I watched my home go up in flames when I was eight years old. My mother ran screaming from the house, clutching my baby sister in her arms. My father was nowhere to be found, so I assumed he was at the local inn, getting drunk again, like he did every night.

I knew my family was hated – a remnant from the days when conquerors from the North had swept through this desert on their way to the East. Passing through, one soldier had fallen in love with a young girl from the nearby village and remained. As time passed, my ancestors began to blend in with the local people – light hair, eyes and skin gradual darkened as Northern blood weakened. Soon, my village forgot that a Northern soldier had ever been in their midst.

That was over 500 years ago, so the town record said. So, when I was born, a boy with light brown hair and green eyes, instead of black hair, brown eyes as was expected, everyone assumed my family was cursed by devils. It was never my fault they were superstitious bastards, but as it was, my father and mother soon became outcasts.

The fire was no surprise.

Nor was it a surprise when my mother sold me to slavers. I could tell in her eyes that she hated me, despised me for destroying what could have been a happy life. I tried not to cry, I was afraid the slaver would beat me if I did. He told me I was going to be sold at the Sultan's palace, and that I had best behave, and perhaps learn a few useful skills, since a devil's child like me would never make it otherwise.

Maybe it was my lucky break when a group of bandits attacked the slaver's caravan in the middle of the night. They took the gold, slit the slaver's throat, and turned to me.

The leader approached me, nodding to his men to untie me. "Hey kid," he said in a gruff voice, his sneer seeming even wider due to the ring in his nose, making him even uglier. "Carry this crap to our hideout." He flicked his head toward a large pile of gold. I knew there was no way in hell I could carry all that gold, but the scimitars the bandits were carrying told me I had better do otherwise.

Like I said, it was a lucky break. Their hideout was actually only about a mile away, so when I finally spilled the gold on the floor and collapsed in exhaustion, the older men laughed. I glared at the leader, hating him for being such an ass. He jumped back when he got a good look at me, which was how most people reacted upon seeing me for the first time. It was nothing new.

Finally, after giving me a long, hard, uncomfortable stare, he burst into laughter. "What an interesting kid!" he roared. "Hey, boy, you've got quite the interesting face there!"

"What's it to you?" I snapped back.

"Feisty, too!" He gestured behind him, and a ragtag group of boys about my age came out from behind him. "Get the newcomer some clean clothes and find him a bed to sleep in," he said to the oldest-looking one. Then he turned to me. "How'd you like to be in our gang, little devil?"

At that point, I wanted nothing more. Here was someone that wanted me, that accepted me. Following wanting to be in this gang, the second thing I wanted was to punch him in the face. I swore that it would be the last time I let someone take advantage of my feelings – my mother had left me, my village had hated me, and the one person that wanted me had played mind games with me for the last three hours, and would likely be doing so for quite a while.

Turns out I was right. Eventually, as I grew older, I learned how to play the boss, Kabul's game. Kabul was quickly gaining a reputation as a famous highway man, and many refused to travel through the Northern desert.

The younger boys, myself included, often went to the city, Agrabah, to pick pockets and swindle people. We were pretty good at it. One of the older boys, Mohammed, was a fire juggler. I had taken up acrobatics and theatrics, since my light hair and eyes would have gone noticed in a crowd. Sometimes, we'd play on my unusual looks and create theater shows, where I would play a marauding djinn that captured the princess – my friend Irfan, who hated pretending to be a girl. Mohammed's fire had scared me when I first joined the gang, because of my childhood home burning down. But eventually, I became drawn to it. Mohammed showed me how to juggle fire, to swallow it. By the time I was 14, I was just as good at it as he was, if not better.

On my 15th birthday, I was captured by the Sultan's men. Tried for thievery, I was condemned to two months in the dungeon. And when they released me, they branded my face, right below my eyes, so that all would know I was a thief and not to be trusted. I gave them a parting gift of my own – a swift kick in the balls. Of course, I was beaten for that, but it was worth it.

The day they shoved me outside the palace walls with nothing but a burlap robe to cover me, Kabul was there, grinning. "Looks like its time you graduated, little devil." That hated nickname again. I still wanted to punch him, attempt to rearrange his ugly face into something more visually pleasing. He jerked his head, a gesture to come, and then tossed some clothes at me. They were looser than the ones I had entered the dungeon in – and they included a scarf to cover my face.

The week after I "graduated" into the ranks of the older men (some of whom, I learned, had similar brand marks under their eyes), we raided my old village. As Kabul laid out the plan, he handed me two circular weapons with spikes on the edges. They were damn heavy. "They're from the east," was all he said about them, giving no indication of how they were used or why I had them. I made a rude gesture behind his back, sloughing the weapons behind me as we made our way to plan and raid.

All I knew was that I was to make myself look as demonic as possible and scare the shit out of anyone I encountered. Irfan and Mohammed took a strange delight in dressing me up, using charcoal to lengthen the marks on my cheeks and line my eyes. Irfan actually jabbed me in the eye with the stick of charcoal, and got a punch in the stomach for it. They took honey and slathered it in my hair until it stood on end in a crazy pile.

That honey took hours to get out, and collected sand like you wouldn't believe. I think the little bastards enjoyed torturing me.

That night, as I watched the village I had grown up in, hated by all who lived there, I felt little regret. In fact, I felt satisfied that justice had been served. And scaring everyone shitless was quite fun. Kabul seemed pleased enough. He even gave me my own share of the loot, just like he did the other adults.

And so life continued like this for the next three years, with me dressing up as a devil and scaring villagers out so my "brothers" could come in and plunder without actually killing anyone. And finally, Kabul got it into his head that raiding the palace was a good idea.

"Think," he said to us, as we enjoyed the spoils of our latest heist, a highway robbery on a rich merchant's caravan, "we could live like kings."

It had "bad idea" written all over it, but with how successful we'd been over the last few years, Kabul would hear nothing otherwise. "But first," he said, that greedy twinkle in his eye meaning he had an elaborate scheme brewing. "I hear there is a cloak that makes its wearer invulnerable…"

And so we were off to a pile of ruins in the midst of the desert. The fact that there were absolutely no nearby oases made it seem like a brilliant plan, just like all of Kabul's other failed plans that involved crap like magic. But we were there, so whatever.

We had expected booby traps, or maybe even sorcery, but never the black monsters that attacked. Kabul waved his scimitar and shouted as the monsters clawed at his legs, creeping up towards his chest.

I merely stood back and watched, holding the weapons Kabul had given me – chakram, I later learned they were called – at arms length, enjoying watching him suffer. Finally, one of the creatures had wriggled its way onto Kabul's chest. Others were dragging him to the ground. With what sounded like a delighted squeal, the monsters leapt on top of him and – I couldn't really tell, but when they scuttled off of him in a black, writhing mass, Kabul was nowhere to be found.

The other two men that had accompanied us, a wormy man in his 30's named Akbar and Kabul's right hand man, Hassid, screamed in terror and made to run. I figured it was wise if I did the same – without the wussy screaming, of course.

The creatures were lightning-fast. I felt them nipping at my ankles almost as soon as I had turned to run. Swinging one of the chakram at them to no avail, I tried to defend myself. No way in hell was I going down without a fight.

I soon found myself under a pile of writhing, clammy dark bodies, all of them rustling and making a strange squeaking noise. I fought to get out from under then, but there were too many. Soon, I felt slimy fingers scraping at my chest, right about where my heart was… and then I felt those same fingers dig INTO my chest. Everything began to go black. I dimly heard Hassid screaming my name, as he fought of his own horde of monsters. It didn't matter any more. I was dying, and this was the end.

The afterlife turned out a lot different than I expected. Once things had faded to black, they very quickly returned to light. I found myself lying on a grassy hill, the sun setting behind a huge house unlike any I had ever seen. I had never really seen grass before either, for that matter. And it was quite a bit cooler than any place I had ever been.

And to my left were TREES. Not a few scraggly palms that we would find in an oasis, but a huge, gargantuan forest of trees bigger around than the Sultan was fat. I gaped for a bit, but then I thought about it – did I really care?

I felt a strange pang in my chest, but it wasn't really pain. It wasn't even a feeling at all – it was a lack of one. Emptiness.

It took all of 30 seconds to realize that the monsters in the ruins had taken my heart and transported me to this strange place. And it took less time than that to realize that I didn't feel anything – no fear, no amazement, no worry, nothing. Just a niggling curiosity as to where I was, what would happen now, and how to feed myself.

I shifted my weight, in order to stand, and noticed my chakram beside me. Well, it had certainly been nice of those monsters to leave me with a way to defend myself. I reached over to pick them up, and a flash of fire sprang out of them. I snapped my hand away, and did a double take as the chakram had disappeared. Even stranger was the fact that, even though I had definitely had my arm in the middle of the flames, I was unharmed.

I thought about it for a moment, and extended my arm, concentrating on my chakram, and where they might have gone. In a flash of fire, one reappeared in my hand. Very interesting. Satisfied, I released it, and it vanished again in flames. I took a look at the strange house. Perhaps there was food inside.

Well, scratch that. The place was abandoned. At least it would be a good shelter for the coming night. As I searched for a good place to sleep (I had assumed there would be nice bedrooms or something), I caught a glimpse of my reflection in a large mirror in the hall.

Was that me? I was still skinny, as I had always been. The scars under my eyes were still there. And my eyes were still green, just… quite a bit more so. But my hair. If I had been able to feel, I'm sure I would have leapt back in surprise. Instead, I reached up a hand, to make sure the bright red mass of spikes was mine. It resembled a red version of what Irfan and Mohammed had done that first raid on my home village with the honey. My skin had also lightened quite a bit, but that was of little concern.

I shrugged. I certainly looked the part of a devil now. It would be interesting to see anyone try to screw with me NOW.

I found a bed, and fell asleep fast. I'd find food in the morning.

Fate had other plans for me, though, and manifested itself in the form of a hooded stranger who decided to enter the room I was sleeping in and wake me up rudely.

"Hey, get up," said a low voice, drawling casually. "Got a better place for you anyway."

I sat up, glaring at the strange man in the black cloak. "Who are you and what the hell do you want?" I said, faking crankiness and scowling, hoping to scare him off.

He lowered his hood, revealing a man in his late 30s, going grey, with an eye-patch and a jagged scar running up his left cheek. "My name is Xigbar. I'm looking for people like me – people without hearts."

"No heart, huh?" I said dubiously. Why wasn't this guy afraid of me? I chalked it up to being in a strange world, and glared at him, summoning my weapons. "Get the hell out of here, and leave me alone, asshole."

He raised an eyebrow. "Nice trick you got there," he said coolly, without batting an eye. "Listen, I'm part of this group of people like me – people like us. An organization, you could say. We're building our own world – and looking for our hearts."

"And if I join you, I'll get mine back."

"Hey, you're pretty smart," he said with a false smile.

"And what if I say no?"

His smile dropped. He reached up into the air, and brought his arm back down quickly, a strange weapon in his hand. Looks like this Ziggurat or Xagbir or whatever his name was could pull a few tricks too.

"I'm afraid no is not an option," he said, scowling.

"Bite me," I snapped back. Even so, because I was interested in seeing what the hell a bunch of guys without hearts were doing, and more than interested in getting my heart back, I went with him.

And so he took me through a dark portal into a world that never was supposed to exist. I was given a number, a new name, and a black cloak like the one Xigbar was wearing.

Organization Number VIII, the Flurry of Dancing Flames: Axel.

But that was only a title.

The truth is, I was a Nobody.