“Very well. I will tell my story. But on my terms, beast. In my own time. And at the end, you will fulfill your bargain. Kill me, and let me die for the last time.” - The Cinderborn at the Black Trial

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THERE WAS DARKNESS. Not only without, but within. A gnawing emptiness, like the worst hunger I’d ever felt before. It drove deep, a festering hornet worming its blind way into my gut, stinging, burning. A scream boiled out of me, and before I knew it, I was awake, clutching my gut and gasping for air.

Something rolled off me. Dry and hard, like sticks. My eyes were gummed shut, and I had to knead them to get them open, a process as slow as it was painful. When at last I opened them, I found only more darkness. Was I blind?

I scoured my memory, but found it as empty as this yawning dark. Nothing. An empty cave: I knew as little about myself as I did my surroundings. That was the first tongue of fear: having no memory of myself at all. And worse, where was I? All there I had, at the very base of my being, was a memory of light: of a saffron sunset over a wine-dark sea. Of white foam over dark waves rolling up onto a beach.

And more. Dead men littered a beach, blanketed by countless crows. Iron swords and slain horses, and arrows feathering everything. I did not remember the dead men, or why they had died fighting on that beach. I didn’t even remember the name of that sea, or what my role in the debacle had been. I knew only the blood on the sand, my blood, mingling with the waves that lapped eagerly at the flow of my very life. A final vision of my hand reaching for the waves, grasping a silver chain that was slowly being dragged out to the depths…

And a phrase: Raana claims her reward.

I was dead then, I realized. The hunger turned cold, and even the pain stalled. The realization of where I had awoken hurt far worse than any meager agony of the flesh. It was my soul that turned in bitter revulsion.

In the dark, I probed my body, searching for wounds and missing pieces. Yet, to my surprise, it was all intact. I was naked as the day I was born, but legs and arms were all accounted for, and fingers and toes. Two apiece of eyes and ears. Two of everything I ought to have, in fact. Only one thing stood out as wrong: a puckered hole over my left breast, two fingers wide and hot to the touch. I hissed when my fingers brushed it, drawing sharply back. Stinking pus was leaking down my chest, but even wiping that away took some doing, so sharp and sudden was the pain. Infected, I thought.

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But if I had truly died, would it matter? I wondered how I’d gotten that ugly little kiss.

Strangest of all, perhaps, was the discovery that I was not entirely blind. A little light was leaking from that wound. A guttering spark, as unsteady as a fawn in a gale, and yet… I looked at my fingers in that uncertain light. They were shriveled, little more than dead-looking sticks.

Standing took some doing. My legs were stiff as boards, my feet mostly numb. A sort of feeling had come back into my body by then, a dull, distant tingle that spoke of some lingering life. With a passing thought, I reached down and snatched up one of the dry things that had rolled off me when I had awakened. By the meager light leaking from the wound, I saw it was a bone. A human bone: the fibia of some poor soul. I gathered what the others were, and shuddered.

So. This was it, then. A silent trial by a jury unseen, a silent condemnation. Abandonment. Having the word for it let me give name to that awful feeling writhing deeper and deeper. No eternity of starlight and feasts; no glorious battle alongside the immortal, shining gods, forever proving oneself in valor of combat. I caught glimpses of faces I dimly remembered. My wife, my children, weeping as I left them. As the proud horns called, summoning me to serve. And by the black blood! Even my own mother must now stand on the opposite bank of that vast ocean of life and death, never again to see my face.

Father, husband, son. Thrown like refuse into the lightless pits by some ill-fated, pointless battle. Given away to the demons that flay skin and drink blood, and scheme forever against the worthy.

Tossed into the dark mouth of Hell.

Raana claims her reward. The silver locket. There was something about that locket that glimmered, eager to be remembered. Anger flashed as I pried with numb fingers at a mind that would not give up its secrets. The denial was maddening, torturous. Who I was mattered less than why I was here, in this awful place. Much less than why I felt this ravening void, this nameless, wordless emptiness within my very heart.

The darkness held its secrets. It was eternal, unchanging. The perfect prison for the unworthy and the damned, I realized.

I let the light shine on my fingers once more. They were decomposing. Withering. Soon, I would be no more than the bones themselves, for men, and even their souls, are temporary without the gods. That was what the priests taught…and this place, if I was right, was far beyond the gleaming starlight.

Raana claims her prize. I scowled in the dark, forcing my stiff face to life. I would not be some bauble to a cruel and careless god, cast away to be forgotten. She would pay. She would pay.

And not even Hell itself could stop me.