Chapter 1

My chest hurt before the arrow hit. The pangs of regret, the fear of death, the error that became all too apparent in the face of defeat. Maybe, after all this time, I had grown overconfident. I knew that I had a long way to go before I would even reach the levels of the likes of Ozpin, despite all the assurances that I was a prodigy.

Right now, all I had left were regrets. I, Pyrrha Nikos, was a murderer. A failure, and a far cry from the hero I wanted to be. On the battlefield and in love, I ended up drawing the shorter straw.

The arrow itself was comparable to the thorn of a cactus. It only amplified the regret, the miserable feeling of failure.

The woman stepped forward, putting her hand on my head. I stared at her, my mouth agape, unable to form words. She was warm. I felt warm.

My body exploded in pain. Not figuratively, no. I did not have the mercy of a quick death. Every single part of me fall apart. I could, out of the corner of my eye, see someone. A familiar face.

Ruby.

I couldn't say anything. I wanted to tell her to run. I wanted to tell her to take care of Jaune for me. I wanted to tell her so many things, and instead, my vision faded.

Ashes.

I felt like ashes.

If I still had a stomach, I suppose the feeling that spread through me right now was sickness. I wanted to throw up, but I couldn't exactly place where my mouth was.

And now, after all the warmth was gone, after the arrow that had pierced my chest left and nothing of me remained, I felt cold.

More than cold. I was freezing, as if standing in the middle of a blizzard. The modicum of comfort I had from Cinder's grasp made my death even more painful.

I hadn't imagined that death would give me so much time to think, to lament over what had happened. If there was simply nothing for someone like me on the other side, then perhaps I deserved nothing more.

"Oh my, lookie." Whose voice was that? Where did it come from. The feeling of sickness increased in its intensity. "Another one bites the dust, eh? Or is it ashes?"

I opened my mouth. I wanted to say something. I couldn't.

The fact that I was slowly feeling limb after limb return was strange enough to knock me out of my stupor of dying.

I gasped, trying to breathe through my newly formed mouth, but my lungs were burning, as if refusing to take in the oxygen. My chest was back too, it hurt, I grabbed it, trying to distract myself from the pain by stabbing my nails into my skin. And there were my hands.

"Don't breathe," the voice said. Male. Cocky. Annoying. "It hurts the more you try. You don't need to."

I didn't want to listen to him, but his words held some truth. The more I tried to breathe in, the sharper I felt the pain.

"Oh hey! I know you!" he said, as if noticing something he hadn't noticed before. "You're some big shot huntress-in-training! Never liked Beacon, to be honest, there's a bunch of brats who kept foiling my plans."

I blinked. My eyes opened slowly and closed again, repeatedly until I was able to keep them open. In front of a very dark background, a face stared at me. Yelping, I tried to stand up, smashing my forehead into his nose.

"OW! You fucking- holy shit what was that for, you psycho!?" he shouted, holding his nose. His voice sounded strained and a bit off, and she could get a better look at him now. His orange hair stood out under his dark hat, as did his bright white outfit in front of the still darkened place. In his hands, he held a cane. "This is it? My fucking afterlife?"

I narrowed my eyes at him, removing myself from the ground and dusting myself off. It was a stone floor, old, from the looks of it, yet I couldn't say where I was without seeing anything else.

I could barely see in this dark. It was concerning.

"Sorry," I said. "You surprised me."

Afterlife, he said. He was dead too? Or... were we? I couldn't say for sure, my body hurt. If I was feeling pain, I was still alive. But...

My right hand moved to my left wrist. I didn't breathe, but maybe I could still feel my pulse. Hope welled up in my chest, and vanished.

No pulse. The cold from before was still grasping at me, the pain in my chest and forehead dulled.

"Who are you?" I asked. He glared at me, apparently still unhappy about my improper greeting to his nose.

He clicked his tongue. "It's impolite to ask someone for their name without offering your own, Miss."

"Cut that out," I said. "You know who I am, you said so. I don't know who you are."

"Tsk." He clicked his tongue again, his eyes wandering down. I crossed my arms over my chest. "Roman Torchwick, and you're Pyrrha Nikos."

Having someone know my name wasn't that strange. The fact that he wasn't exactly inclined to be polite to me despite recognizing who I was... it wasn't bad. Not really good enough to wipe away the first impression I got from the foul-mouthed man, but not bad.

"Do you know where we are?"

"No," Roman said. "I woke up here a while ago, haven't really done much exploring, you know? It's rather spooky, if you get what I'm saying."

I couldn't tell if he was joking or if he was actually that cowardly. Maybe a bit of both - despite the unfamiliar situation, he seemed rather nonchalant. I would have to consider the possibility of him lying to me, though.

"You said something about 'afterlife'," I said. He grinned at me.

"Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure I died," he said. "Really shitty situation, got eaten by a Grimm, hurts like a bitch."

"I..." I began, checking my chest. No wound. "I was fighting someone, she killed me. I'm sure of it."

"Then that answers the questions of where we are," he said. "You think there's some welcoming committee?"

"No," I said. It was more concerning than that. The Grimm, the White Fang, everything that was happening. If this was actually the afterlife, why weren't there more people? "I'm wondering what you're doing here."

"What?" he asked. "Hellooo? I just answered that. Prim and proper freshly deceased here! You just regenerated from ashes into bones and flesh, too."

My eyebrows furrowing, I sighed. "That's not what I meant. I mean, the city was under attack, so many people died, why are we the only ones here?"

"No clue," he said, shrugging. "Maybe it's hell, you know, place for bad people."

"Bad people?" I asked, my stomach sinking. Yes, I, I did something horrible. I wouldn't say I'm the religious kind of person, far from it, but I've sinned. Hell sounded appropriate.

"You know, murderers, rapists, all that," he said. My stomach sunk further, and the feeling of sickness increased once more. "So, what did you do? Kinda hard to imagine a kid ending up in hell."

I shook my head. If this was actually the reason we ended up in here, I had no reason to do small-talk with some person who admitted to being 'bad'. If he was a murderer, then he was the worst possible company.

Just like me.

I grit my teeth.

"Let's look around," I said, walking away. Maybe we could find an answer about what this place actually was, because I doubted that it was simply hell. I'm not convinced that I had somehow survived that attack, considering we're both left with memories of how we died.

"Are you sure? Maybe someone else will follow? Can't be all angels, honestly."

I turned towards him before staring back at the spot I woke up on. He wasn't wrong.

"Alright," I said. A few hours. No more people should arrive after a few hours, because we would have gotten the situation under control. There was no way that the madwoman had enough power to take an entire kingdom on her own.