Yuji Sakai is walking home from school when a monstrous Rinne attacks, only for a sword-wielding girl to cut it down and tell him something worse: he's already dead, reduced to a 'Torch,' a fading echo of the real Yuji consumed to fuel someone else's power. The girl, who takes the name Shana, is a Flame Haze bound to the spirit Alastor and tasked with destroying the Denizens that prey on human existence, and for reasons she can't explain, she decides to let Yuji's borrowed time keep running instead of letting it burn out.