Two years.
That's how long it took to go from a flicker of hellfire to an inferno.
The E-Rank license was a distant memory, traded in for a disc of polished obsidian etched with a single, glowing "A". I wasn't "new meat" anymore. I was Cinder.
The name stuck after the incident with the Nest of Lamentations. They said the flames burned so hot the sorrow-fueled spirits vaporized into screams of steam. I didn't bother correcting them.
Zay wasn't just my mentor anymore; he was my partner. The only person in this damnable place I didn't have to watch my back around. Mostly. We had a rhythm. He'd find the marks—high-value targets, rogue spirits, unstable dimensional rifts—and I'd bring the fire. We were good. The best.
We were in the Tanglewoods, a part of the Grey Banks where lost memories congealed into thorny, treacherous landscapes. The mark was a Memory Leech Matriarch, a colossal, pulsating thing that had been draining entire sectors of souls, making them blank slates. A big payday. An A-Rank job.
"It's feeding on a nexus point,"
Zay said, his own flames a low blue corona around him as we moved through the psychic thicket.
"We sever the connection, hit it with a concentrated burst before it can release its swarm. Simple."
"Simple,"
I echoed, a confident smirk on my face. My hands were wreathed in controlled crimson fire, the heat a comfortable second skin.
We found it. A grotesque, pulsing sac of stolen lives attached to a writhing root of pure regret. It was surrounded by a faint shimmer—a protective energy field.
"On my mark,"
Zay whispered, drawing on his power for a focused lance of blue flame meant to pierce the shield.
But the Matriarch wasn't just feeding. It was birthing.
The shield wasn't for defense. It was a containment field. And it dropped.
Not to make it vulnerable.
To release its children.
A tidal wave of Memory Leeches, each the size of a hound, erupted from the Matriarch. Not dozens. Thousands. A living, skittering tsunami of oblivion.
Zay's roar of warning was swallowed by the psychic shriek of the swarm.
My instincts took over. I didn't retreat. I was an A-Rank. I met the wave with a wall of hellfire. The leading edge of the swarm vaporized into nothing. But for every one I burned, ten more took its place. They were endless.
I was powerful. But I wasn't infinite.
I started fighting, opening the monsters with my bare hands and smashing their body.
A searing pain shot up my leg. One had latched on, its maw sinking through my armor, through my essence. My fire sputtered. Another hit my arm. Then my back.
The memories didn't drain slowly. They were ripped away.
The feel of the A-Rank license in my hand. Gone.
Zay's smirk the day we took down our first major bounty.
Gone.
The taste of my first victory.
Gone.
The reason for the fire in my chest.
Gone.
My name. My name was... my name was...
The hellfire around me died completely.
I was on my knees, the world a blur of skittering shadows. I saw Zay, a brilliant torch of blue fury, fighting his way toward me, his face a mask of desperate rage. He was screaming my name as he kicked the monsters away with fury.
But the name meant nothing to me.
The last thing I felt was the cold, numbing kiss of a Leech attaching itself to my forehead.
The last thing I saw was Zay's horrified face.
Then...
---
...?
Waking up was the opposite of nothing.
It was a cold so deep it felt like my bones were made of ice. It was the smell of damp ash and something sweetly rotten. I wasn't in the Tanglewoods.
I was on my knees on a shore of fine, grey sand that stretched out in every direction into a sick, yellowish fog. A cold, silent sea of the same grey water lapped at the sand. The air was thick and heavy, pressing down on me.
This was… nowhere.
Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through the absolute void in my head. I scrambled to my feet, my heart hammering against my ribs. I was wearing strange armor, scarred and burnt. Who...?
"Hello?!"
My voice sounded small and pathetic, swallowed by the fog.
"Is anyone there?!"
Nothing. No answer. Just the endless, silent grey.
This had to be a dream. A nightmare. I started to run. I had to get out. I had to wake up.
I ran along the shore, my feet sinking into the cold sand. The fog didn't clear. The landscape didn't change.
This was wrong. This was all wrong.
I fell to my knees again, the panic curdling into something worse. Something absolute.
This wasn't a dream.
The last thing I remembered was… was…
Nothing. There was nothing before this beach, besides my past life.
The truth was a vacuum.
I was nobody. I was nothing. I was empty.