The Cinder

The Cinder apprenticed to Hareth Vol, a ritualist of pyric burial, a minority rite in which the dead are committed to a small controlled fire rather than to the void. The rite is older than the Dominion and barely tolerated. Hareth was one of its priests. He was killed in a border skirmish, and the local adjutant, citing logistics, void-buried the body without notice to the apprentice.

The Cinder learned this from the paperwork. He has lodged a formal grievance four times. Each one was acknowledged and shelved. He now performs the pyric rite himself on every wreck he produces, with a small torch he says was lit from his master's last fire. The Dominion calls this a private eccentricity. He calls it the only correct response. His grudge is against any adjutant who has signed a void-burial in place of a pyre.