Revenge12 min read
I Went "Crazy" on Purpose and Took Everything Back
ButterPicks14 views
I don't actually go mad.
"I didn't see anything," Sofia said, voice trembling like a child. "Sofia didn't see—Sofia wasn't trying to—"
Sofia's eyes were wet. "Senior Sister, you won't blame me, right? I didn't mean to disturb your...your thing with Senior Brother."
I stood very still and let her assume what she liked. "You walked in," I said, cold and flat. "You saw. You smiled. You thought you had my part."
Senior Brother flinched and shielded her with his arm. "A'ying," he said, voice small, "don't blame Sofia. She's just a gentle little thing. If you must blame someone, blame me."
I smoothed my robe. "You should blame yourself for standing between steps and being useless."
Senior Brother's face went white. "A'ying?"
"Yes, Lennox, you," I said. "You're a man who can't double-cultivate and yet you think you're the pillar of the hall? Cute."
Sofia whimpered. "Senior Sister, I'm sorry—Sofia won't do it again. We were all doing it for the sect."
"For the sect?" I laughed and took a step forward. "You're a child acting like the center of the world. I'm not your stepping-stone."
I moved. The motions were crisp, practiced. I made them gasps crowding the small room like the start of a performance. I let my fingers slip an extra flourish, feigned the dizzying spark of "going mad." Senior Brother crumpled with a howl, clutching himself on the floor.
Sofia stared at him, eyes huge. "Senior Sister, I'm so sorry. I didn't—"
I took two steps and slapped her twice, left then right, clean and precise, twenty at once would have fit the moment. I plucked the red lenses from my eyes—my showpiece, my mask—and looked at them as if they were nothing.
"Sorry," I said softly. "Went a little mad for a second."
They left trembling. They would take their memory, their story, and run.
I didn't go mad. I acted.
I wandered the halls like a ghost with a smile. The apprentices who used to shove me aside and call me "the replacement" now cleared a path. That kind of fear is useful. After all, I was the second-strongest fighter in the Heavenly Void Gate, second only to Master.
Master, though, was closed in seclusion. He was supposed to return today. I had bought a lock of iron at Ironsmith Sect and signed the papers. If the lock opened, Ironsmith owed me everything. The lock? Stuck. The key? In my stomach. I swallowed it thinking of compensation and a new life.
My purse jingled like false hope. I had the right to be greedy. I had been second for too long.
Little Brother was the only one who followed me without fear, because he didn't know the book that had been written about us. "Senior Sister?" he said, coming close enough to almost bump into me.
"Stop being a fool," I said. "Everything you think you earned? It wasn't me who saved you in deep white snow from Endless Thought. It wasn't me who begged Master for your entry. It wasn't me who fed you when you were injured. All of that was done by Sofia."
He looked at me like someone waiting to be told to kneel. "Are you sure?"
"I'm sure," I said. "You've been loving the wrong person all these years. When you find out, you'll dump your bitterness on me. So go ahead, make me hate you. Make it clean."
He blinked, hurt and ridiculous. I turned away. I had no sympathy. I had learned to be a cold thing.
Then the post from Ten-Thousand Swords Sect arrived.
"There's the tournament," Dante said, lounging with his sword across the windowsill like he owned the sky. "The sect competition. Everyone sends their best young cultivators. If you win the top prize, there's a reward that can—change things."
"You think Sofia will take the stage and be a heroine?" I asked, sipping melon meat like a queen sizing a pawn.
"She will," Dante said. "She will absorb your spirit quietly and smile, and everyone will forget you. But I've got an idea."
He leaned forward. "Join me."
"Why should I?" I asked.
Dante's smile was lazy. "I saw you fight. You make things happen. I'd like to be on the winning side."
"Then I'll let you borrow my red lenses." I handed him two pairs without much thought. "They're limited."
He laughed like a small boy. "Where did you get these?"
"Space tears open in weird ways. Sometimes it eats a thing, sometimes it spits one out. I found these."
"Can I find sneakers next time?" he joked.
"You can try." I split one pair with him. We made a fine alliance. He promised his sect behind him would do as he wished. He pressed a seed into my palm, and I signed it with my ink.
"Do not tell me you are really going to let them use you to lift Sofia," Lennox protested, bursting into our room with a bag.
"Are you invited?" I asked, without looking up.
"No, but I am going with you." He looked over at Sofia and softened. "I'll go because you can't sword-fly and this path will be dangerous."
"You can't even double-cultivate," I shot, and before I could stop the motion my fist landed, blood painting the floor. He spat two rude mouthfuls of blood and staggered.
Sofia's lower lip trembled. "Senior Brother, you—"
"I told you to stay and help the sect," Lennox argued, stumbling.
"You want to be the hero? Then go be it somewhere else." I booted him out like a pest, and he slumped off.
Sofia's soft voice broke into the room. "Little Sister—" she started.
"Shut up," I said. "You're here to go to the contest. You will take the invitation. You will be the one everyone thinks is chosen."
She trembled and agreed.
The first night in Ten-Thousand Swords we left them looking like bruised sparrows craving my pity. I rode the air with Dante, who was—annoyingly—charming.
"You looked at the lenses," I said later in the room, handing him spiced seeds.
"You're reckless," he said, sounding surprised.
"Reckless gets results," I said. "I have no time to act like a good girl."
"You are not a good girl." Dante's voice softened. "You're something else."
"Call me many things," I said. "But don't call me weak."
He smiled. "I'll give you two boxes of red lenses for good luck."
In the mountaintop city of Ten-Thousand Swords, the people gossiped. "Isn't that the Heavenly Void Gate's Senior Sister? Why is she entering as a wanderer?"
"She went mad," the market girls said. "She walked red-eyed through the hall and then quit. Can't be sane."
I climbed the stage in the open square and announced, with a tilt of my chin, "I resign from Heavenly Void Gate. From now on, I am a wanderer: Kaleigh Collins."
The whispers swelled into a little wave.
"You're insane," someone called.
"She's gone rogue," another said, in a tone of both pity and performance.
Sofia began to cry openly, another show. "Senior Sister! You can't do this. It's betrayal!"
I lifted one hand. "Betrayal? You want to strip me of everything and call it devotion."
"What will the sect do?" a veteran asked aloud.
"Let them try," I said. "Watch them scramble."
I had planned the exit. I had inked the contract with Ironsmith Sect. I had swallowed the key. If the lock broke, they would owe me ruin and salvage. If the lock stayed closed, they would be free.
Dante's voice beside me was quiet. "You really are doing this."
"Yes," I said. "Yes. I am tired of being the understory to someone else's play."
They said "no one leaves" and "no one abandons." They said "the rules." But rules are made to be broken with purpose.
Master climbed down from the cloud-carriage like a man who carried the sky's own calm. Callen Blanchard looked at the square and then at me. The air changed.
"Kaleigh," he called. "Stop this trouble."
Sofia burst forward and sobbed. "Master! Master, my Senior Sister is wrong. Please stop her. She mustn't leave the sect."
Callen looked at Sofia with that fondness that made my skin crawl. He stepped toward me, hand half-raised in that old, gentle way he had always used.
He couldn't have known I had been pretending. He couldn't have known everything I had swallowed to be ready. He couldn't have known that forgiveness was the last thing I would ask.
"Callen," I said, and my voice slid like a blade. "You are accused of treating your disciples like puppets."
The Master stopped with his hand mid-air. "Kaleigh, child's talk—"
"Don't call me child," I snapped. "All those times I bled for you, you pretended to care. When Sofia ate the dream fungus, I took the beast and fought on the isle and came back with torn arms. You took my herb and you used it to wake her. When she was carried off by bandits, I took the wound in my chest. When her training failed and she crashed from the cliff, I wore the snow's thorns. I bled in secret while all heads turned to her. You have used me since the day you found me."
His face was first stunned, then vexed, then angry. "Kaleigh—"
"No." I drew myself taller. "No more."
He tried to say, "Come back, I'll be fair." He even moved to put a hand on my shoulder.
"Don't touch me," I warned.
Callen looked like a man who had been hit by wind. "You don't understand the rules," he said. "If you leave, you must be punished. The soul-nail penalty will be executed."
"It won't happen," I said with a smile that tasted like iron. "Not today."
The room twisted into accusation and rumor. Someone called for mercy. Someone called for rules. I could feel their eyes press and pull like fingers.
"I will not kneel." I walked into the center of the square and looked over the crowd. "If any of you think I owe this place my life, remember I gave it and it still wasn't enough."
Callen's face screwed up with grief and fanaticism. "Kaleigh—"
"You used me," I said. "You used me to warm someone else's path. You pretended you saw me when you stained the scrolls. You called me your second and then closed your eyes at my sacrifice."
He opened his mouth, and people gasped. "I loved you as a disciple! I—"
"You loved an idea," I finished.
The Master clenched his jaw. I could see the red lining in his eyes. He had given up sleep for the sect. He had yoked my life, and now he could not imagine a world that did not bind the leash. Around him were faces of elders, voices from the old times, and a handful of apprentices who would not speak.
"Then you will accept the punishment," Callen said, low and furious. "You cannot leave unbound."
"Let it be known," I said, louder, to the press of servants and students and visiting cultivators, "Master Callen Blanchard used the soul-nail to bind his disciples. He broke us. He said rules mattered more than people. He preached humility from the dais while using his favorites."
A few people in the crowd started. "What are you talking about?" a sect elder barked.
"You ask me for proof." I opened my hand to show the red lenses, the signs I had used to stage my "fit." "I was made into a spectacle. For their show they used me as a tool. Who will deny that they used me? Who will deny the gifts I have made and been denied?"
A murmur rolled. In the murmurs were the names of other forgotten students: the ones who had bled and been forgotten.
Callen stepped forward. "Stop this farce! Do not smear the Gate!"
"Farce?" I smiled, small and sharp. "You who sealed your own disciple with soul-nails in the name of order. You who would rather die for rules than live for people. You who would let a child be eaten by envy for a crown."
He faltered.
Then I did something I had planned in a thousand quiet hours. I drew the Shadow Sword—the blade given to me in secret, the sword I had concealed under my robe while I played the obedient one. No one expected I would wield it.
"Everyone," I said, voice steady, "mark this." I put the tip of the sword to Callen's chest.
Callen's eyes widened to the size of moons. "Kaleigh—"
"Do you remember the soul-nails?" I asked.
"You must not," someone shrieked.
The crowd surged. Everyone moved a hair's width closer. The elders' faces blanched. A dozen pairs of hands reached for me. Dante's grip tightened on my sleeve for a second and then released.
"I remember every stitch," I told him softly. "I remember every time you took what I risked and used it to raise another. I remember the day you drove tacks into my skull on the altar and called it discipline."
The crowd's breath cut like rope.
Callen's lips trembled. "You lie," he said.
"Do I?" I asked, and then I moved the sword.
The blade slid between his ribs with a sound that wasn't loud and wasn't soft. It entered as though the world had held breath across that thin seam. The Master gasped like a child surprised by winter.
"No!" Sofia cried, stumbling back. Lennox shouted his name. People ran forward, some to prevent it, some to pull the Master away, some to record the moment with wands.
Blood marked my hands, slow and steady. Callen looked at me. In his eyes there were a dozen things: shame, pain, disbelief, and, for a moment, an unbearable loneliness.
"Kaleigh, no—" he breathed.
"Remember," I said. "Remember when you put a nail in my friend's head and said order came first. Remember when you chose another's laugh over my bleeding. Remember, because I will not be erased."
He coughed. "You don't mean—"
"I do," I said.
It happened then: the transformation of the crowd's mood. First shock, then a ripple of whispers, then the restless click of people opening their spheres to record. Someone screamed for the elders. Someone else wept openly, the sound raw. A few who had spent their youth hiding their anger at the sect found release and shouted, "Finally!"
Callen's voice shrank to nothing. He tried to stand, to push me, but the wound melted his strength like frost.
"Stop!" Lennox cried, charging. "Kaleigh, please!"
"No," I said, and I pushed him away. "You let me bleed for you. You held me like I was a servant begging for crumbs."
He stepped back, shocked. The crowd was at fever pitch. Some were filming with little ovoid devices, some simply stared as though they had been waiting for this exact second. A pair of novices clutched each other. An old elder laughed once, bitter, as if a wound had at last been exposed.
Callen's face crumpled. He tried to deny it, the old prayers and the old excuse. "Kaleigh, for the Gate—"
"For the Gate?" I echoed. "You used me for the Gate. This gate will rot if its pillars cannot be true to people."
"How dare you!" the head elder shouted, trying to hold the narrative back. "You are murder—"
"Judge me," I said. "But look at your hands."
The scene escalated. Students began naming other abuses aloud. A woman from the herb hall accused the Master of taking her harvest and calling it a "test." A former disciple announced she'd been sold into labor to repay tuition years ago. It was a flood. Each accusation was a stone thrown at the pillars. The Master slid to the ground, eyes wide, hands empty.
"Stop!" he said, whisper again, for the last time.
The crowd's reaction changed geometry when the guards arrived. Some of them stood unmoving. Others looked at me with fear that wasn't for the Master—fear for the ending that would follow. "Arrest!"
"Enough!" shouted the head elder. "We will convene the council—"
The chants against the old order began, low and ugly. "Expose them! Expose them!" someone cried.
I turned and walked out. My robes held the wet scent of finality. I walked past Sofia, who collapsed in wails; past Lennox, who had a pale face like wax, and he placed his hand across his mouth as if to mute a scream.
They called me criminal, traitor, wicked. Cameras whirred. People shouted. The Master's followers scattered like moths from a flame.
When I left the square, the story had already escaped like spilled sand. The city hummed with debate. Some thought I had delivered righteous vengeance; others called me unstable. But the difference was I had no more ties strong enough to drag me under.
I took the reward from Ironsmith Sect the way one takes water when one has been thirsty for a decade. The contract was paid out because the lock was still good and the key had been swallowed. They regretted the debt too late. I used the coin to vanish from their world and buy a life that was mine.
But before I left, I spent three long days in the snow field where Ellis—my old little brother—had died. He had thrown himself between me and an enormous blizzard wolf. He had reached his hand into the snow and called my name. He died with my skirt in his grip.
I hung his memory on a small silver chain and walked away.
The legend took shape. "She went mad," the tongues said. "She killed the Master and weakened the gate." "She stole the sect's reward and vanished." "Her name was Kaleigh Collins."
I left them a warning: the second you make a person a tool, they will learn how to sharpen it.
Dante tracked me down later, by a cliff-side sea where wind slit the light. He came with the sword I'd entrusted him and a grin that had become secretly mine. "No one left you to yourself," he said.
"I never was lonely," I lied.
"You gave me a story to tell," he said. "You gave me the right to fight for the wrong side."
"It's a good story," I admitted. "One I will keep."
He reached out to take my hand, and I let him. "Are there no people left you care about?"
"There is one."
He perked up. "Who?"
"You."
He laughed like a boy and then he kissed my fingers, soft as a promise. "Then let no one take you from me."
We walked together, outward into a life I had bought with a swallowed key and a sword's truth.
---
Afterward, whispers became a myth. I retired with the Ironsmith coin and the spoils of the tournament to a quiet life. People told the story at teahouses and in the market: the woman who played mad to take her fate back, who stabbed a master and left his sect in ruin.
Sofia's name faded with the old hall. Lennox's too. Callen's body was tended by those who once loved him—and none of them could make the rage in me stop. I had taken a sword to right a ledger. I had made a show of justice in a square. I had been cruel, necessary, fast.
Dante stayed by my side. He asked me once, while we ate a roast over a sea-smoke fire, "Do you miss them?"
"I miss nothing that used me," I said.
He nodded. "Then stay. Be with me."
"I will," I said. And I meant it. I had been made into an instrument of someone else's story for too long. I would choose now—to be the author of the rest of my days.
"Will you ever forgive?" he asked, after a pause, like someone testing the bar of my heart.
"Forgive?" I shut my eyes, remembering the nail points and the red lenses. "Forgiveness is the luxury of someone who doesn't have to survive."
He accepted that. He put his sword on the table like a toy and smiled, and in the half-light his grin made me breathe out a laugh I hadn't known I had.
We left the city behind us and kept to the sea road. People sent messages asking for interviews, for favors, for pardon. I answered none. I had spoken my truth in the square and watched the reaction with care. The world was changed, at least in one small way.
"You're not the same person the book said you'd be," Dante said once.
"Good," I said. "Neither were you. You were meant to be background, and you are now someone I like."
He colored and then reached for my hand. "Then let's be something worth keeping."
And when I looked over my shoulder, I knew they would talk for a hundred years about the red-lensed woman who threw off her cage and cut the strings.
I had no crown to wear—only a sword, a debt paid, and the man who stood ready to keep me from falling.
I had finally learned that "going mad" could be a performance that freed me.
The End
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