It was a cold Atlesian night, when Cinder Fall was brought into this world.
Under the dim glow of a candle's flame, a bastard daughter to a rich and influential Atlesian man and her mother, the man's maid. A secret love affair, unknown by the family and loved ones of both parties. For while the man loved the Mother Fall he was betrothed to another, and under his true wife's hand the lives of Cinder and her mother were made into a living hell.
"Keep moving forward, always keep your chin up, never let the world hold you back, my beautiful little flame." Her mother would say. Calm, loving words of encouragement for the daughter she loved most of all. That daughter, her lovely flame.
The bright Cinder Fall, not yet warped and twisted by hate and despair.
But despite these words, life was not easy for the two. Despite her father's attempts to ease their lives, there was still a secret to be upheld. It should never let slip; the secret of Cinder's birth.
And so, he could not stop the woman he was to be married to from putting them through hell.
Because the Mistress hated both Mother Fall, and young Cinder.
To do every last chore around the house. Every floor, spotless, else they must do all of them over again, every corner and room dusted, to cook and make every dish perfect. Whenever praise was offered for the perfect household, the Mistress would steal all the credit. And if the house wasn't up to her standards?
As Cinder's mother learned, the consequences were painful.
Taking the blame for a mistake Cinder made, she was forced to take the punishment and learn the Semblance of that wretched woman.
The Touch of Agony. "Baneful Touch", the Mistress called it. A targeted semblance which puts the receiving party through wave after wave of unbearable pain. Cinder's mother learned this painful lesson first-hand, one that she would learn again many times in the future.
As Cinder grew, so did her dreams, along with the torment and torture she endured from that vile woman. Her hatred of the Fall family was no longer directed at the Mother Fall but at Cinder herself.
Perhaps on some level the Mistress knew her husband had been unfaithful. After all, the man and Cinder shared the same eyes, those amber orbs which burned like a flame, bright in the darkness.
And so, the Mistress made sure that with every word she said to Cinder, with every task that Cinder was given, that Cinder knew she was hated. However all of that could not break the unshakeable spirit Cinder possessed. Her mother had made sure her little flame would continue to burn brightly, no matter what.
Until one fateful night, that is.
It was a night like most others, cold, snowy, and dark… But this night would forever change Cinder. The night her mother's light flickered, and died out.
Cinder had awoken to screaming from the main hall. The screams of her mother. Naturally, she went to investigate, worried about her mother's safety.
What she found was her mother, caught in the grasp of the Mistress. Her Aura flared in such a way that it seemed to spark. Her mother's visage was one lost in intense pain. The Mistress had taken it too far; she had used too much of her Aura. She had inflicted so much pain on Cinder's mother that she had died from the shock.
Cinder screamed as her mother fell to the ground, her lifeless body slumping against the cold stone. Her light was snuffed out in but a moment… And so the Mistress' gaze turned to Cinder. There needed to be no witnesses. Not a soul to see what she had done. So she strode over to the young girl and lifted her by the neck, up into the air.
The Mistress' aura flared again, and Cinder was racked with a pain she had never felt before. It coursed through her like fire, a searing feeling that wouldn't go away, permeating through her muscles and down to her bones.
Her lungs couldn't draw a breath. Her body couldn't bear any more.
And so her soul awakened, bearing the pain.
Cinder's Aura awakened; her fledgling semblance begged to be used. A way out, a means of escape. Cinder took the Mistress' wrists in her hands, and began to sear them.
She burned them with her Scorching Caress until the silence began to be pierced by the Mistress' screams. Until her grip on Cinder was released, her Aura broken. Her hands and wrists were seared, burned down to nothing but charred, blackened flesh.
When the other residents of the estate awoke, they were met with the sight. Naturally, the Mistress knew exactly where to pin the blame. Straight onto Cinder. She weaved a story of how she'd been awoken by the Mother and Daughter, and how they had tried to kill her, so she fought back in self-defense.
Cinder had tried to tell the police the truth: that the Mistress was a liar, and that she had killed her mother in cold blood. However, to the police, it was a matter of the word of an Atlesian noble against the word of a lowly servant girl. She had no hope of fighting it. She was taken into custody under the charges of assault and attempted murder.
But imprisonment would have been a greater blessing than what truly awaited Cinder.
What truly awaited her was a handcrafted hell, all thanks to the Mistress. An agreement with the Atlesian police ensured that the charges against Cinder would be dropped and she would be released back into the Mistress's hands.
All to Cinder's fear and confusion.
That sickeningly sweet smile Cinder was given when she was taken back to her old hell is something she still remembers to this day. But that's a tale for another time.
Cinder was lost. Her mother was gone, her comfort and warmth a distant memory now. She was forced by the Mistress into a life of cold solitude. Cinder was fitted with a collar which nullified her semblance, while the Mistress was fitted with the best prosthetic hands that money could buy.
She had wasted no time in using her new metal hands to beat the young Fall into submission.
Her father's health was failing, her mother was murdered, and now Cinder knew the cruel torture of the Mistress. The abuse was mental and physical, forcing Cinder to do everything perfectly while still getting beaten on a whim. Cinder's light had begun to fade, and her heart filled with despair and hatred.
Hatred against the Mistress who had taken away everything from her. All that she knew, all that she loved. Cinder despised the Mistress with every ounce of her soul. And as years passed, the Mistress' complacency grew as Cinder did, years of abuse resulting in the woman believing she had well and truly broken any last shred of resistance in Cinder.
It was a day like any other, but Cinder recalled it vividly. Cinder was forced to her room. The Mistress was hosting a party, and other members of Atlas' upper class would attend. Nobles who wouldn't even want to catch a glimpse of the poor servant girl. Cinder needed to stay out of sight, lest she ruin the party with her presence alone.
However, the Mistress had made a fatal mistake. She hadn't locked the door to Cinder's room.
Waiting until the Mistress had gone, Cinder took her leave of her room, bringing with her nothing but the clothes on her back, the warmest clothing she had ever been given, only so that Cinder would not freeze to death.
Taking this opportunity to escape, Cinder began making her way to the Mistress' room. There she would find the key to the collar around her neck, the only thing standing between her and freedom. She knew the mansion like the back of her hand, literally, given how long she spent kneeling over, staring at her hands and the floor as she mindlessly scrubbed.
It wasn't a long walk. Finding the room and stepping inside, she wasn't just greeted by the interior of the room. No, there, lying upon the grand bed, was her father. Sickly and pale, wires connected to him, all in an effort to monitor his health. Instead of pity, or perhaps sadness, all Cinder felt when she looked upon her father was an unchecked rage.
In her eyes, he was an accomplice to the horrors she was forced to endure. Years of mental and physical torture at the hands of the Mistress. It was too much for Cinder Fall. Hate flowed through her, Cinder acting on little more than instinct. Grabbing a letter opener from the desk at the side of the room, she stalked over to the husk that was her father, sneering down at him, his dull amber eyes meeting hers which burned with rage.
She drove the letter opener down into his chest. All that escaped him was a ragged gasp. Her strike had found its mark, and the world around her father began to fade.
With his dying breath, he looked upon his daughter in sorrow. He had failed her. All the times he stood aside, letting her suffer, had led to this. He knew in his heart he was a coward, and even now, seeing his daughter look at him with such contempt...
He was at her mercy, and he knew that Cinder had judged him guilty.
His vision faded, his eyes drifted shut, and Cinder felt nothing. Nothing at all. Turning away from her dead father, she began searching for the key to her collar. Once she found it, this nightmare would end. Cinder knew it.
Finding it on the desk that once held the letter opener, Cinder undid the lock on her infernal collar, the metal thing falling to the floor pitifully as Cinder felt her soul returning to her for the first time in years. She felt energized, alive, and stronger than ever.
With her newly freed soul, Cinder had settled on her next grand goal: to torch the mansion and kill the Mistress. A simple matter in both regards, now that she had Aura. Stepping through the halls of her prison, Cinder began starting fires. Portraits set ablaze, curtains turned to cinders...
A distraction.
Her true aim was the party the Mistress was hosting, there, she'd be able to corner the woman. And Cinder did indeed find it, being hosted in a familiar room, the room where the Mistress had taken her mother's life. Cinder fumed as she waited outside the room, waiting for her distraction to bare fruit.
It came as the Mistress' servants called her into a side room. Panic in their features, the servants informed the Mistress of the fires that had been set in the mansion and asked if they should evacuate the building. The Mistress, ever prideful, yelled at her servants to deal with the fires. The party wouldn't end over something so trivial.
And as the servants left the room, they paid no mind to Cinder as she entered.
The Mistress seethed seeing Cinder, stepping over and preparing to strike the girl, she noticed far too late that something very obvious was missing. Cinder's collar was gone, Cinder had her Aura back. The Mistress recoiled in fear, stepping back and away from the servant girl she had abused for all these years...
This woman needed to suffer; Cinder had long ago decided that.
An idea came to mind. A terrible death awaited the Mistress, and it would be because of those damned metal hands of hers. Those hands which had beaten the young Fall, chained away her Aura, and kept her hidden from the world for so long. How poetic, Cinder would kill the woman with her own hands.
Cinder overpowered the Mistress, for although the woman had Aura, she was by no means strong. Cinder, however, had developed a decent level of strength through her years of toil, allowing her to force the Mistress to the ground, pinning her there, and forcing the woman's own hands up to her fragile, pale neck. No, Cinder would not strangle the Mistress. That would be too easy. She activated her Semblance, and allowed nature to take its course. Instead of searing flesh and muscle, her hands heated metal. Metal that glowed red-hot, as the woman struggled. Her cries of pain could not be heard, for her throat was being burned away by the heat of melting metal.
She felt an unbearable pain, looking up at Cinder, whose amber eyes looked down at her with no mercy, no forgiveness.
Cinder held the Mistress down until her panicked and painful struggles began to cease, her neck scorched so thoroughly that almost nothing remained. Cinder let the woman lie there, uncaring as the carpet around the Mistress and the clothes on her body began to catch fire as a result of the heated metal resting against them.
It was finally time to leave after so very long, nothing would hold her back.
Cinder made her way through the mansion once more, finding her way to the entrance hall. It was grand and lavish, just like everything else in the mansion. She took the time to light a few more fires, then strode down the steps and out of the double doors, leaving behind her personal hell.
Cinder was free, and she would never be caged again.
But alas, this story has no happy ending. Cinder was left destitute. She had no money to her name, no identification, and only the thin winter clothes she wore to keep away the chill of Solitas. The streets of Atlas were heated, yes, but that didn't stop the wind from biting at her, even through her layers...
Cinder had begged for the first time in her life, begging for help on the streets, anyone to spare her even a glance as she struggled to find her way in the world. But no one did. No one came to her rescue; no knight in shining armor to whisk her away. Only the cold, lonely streets, as Cinder was spurned by the Atlas elite. At best, they ignored her; at worst, they looked down on her as nothing more than a filthy beggar.
Even free from the Mistress as she was, Cinder was rejected.
She was alone.
She had nothing.
A lone flame, amidst the cold wasteland.
Blood on her hands, and a trail of fire in her wake.
Author's Note: Thank you for everyone who decided to read my little piece of lore. In truth, I don't really know how well this fanfiction will do, but as time passes, I'll write more additions to it. In fact, I'm already working on the next chapter, which will be centered around a particularly unpopular bull Faunus. No ETA on it, so it could be anywhere from a day, to a week. I also have no idea how many of these I'll actually do in the end, but given how RWBY is? I've got a lot of material to work with. Ciao for now.