Undo.

The screams of the child entered Tic's head like an explosion and brought him to his knees. How could it come to this, the life of a child for his? Agony swept up inside of him, rushing the blood to his head and throwing him off balance. He grasped the edge of the wall and looked to the ground as it swayed dizzily before him. He let himself fall and buried his face in the ground, closing his eyes but not going unconscious. He struggled to keep his mind alert as he allowed the fainting spell to pass over him. The waves of dizziness finally subsided, and he raised himself against the wall, opening his eyes to a blurry scene of fiery chaos.

Villagers were fleeing in every direction. Buildings were burning; fire and smoke bustled from the windows of shops and homes. Smoke filled the air, shading the world in grey and black. The guardians hurled flaming discs toward the village houses, which erupted into fiery explosions as they collided into walls. Tic could see it all happening in front of him, like a surreal dream, unreal and untouchable. Somewhere beyond the smoke-filled air he heard the collision of metal upon metal, gunshots and electricity. He saw the forms of black-clad figures fight, fall and flee from a pink-haired figure dashing to and fro, swooping upon her victims and slaying in single swings. Men were shouting, women were screaming, and somewhere amongst it all, a little girl was burning to death.

Though he wished he could not see it, he was drawn to the writhing mass of cloth, flesh and fire. His eyes were wide in a trance-like stupor, trapped onto that nightmarish vision, as his feet carried him toward it. The stench of charred skin had already reached him, churning his stomach in sickness. A warmth writhed within his chest as if his heart had caught aflame from the very sight of the girl on fire.

This was not where he imagined his life to turn. He could bear it no longer. His life and what control he had over it seemed to perish in those flames. Nothing would ever be the same. Nothing but the aching inside his heart that rose within him from the moment his heart learned to feel. That would remain forever; a scar, a gift, a desire to undo the wrong. The power to undo wrong. The power to undo death itself.

The guardian was already dead by the time Tic reached him. Dead from Miraye's sword. His eyes were shut and he appeared to be sleeping in the fire, holding his ragdoll to ease him into a sweet dream. Both he and his doll were cloaked in flames, their bodies whistling and cracking like fresh wood in a campfire. The girl was was nothing more than dead; her body was a mass of blackened flesh, crumbling and peeling the skin from her bones, melting away into nothingness. That is, until she opened her eyes.

The crystal clear blue of her eyes appeared dramatically radiant against the backdrop of molting flesh. The eyes widened at the sight of the boy leaning in toward her. What little strength that was left inside her was used to raise a withered black hand, as if to touch the boy's face. Without thinking, Tic laid his hand into the flames, slipping his fingers around the girl's. He leaned into the fire, flames licking his unscarred skin, so hot he could not feel anything but the girl's body as he slipped his arms around her and tore her from the corpse that bound her.

And when he did feel the pain, he did not scream, only closed his eyes and held the burnt doll in his arms. And even as the flames caught onto his clothes, he did not struggle, he did not throw himself to the ground. He stood up with the flaming black creature and walked to the pool of village drinking water. Each step he took was an eternity of pain, peace and death. There was fire, but something else was raging, something so unbearably hot that it did not feel like fire at all. Something so unbearably painful that it had become painless. Something he had felt before.

His eyes rolled upward, as if pulled to the sky. His heart tightened and relaxed, each beat alive in his chest, pumping something purer than blood through his veins. It overflowed and saturated his flesh, until every inch of skin was imbued with the immaculate touch. Looking down he saw the crystal clear stare of the girl in his arms, her skin as white as a dove's, as he pulled them both into the pool.