As the sound of hair brushing reverberated throughout the room, a mirror standing on top of a wall reflected a distinct scene.

In it, two figures were shown.

The first? A fair-skinned, black-haired young girl no older than 10, with varying unique features, from the light heterochromia that made the left of her two violet eyes have a pinkish hue, to the presence of scorpion-like animal traits spread across her body—such as the obsidian-colored exoskeleton adorning her exposed arms and neck, and the pointed tail swinging around in the background of the mirror.

But said tail was not swinging around on its own. Rather, it was trying to catch a larger, slippery tail that kept escaping the smaller one’s attempts. Its owner? The second figure, who was using her own tail to entertain the smaller one while combing the shoulder-length hair of the young girl.

Except for the heterochromia, the two figures' features were alike, even wearing the same simple violet dress, with the only notable difference being age—and, as such, the size of their dresses, since the second figure had long since stepped into adulthood.

Strangely though, the older figure in the reflection appeared blurry, as if covered by mist...

It was that memory again—the one she had seen too many times to count.

But rather than familiarity, looking at the figure that seemed to get blurrier each time the scene was recalled, her heart was filled only with helplessness and loss.

'Will I eventually forget you had a tail too?'

'Am I even going to live long enough for that to happen?'

As the blurry adult figure kept combing the young girl's hair, words that had long since begun lacking a distinct tone flew out from her direction.

She was the speaker, the blurry figure—that much could still be discerned.

“Do you know what happens a week from now?”

“Uhhhhh, Mom, what day is today?” answered the younger figure with a feminine, somewhat high-pitched voice full of individuality.

Just like her figure, her voice remained clear and easy to distinguish, much unlike her mother's blurry image and hazy tone. Why was that? Why didn't she become like that too? She never understood.

“Silly girl, we're a week away from your birthday! You can do the math yourself now...” The same monotone voice came from the blurry figure, lacking any emotion. Yet, from the choice of words alone, kindness was still very apparent.

“Ohhhh! Birthday!”

“Any idea what you want then? Nothing excessive, of course!”

“Surprise! It gotta be a surprise!”

The contrast between the monotone tone of the adult figure and the excited one of the young girl was but a painful reminder of the passing of time to the spectator.

'Just seeing you would be enough. I don't want anything else.'

“I-Is that so? You don't think that Mom might get the wrong thing?”

“There's no way! Mom knows me best!”

'How could it be wrong if you are there?'

“Fine, fine, we'll do it like that. Now though...”

“What?”

'Here it comes.'

As the blurry figure uttered the next words, the fogginess that seemed to cover her voice dispersed a bit, making space for a little glimpse of a mature, calm, and—in that particular moment—stern tone addressing her daughter.

”Why did you look for trouble with that kid Niall again?”

The question that always made her angry, be it back then or dozens of times more now...

“Uhhh?! He's the one always looking for trouble by badmouthing you!”

'Why can I only hear your voice when you defend that scum?!'

The older figure could be seen sighing in helplessness in the mirror, clearly troubled by her daughter's stance on the matter.

Pausing the combing of her daughter's hair, she turned the chair the young girl was sitting on toward herself while slowly bending her knees to get on her same eye level.

“M-Mom?”

“This should be among the last things a mother should ever say to her child, but...”

At this point, the spectator was in complete silence. She knew very well that the memory was about to end, and she didn’t want to miss anything despite having replayed this conversation in her mind countless times...

And yet...

“Battles can't always be fought ** **** *** ***** you know?”

'UH?!'

“What do you mea—”

The haze in the older figure's words was back, her unique voice nowhere to be heard. Only a fragmented message stood against the passage of time.

“You should...”

“......to fight...”

“............not...”

“What do you mean, Mom?”

'WHY?! WHY CAN'T I HEA—'

“This........advice.........the world...”

“But...”

“Mom?”

'MOM!'

For but a single moment, the lower half of the older figure's face's haziness seemed to evaporate, exposing to both the young girl and the one spectating through her eyes from the future a wide smile full of hope!

“If you have this small lesson engraved in your heart early on, then maybe Aliyah... maybe you'll be able to take a few more steps than me in life...”

Following said words, the memory—accompanied by the sound of glass breaking—abruptly ended.

♦♦♦

As she came back into herself, away from the memory that tormented her the most, two things were awaiting Aliyah.

Firstly, the broken mirror in front of her, where a much less young but not quite yet adult figure could be seen between the cracks.

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Her black hair was no longer stopping at shoulder-length but rather reaching midway down her back, the scorpion-like exoskeleton covering a bit more of the few parts exposed by her larger violet dress, and her bigger pointed tail in the background was all the more present.

But most importantly were her deep violet eyes, staring straight into Aliyah, with the pinkish hue on the left one being much more dominant than in the earlier memory...

Secondly, the sound of blood dripping on the floor, falling from the right hand that had clearly just been used to shatter the mirror in front of her with a punch...

For the first time, rather than escaping into that memory, she had escaped from it.

Aliyah gritted her teeth, her gaze now shifting from the remains of the mirror to the pieces of glass that had fallen onto the floor of the room.

“So what? It's not like they'll pat me on the back for cleaning this mess...”

'It won't mean anything.'

But it was that mirror.

The one that had witnessed her in her lonesome since that day.

Aliyah's gaze softened and, after finding the adequate cleaning tools, she started to carefully pick up all the broken glass from the floor, not minding how much time it would take...

♦♦♦

The small whispers always came from too far away to be properly heard.

The concealed gazes were never within her field of vision to be accurately identified.

And yet, she knew too well...

'I am late.'

To whom most of it was directed...

'The servants only observe from distance and comment on what they see to each other as mere spectators.'

How could she not understand when the same performances kept being presented to her for more than half a decade?

But today was a bit different.

“...Insolence...”

“....Spawn of...”

“...Shame.”

'They're noisier and bolder than usual.'

She could even make out a few of the monikers these people liked to refer her with...

But it wasn't surprising.

Having spent more time than usual in preparing herself due to the broken mirror, plus making sure her right hand wasn't bleeding all over the place, as mentioned earlier, she was clearly late.

As she waited in place while sitting on the cold floor—completely uncaring of how that would further provoke the onlookers—Aliyah idly looked around the very familiar place.

Sparkling white tiles adorned the floor, stretching for dozens of meters in every direction, forming a perfectly flat area where various humanoids with animal-like features sparred with one another. Each displayed their own unique styles, using a mix of animal and human body parts in countless ways.

At the edge of the training ground were servants from many different humanoid animal-like races, most of them with the task of watching over their masters' training, while a few were directly in charge of the training ground.

Gazing even further than them, one would notice that the square-shaped training ground was surrounded from all four directions by a four-story building that, by enveloping the whole place, isolated all the trainees from the world's distractions.

Gazing directly behind her, towards where she typically entered the place, Aliyah only needed to raise her gaze a bit to have her room on the second floor in sight.

After staring at that room for a few seconds, Aliyah dropped her gaze and scoffed.

'What a joke!'

'The Governor reserves the 3rd floor all for himself, the few family members he's chosen to recognize the blood of, and the guests from either above or other nests...'

'The dozens of concubines, all of their children, and the servants that directly answer those on the 3rd floor all stay on the 2nd...'

'The 1st floor, meanwhile, is always overfilled by servants of both the mansion itself and whoever the Governor deems fit...'

'As for the ground floor, it's simply where common workers are relegated to do their jobs.'

Thinking of the rules she'd known since gaining awareness of herself, Aliyah's heart, which had started to relax, grew cold.

Looking in disgust at the silver badge woven onto the left side of her top, a phantom pain on her back made Aliyah wince.

'Punishing people just for going a floor higher than they should...'

Aliyah never understood the reason for dividing people that way. It felt incredibly useless and pretentious—something done merely to stroke one's ego.

'It's not like I can do anything about it, and besides...'

Suddenly, the sound of wings flapping from high up could be heard as a large shadow—starting from one of the edges of the training ground—slowly grew smaller as it traveled to the center until reaching the feet of a well-built, young, light-skinned falcon humanoid male exactly when he landed on the ground.

After touching the ground, the falcon-like young man took his time to flex his sparkling white wings that shone with a slight golden aura. An expression full of pride and scorn for those lesser than him adorned his face as the wind from his movements made his expensive white tunic and golden cloak flutter around.

Aliyah smiled coldly.

'One of the leading actors of today's performance has finally arrived.'

Immediately, all the other trainees stopped what they were doing, making space for the newcomer while glancing between him and Aliyah.

As for the new arrival, ignoring all the gazes of others and fixing his eyes on the scorpion-like girl sitting away from him, he began addressing her while raising his voice so everyone could hear.

“Little pest! Not only did you show up late today, but I've heard you're now damaging the manor's belongings! What, getting cold feet since you have a week left before your worthless self won't have anything more to cling to?”

The young man's voice was full of arrogance and disdain, as if he had been unwillingly forced to clean up the trash.

Hearing what new, innovative, and original thing the man had to say today, Aliyah audibly scoffed and, after getting up from her resting place, she gave her answer while walking toward him, also not paying any mind to the onlookers.

“If I'm late, then what even are you? Birdy? Did you think for all this time that I didn’t have you figured out? Having me come to the grounds early just to be sure I'm present when you do that poser entrance? Who are you trying to impress exactly?”

After finishing her speech—mimicking his tones and facial expressions while giving him her piece—Aliyah thought that would be enough to shut the overgrown bird's beak up. And yet...

'Why is he smil—'

“Filthy scorpion breed, sometimes you really think you're the only one with a brain, huh?”

Aliyah halted her steps, now being less than twenty steps away from the leading actor.

Seeing Aliyah stop in place, the young man let out a laugh.

“Unless someone truly touches your reverse scale, you never try to shut them up completely, right? Instead, you’d limit yourself to barking some snide remarks at them like a powerless dog. So, pray tell, are you getting cold feet?”

Aliyah's pupils shrank, and her posture grew more on edge as she instinctively took a battle stance.

“You sure understand a lot about someone you see so far below yourself that you can't even bother to call by name, right, Zivas?”

Zivas, the falcon-like young man, abruptly stopped speaking and visibly clenched his hands. Veins appeared at the edges of his face, his hawk-like white eyes widening in anger.

'Uh?'

Aliyah blinked a few times.

Surprisingly, that was the comment that successfully shut the bird's beak. Though Aliyah did not have much time to think if it was due to what she had said, or if simply being called by name was such a huge affront to the guy, despite being called "Birdy" just earlier...

But this wasn't the end of it, she knew so very well.

He wasn't there just to talk, after all...

“As you've long since known, the Governor was compassionate enough to not only let what might be the spawn of another ma—”

“Cut the crap and start your spar-disguised beating, you overgrown bird!”

It seemed that Zivas wanted to speak with his fist even more than with his words, because unlike what Aliyah had expected, he readily listened to her advice and sprinted toward her, using his wings to give himself a boost in speed.

Though, even if she was ready, how much would it change?

“This time I'll engrave the difference between a mere Mortal and a Scion in your bones!”

He didn’t even need a proper stance.

Nor did he need to take her seriously and watch out for any of her moves.

'He likes to start off with a kick to the left side.'

She knew how he fought.

She had already begun evading his typical attack while preparing to counter with her tail the moment she saw him move.

And yet...

Despite the two being more than 10 meters away from each other, a few instants after the falconkin sprinted toward her—too fast to follow with her eyes—a more than familiar pain greeted her left side before she could take a single step backward.

But the familiarity didn’t end there. As the force from the falconkin's attack threw her away, his taunting began.

“Sturdy for a mortal, ain't you?! Maybe your mother mated with a cockroach for you to take beatings so well!”

Despite the pain from part of her exoskeleton breaking in a single hit tormenting her mind, Aliyah quickly got to her feet with the help of her tail and answered with a sneer on her face.

“Ever thought that maybe you're just not that good yourself? Amar and even Luvian pack more of a punch than you, honestly.”

Aliyah wasn’t being honest at all, actually, but the few veins that popped on the falconkin's face from her words made the lie more than worth it.

What ensued next was something she expected from the beginning.

Even though looking at his preparing movements, Aliyah could easily glean Zivas' next move, the raw difference between the two in all spectrums made the attempt entirely useless.

The falconkin could either change his mind at the last second or stick with his programmed moves, and—even if predicted—she’d have zero chances to respond properly.

A punch to her stomach could transform into one toward her chin in the time it took her to blink her eyes.

A palm toward her face could do serious damage, even if she protected herself with both her arms and tail.

A particular hit to her stomach made Aliyah glad that she always made a point to skip breakfast when "sparring" with the guy.

As for trying to attack him? Even with the bird taking unnecessary risks and allowing her to have some chances to respond to his moves, Aliyah never scored a hit.

But despite failing every time, she never once stopped thinking about how to respond to Zivas' movements.

Even if she hadn't managed to land an attack on him even once in their hundreds of "spars", she refused to give in and become a punching bag in the mind as well.

But try as she might, even today it was for naught.

♦♦♦