It was an odd feeling, burning to death. The excruciating pain overshadowed everything, yet the woman's focus remained on what she wasn't able to do.

I couldn't–

She coughed, and instead of air, her lungs filled with panic at the realization that no matter what she did, she couldn't breathe properly.

Funny. She had just been burned, but the feeling of her skin melting away had ceased. Actually, she felt colder than she had in her entire life. She would have probably been alarmed, but she couldn't seem to focus on it.

With the pain mostly gone due to her nerves being damaged, the smells and sounds were the worst part. The sulfuric stench of her own hair burning. The sound of something sizzling—that something being her own skin.

She couldn't see well, either. Everything was blurry and distorted. It reminded her of when she was younger and would see the elongated lights of her house after a crying session. Only, instead of house lights, it was the moon.

The night was clear, mostly. Stars were glinting in the sky, mocking her predicament with how, no matter how high she reached, was she able to lift her arms at all, she could not escape her own body being a pyre.

A pyre cannot reach the sky. The smoke, the arm to its body, is determined to, but it always falls short. The smoke, like the pyre, has no purpose but to destroy and be destroyed. Any semblance of light it brings is put out by its own self-destructive nature.

She watched with eyes half-lidded as that dark smoke reached into the sky, curling into claws that hopefully carried her spirit up with it. In her ears, her racing heartbeat started to slow until it began to sound distant.

In fact, everything sounded distant. It wasn't just her heartbeat. It was the sirens that started to blare. Her mind filled with a warming water that drowned her senses in numbness.

Someone's voice echoed in the background, their words muffled by the overwhelming dullness engulfing her senses. Her vision began to mimic what it was like sleeping with her eyes open. She could see nothing and yet everything at the same time. 

A/N: 

Banunu and I here!

I'll be drawing a painting for each chapter of our original story. We hope you enjoy our novella here. :'D Chapter 1 will be longer, so stay tuned! Banunu wrote this part and I helped edit/reword some parts!