Story
Hunters come from everywhere, and some of them come from somewhere you really would rather they hadn't. There is a breed of Hunters who fight the dark with a fire drawn straight from the inferno underneath the world. We call them Infernal Guardians but down there, they're known as the Hellforged. That name might be more honest, because forging is done in fire, by force, shaping the metal in ways it never asked for.
No two of them tell the same origin. Some bargained for the power in a moment of desperation, a deal struck with one of the lords below when every other door was closed. Some swear they were marked from birth, born already promised to a destiny too big and too terrible to outrun. The truth probably varies. What does not vary is the bill. To be an Infernal Guardian is to spend every single day balanced on a wire, with salvation on one side and damnation on the other.
Because the fire is not a weapon they own. It is a tenant that wants the lease. It whispers. It promises. It offers more, always more, for the small price of letting go of the part of you that says no. An Infernal Guardian does not fight one war. They fight the Horror in front of them and the hunger inside them, and they have to win both, every time, forever.
In my youth I worked with a Hunter named Lilith. In a fight she was an act of God, hellfire pouring off her, reducing things that should not burn to a fine grey ash. She raised walls of flame to fend off reaching claw, then drew that same fire down into a single searing point and ran it clean through the creature's heart. Standing near her was like standing near the open door of a furnace. You were grateful for the warmth but you knew it could burn you just as easily.
What I remember most is after. The flames would die and I would catch the look on her face, the exhaustion that had nothing to do with her muscles. She told me once, quiet, that the fire never really went out. It sat in her chest like a second heartbeat, pounding away, murmuring that she could have everything if she would only stop holding it back. And every day she held it back anyway. She chose to be a guardian instead of a monster, a shield instead of a wildfire, and she made that choice again the next morning, and the morning after that. That is the real power of the Infernal Guardians.
That's the thing about Infernal Guardians. Their humor is exactly as dark as the stuff they carry, and I think it might be load-bearing. When you've got the literal fires of hell idling in your veins, you find ways to vent, or you go up all at once.