I. Buried Alive

"Am I dead?"

It was the cold and the darkness that welcomed Bella's eyes as she struggled to look around.

"Where am I?" she asked again. Neither question was granted an answer.

She waited for her eyes to adjust in the darkness but as the moments passed, no light had made it to her sight. It's as if her eyes were not open at all as she could not make up anything in the total darkness around her.

"Damn it! I really am dead!" she exclaimed. Even her voice sounded muffled which made her wonder if she said that out loud or if it was all in her head. In this pitch-black place, she was devoid of her senses. A ghost, existing only with the thought of regrets that would soon haunt her forever.

"In the end, everything was for... nothing," she said in a regretful voice. "To think I ended up in this place… could it be that Hell is real?"

Thud!

The sound of her elbow hitting a wood-like structure had taken her aback, interrupting her moment of acceptance. She could not be wrong. The sensation was real. "I thought the dead do not have physical senses," she thought. She shifted. She had to make sure. Once more, she brushed her elbow to where she felt the wood.

"It's… it's real! I can feel it!!" she exclaimed in thrill. "I knew Heaven and Hell do not exist! Those bastards failed to kill me!"

Little by little, she was regaining her senses. She felt that she was lying and the wood she felt with her elbow wasn't merely a wall. The same structure also obstructed her vision which she could feel under her breath. Slowly placing her palms on the wood above her, she pushed it and the wood shifted slightly. Sand fell to her face, reminding her of how she got here and what this place is.

She's inside a coffin!

"Shame to you! You wanted to bury me alive but here I am!!" she screamed as life began to ignite her chest. With her bare fingers, Bella clawed on the wooden frame she would crawl her way up and ascend back to the ground and kill the people who brought her here.

Scratch! Scratch!

It sounded like a wild beast. Each time her nails hit the coffin, it would scrape her skin. The bones of her fingers almost shattered with every attempt to break the obstacle. Not even the blood gushing from her hand stopped her burning desire to get out of her grave.

Kriiek!

Until finally, the seeming door of hell had snapped. Instead of light, more sand dropped on her face. She could taste death from the soil. But Bella did not mind. The dark earth was her light at the end of the tunnel.

Then the droppings of soil became pouring. Sand entered her eyes, mouth, and nose. Breaking the coffin was the easy part. She would suffocate if she wasn't quick enough to dig her way up. As if fate would have it, her arms started to sore. Eventually, it became numb.

"No… no… not yet!" she said, full of determination. If her hands would not move, then her feet should shoot her out of here as she kicked and kicked to push her body off the earth. The harder the sand poured, the stronger her will to escape burned.

Bella could no longer remember how much time she spent clawing her way up from the grave. Her whole body lost its senses from the exhaustion, much less her sense of time. If there's one thing that remains in her heart, it is hatred and vengeance. Mustering all her strength, she made one final push, and her hand could no longer feel the sand above it.

"Just you wait… I'm coming for you all!" she swore, slowly ascending from the grave.

***

Isabella Geneva. Daughter to one of the wealthiest tycoons globally. Almost all corporations in the world were owned by her father, if not a big shareholder. Being the only child, Bella was the sole heir to her widowed father who chose not to remarry when her mother died in a tragic illness. Money. Beauty. Intellect. Power. Name all the things that people envy, she had it. Destined to have it all and more. Until when it was her own family, her aunt, who betrayed her.

Her father must have underestimated people's greed. Bella was barely ten years old when her healthy father ironically died without a trace. He just did not wake up one day, like he forgot to breathe and his heart stopped. Sudden unexpected death syndrome, the doctor declared. And that's that. Everything that Bella had and was meant to have were seized by her greedy aunt.

At first, her aunt's abuses were tolerable. Bella was forced to do tasks before she could have money and food. "If you want to inherit your father's empire, you need to work hard and prove yourself worthy," her aunt used to say. She was already in her teens when she realized that none of the house and dirty chores had any connection to running her father's business empire.

"What's wrong with being poor?" the stable boy once asked her.

"You won't understand," she replied. "You have been poor all your life! You're used to being poor. You're born poor and will probably die poor too!"

The once sweet and gentle girl was gone. Poverty had been harsh to Bella. "I-I'm sorry!" she blurted out when she realized the gravity of her words to which the stable boy only replied with a smile.

No, it wasn't just a stable boy. It was Alexander. For the longest time, he had been her only friend even back when she was still the heir of her family. Now that she seemed to have lost everything, Alex was still there for her. She had already lost her father and her inheritance. If there's one thing

"Seriously though, you have to work your way up," Alex stated, scrubbing the stench of the stables. "I heard that even your father, Mr. Geneva, was once just a common man and hard work put him to the top."

More than anyone, Bella knew it herself. Perhaps it was because her father came from poverty that he was so kind to everyone. The corner of her eyes stung at the memory of her father.

"I can't work my way up here, Alex," she said, sitting and watching her friend cleaning. They were supposed to work together, but Alex insisted that she take a rest. It was not the first time he let her off the chores. After all these years, Alex treated her the same, as a princess, and would take all the hard work from her as long as he could.

Alex threw her a confused yet sympathetic look. His cerulean eyes glimmered beyond the messy brown hair that covered his dirty face. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"Auntie. She plans to keep me imprisoned in this place," she said, taking a deep breath. "I can't get my inheritance until I'm 21 and waiting for it is getting painful by the day. Seeing her face and her ugly sons' faces is unbearable," she thought.

Ironically, her inheritance was also what was keeping her alive. The moment her Aunt found a legal way to transfer her father's will, it would be the death of Bella.

***

"Pfft!!"

Almost suffocating to her death, Bella emerged from the muddy earth where she had been buried.

"Ughk! Gawk!"

She coughed harder than a sick person to expel the soil in her system. The rain-softened earth made it difficult to understand whether she was suffocating or drowning. Nonetheless, she got out of that hell hole alive.

Bella's eyes fixated on the dark sky. The heavy downpour seemed to sympathize with her miserable state. Cold. Naked. Alone in a graveyard, God knows where.

"Heh…" A smirk formed on her lips. "Haha…" Little by little, the smirk turned to a smile. An insane smile, one would describe. "HAHAHA!!" Her laughter echoed through the empty cemetery.

Then there was silence. Her head bowed, now starting to the mud. It reflected her face, albeit not very incomprehensibly. Yet she sees herself clearer than ever.

"I will kill you all," she swore as her tears fell to the puddle, creating a ripple in the already blurry reflection. "But not after you suffer first," she declared, gritting her teeth so hard that they bled.

From a distance, Bella could hear footsteps approaching behind her. "Damn it!" she cursed. She was out there in the open with nowhere to hide. "Those could be Aunt's goons," she thought. They must have come back to make sure she stays dead. Or at least, buried.

Bella took a deep breath. Panic would do her no good. She looked around to find something that she could use as a weapon. Beside her was a piece of wood with a pointy end. It was a piece from the coffin she was in.

"I'll be damned," she thought and smirked at the world's cruel irony. She just arose from the dead, literally. Nothing could scare her anymore…

"Ahh… Look at that beauty. An Ascender, fresh from the grave."

...or so she thought.

She turned to see the owner of the voice. Nothing prepared her to find out that it wasn't anything that she had ever seen in this world.

A bald figure with spiky hair towered before her. This person must have been eight feet tall. "Little Ascender with a little stick?" the gigantic man said.

"Stay back!" she warned. Bella raised her arm. The way she guarded herself showed it wasn't the first time she held a "knife". "You're not the first man I would be killing," she said, ready to strike and kill.

"Man?" the figure said, menacingly advancing towards her.

KRASHH!!

Thunder roared and lightning illuminated the figure. None of the flashing images looked human. The spikes weren't hair, but horns. Blood red eyes glared at her. Its skin was black as the mud. It sneered at her with a mouth that spread from one ear to another, baring its sharp teeth and tongue that stretched long enough to lick its own forehead.

"I'm a Graveborn!"