They say your past shapes you. But what if you don't remember yours?

What if all you have are fragments- too soft to hold, to sharp to forget?

A women's laugh. A man's voice whispering "keep her safe." A pair of arms around me- warm, protective. Familiar.

And then.. smoke. Screams. Nothing. Blank.

Like someone took a match to my childhood and set it on fire.

All I know is I was once loved. I had a family. A brother. A name that meant something.

Then I woke up in a place called Grave.

An orphanage dressed like a prison. Cold walls, colder hearts. They didn't raise children there- they broke them. Fed us with rules and punishments. Made us work for food. Made us fight for survival.

Grave was never a home . It was a training ground for the forgotten.

And I survived . Not because I was strong. But because I learned to pretend.

Sweet smile. Quiet voice. No one notices the girl who blends in. But inside? I was fire . Controlled. Patient. Waiting.

One night, the sky turned red and the walls of the orphanage cracked like bones under pressure. Flames licked the ceiling like they'd been waiting- like the fire had always been there, beneath the surface, hiding in the shadows of rotting walls and broken promises.

It wasn't an accident. It was reckoning.

Someone had opened the gates of hell inside those walls- and Grave, as cruel as it was, burned from inside out.

And that someone is ME.

All I know is Grave died that night. And Aria Stone was born in the ashes.

I didn't look back when the flames devoured Grave. That place had already burned me long before I lit the match.

I was thirteen when I stopped crying. Fifteen when I started plotting. Eighteen when I set it ablaze.

And when the last scream was swallowed by the smoke, I disappeared. No papers. No past. Just Aria- reborn.

I found my way into the shadows of the Bratva- Russia's underground heart where blood speaks louder than money.

They didn't give me name. The streets did.

Nix.

A whisper in the dark . The goddess of night. Of shadows. Of death wrapped in velvet.

They say I don't exist. That I'm a fever dream with sharp eyes and cruel lips.

But I am real. Oh, I am deliciously real.

They say curiosity kills. But I'm the kind of girl wo kills back.

I don't need protection. I am the storm your mother warned you about. The fire in your pretty fairytale. The nightmare tucked inside a daydream.

And he saw it. Not all of it, not yet- but enough to keep wanting. Enough to want more.

And when he looks at me? It's not lust. It's curiosity. Hunger. He doesn't just want to kiss me- he wants to unravel me.

Good luck with that.

I'm not the girl who runs. I'm the one who ruins.

And he?

He's tempting fate trying to figure me out.

He thinks I'm the mystery. But he's the one who's going to fall. Hard. Messy. Obsessively.

And when he does...

I'll either kiss his broken pieces, Or rip them out one by one.

After all, it's not me who's going to be devoured.

It's him.

Darkness may look pretty in a suit- But I am the goddess it prays to when the lights go out.