"I'm scared, Mama! I'm scared!" A kit's voice echoed through the shell of the empty building. A dark brown tabby she-cat sat in front of the kit, pawing at its pitiful droopy wet ears and managing to shush it. "Hush, Sung," she whispered quietly. "Hush…" She stared at the kit for a second before she burst into tears. "Oh, I can't let you go! I can't!"
"But you can." A deep, dark voice spoke from the other end of the building. Huge oval-shaped eyes burned in the darkness. Yellow, the same as the kit's. "Stay out of this, Matt," she growled. "You haven't made this situation even better." Matt smirked. "Oh, really, Deli?" he hissed back, his voice low and angry. "Who was the one that gave you a home in the first place?" Deli swung around to glare at the tom who sat in the shadow of the rubble. "You knew it was a home destined to crash and burn, Matt," she spat through clenched teeth, her eyes burning with a furious fire. "No cat can escape the wrath of Marked and her clan and you know that!"
Matt sighed and dipped his head low. It seemed like he was submitting and Deli was caught off guard. "I was just trying to keep our family alive," he said quietly, closing his eyes as he spoke. "How?!" the tabby she-cat exclaimed in outrage, stalking closer toward him all the while. "How are you trying to keep our family safe, Matt? How?!" Matt shook his head side to side, slowly, as if he knew something that Deli didn't. "You don't understand, dear sister," he replied. He opened his eyes now and stared at the tabby she-cat boldly.
He then stalked off, calling over his shoulder, "Well, it's your pick now, Deli." He then muttered under his breath, "The choice to leave your kit to suffer or let both of you suffer by Marked's rage."
Deli shook her head and hissed profane things about the tom then looked warily at her kit. But Sung didn't appear to have heard. She had fallen asleep on the stone floor. The she-cat sighed. She wished she could fall asleep so innocently and easily as the kit could. "Has she given her piteous swan's song?" the high-pitched, melodious sneer of Marked reached through the hollow shell of the building. "Yes, yes, she has, Marked," Matt's voice said far more quietly than Marked's. "Then, let the pyromaniacs approach."
Both Matt and Marked's voices seared through Deli's soul. Matt's betrayal. Marked's resort to dark ways of letting everyone know her mark, her death mark. Unable to take it all in at once, she curled around Sung and wrapped the kit up in a warm embrace. "Aurmm," she mumbled in her sleep pleasantly, kneading her claws into Deli's leg.
Over time, the flames spread closer and closer. Soft warmth coming from far away, then the hot burning feeling of fire in close vicinity. Smoke filled the building and Sung began to cough and choke. Deli just clenched closer and closer around the kit until she felt that the flames were hovering right beside her. Her pelt was burning, searing now. Pain stabbed at her tender skin like daggers and she could feel her fur burning off, as well as Sung's. She was wiggling, trying to stay away from the unpleasant warmth. But she was all too late. Burning, smoke, and fire filled her nostrils then an unbelievable shock, a zap even of pain that left her nerves scarred and scattered beyond repair. Fuzzy blackness filled her vision. Hollow, blackness of the void, that final death moment being separated into thousands of fragments, until altogether, they dispersed and both Deli and Sung were gone at the same time.
You spiral out of the memory, breathing hard, feeling an ominous dead static in the darkness and a death gong. That intense pain…fire….your first pain memory. Your first memory, in general. But you're ready to test out your power further. How far back can you go? You suddenly feel your paws shift beneath her. A dark wormhole awaits you. You're being sucked into another memory. "No," you howl, raking your claws along the floor of the stone cave you stay in. But it's too late. Your head is dragged into the wormhole and it closes up around you, leaving you hurtling, breathless into another memory.