Her scarlet gaze laid veiled.

Her figure remained still, like a statue, her chest not swaying with the usual signs of breathing.

As for her mind… her mind was lost amidst fog and shadows.

In there, her consciousness was like a loose string at the mercy of the winter winds cutting through a mountain valley; her memories blurred in snow white, sounds drowned by the storm.

Resting against her shoulder, there was a spear made of shadows, and she herself was seated on top of a rock composed of the same ether-like element. Both were of her own creation, yet their making lacked any kind of conscious thought.

She was instinct.

She was muscle memory.

She was a weapon without a handle.

No one could wield her.

Her being was the edge, sharp, deadly.

To touch her, meant to bleed.

Yet amidst the fog, traces of someone would sometimes become clear, like a dance of silhouettes behind a curtain of rain; someone who would clash against her, time and time again, tirelessly, unafraid of the pain.

What drove him? Was the question that would not leave a print in her psyche, as her figure moved with deadly precision, plunging her spear into the young man’s chest.

If she could, she would have wondered why despite killing him so many times, the young man would appear before her as if nothing had happened. If her thoughts were just slightly within the room of coherence, she would have noted his slow yet steady improvement, and her own need to clash against him, drawn by a desire painted in dim gray.

But she could not, and so the memory smoldering inside her, remained hidden, there, beating involuntarily in her chest, fueling her. There was something bright in that memory, pure yet rueful; an impossible situation born from the wisp that was she, and the relentless attempts of a boy at mastering the legacy he was given.

Since the first moment, and to the last, she watched him from behind an invisible wall, as the boy tried to get through it, pushing, running, hitting in frustration; unaware of her presence, of her existence, yet at the same time, yearning for someone exactly like her.

To be like her. To be with her.

She watched how the boy grew into a young-man, unable to do anything but witness his suffering, convinced that he’d been given an impossible task, and that her own purpose would be never fulfilled…

But there he was.

Screaming, tearing, gnashing his throat as his hands clashed against the invisible barrier, digging nail and bone into it, chiselling it down, dent by dent… he was enduring a pain that went beyond what was physical, she knew, and so it was all the more painful to stand there, behind the wall and without the means to help him tear it down.

She wanted to fulfil her purpose.

She wanted the young man to succeed.

And in her infinite loneliness, one born not from her short life in isolation, but from the one who created her, she came to wish to meet him.

But she knew she shouldn’t. That wasn’t her task.

And so she buried the memory deep inside her, so deep it faded into near nothingness, not expecting to ever get her wish…

Such was the memory driving her now.

Such was the reason why, amidst the fog and shadows her mind was in, a flare of urgency and fear crossed her consciousness, spurring her every muscle into action…

To protect him.

Shield him from that foreign hatred that shouldn’t be there.

To destroy that which threatened that person.

She was an edge. To touch her meant to bleed.

Yet that action alone blossomed into a spark so bright it cleared the fog and shadows her consciousness was in, even if briefly, even if meaningless, her scarlet gaze falling upon the boy, with a longing that carved an even wider hollow in her chest.

It didn’t last, however. Not even as long as a breath, and so when the boy’s purple eyes settled on her, she didn’t meet them. She couldn’t.

Her movements were instinct.

Pure muscle memory.

Which was why, when her own spear was returned, she didn’t even think about retrieving it. Her hand just moved.

However…

There it was, the hollow in her chest. A constant reminder of what she had been, of what she could be, of the one spark being born over and over again in her unable psyche, in her incomplete form.

It was meaningless.

It was powerless.

… it was hope.