Blood oozed from the young man’s head as his world spun and his vision turned dark. The little girl looked at the young man with anger still in her eyes, raising the rock once more and slamming it down. Over and over, she continued to smash the rock down, not caring about anything. She was sick of it. She was sick of the way everyone was treating her. She never did anything wrong. She only lost her parents, and the entire village saw her as some kind of monster. Since that was the case, she would turn into a monster. They wanted her to die, then they could die. She no longer cared about anything.

She had kept to herself all this time. Suffering on her own with no help from others. She never asked them for anything, not even a single grain from the harvests. She ate what she could find, no matter how bitter it was. She risked her life to enter the forests while it was still dark. She risked her life coming to the edge of the desolate lands. She had had enough of it all. The kids tormented her. The adults shunned her. And for what? Just because she was an orphan? Did she choose to watch her parents die to monsters?  No, she didn’t choose this life. It was forced upon her.

Life was hard enough as it was without idiots like this boy ruining her only source of food. She smashed and smashed until the boy's skull was crushed into a paste along with whatever was inside that hollow head of his. 

“I’m sick of it all. I just want the world to burn….” The little girl’s eyes glazed over. At the moment, she did not notice the flames that sparked from the tips of her hair. She slowly got up and walked over to the destroyed mound where the weeds were and scooped up what she could. It might be crushed, but she could still wash it and eat it.

The girl walked back to her hut, not realizing she was leaving bloody footprints in her wake. She only cared about returning home. She began working on making her soup with the prize she found to add to it today, a baby turtle that had gotten stuck between two rocks. It was as big as her hand and seemed like it would be tasty. She smashed the shell open, scooped out the turtle inside, and dropped it into the boiling water.

“Tonight I will eat well….” The girl smiled brightly. She waited for everything to cook before indulging in her creation. It was bitter, but she did not care. She ate and ate until her small belly protruded out. Only when she was done did she look around at the flames that surrounded her. This entire time, she had not noticed them, or maybe it was her own mind that tuned them out, but what she found strange was that she did not feel that the flames were hot in the slightest. 

Even as they burned her skin, she just stared at them as if nothing was happening. “Strange…. Why do I not feel anything?” The little girl looked at the door that fell to the floor and saw that outside was a group of angry villagers yelling things. 

“You demon girl! You killed my son!”

“You should have died along with your parents!”

    “Burn in hell, you demon!”

“A demon, huh?” The girl’s eyes curled up as she smiled. “Then a demon I will become…. The world should be burnt to cinder…..”

As these words fell, the entire house exploded in flames. It began to twist and spin until it formed a flame tornado that began to expand bigger and bigger. The villagers who were outside the house all screamed in fright and began to run away. In the center of it all, the girl let out a maniacal laugh as the flames surrounded her body. Horns began to appear on her head as her skin began to darken. “Burn the world. The world shunned me, so why shouldn’t I burn it all!?” 

The girl rose into the air as all the flames suddenly began to flow into her body. The girl who once looked sickly now looked anew. Her tattered robes were replaced by a dress of flames. She looked at the village and the retreating villagers and smiled. “You wished to burn me, but in return, you created a new me. A me who will burn the world to cinder and live in a place where no one can treat me badly.” 

The girl reached her hands out, and flames flowed from them. It was as if she and the flames were one. They spread out over the village, burning the fields, homes, and all the people within it. The villager’s screams of pain brought a smile to the girl’s lips. This was the start. The start of her crusade to burn the world. To create a place with no hate. 

It was on this day that the Demon Queen of Cinder was born….

- - -

“So demon queens are born from the grudge that hate creates?” Desaray asked softly. Listening to Cinder’s story, she understood that Cinder did not end up like this because she wanted to. It happened because they pushed her too far. She actually felt pity for the demon queens. She did not know what they all went through, but she knew it must have been something horrible to end up hating all of humanity because of it. Cinder was so young, so her hate was easily fostered. It only took a small trigger to set her off.