Her hollow eyes tracked the bald boy from afar. She observed his weak smile and within her clenched fists, her long nails drew blood. Her gaze fell once again on the boy’s bald skull causing her jaws to tense. And as her teacher greeted the boy with a smile, her heart suffocated. Yet, she continued to watch from afar, hidden from the eyes of her once friend.

Often, the success of one’s friends, where one had failed, rubbed salt in one’s festering wounds and bloody lacerations.

Surabhi’s hollow eyes traced Kiran’s retreating back. Soon enough, all the children left to meet their families, however, Surabhi did the opposite. She wanted not to see the face of her father, the reason for her failure.

‘It’s alright. It’s alright.’ The teenage girl breathed deeply to settle her suffocated heart. ‘At least I won’t have to beg for food...’ However, the suffocation in her heart didn’t decrease. Instead, her stifled heart seemed to get even more deeply entangled in her misery, failure and loathing. ‘I won’t have to beg for food. I won’t have to be dressed in rags. I won’t have to help the-’

Her pace hastened and she began to run. The wind hit her face like slaps while her long black hair trailed behind as her feet raced to leap ahead of the other. Her chest burned and her breaths shortened yet she continued to run. She had no destination and no path, yet the teenager ran. Though, why the girl ran, the failure herself did not know.

Surabhi reached her shack only to collapse, exhausted and panting. She wheezed as her prone form remained sprawled in the mud and filth, the sound of her laboured breathing echoing across the empty mud field, as if to mark her loneliness. Her teary eyes aimlessly searched the clear blue sky but knew not what she sought.

Answers, she had. Reasons, she knew. Perhaps it was her future she sought?

Thick tears rolled down the side of her temples to fall and become one with the mud, dirt and filth. Perhaps they were as meaningless as her existence.

The failure sat up with a jerk, the sudden action caused her long hair to flutter in the air for a moment before they hit her face to cover her eyes. At that moment, her hindered vision seemed quite akin to her pathless future, blocked and sundered.

The teenager unkindly gripped the ends of the long strands, as if they were not her own before her crying features twisted into an ugly snarl and she ripped the offending strands from her scalp. Pinpricks of pain blasted off in her skull but they were dwarfed by the guttural scream that escaped her lips. Her throat and chest shook from its power while the nearby birds escaped into the sky.

‘Married. To produce children. To serve endlessly.’ The failed girl’s jumbled thoughts clashed. ‘A [Student] at best.’ The once ambitious girl’s future was bleak. The girl that had once dreamed to walk the path of [Monster Tamer] to stand toe to toe with the royals themselves, now had to imagine herself tied to someone else’s desire.

The very thought caused her exhausted heart to race and subsiding pants to escalate. Had she been allowed to pursue her dream path, then the failure would have been her own and she could have lived with it.

However, that was not the case. For years she had been forced to walk a path that was not hers. Even before she had been inducted into the ashram, the girl had been taught alchemy. The desire of her father to see his legacy passed had caused the man to raise his only child, Surabhi, like his son.

Perhaps, this delusion was also the reason that the Alchemist’s slow progress on his path had stifled and halted. A path that existed not for the failed girl, much like her future.

Surabhi wiped the drying tears with her muddy fingers and stood up to walk. Her unsure feet that had aimlessly run previously now steadily walked towards their destination while her tear-stained face remained lost in the unending hollowness of their failure.

Soon enough, she arrived at the short wooden fence separating the ashram from the haunted forest beyond. Growing up in the ashram, how could she not know of what lay beyond? The stories that she had heard and the warning that had passed down were etched in her mind and heart.

Thus, numerous warnings echoed within her entangled mind and a spark of resistance manifested within her hollow eyes as she hesitated. However, the shrieking voices gradually became distant and they took the dying resistance with them, leaving behind a pair of eyes that were dull and hollow once again.

The failure placed her hand on the mouldy wood before lifting herself and crossing the weak fence in a single leap. Her feet landed on the soft grass but the disappointment paid it no heed as her heart raced. However, her eyes remained hollow. The let-down stepped forward and the dark forest seemed to press down on her psyche but it mattered not to her as she continued to walk deeper into the land forbidden to someone as pathetically weak as her.

Her uncharacteristically sure steps cared not where they walked as long as they went deeper into the treacherous unknown. The distant screams and fading howls came closer as she walked while the pungent scent of animal piss fleeted past her senses. Fallen leaves crunched under her unceasing slow gait while tiny branches broke and cracked, adding their own sound to the eery buzzing of the gloomy forest.

As her final journey continued, the signs of struggles appeared with increasing frequency in the forms of fallen trees, lacerated trunks and decaying bones. Yet, the futureless failure continued her slow ceaseless trek.

Her hollow eyes gazed ahead, missing the fresh paw prints in the moist earth while her overwhelmed mind failed to hear the soft rustling of the grass. The failed girl tripped and fell only to get up again to march deeper.

However, her journey was cut short as a blur attacked her throat. The force of sudden attack slammed her into the moist earth, causing her frame to rattle and her vision to blur. Pain blasted off in her back and hip but it mattered not as her windpipe was choked before it was ripped out of her throat, leaving a gaping bloody wound in its place.

When the agony of the brutal assault was finally comprehended by the failure, a soul-searing scream tried to flee from her throat. However, the throat stood raptured and the silent yell merely gurgled the pooling dark blood. The failure wheezed and struggled as regret and panic bloomed within her haunted eyes but it was too late.

Her Remnant manifested within a single long strand her dark hair.

-X-

Within a desolate desert, inside a dilapidated shop, on a simple chair, a youth seemingly slept.

-X-