Left Behind

Azra woke up feeling refreshed. It felt like the first time he got a good night's sleep in a long time. It wasn't until the drowsiness wore off that he realized something was wrong.

There hadn't been a single calm morning ever since the director picked up those twins, not a single one. But the orphanage was as quiet as a dead man's coffin. Since the wind was still, he couldn't even hear the walls of the old house sway and creak.

Azra left the bed and went down the stairs leading up to the loft that also acted as his bedroom. Azra had asked for the loft to be made into his own private room since he was the second oldest and deserved his privacy, and also because he wanted some peace from the other kids. The director obliged and transformed the dusty storage into a proper bedroom since he knew Azra's habits and how noisy the other kids could be.

After sending the stairs up into the ceiling again, Azra went down to the kitchen on the first floor, flicking the string used to pull the stairs on the way. Even if the twins were gone, and the other kids were uncharacteristically silent, he would at least find some signs of life in the kitchen.

Since Rodrick had a habit of snacking, there was almost always a trail of breadcrumbs leading to where he was.

But when Azra got to the kitchen, it was completely bare. There weren't even any signs of anyone making breakfast. He hadn't seen any signs of the other kids on the second floor either.

Azra was about to go scouring through the rest of the house to see if he could at least find Kyle, but then he saw a piece of paper resting on the kitchen table out of the corner of his eye.

When he saw the paper, Azra got an ill-natured premonition. Picking up and reading the first few lines confirmed his suspicions. The first word was "Sorry," and that was all Azra needed to read before he knew the rest of the kids at the orphanage had abandoned him.

He still read the rest of the letter in order to see if there was anything else in it. But the contents followed his suspicions.

Although Kyle had softened the blow using sweet words, the general gist of the letter was that Azra was useless and would only drag the others down as they went to look for a living in this scarred world. At least they left behind an empty promise to come back sometime in the future.

Just because he hadn't awakened his inclination, Azra was apparently so much of a deadweight that Kyle would rather bring two nine-year-olds that didn't know the meaning of tranquility than him.

Azra already knew what the other kids at the orphanage thought of him, so it didn't come as a shock. However, he started to wonder when they had started planning their stunt. Since he usually locked himself in his room and reread the stories up there, it wasn't like there was a lack of opportunity for them to decide what to do, but Azra still wondered for how long they had been thinking about abandoning him.

The war began several years ago, shortly after which the army drafted the director and Tenna. Even after the war was over, the director and Tenna showed no signs of returning, maybe because their kingdom had fallen.

Azra didn't know the details, but there had been a great ruckus in the village down the hill that the Redire Kingdom had somehow lost its entire royal family. And instead of some distant relative picking up the crown and continuing the lineage, the kingdom collapsed.

Though, before further news could spread to the village, it burned down. It happened during the night, and the kids only noticed when the flames reached the sky. They couldn't tell if it was an accident or intentional, but they couldn't find any traces of survivors or intruders.

Since there weren't any signs of bandits or beasts setting the village on fire, Azra guessed that it was an unlucky accident wrought by the climate.

Despite being far away from the battlefield, their plane had still been affected by some weird magic that turned their sixth level plane of Blossoming Spring into an arid wasteland.

The climate lasted for years and persisted even after the war ended. The inhabitants of the plane were only used to short bursts of heat during summer, so no one knew how to prepare for the effects that the long-lasting drought would have.

A single dropped match had probably been enough to turn the village into a blazing inferno since all the houses were made from dry and highly flammable wood, not to mention the walls filled with even more flammable insulation.

The kids at the orphanage took it hard. Especially the twins, Mia and Leo, who realized that all the friendly aunties and uncles who gave them treats all the time were dead.

Azra felt it was a pity that the village burned down. But that didn't stop him from scavenging for resources as soon as the embers cooled.

Without the village, the orphanage wouldn't be able to last for long. Azra wanted to secure any surviving sources of food before they spoiled. After looking long and hard, he found several spatial rings that survived the fire, many of them containing at least some food. Despite leaving Azra to go through the wreckage and corpses alone, the others happily gorged on the food in the spatial rings Azra brought back.

Spatial rings that lay next to the letter Kyle had left him.

'At least the bastard left some food behind.'

Azra got dressed before putting the rings in the side pocket of his robes.

It was a simple brown robe made of rough fabric he got from the village, but at least it covered most of his body, protecting it against the weather outside. It also had an almost watertight hood to shield him from the rain, wind, and eventual sandstorms that had gotten more common as of late. And if his bangs weren't enough, the hood could also help him cover up the symbol of his inclination.

Although Kyle hadn't said where they were going, Azra could guess they were heading for the plane's capital, Flower of Spring. If there was one place that survived the war and could bring hope of prosperity, it would be that place.

Kyle had told Azra not to try and follow them, but even if he hadn't, Azra didn't have any plans of trying to catch up with the other kids from the orphanage.

Instead, Azra headed for another village that should be close enough that Azra could last with the little food he was left.