Immortal Burn (ONC 2024)

Prologue

She knew long before The Fall that she was different than those around her. No, not because she acted a certain way or looked any different than them. Noe of the usual human differences could ever describe what truly made her stand out among the people she lived near. The many old photos that she had managed to save after The Fall had proven that in quite a few ways. They were memories sitting around the dilapidated structure she now called a home, sitting on the shelves made of old wooden boxes and metal sheeting. They hung on walls that were made of a combination of rusting metal slabs and wooden planks that appeared to have been burned in a fire at some point, all of it keeping the weather from getting inside. Each photo was a reminder of the curse given to her all those years ago, a mistake she wished she could undo every single day she walked the earth. 

Immortality. 

The thought of living forever had always sounded appealing to her in her youth during the victorian era, but after the gift had been bestowed upon her, realization of just how much of a curse it truly was had hit hard. Watching those she loved wither into the afterlife while she herself remained young, youthful and untouched. It was unfair and the reason why she kept to herself as much as she could, surviving a burning world that everyone now had to to live in and work together in. She had watched so many succumb to the effects of The Fall. People falling ill to the Scorch Sickness, young and old perishing from the heated flames that overtook every inch of the Earth. If it wasn't that, they were picked off one-by-one by the animals that once occupied the world, now somehow mutated by the fires into ravenous killing beasts most still didn't understand. 

Survival was key for the past five years, but that was something she wouldn't have to worry about for herself. Being immortal had its perks during a burning apocalypse, but it also had its drawbacks as well. . . 

. . . and she was ready to die.