Disclaimer: I do not own Hunter x Hunter, its characters, and its plot. Those are the property of Yoshihiro Togashi. I do however own all my OCs, all the places I have created and the concepts I have come up with.

Prologue: Into the Void

She opened her eyes. Slowly. Her sight clouded, her eyelids heavy, twitching. Out of breath and drenched in sweat. She was lying on the floor, flat on her belly. Her whole body hurt. Her skin prickled as if a thousand ants were marching all over her body. A headache throbbed in her ears. Her temples were pounding, her ears ringing, until they slowly deafened. She tried to move a hand, but her movements were disarticulated, her thoughts uncoordinated. Her mind empty. Foggy. Confused.

A warm string of blood trickled on her face. She painfully craned her neck, scanning her surroundings.

Where…?

She was in a dark room. With broken furniture scattered along the walls, as though something had exploded in the middle and shoved everything to the sides. Shattered pieces of wood pierced her skin. Torn sheets were spilled on the floor. She breathed in dust, wood, the acidic smell of sweat. And blood. Everywhere, blood.

As her chest heaved, hard and heavy, she gritted her teeth and propped herself on her elbows. A sharp pain in her side screamed. She winced. Reached for the burning sensation.

Blood.

She was wounded. Bleeding.

What had happened? Where was she? She knew she was supposed to do something important. Questions popped into her mind, but the answers were so slow to come. Dancing around in her mind, taunting her, but running away when she tried to grasp them.

She clenched her teeth, her hazy head weighing tons. She tried to look around, saw a dark figure lying on the floor, immobile. Distinguished legs and hands.

Who…?

Something moved on the other side of the room, swift and quiet. She froze. Listened. Caught signs of breathing. Clothes ruffling. Pieces of glass clinking as someone pushed them away. She tried to find the source of the noise, a panicked prey searching for a predator in the dim flickering light. Tried to silence her wheezing breath. Until she saw him.

A tall, lean form in a dark coat. Olive skin peeking through his sleeves. A balaclava barely showing his eyes.

And everything rushed back to her.

The mission. They were on a mission. She and her friend. They were chasing a man. They had tried to ambush him. Then, the explosion. The trap. The blackout.

The man had survived.

But what about her friend?

Her heart missed a beat. All the elements linked together. The thick smell of blood. The figure lying on the floor. The man on the other side of the room, still standing while she was crushed to the floor.

They had failed.

She hastily started crawling toward the figure on the floor. Toward her friend. Fueled by fear and despair. Ignoring her lungs that screamed for air, her heartbeats that hammered against her chest, her wounds that begged and screamed and pulsated. A broken thing swimming against the tide. Sliced apart, sobbing, miserable.

Terror increased with every centimeter closer to him. And so did the scent of blood. Coppery and rusty. The more she crawled, the more she realized how hopeless the situation was. She was wounded, unable to defend herself. Didn't know if her friend was safe. Had failed to stop their enemy.

And he was in a better shape than them.

She pushed her body to its limits, dragging her wounded body with her. Suffocating with pain. Gasping for air. Quivering with fear. Clawing at the ground. Each second was stamped on her as a second too late. Each pathetic lurch on the ground, each time her chest hit the floor and her fists trembled and her knees scratched the concrete.

How ironical was it that she, the hunter, had become the prey?

With a last effort, a last painful lurch on the ground, she reached the immobile body on the floor. Her friend.

Her hand landed in a pool of blood. Thick. Gross. Still warm.

She widened her eyes, dizzy. Used all her strengths to kneel. Focused all her balance in her legs. Wobbled. Like a broken toy.

And then, as the light flickered above her, she saw it.

The void in his chest. Hollow where his heart should be.

Shock hit her like a tidal wave. Shaking her, drowning her, flooding her with emotions. Bile rose in her throat. Her stomach churned, twisted and turned. She felt like throwing up. Her head was spinning. She was panting. She was suffocating.

Her frantic eyes coursed all over him. She caught glimpses of his face frozen in death, of the fear forever carved in his features, of the tears and the wrinkles and the tension. She whispered, whimpered, repeatedly, "no, no please," her voice cracking and dying each time.

It couldn't be.

It couldn't be.

The other man started walking. Toward her.

But she didn't hear him. She heard nothing. Nothing but her own cries. Irregular, breathy cries. Rocking back between consciousness and dizziness.

Dead. He was dead.

She was unable to process the information. Unable to accept it. It stuck to her, refused to let go, like flies on a cadaver. She hadn't been trained for that. She hadn't been trained to see her friends cold and dead, bathing in their own blood. She hadn't been trained to learn how to live with that. With the knowledge that her friend had died on her.

And that it was her fault.

The guilt. The ugly, capricious guilt. It already prowled, waited. Patiently. It had all time. It could wait forever. As long as she'd be alive, it would wait. Nudge. Poke. Bite. Snicker and hide and claw at her.

She saw it. Gleaming in his dead eyes with silent reproaches.

She couldn't take it. Couldn't take it anymore.

But the man now towered over her. Still.

She stared at him. Half-conscious.

Tried to process his presence.

Barely seeing him.

He moved.

A hand.

And—

She was unable to describe what had happened next. Not that she had forgotten –she could never forget. But she couldn't exactly say what had happened next. All she could see was a monochrome, shivering picture. Uncertain figures, faces and places. A blur. A scream. A perpetual scream.

And the hand. Moving toward her, slowly. An opened palm with a tattoo that peeked through a burnt glove. A black flower with diaphanous petals and long stamens that curled like tendrils.

But she remembered what she had felt. The agony tearing her apart. Twisting her entrails, firing up her whole body. Seeping through every pore. Blinding her. Breaking her. A riot had awakened within her and she was crushed under its rage. Crippled with pain and helplessness and fear and guilt. With shame, anger, distress.

She remembered how insignificant her own life had appeared then. How fragile it was, this big thing called life hanging by a tiny string above the void. Just a skip, a split second, a slight disruption, and the string would break and life would disappear into the void.

That was the best she could do to put words on what had happened.

She had stared into the void.

A/N: Hi there! Thank you so much for giving this story a chance! I hope you enjoyed the prologue, and hopefully you will choose to keep reading this story. I've been working on it for so long and, to be fair with you, I'm a bit nervous about publishing it… but here I am!

Before I give you some technical details about the story (that I encourage you to read, just in case you realize this story isn't for you), I would like to thank all the people who've supported me while I worked on the story. I can't give you names because I was blessed with a lot of friends who believed in me and pushed me forward when I doubted I could make it, but I can tell you that without them, I wouldn't be there. So thank you, thank you, thank you. I've been through a lot and without your support, I wouldn't have managed to keep writing.

There is, however, one person I would like to mention, because, without her, both this story and the person that I am wouldn't here today. So, special thanks to my most awesome beta BakaNyu, the best beta and the best friend I could ever hope for, who never fails to make me laugh when I feel bad and punches all the bad guys for me. Merci mon cœur, tu peux pas savoir comme je t'aime et comme je suis heureuse d'être ton amie. (Imagine des cœurs là, ici, tout partout, et des bisous aussi !)

Now, I'm going to give you some information about the story that I think is worth noting.

First of all, as you may have noticed, the story… can get pretty bloody. Of course, there is nothing that should shock you more than the Chimera Ants arc, so you may think this warning is useless, but just in case… There will be blood. Here, I said it.

There will also be mature content (yeah, sex) later in the story. Nothing explicit per se, but sex nonetheless (I mean, I am writing a romance between two sexually active young adults, so…). Some of my friends have read the mature-ish scenes for me, and they told me the content was suitable for sixteen-year-olds and above. Nonetheless, if you wish me to do so, I will put a warning in the A/N when mature content comes up, for readers who would prefer skipping the sex scenes.

And well, while we're at it, I love crude jokes, so… expect a lot of those.

Technically speaking, the chapters are a lot longer than the prologue. I try to stay within 10k words but I don't always stay within those bounds. I've also written 10 chapters so far, and I plan to update every two weeks or so, to give myself some time to write the latest chapters. I may change this schedule if I feel like I need more time.

Okay, here we go, I think I've said everything. Don't hesitate to contact me if you have any question, either by PM here or on my tumblr (I'm kigamin there). You can also check my story's tumblr, poisonedamaryllis on tumblr, where you'll find excerpts from the future chapters, drawings made for the story (including amazing fanart), questions I've answered, text posts, and a bunch of things I reblog for fun.

Last but not least, I'd love to hear your thoughts about the prologue! Reviews are more than welcome, guest reviews too, and I'm always happy to read your comments! Chances are I will think about them for three days on non-stop.

Thanks again for your attention, and sorry for the super long A/N, I promise the next A/N will be a lot shorter (and the chapters a lot longer too).

See you next chapter!