Zyra shuddered as she heaved a deep, shaky breath.

She released the air in her lungs and felt her mind clear, the stress disappearing in a dull ache that left the sides of her head throbbing.

She relaxed and her neck lost its strength, her head went forward and banged against the door to her dorm room.

Standing here like this, with her forehead pressed against the door to her room must be an odd sight for any possible onlooker- and she knows that there aren’t, or at least there is none right now given that it’s Sunday afternoon and almost everyone around here were either outside enjoying themselves, or were still out hunting.

She sucked in another lungful of air and heaved it out, repeating the process for a good while until she finally had the courage to grab the doorknob and twist her door open. She stumbled and fell- forgetting that her head was still lulled against the damn thing.

It took her a moment to catch herself and even longer for her to recover from such a simple failure.

Zyra leaned her back against a wall and took deep breaths that left her messy mind in a much better state with each lungful of air that puffed up her chest-

Failure.

That is such an odd word, to some, it would be akin to something of a mistake- but mostly, it is nothing more than a label to put on past regrets or things that could simply be done better- results that, to the one getting them, felt lackluster.

The word has a lot of definitions, but to Zyra- to the little girl who’s never had the opportunity to truly leave her past behind- it means that she’s further fallen down the steep mountain she had been trying to scale for most of her life.

Every setback- every failure- means that she stumbles and falls further down and away from reaching her goal and that’s… not really something she could afford to do.

The impossibility of reaching the top has never really been something that Zyra bothered to worry about. Why would she? Worrying about something like that is simply pointless and a waste of energy but it’s during times like these that remind her just how hard the journey to reaching the end would be.

The scale of the mountain she was trying to climb- the sheer limitlessness of the problem that stems from her origins was simply too great and it’s during times like these, times when she feels like she’s hit rock bottom, is when she wanted to give up her spite and let the Whirlia Family take control of her-

She scoffed, “as if,”

Zyra pushed herself off of the wall and stepped into the hallway.

She closed the door behind her and faced the framed maps and quotes from past Heroes on either side of the wall.

Like most students, she had decided to discard the motivational words that once filled the space that her maps and quotes occupied, throwing them all aside in favor of her much preferred stuff, and well, the motivational quotes did- are similar to the words of encouragement she threw out but- but the ones from past heroes were infinitely better than the ones her room came with.

Zyra longingly scanned the maps and chuckled at the quotes her eyes caught as she passed them by.

All of that came to a halt when she entered her spartan living room, and the fleeting feelings of happiness that she felt from walking across her own space, one with signs of a much more intimate and personal touch, disappeared and the irritation mixed with a bit of existential dread that has been haunting her on the way back crashed against her mind and reminded her of her current reality.

“Failure.” Zyra forced out a chuckle as she made her way to the couch on the corner of the room. Her expression corrected itself halfway through and when she took a seat, her face was back to scowling at nothing.

“... it’s… a weird word,” she said simply.

Zyra allowed herself to relax and rested her back against the spine of the couch, her eyes scanned the living room; unlike the hallway that she spent a lot of time decorating, this place was… bare.

With little to no furniture save for what came with the dorm, and even then, they went unused. Collecting dust.

The simple reason behind for why that’s the case is because she has never really been fond of wide spaces and every time she went inside of one there was a sense of aching at the back of her head, like someone was watching her and that feeling of gnawing anxiety has never left her.

Right now though, she could stomach it, and that’s mostly because there’s a wall behind her preventing any nagging thoughts of some murderer coming up from behind her to suddenly manifest with the sole purpose of killing her.

She felt safe and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Or something,” Zyra stopped staring at her empty living room and let her head lull back.

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An action that she quickly regretted when her anxiety crept up and told her that someone, for whatever reason, would come from the front and suddenly stab her. Was it a needless worry? Yes. But anxious thoughts often are.

She sighed as a memory flashed- the Great Rotter’s face, its eyes melting like wax, erupted in her psyche to bite at her. It didn’t come, obviously, and she’s since grown old enough to ignore those kinds of intrusive thoughts but that didn’t stop them from coming, nothing does.

Still, seeing that Great Rotter was a reminder of something worse than her constant feeling of anxiety within open spaces.

Their hunt was a failure and her team needed a lot of training before she could confidently say that they could attempt something like that again.

Lucille had been carefree- way too carefree during their hunt while Yhaine constantly froze like she didn’t know what to do during stressful situations, both were problems that she needed to solve- or maybe not?..

Lucille was competent enough but Yhaine… she at least found her courage at some point and was willing to fight the Great Rotter head on.

So who was the real problem then?

Zyra pointed a sarcastic finger at herself, “me,” she said with a mocking tone, “I’m the problem,”

Her team relied on her for tactics and quick thinking but she couldn’t even provide something so simple- it was her job to give them instructions and be the leader, her job to be someone that they turned to whenever situations flipped upside down and no solution could be found, it was her job to be the brain of the group.

And what isn’t her job would be to worry about their possible deaths- no, that’s her job too, Lucille couldn’t be trusted to keep them safe and when asked, she’d probably get them to go to more dangerous areas instead of avoiding them while Yhaine is too… volatile for her own good to come up with something more than “panic and improvise” when she’s in danger.

Zyra shouldn’t have kept her knowledge of the Jungle Warrior stalking them to herself, and she definitely shouldn’t have led them deeper into Greatape Forest because of it- because look where that led her team; towards a Great Rotter that, if it wasn’t for Karsten, would have killed them.

And if they went any deeper, then they would have been greeted by a King Fungi.

She shuddered at the thought of facing something that only Prophecies were allowed to fight.

Her team couldn’t fight something like that and she- no, they should have known.

The signs were already there from the start and if they just spoke up- were more proactive with planning and conversations or even worrying about each other, they would have run away from that part of the forest when they heard the shuffling sounds of grinding wood that a Lichen Crawler makes when it moves.

If someone- Yhaine had just been louder at denying her, or if Lucille agreed with their front line a lot more vehemently instead of sitting back then Zyra would have… not believed them- or ignored their worries like all the times she did back then.

And all of that was because she was too scared of the Jungle Warrior hunting them, so she deflected Yhaine’s worried words and urged them to keep moving forward.

Sure, she could blame her friends for all of that- for the fact that they encountered a Great Rotter and almost died but… she knows that if there’s someone who can truly be blamed for everything that happened it would be her.

Zyra should have disagreed with Yhaine when she told them about how Neophyte’s feelings would be hurt when they came back empty handed, because looking back, that was the point when they should have returned to Vulnaza’s capital.

And in retrospect, with how Neophyte is when it comes to keeping her fellow Prophecies safe, it was obvious that the princess wouldn’t have cared and would even be happy about them coming back empty handed but alive.

Even Neophyte’s sister said as much.

Briefly, Zyra wondered how Yhaine felt when she heard Calcite request them to keep silent but she shook that thought off.

It was pointless to worry about how other people felt.

Zyra stood up and walked to her bedroom.

It was, much like the hallway outside, intimately decorated.

Mostly- she didn’t dare to touch the black walls with white dots on them- after all, the imitation of the night sky does look nice, so she didn’t see any reason to change it, - but everything else had to change, her bedsheets turned green and so did her pillows, and even the cabinet beside it was draped in a light blue fabric for dressing.

She passed it all by with a clear head and stepped into her bathroom, when she came out, she was wearing a loose white T-shirt and a pair of shorts that stopped halfway down her thighs.

It was the kind of nightwear that would make her parents angry but they- she wasn’t here and even if she was- she wasn’t Zyra’s actual… well, she is- but her actual parents have always been her grandfather, and grandmother, and that sort of thing wouldn’t change in her mind- the point is, though, she…

Wasn’t really sure where she was going with this so she let the train of thought go.

Zyra threw herself on her bed and landed with a soft whump.

She felt herself bounce up and down once, twice, thrice, then it stopped.

Then her thoughts came to a halt and for a good while, she stared at nothing with a foggy head and misty vision. The cold, refreshing feeling that came from taking a shower was everpresent in her dazed out state and the feeling of smoothness pressing against her arm made her feel…

Nostalgic, she thinks, is the right word to use in this context.

It made her feel nostalgic- longing.

She was searching for something- she didn’t know just what that something was but her heart did, and- and for some reason, her stupid mind decided to believe the baseless words it was spouting- belief in longing for nothing- it was an odd state of mind and she couldn’t help but smile wryly at the thought of it.

But maybe- just maybe, deep down her longing made sense- just what she was searching for was unsure but she knew it by heart- it was a contradiction that left her confused, and she decided to fill that gap, not with… hate like she usually would- but something much warmer, and the thing that came to fill that gap was none other than Lucille.

Why?

Zyra honestly didn’t know. Like most of everything that’s been happening to her lately.

But she knew she didn’t need to make sense of it, just… let it be there, making her chest feel tight with a tender kind of warmth.

Zyra closed her eyes and let the feeling drag her to the confines of sleep, and there, in the darkness, she felt for the thrum of her beating heart and her hand went up to touch her chest, “still alive.”

Her murmur came soft and foggy in her ears. Fleeting.

She woke up at some point during the night, with the entire afternoon passing her by- she wasn’t sure if Neophyte and the rest had come back yet, but they most likely had, though her curiosity wasn’t sated by simple thoughts and she decided to step out of her room and out into the darkness of the night.

And when she was out, she just felt… confused, not really knowing why she decided to search for Neophyte at this hour.

Regardless… she welcomed it- it was nice. Being here.

Cold air caressed her skin the moment the soles of her slippers touched the grass outside and her arms reflexively curled into herself to give it a modest amount of protection from the frigid bite of the wind.

Her eyes wandered over to the fireflies in the distance, their dotted forms flying about, carefree in their action and sluggish in their speed, some didn’t even move, well content on just hovering in the air, suspended there much like the Seraphims up above.

She found herself staring at them for a good while, unmoving even as the cold air breezed past, she didn’t shudder, and her breathless expression barely shifted.

Then, the moment passed and time moved back at regular speed and that fleeting sensation of niceness- of- of- something- disappeared into mist, and not even recalling it helped her remember the odd sense of purpose she had while in that state.

So Zyra decided to move on.