She heard, long ago,
of three paths aged into fate
long before the souls meant to walk them were born.
There were those who came into the world
hand in hand with fortune.
Before they even learned to knock,
doors obeyed them.
Do not misunderstand…
their victories were earned.
Only, somehow,
the road had always known their names.
They would have won anyway.
It was not luck.
Perhaps something quieter;
the silent cruelty of ease.
Then there were those born to hold the balance.
Their path belonged neither to fortune
nor to its absence.
It was clean. Blank, even…
waiting to be carved.
They forged it at their own will,
with tears, pain, sometimes blood.
If they fell,
they fell by their own becoming.
If they rose,
they had bled for the height.
Most people she knew belonged there.
People of honour.
People respected, remembered, even worshipped.
People…
she would never be.
And then,
there were the marked ones.
Those whose roads were already broken
before their feet ever touched them.
The kind the Creator watched in silence;
not to guide,
nor favour,
nor save,
but perhaps only to see
how long hope could survive inside them.
How long they could fly
before the sky remembered to break them.
How long they could live
before something in them cracked.
How long they would keep searching for light
before darkness learned their name.
If, of course,
they were ever given enough life
to search at all.
For the marked ones,
what they touched crumbled.
What they loved
learned how to leave.
They did not walk their broken roads.
They survived them.
And she…
she was the marked one.
