Chapter Three:

Soul rotted, thoughts blackened. Actions evil and magic rotted.

The Devourer can be recognized by a knife-cursed body and void’s eyes.

-Stories of the Gods, a children’s novel

I… got by with begging, at least until I was six. When I turned six, the only acknowledgement of my birthday another scratch on the wall, there was a fire in the Hole. It… was massive. The fire started simple, at a drug parlor, but it grew to take over more than half of the district.

And through it all, none came to help.

I ran from the fire. It swallowed up the old women’s homes, and I didn’t know if any survived. It came for my small hole in the side of a bridge, and I scrambled out, running as fast as I could. There was no time to climb up to the rooftops. The only opportunity I had was running until the fire went out or lost interest in me. Eventually, I grew lost in unfamiliar territory, and that spelled my doom.

I had accepted my fate. I had ran down a street to escape the fire, but only found a wall at the end. I turned around, the fire behind me. Then I accepted death for the first time, staring into the burning red gaze of the fire, and prepared to walk into it, to surrender my life.

“Don’t,” a voice came from behind me.

I turned, seeing a man standing there wearing faded blue robes. “I am a Gifted of Nadir, and this city will not burn.”

Then he smiled at me and waved at the sky. A storm started above, but I was more scared than even by the fire. If I looked wrong at a Gifted, I’d die. So I just huddled in a corner away from the fire and watched him as he strained against an invisible force, muscles revealing themselves under his robes. Soot slowly covered him as the fire continued to inch closer. I took steps back as the fire, somehow giving the Gifted a wide berth, came for me.

I backed up to the wall, squeezing against it. The flames licked up against me. I heard flesh start to sizzle, and I screamed.

And that’s when the storm came.

I closed my eyes, and found an unwillingness to die just as drops of water, each fatter than the last, landed on me. Gasping, I looked up as a sea poured from the sky. I fell to my knees in the pouring rain. The Gifted smiled as he pulled down the heavens, all the bright fires I could see around the Hole winking out.

Then he smirked at me. “I’ll be gone now, young lady.”

I just stared after his departing figure, too scared to talk. But one question circled my mind continuously.

Why hadn’t he come earlier?

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I made a new home in the soot-stained world I’d found myself in. I knew there was no way of me finding my way back to the old women who had helped me so much, after running this far from the fire. There was no guarantee they were alive, anyways. My burned fingers pulled me onto a ledge, then the rooftops, before I finally felt I didn’t need to look over my shoulder every few seconds.

Then I looked for a new haunt.

I found one relatively quickly. There was an alleyway with a small turn at the end, directly into an alcove that was invisible from the road. I wondered about why this turn had been built into the city, but ultimately took the alcove as home.

The next day, I could barely move. Every part of me was burned in some way. Soot stained my entire body. I was unclothed, now, for my clothes had been burned so badly they’d fallen off. I was no stranger to nakedness after living all my life on the streets, however. I attempted to drag myself onto a rooftop, then, when I was met with a painful failure, looked longingly-and yet, with fear-at the main road. There was no way I’d go out there, not while I was hurt in unfamiliar territory.

So I sat through a day, then two, until my burns healed enough for me to move. My skin was bubbling all over my legs and arms, causing me excruciating pain without an end in sight. The familiar pain in my stomach, warning of an approaching death, was the only thing that kept me sane during those days. Eventually, the burns stopped hurting as badly as they had used to. They hadn’t healed, the bubbles still visible and the angry flesh screaming at me to stop moving, but I had no choice but to move.

I leveraged myself onto the rooftops as morning came again, my entire body protesting. I’d starve before I healed, at this rate, and if I’d waited any longer I would’ve died of thirst. The rainstorm had created a puddle which kept me alive, but that wasn’t enough anymore.

I peered over the edge of a roof at people below. Every single one looked around suspiciously, hiding their money. They didn’t seem like the softhearted old women who’d give me food when I asked. They seemed like they’d kill me in the hopes that I had a coin or two they could take. I knew what I had to do to survive. I would have to steal.

My first target was a merchant with bread, fresh fruit, and vegetables in stock. A grocer, I assumed. I waited until he was arguing with a customer-not an uncommon sight-and casually walked past. No one noticed the bread I’d secreted under my shirt, and I swiftly escaped to my alley clutching my prize.

It was an easy take, far easier than I’d expected. No one chased me. But I couldn’t get overconfident. I’d seen what had been done to thieves who were caught in the act. I had watched them screaming as their hands were hacked off. I had watched as brands were burned into their foreheads. I had watched them whipped so hard their skin came off in flaps across their back. Shuddering, I swore that would never be me. I ducked back into my nook and started to cram the bread into my mouth. After eating the entire loaf, I went to a different shop for another, and ate that too. Two loaves in one day was more than I’d ever had before. I stopped myself from going back for another, just barely overcoming my temptation.

My hand, displayed on a wall like a stuffed animal head, haunted me that night.

I climbed on the rooftops, another day in the beautiful, soot-stained streets of Heimo. The storm hadn’t washed the remnants of the fire away. Neither had the flood which had come after, perhaps killing more than the fire itself did.

You could find soot everywhere, and it would get under your nails and into your skin. Even the food from the most expensive merchants was stained black. I leaned over the side of one of the buildings, gazing into the river. It ran bleak and gray, reflecting my raven-black hair and blue eyes back at me. I smoothed my hair out before pulling my petite figure away from the river. I quickly found another mark-a girl carrying a basket of bread somewhere, presumably to her home.

I walked past her, casually sliding a loaf off the pile she held, before secreting it under my shirt and entering an alley, as I usually did. The bread swiftly disappeared before I decided to climb to the rooftops once more. My fingers latched onto the side of the building. I pulled, when suddenly a grip latched onto my foot. I kept pulling, trying to get onto the roof, but the hold was too strong. I fell to the ground, dazed, just before a blow landed to the side of my head.