"Do you believe in destiny?"

..."Yes."

Cinder Fall, pride of Beacon, was going to die, by cold or by Grimm. With her aura all but spent from the three day siege, the bustling village she and her team had entered only days ago was nothing but ruin and dried in carnage; evidence of recent life, but more than that a warning of how quickly that life would end if pressed.

They were just children, all of them. But the Grimm did not show mercy to children. Dozens of grieving mothers and rage addled fathers had made that clear on the first night. But the death of a stranger's child evoked nothing but secondhand sympathy, a shallow belief in shared pain. After all, everyone had suffered at the claws of those implacable, immutable monsters. But when it was your team; men you had stood by, lived with, matured with over years, that was different. The ravaged corpse of a nineteen year old boy you would have happily called brother seemed somehow impossible, even though those corpses were only three of many. Cinder had gazed upon these corpses with a body and mind spent from ceaseless battle and in that exhausted numbness that refused to allow for grief, she had realized something. These men who wanted so badly to be Huntsmen, to be guardians and caretakers. They were nothing more than men in the end. Men who bled, men who died, men whose corpses were only distinguishable from the rest by what she remembered of them in life.

Humanity. Such a fragile species. So easily torn apart.

Third year huntsmen. When push came to shove they were no greater than the first years. Only luck and theoretical knowledge separated them from the masses. The weak died, the talented emerged from the ashes. A CCT break down, a storm blowing out local comms, simple coincidences such as these set these sides as clearly as her reflection in glass. And her team had been found wanting.

But she couldn't allow herself to think like that. Some small number of villagers yet lived, and they had set up a dark, damp camp in the woods. The smarter and more foolish survivors alike had taken to cheering up the rest. Negative emotion attracted the Grimm. Neutralizing that attractor came second only to survival itself.

But it wasn't truly that simple. Here stood innocents who had lost everything in days, and they hadn't fought their energy away. They had time to grieve, to wonder why them, to curse the skies, the seas, the stones for their misfortune.

And one. One was worse than all the others.

He was only slightly older than Cinder; a shorter, thinner, almost sickly pale man. A man who may have been handsome were it not for the delirium of hypothermia sinking in. A man who had lost husband, mother, and brothers in one night, and who would not- could not- rest until the world knew of his agony.

It was Cinder's job to protect these people, and his misery could not run unchecked much longer. Emotion was a cancer; a festering sickness that spread all too easily to the hearts of men, unifying and dividing them all at once. And when angry sorrow was so much easier than forced smiles, the common citizen would always, always choose angry sorrow.

Cinder's heels crunched leaves underfoot with her approach. The man was so caught up in his latest tirade that he only heard her at the last moment, a split second before she placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. He flinched, stiffened, and glared, but Cinder kept her smile constant- she had spent far too long perfecting that smile for it to waver before one glare.

"Help me gather some food. Please?" Her tone and expression, artfully crafted, had the man following on her heels into the deeper parts of the forest; beyond the eye and earshot of the other survivors. It was only when gloom surrounded them that Cinder reached into one of many pouches at her waist, pulling out a pinch of amber colored dust and charging it with a fraction of the aura left to her, filling the clearing with a dim, though not unpleasant glow. Though the cold still tickled her neck and the gloom barely stirred before the fire, the burden upon her shoulders grew microscopically slighter as her smile faded.

"Thank you for joining me. I thought it best we have this conversation in private." Cinder moved her hair- wild and unkempt after days in the wilderness- over the windbitten patch of skin around her neck, where the soft fabric of her collar had torn and exposed it to the elements. "You're aware negative emotions attract the Grimm. I...we-" how disturbingly easy it was to forget she had had a team only three days ago- "spoke of this upon our arrival. If you stay this course, you'll invite another Grimm attack onto our camp. We can't survive another one. Please, I know you've suffered, but-"

"What do you know, exactly!?" The man's expression had grown steadily more pained over the past few moments, and now anger had amalgamated with that same pain to form a simultaneously heartwrenching and grotesque mask. "My family is dead! What have you lost!?"

Everything. Cinder's head pounded, and she brought her free hand up to clasp her pulsing temple, wave of pain after wave of pain crashing in before the last had fully faded. No, she had to stay calm. Somebody did. Showing fear, showing pain, it was not the mark of a survivor. "I know your pain. Truly, I do. But we need to stay together. As a team."

"Like your team?" The man embodied hysterical scorn, if such a thing existed. "They're all dead! No, we can't stay here. I'm rounding up my friends and we're leaving with everyone we can. Every man, woman and child!"

"Please, wait-" Cinder placed her free hand on his shoulder, but he continued on, ignoring her. No, no, no, this couldn't happen. He was signing their death sentences. All of them. At best the Grimm would come and finish them off, and at worst they would be split in two, easily picked off separately. She had to do something. She had to.

The other hand, fire dust still clasped in its palm, flew forward, and Cinder felt a split second of regret, horror, and despair all at once. Regret that it had come to this, horror as she put infinitely more strength into the dust than she meant to, supercharging a light into an explosion, and despair as the ensuing riptide of flames decimated the villager's untapped aura. For a moment he was lifted off the ground, eyes widening just a little as the beginnings of surprise registered from brain to face. And then, in a single, blinding flash, it was over, fire consuming him from the inside out, burning all the fuel it could in an instant and leaving only a charred husk behind.

What little dust remained after this unintentional assault sifted between her fingers as her hands went slack and she dropped to her knees, scrambling over to the man as if there was any hope he yet lived. No, this couldn't be happening. She hadn't meant to. It had been the stress, the Grimm, the loss, the threat. No, no, no. She mouthed the words, hoping against hope that anything would change, but here she still stood. Cold, wounded, and starving, with a victim of the Grimm murdered by her own hands.

Harsh, violent sobs echoed in the canopy above, joined only by the crackle of embers dwindling to sparks. Even as her emotions got the best of her, the stench of charred flesh had her dry heaving as her stomach tried to expel something that wasn't even there to begin with. Cinder didn't know how long she sat there, hoping twisted relief would replace everything else she was feeling, hoping that somehow the thought of what she had done would get easier. She had to. She had to.

"I had to."

Snap. Twigs cracked under a terrible weight and Cinder turned around. Ursai. Five, no six, no...oh gods. Too many. She had drawn them here, hadn't she? In her sick effort to silence the despair, she had only invited his into her heart, to struggle for space with the guilt and the deep dark wish that she could just go home, others be damned. They would kill her, and then they would proceed to the camp.

She had failed.

Primal, desperate survival instinct made her scream as the Grimm charged. "Please no!" Her final words, hmm? As final words went, she supposed they weren't the best. So like so many before her, Cinder squeezed her eyes shut and awaited the end.

But it didn't come.

Her eyes opened, a fraction at a time. And there they stood...or rather sat, haunches relaxed. Calm...calm? Grimm? Impossible. But possibility didn't matter. Only the opportunities that came with them. A massacre? No, she didn't have the aura for that. But what then? What else could she do but kill the monsters?

"G-go away!" she screamed, voice cracking. And they did, disappearing into the shadows they had come from.

It felt like an eternity before Cinder could stumble to her feet, cold brushing at every exposed patch of skin and every open wound, the stench of burning death receding as a change in wind carried it away.

She would pay for his death. She deserved to...she deserved to suffer. But that would come later. Thought would come later. For now, all she had was her instinct and what was left of her charges. Everything else could wait. Guilt could wait, pain could wait. It could all wait. A miracle had granted her this reprieve, and Cinder intended to use it.