Remaining Embers~Jaune x Cinder

Living...

Cinder took her time in exploring the outskirts of Salem's castle. The fortress was enormous, and surrounded on all sides by barren red stone and black pools of mysterious liquid, and massive crystalline structures that seemed to erupt right out from the ground. Cinder could not help but be curious about it all, even if her instincts were to flee from such ghastly and unnatural sights.

Salem focused Cinder's attention on the pools of inky black dug into the scarred red ground, as a young Beowolf dragged itself up from the dark liquid, its body seeming to constitute and form as it emerged.

"What is that?" Cinder cautiously asked.

"The bubbling mass of the Heart of Remnant," Salem answered.

"The Heart of Remnant?" Cinder repeated.

Salem stepped over to the edge of the pool, unconcerned for the young Beowolf. The beast snarled at her, but despite being little more than aggression cobbled together in a vaguely mammalian form, the creature moved on its way. Salem waved Cinder over, and she cautiously joined her mistress at the edge of the pool.

Salem waved her hand over it. The dark liquids began to recede, and Cinder saw an even greater darkness in the hole, like staring into a deep, empty well.

"This world, this remnant, is just a shell," Salem explained. "At its core, however, is the surviving fragment of what once was. In the chaos before the world's beginning, there was a heart that pumped out the blood upon which life was sown."

"The heart of the God of Light?" Cinder speculated.

Salem seemed amused by her question. "In a sense. But whether it was the older brother's creation or not, the younger brother corrupted it, and curdled its blood. Where the older brother sought to sire new life from the core of the planet, the younger brother used it instead to spread his darkness and forge the Grimm."

"How?" Cinder inquired.

"The god of darkness imbues upon the living his gifts," Salem answered. "Humans are his creations too, and those touched by his essence pass their Aura from life and it gathers together beneath the surface and gathers in the heart. There it combines with the negative energy that forges the Grimm, and further corrodes this remnant. In time, the weight of that darkness will shatter this damaged world and return it to nothing."

"And when -exactly- will that happen?" Cinder asked.

"When the Grimm overtake humanity and there are no more to accept the god's gifts," Salem answered. "An inevitability- but not one likely to occur just yet."

Cinder continued to peer into the darkness, wondering how deep it went. "The dark god blessed me. Is that where I'll go when I die?"

"Why wait?" Salem asked.

Cinder suddenly felt pressure on her back. She felt herself tumbling through empty air, her body contorting and twisting about as she fell. She glanced back up to see Salem standing on the red surface above her, as she continued to fall into the darkness.

Cinder tried to cry out to her mistress, but no sound left her lips. She just continued to fall, surrounded by darkness, suffocating her like deep, pressurized waters. She tried to use her Semblance to illuminate the area, but no flames raised from her hand. She just continued to fall.

And fall, and fall, deeper into suffocating, all-encompassing darkness...

Cinder reached her hands to clutch her throat, trying desperately to hold onto what air she could, and her vision was nothing but blackness... save for two streaks of light, one blue, and one red... each color filling either eye for the briefest moment.