She remembered to perfection her first death in this dark limbo that was her current existence. The death that had changed everything. That proved to her beyond any doubt that what those men said before she died were not the ravings of madmen, but nothing but the truth.

The cruel, cold truth.

It's not as if she only couldn't die. Besides that, time had stopped for her. She didn't flow against the current of time like some beings of legend, long extinct if they had ever really existed, like vampires.

She existed outside of time.

That is why she couldn't be considered a living being. Something that couldn't die was not alive. Life and death always went hand in hand.

But she was digressing. What she was getting at is that of course, some would think she should have seen the signs even before that. Because she was and always would be a girl in her early twenties, and she wasn't normal.

As she had said, though, she had been very young when this curse was thrust upon her. And young people, especially seen through the eyes of an older person, already in and of themselves seemed to be immune to the passage of time. So she didn't notice anything unusual. Nor even suspect it.

Naturally, how could she suspect that something was happening to her that was so far out of common sense?

That's why she did nothing.

That's why she blithely, like a fool, continued immersed in the dream of a normal life.

Until those she had called neighbors and friends opened her eyes.

Until that day.

She could still feel the flames on her skin. It was as if she was burning, as if she would always burn. This existence was her own personal hell. Of course it burned. And the flames of hell tormented her especially in situations like the one she was in now.

Up to her elbows in the blood of her enemies. As she had said she would, she was continuing the killing. To protect Desmond and, above all, herself. She was a woman of her word.

The first time she had found herself with only three men in a dirty alley.

This time, however, they kept coming. One after another. They came for her, seeking peace, glory or whatever, and only received the embrace of death. In other words, what they deserved.

They deserved no more than this. To drown in their own blood. To die cursing her, cursing even the heavens. To burn, as she was burning.

She had lived a long time. At first, she had harbored a thirst for vengeance against the world, certainly. As the saying went, misery loves company. For the first few years, she had devoted herself solely to spreading her misery. She had been a mass of flesh that lived only to hurt others.

But those feelings, once so intense, had proved to be transient, like so many others.

Yes, it's not as if the flame of her hatred still burned. It's not as if the bonfire of that day had never been extinguished in her heart. But, she couldn't let it go. She couldn't get it out of her mind, nor would she want to.

How could she?

Both those she knew and those she didn't gathered to rain abuse upon her. The daily life she had grown accustomed to changed literally overnight.

When they laid into her, she felt no fear. What she felt at first, no, before the beginning, was confusion.

As expected.

She couldn't understand it.

How things had changed so easily, how they could be doing this to her.

It was crazy.

The town she had lived in all her life had apparently been transformed into a den of bloodthirsty monsters. Even after seeing that they had no explanation to give, or that they didn't want to give it to someone like her perhaps, she continued to insist as if knowing the answer would change the inevitable.

That's what she did during the night she spent in a cell, waiting for the moment of her execution.

Crying and asking for explanations.

Back then she had been what humans consider an adult woman. Yet she had behaved like a child. She didn't hate herself for it or blame herself. It was only natural that the weak could do nothing but cry. Prey was devoured by larger and stronger animals. In that they did not differ at all from the animals.

If I had been as strong as I am now....

If I had known what I knew now....

No, there was no point in thinking like that, in asking such questions.

Even if she'd had the will to fight and the weapons to do so, she wouldn't have been able to. She knew that. The others had turned on her with ease. But she... Cut the throats of her friends? Just acquaintances, even though she saw them practically every day because it was a small town?

No.

Back then, she wouldn't have been capable of something like that. Even if it would have been to save her life, she would not have moved. The inevitable tragedy would have taken place anyway.

Without explanations, without spitting anything but hatred, they took her to the square where she would be executed for the crime of existing.

They ignored, as from the beginning, her screams and the tears that ran down her cheeks, so hot that they gave the impression that they were burning her skin.

Abigail screamed wildly and brandished the knife in her hand.

Thus, as if she were Death himself, she cut down another life.

In her voice there was only fury.

She was on fire. From head to toe, all her skin burned, and the flames of hell would eventually consume her.

But not yet.

Not yet.

They chose to burn her alive to make sure she would die. She was not lucky enough to die choking to death from the thick smoke, like most people who were executed that way.

She was a "thing" for which no time passed, after all.

They didn't think such a death would be enough, and they thought right. What escaped them all, especially herself, who thought she was normal, was that even flames wouldn't be enough.

She screamed, of course.

She had never felt such pain in her life. Her life had been that of any normal girl you could find anywhere. She hadn't gotten into trouble, and she had a kind and loving family who had never raised a hand to her.

She had been completely unprepared for what she perceived at the time as a complete change.

For such hatred, and such pain.

Her mind went blank with fear and pain. As she burned, she ceased to exist as a human being. She was reduced to an animal that felt her own death approaching. It smelled something burning, and knew it was its own flesh. Even its bones.

It screamed, yes, and a lot. But eventually it ran out of strength to scream, let alone try to undo its bonds.

In any case, even if it had been able to untie itself, it would not have been able to escape in any way.

Even with divine luck on its side, it wouldn't have been able to get out of the confines of the village, much less find help.

At first, the spectators enjoyed her execution as if it were the most fun that had happened to them in years. They had all come together for someone's suffering, after all. There was no sweeter nectar than the suffering of others.

People only cared about others insofar as they affected them, after all.

But this was not mere suffering, excessive and aimless. No. Those gathered there, she now understood, had sought to confirm their own happiness. What possible way was better than to see someone going through the most extreme suffering they could imagine?

But the fun went beyond that. Perhaps because of her special nature, it simply took too long for her to die. When they stopped hearing her scream. That's when they took a good look at what they were really doing.

There was nothing left except a burnt husk.

Her skin had turned pitch black, speckled with fiery red dots that stood out.

It was not blood.

It was about the muscles that her burnt skin showed, that is, in the spots that had not been so badly burnt that only her bones could be seen.

It was something grotesque. She would say it was like the remains of an animal on display in a butcher's shop, but the difference was that with her no one had to strain to see the shape she had originally had. Even though they were looking at a sight so horrible that it made them wish she wasn't human, they couldn't forget that she was.

And that they were the ones who had done this to her.

But their guilt wouldn't last.

It certainly wouldn't. As soon as this was over, they would undoubtedly go back to their normal lives as if nothing had happened.

Telling themselves things like this couldn't have been avoided, at best.

But, at that moment, they became her prisoners.

She was still alive, even in that state. Her breathing was like the wind passing through a cavern. Her ribs stuck out like the petals of a blooming flower. But she was clinging to life. And the flames had already died down. The amount of wood they had gathered at the bonfire was no longer enough.

Time stretched into eternity.

With all the spectators becoming her mute prisoners.

The powerful illusion that time had stopped, that everything was frozen, was easily broken, with one step. And a sound like glass bursting.

The one who had stepped forward was a person in monk's robes. He crouched down and looked into her eyes. At her, who had been reduced to a mass of flesh that could not even recognize herself as a human being.

The monk had that problem too.

His eyes were as cold as ice. He didn't seem to be seeing the same as the others, who were suddenly stupefied, terrified.

As if bewitched.

As if she were truly a witch.

Those cold eyes did not leave hers as he plunged the knife into her forehead, putting an end to her suffering almost instantly. Or so the monk thought, of course. But evidently her suffering had only just begun then. There began an eternity of suffering.

This she did not witness directly, since she was shrouded in the darkness of death in the meantime.

But, after the monk stabbed her, they threw more wood on the bonfire, made sure that it burned, that nothing was left of it but ashes.

She found that out later.

After opening her eyes in the middle of the night, alone in the middle of that square and as good as new.

The first target of her burning desire for revenge was that monk, for striking the final blow. Then she took care of those who condemned her.

She didn't mean it in a legal sense. She hadn't even had anything resembling a trial in the first place. Of course, she took care of those who presided over her execution. But she didn't stop there.

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She killed many of the people who had laughed at her and spat on her, enjoying her suffering.

What she really wanted at that moment, mad with rage, was to kill each and every one of them. To wipe those filthy creatures off the face of the earth, along with the village they inhabited. No one could have blamed her for that desire. Even if someone did, she wouldn't give a shit, what she felt was enough for her.

It wasn't a bad wish. After going through something like that, it was the only thing anyone sane could wish for.

And, despite everything...

As she was saying, she hadn't. She would have been able to, but only physically. Mentally...

She collapsed.

She bathed in the blood of those who had condemned her, of those demons who had dragged her into the flames of hell. But she collapsed as soon as she had to face the fear-filled eyes of a child. What she did, in the end, was to run away. Disappear into the night.

Even after suffering like that, she wasn't able to give it back to her enemies... No, that wasn't the point. She wasn't able to return it to the children, who were not to blame for anything. She was entitled to kill them all, to fulfill her revenge. That was undoubtedly true.

But not that.

She hadn't been able to allow herself to trample on those lives for the sake of her own.

Even if she had killed all the adults, leaving the children, who knew nothing, alone, she would have condemned them anyway. They would have starved to death. Sooner or later.

And, of course, it had been a mistake from the most practical point of view.

She would have saved herself a lot of trouble if she had completed her killing spree. If she had prevented the town authorities from reporting it. With the town full of dead souls, she could have gone elsewhere and started a new life instead of being hunted down as a witch, an abomination.

Still, even so, she didn't believe she had been wrong. The mistake had been the right decision for her as a human being.

But, even today, she was burning at that stake.

The smell of her burning flesh still filled her nostrils. She had died that day. Her spirit, pulling at her corpse like a puppet, wouldn't stop burning until she was finally allowed to rest in peace. There was not a shred of peace within her.

Killing the soldiers of what she designated simply as the Organization because there had been too many like it before, and she didn't care what name it might have, she barely differentiated them in her memories, Abigail screamed like a fierce beast.

She vented her rage on them every time she swung the knife.

With every stab, every scream, every blow.

Even the sound of the guns going off all around her seemed to be nothing more than an expression of her rage.

She was experiencing one of those moments of ecstasy where she seemed to be connected to the world she was so far removed from.

And she was feeling like this killing relentlessly. Mercilessly.

She told herself that she must have taken a bad turn at some point, to have ended up like this. She couldn't say when it had been, though. Or if she had, in the first place, because this could simply be the inevitable result of being what she was.

In any case, the battle was coming to an end. They were far enough away from civilization that the continuous gunfire and the occasional explosion (oh, and the sounds of the wounded or dying, of course) didn't attract attention. So it's not as if she was in a hurry.

It was simply that this fact had caught her by surprise, immersed in her thoughts as she had been. Even now that thoughts of the past were gone, she couldn't be said to be concentrating, however. The fire that was devouring her inside prevented any rational thought.

She was a mass of impulses, like a wild animal. Reacting on instinct alone. Killing because she had to kill.

Luckily, that was enough.

It had been enough so far and would continue to do so.

But that was tempting fate. Shortly after that thought crossed her mind, there was a gunshot. One more among dozens. But this one was different, she distinguished it instantly. Because this one rocked her world.

Abigail fell to the ground, letting out a startled voice.

Lying on the ground, she coldly observed that a good portion of her legs had been blown off by the shot. However, she felt no pain. She perceived it as something that was in a different world from hers. Now especially, the only thing she felt was the flames burning her skin.

The only thing that propelled her forward.

Mouth full of blood, teeth painted red and clenched, showing them all, Abigail looked at the enemy that had managed to reach her. Hit her good.

This wasn't the first time she had bled in this battle, but it was the first time she had suffered a wound of such severity. Of course, calling this a wound was like a bad joke. For normal people, wizards or not, in most cases this would be a death sentence.

No more, no less.

To her this would only slow her down.

It was just a small obstacle.

Her defiant gaze was loaded with that message, burning it upon the enemy holding the shotgun that would force her body to produce a new pair of legs.

Abigail laughed, as if talking about something funny, or as if she had done it in a funny way. On top of that her new legs weren't what was funny here. It was the guy with the shotgun, who looked at her with a somber expression, so serious. And not because he thought her laughter was directed at him.

No, no, no.

-You think you're some kind of hero," she pronounced clearly even with her mouth full of blood, unimpeded by pain. You think there's no one who can stop you. Because you're righteous. Or because of some shit like that, right? Too bad you're just too blind to see what's in front of your eyes.

The soldier didn't pull the trigger in response to her concerns, emptying the shotgun.

He kept looking at her as if waiting for something.

She didn't wait. She took action without hesitation. She didn't have to wait to be killed, wait for her next resurrection. Even without her legs, she could still fight. Besides, it was temporary.

Abigail grabbed the shotgun an instant before the soldier pulled the trigger.

She twisted it, causing it to discharge against the car next to her. The alarm began to sound.

Another irritating sound added to this chaos, this feast of blood and gore.

She had gripped the gun against one hand. She didn't need to use both hands, even in such a disadvantageous position as this. Neither to deflect the shot, nor to wrench the gun from his hands.

But there was a problem. That the soldier was too alive for her to take the shotgun from him.

Even she had limits.

Luckily, however, she had the power to rectify them quickly. Not all of them, but this one did.

With her free hand, she threw the knife.

The blade stuck between his eyebrows. It plunged deep into his skull and penetrated his brain, killing him almost instantly. Abigail took the opportunity to wrestle the weapon from him before his grip tightened.

The soldier fell along with his knife. The bladed weapon was stuck so deep inside his skull that it would be hard to pull it out. That is, if she had to pull it out. But she didn't need to. With a thought, she could retrieve the knife whenever she wanted. Not at the moment. At the moment she had a more suitable weapon already in her hands.

Abigail fired.

As if she had intended revenge, her shot blew off the left leg of a running soldier.

If so, it was a very poor revenge. She had shattered one, not both of his legs. And she hadn't even aimed the shot at the soldier who had done this to her. It would have been a waste, since he was already dead, but hey, it's not like human beings can't get satisfaction out of something wasteful. If so, humanity would have far fewer problems.

She fired a second time.

The head of one of the enemies, which protruded from behind the car where he was covered, flew through the air.

In thousands of pieces.

His mangled face, with him lying there on the ground, exposed to the sun, resembled what the crows might have left if they had been raging over his corpse.

Was she, then, the scavenger bird in this case?

She laughed sharply. Mocking them all and even herself.

She made a gesture to reload the gun, but the ammunition had stayed with the dead man. She had done it unconsciously, as if this were her gun. Anyone could make a mistake like that. But even a second could be vital in a life and death fight. It was the difference between life and death.

The time she had wasted trying to reload the shotgun was not going to be recovered.

Nor the opportunity to invest those precious seconds in walking away, crawling over her own pool of blood.

So, sure enough, she was punished for her mistake.

Another shot.

The bullet hit the shotgun, close to her hands, and made her drop the gun. It didn't matter, empty it was not a weapon. She supposed she could have cracked the skull of someone who had approached her, brandishing it as if it were a club.

But, for personal encounters, she had a better weapon.

There weren't that many left.

Her slaughter had sown the field with the blood and entrails of the fallen.

There was no way to find out how many she had killed here and now, even if she stopped to count. They were in too many pieces for that to do any good. However, there were only half a dozen soldiers left.

And there would be no surprises.

There would be no cavalry joining the decimated forces of this guard post.

Hers? It had already arrived.

To recover as quickly as possible, Abigail had forced her own body to prioritize her right leg. It looked deformed and strange, like the limb of some unknown creature that had crawled out of the depths of the earth. It didn't look like a human limb at all.

Not yet. But it could do its job, and that was enough for her.

Abigail leapt to her feet.

She was forced to lean against a tree to keep herself upright, as her left leg was not yet ready, it had barely started, because of what she had done.

Thanks to her quick reaction time, while she was unable to avoid all the shots, the bullets that hit her were not able to stop her.

The bullets that hit her hit her chest, piercing it and not her head, putting a temporary end to this little fight.

She wasn't literally growing a new pair of legs.

Her legs, which had been lying on the ground in a pool of blood, had disappeared without a trace.

The blood that had spilled from them as well, of course.

Her power wasn't regeneration.

When she was damaged, time flowed backwards to restore her to her "original state". That was the secret of her immortality.

But time, though flexible, had to be resilient.

That's why it took time. That's why it went piece by piece instead of happening all at once.

Abigail brought the knife back to her hand.

Yes, she burned. She was like a phoenix. Dying and rising from the ashes, over and over again. And, like a phoenix, dead or alive she burned in her own flames. She was doomed to burn. I wish I could make them understand what immortality meant. What it was they were really looking for.

What the reward of their efforts and sacrifices would be, even if they won.

But she couldn't. She had tried more times than she could count.

Every time she failed.

This Organization was not the same as any that had preceded it, her previous enemies. Of course. But, to her, they were indistinguishable. Like the same person wearing different masks. She had no reason to think that anything would change this time.

No, the only path open before her was the only one she always had.

Kill. And kill she did.

The outcome had been decided from the beginning. The timing of the victory was the only thing in question. For time was on her side. Sooner or later, she would come out on top.

Abigail, both legs now in place, recovered (that included her pants and the boots she had been wearing), dropped down among the blood and corpses. Still clutching the knife tightly. In that wasteland of death, Abigail looked skyward as if hoping to find something there. Perhaps fallen souls flying into nothingness. The souls she had mowed down today.

Abigail laughed again, unwillingly.

Not knowing what she was laughing about, this time. It hadn't been that thought, but something else. The shadow of her thought. Something unknown to her. Unknown because she wanted it that way.

She didn't want to dig around and find anything.

Never.

She was tired, very, very tired. She was sick of everything.

So, as expected, she would not be allowed to rest.

She heard the call.

It wasn't some kind of metaphor, it was very literal. As for the person who was on the other side? That was, of course, Desmond. The only one with whom she had formed a contract at this time. The only one alive that she had wanted to offer as a sacrifice on his behalf.

The boy who had promised her that he would give his all for her, that he would bear the curse she carried on her shoulders if that was what she wanted.

And he hadn't lied.

She knew that without a doubt. If he had lied, he had lied to himself as well, he believed it.

But she didn't believe it. She thought she knew him well enough, even though they had never been together. He wasn't the type to lie. He was like an open book. Honest as a child. She had seen that innocence in his face, that night that now seemed so long ago.

They'd had a few conversations since then, since her return, and it had only allowed her to confirm what she'd thought all along.

That he was telling the truth.

That this was her chance to finally get off the hamster wheel she was trapped in.

Following that logic, she should be grateful to him.

She should do anything to please him, and to make up for what she was going to do to him.

Even though that was a crime that had no compensation.

That the boy would never forgive her, just as she had never forgiven the man who did this to her even after coming to understand him.

But instead, she ignored his call once again.

It was so hot. Her forehead, her whole body in fact, was pearly with sweat. And on top of that, now she had to endure this. As if an invisible hand was tugging at her brain.

They had found themselves in the middle of the remains of the normal lives of thousands of people.

It couldn't be called a battlefield, because there hadn't been a battle there in the first place. With no mages to protect the village, the Empire had committed a massacre with hardly any resistance. Their bond had been forged in the midst of that monstrous violence.

It was natural for him to be this violent.

It was natural that her ties with the lambs she wanted to slaughter were all violent, without exception.

In this case, there was another explanation. A reason why the call was even more violent than usual.

Quite simply, Desmond was irritated because she wasn't answering his calls.

More than irritated, scared, surely Exactly like a little boy looking for... looking for his mother. She should answer him. Right now, she no longer had the "excuse" of being immersed in a battle.

Like she hadn't had it dozens of times before, and yet she'd ignored him anyway.

Now?

Even she didn't know what she would do.

Abigail put a hand to her chest, squeezing.

She could feel his heat.

Desmond's warmth, that is.

Their hearts beat as one.

But they couldn't be further apart. Despite everything, they were as far apart as heaven and earth.

What was she going to do if she didn't want to talk to him, if she didn't want to do what was necessary?

Let him go, perhaps?

Spare his life by allowing him to die someday. Ha.

In that case, what would happen to the next one? What differentiated Desmond from the boys and girls she would have gladly offered at her own altar in the past?

Nothing, of course. It wasn't like he was some innocent kid who didn't know any better, even though his personality was similar. He was someone who had crawled out of a pit of corpses, in the metaphorical sense. Like coming out of his mother's womb.

That had been his rebirth.

Having seen so much death at such a young age, he had no problem killing. In fact, he almost seemed to... enjoy it. He was a good person, but he was not innocent, far from it. So why wasn't she suddenly not answering his calls? What was it that made her hesitate even though everything she had ever wanted was at her fingertips?

What was wrong, what had changed?

Her.

She had changed, not Desmond. The thought of making use of the key that would break her out of her prison, that would finally give her peace and freedom, made her feel guilty. She couldn't believe it, but that was the way it was. There had been no need to go round in circles. The answer had been right under her nose from the beginning.

And, because of that poisonous guilt, now she didn't even know how to look him in the face.

Pathetic.

Yes, just plain pathetic.

As if, although she had run a long way since the day of her own rebirth, she hadn't taken a single step since then.

Oh, right. Of course she was like that. He was a hamster stuck on a wheel.

How was she to move forward when she was nothing more than a hamster trapped in the wheel of life?

Once again, the call, the tug.

She knew she had to answer it. To reassure her, not to think the worst, because that's what he was going to think, it would never cross his mind that she was ignoring him on purpose. And to let him live blindly, imagining the most terrible possibilities, was also cruel.

So that he would not have to suffer in that way and also to strengthen her bond with him.

She had a great influence on the boy. Although she had never once acted like a mother, he saw her as one. Those little friends of hers were beyond comparison.

But just because that was the case didn't mean it would stay that way.

Nothing lasts forever.

Not even her, she hoped.

The bond they shared was like a plant. She had to water it and nurture it or it would wither. At least that's according to conventional logic.

But Desmond was a plant that had not only survived for a decade without the sun, it had grown taller, and its roots were more deeply rooted than when she had left him without looking back.

In fact, he'd done virtually all the work....

But that was telling herself excuses.

She wasn't going to answer, but not because of that. Just... because she wasn't.

Abigail closed her eyes, still lying on the ground amidst the filth, dirt and blood, and waited for the sensation to pass.