Revenge14 min read
My Koi Luck and the Brother Who Lied
ButterPicks15 views
"Master."
"Master." I said it twice, the small voice wobbling. I was three years old again, and my cheeks still had that baby roundness that made everyone soft.
Callahan Madsen looked down from the pavilion. He did not smile much. He never wasted words when he could use silence, but his hand paused on the jade zither. He looked at me the way a man looks at a small bird that keeps trying to fly.
"Come here," he said. The word was small, but it sank warm into me.
I toddled up. My little fingers grabbed at his robe and then at his sleeve. I mashed my face into it and let the tears come out anyway. Crying was sometimes the fastest way to get him to stop thinking about other things.
"Who hurt you?" Callahan asked.
"A senior brother hit me at the mirror platform," I sniffed. "My head hurts."
Callahan's voice softened for a breath. "Tell me his name."
"Henry Peng." I spat the name like a kid naming the naughty goose.
Callahan tapped my head, very light. "For such a small thing, you cry big."
I liked the way he said things. He was my master, my keeper, the man who had found a crying child in a burnt village and refused to leave. He had said he would only raise me until I could leave, but he kept me. He had the patient softness that made me think of safe rooms and warm bread.
"Master will teach you another move," he promised. "Tomorrow you'll beat Henry for good."
My eyes brightened. "Promise?"
"Promise." He did not smile, but he touched my hair. The world felt less sharp then.
That night, I sat on the small mat and watched the thin white progress bar float in my mind like a stubborn firefly.
"Koi Luck: 20%."
I had died in the office. One minute I was finishing a midnight report, the next I was waking up with baby hands that smelled like rice and smoke. I had a system. The system promised luck for effort. Each time I pushed, the bar moved. At 100% I could ask for anything. In the meantime, I had to grind for tiny luck ticks: win one spar, make a friend, beat a senior—small things mattered.
The first big thing I wanted was simple: five points for beating Henry. I needed that strike. I needed the bar to move.
"Eat slowly," Callahan warned at breakfast. He used chopsticks like a man who had studied calligraphy for years—slow, precise.
I stuffed my cheeks. "I will win tomorrow."
"You always will be brave," he said, but I could tell he had the old worry of a father. He does not like everyone near me. He narrowed his eyes at the courtyard sometimes and it made me cling to him more.
At the mirror platform, everyone was there. Henry was smug. Ashton Poulsen came too, leaning like he owned the sun. Ashton was the third senior brother—warm smile, a touch too many favors, a laugh that made other people fall into his orbit. He had put ointment on my head the day after Henry hit me. He had picked me up from the steps of the medicine hall and pressed a sweet into my hand. He made a point of being gentle.
"Let the little one try," Ashton said, and the way he looked at me made my heart do a small honest skip.
Henry sneered. "I'll go easy."
"Please don't," I said, and the whole circle laughed like the world belonged to them. I charged. Sword felt right because Callahan had given me a tiny training blade, carved with a sugar-skewer ice candied fruit as a mark. Everyone laughed at how childish it looked. I did not care.
I pushed, and the fight blurred. I learned quickly. I moved like I had been doing it my whole life. Sword lines, memory of press releases and spreadsheets and names—my other life dropped into my hands like old gloves.
Blue light circled. My sword touched Henry's chest. He fell. Everyone clapped.
Ashton bowed, hands gentle on my shoulders. "Well fought, Daria." He smelled like pine and incense. "You surprised us all."
Koi bar dinged. "Koi Luck +5%. Progress 25%."
I felt my chest swell. I stole a look at Callahan. No smile, just a careful nod.
After practice, Ashton walked me to the shaded bamboo courtyard behind the mirror platform. Harmony Thompson—who made herbs sing and could smell a fever three rooms away—came out and offered soup. Harmony liked me, in the quiet soft way.
Ashton leaned down. "You should not run everywhere alone."
"I am not alone," I said. "I have a master."
He smiled wide. "Then let the master worry. You let us have the fun."
Something in his voice made me feel both safe and slightly dizzy. I kept thinking he was a good brother.
Two days later, my small mouth tasted of poisoned sweetness.
I had run to Harmony's quiet place because the smell of her broth had called me. Ashton shadowed near the bamboo. He offered a candy—sweet, red, glistening like a jewel.
"Here," he said. "For the brave little fighter."
I bit.
Hot cold pain. My stomach flipped like there were knives inside.
I remember bright white light, Harmony's cry, Callahan's wind-like movement snatching me back to the medicine mat. Callahan's hands were everywhere—diagnosis, pulse, a slow, terrifying whisper. "Poison."
I remember his eyes the night he stayed by my bedside until dawn, the way he set up needles in my back with hands that did not tremble. He fed me bitter medicine like a mother forcing sour medicine into a child's mouth. He promised he would find who did this.
"Curious," he muttered that night. He suspected Ashton had ties to odd comings and goings. "Someone tried to speed up your rise," he said. "Someone tried to force your luck."
"I ate Ashton’s candy." I said it like a kid confessing a scraped knee. I wanted him to scold Ashton and maybe send him far away.
Callahan did not say what I wanted.
"I do not think Ashton poisoned you to kill you," he said slowly. "I think he wanted to see what would happen."
"What?"
"His hands were there after." He looked like a man who had seen the pattern of weather. "He saved you. But that does not mean he is clean."
Ashton kept visiting. He pretended to help. The Koi bar ticked forward on small things—a saved spar, a herb found, a lesson learned. It felt too neat.
The more I watched Ashton, the more small things gathered like witnesses: a shadow flash on the mirror platform the night of the candies, the way he hushed Harmony when she asked about origin, the little fox in his step when he left the kitchen but pretended he had been to the library.
I pushed the system harder. I trained until my bones stung. I learned to ride the training sword on air, to hear where the enemy's breath would be. Each small skill pushed my Koi further, and the numbers made a promise: when I reach a certain level I can ask for truth.
Callahan’s face often cooled when Ashton was near. He would brush it off, make some excuse about duty. But sometimes he would stand very still and watch Ashton like a hawk watches a fox.
One night, I saw Ashton slip into the darkness under the training pavilion. I followed, quiet as a sparrow. I watched him meet with a cloaked figure, a small fox statue at their feet, and a breathless hush of plot. I saw a map, a set of runes—symbols I recognized from the rare books in the deep stacks.
They were planning. I could not hear words. But I saw the map point to Callahan's hall, to the old altar at the festival grounds, to my name scrawled in an ink that tasted like poison.
I ran to Harmony. "I saw Ashton."
"That's dangerous," she said.
"I know." My voice was steady like a child pressing a finger to a bruise. "I will tell Callahan."
He listened. He did not look surprised. His face was stone. "We will wait."
I did not know patience then. I wanted to scream. I wanted knives under the moon.
The harvest festival came. The temple yard filled with people—teachers, elders, visiting masters. It was the one day all the sects and tradespeople came to meet the long hall elders. Everyone would be there. That meant witnesses. That meant ash and banners and a great drum that could carry truth.
Ashton smiled as he walked among them like the host of the sun. He had never looked sharper. He wore white like he owned the light.
Callahan came with me on his arm. He had told me to stay quiet; he said he had arranged something. "We wait until the right moment," he said.
I felt my small heart like a trapped bird.
When Ashton moved to the stage to speak, Callahan's eyes narrowed a fraction. Ashton made a speech about unity and openness. Nearby, the big screen that the sect used for announcements—only for law and celebrations—blinked black and then flashed to life.
At first, I thought it was part of the show.
Then the screen began to roll a scroll of messages. And there on the scroll were words—Ashton's words—written like daggers.
"You are tired of being a charity," one message said. "You hold too much. It's time the master dies and his treasures fall to a new clan."
A video played. The camera had captured a scene from inside Callahan’s private courtyard: Ashton and a cloaked woman trading a box full of black candy, whispering, "When the child eats, the ember will open."
My stomach dropped. The crowd began to stir.
"Turn it off!" Ashton shouted, and he ran toward the screen as men in the crowd took out their small viewing stones and phones.
People began to record. A row of five novices gasped. The merchant from the east took one step forward, eyes wide. An old teacher put down his tea, and the sound of porcelain hitting wood snapped like a crack.
"How could you—" Callahan's voice caught. He stepped forward.
"Turn it off!" Ashton snarled, fingers on the console. He struck at it like a man who had always relied on a hidden lever. The screen flashed. His face went from color to white.
"Stop him!" someone yelled.
But the screen would not go black. The recording continued. It showed sugar-coated candies, the exact box Ashton had given me, and a map of the altar at the festival grounds. The camera had recorded his signature, the same hand that had signed every donation ledger.
People were pulling out their devices. A merchant raised his camera. A dozen novice boys crowded near the stage, excitement buzzing like bees.
Ashton pressed his palms to the console. His face reddened. "That is fake!" he shouted. "That's forged!"
"Show your hands," Callahan demanded. "Show what you meant."
Ashton lunged. He wanted the console. He stumbled against a lantern. The crowd closed in.
I stepped forward on my small legs, then stopped. My voice came out small but clear. "You gave me candy," I said. "You said you wanted me to be brave."
Everyone turned. The silence became a blade.
"Forged?" a woman whispered. "Why is he at the casting table with the poison?"
Ashton’s expression changed—first to denial, then to fury, then to something like a man seeing a long-plotted house of cards fall. "No—" His lip trembled. "No, I only wanted to wake her. She is my key. She is the little sea-fox's heir. With her, I can take Callahan's place and then—"
A hundred voices rose. "You planned this?" someone hissed.
Callahan's face went very, very cold. He walked to the center of the yard as if toward a blade.
"Ashton Poulsen." His voice carried. People leaned in.
"I saved you," Ashton said, voice cracking. "I gave her life."
"A life that could have been cut," Callahan said. He looked at me. "Daria, step back."
No. I stayed. My little chest puffed. I had the words in the system, in my head. The Koi bar hummed. I was small, but the thing that had kept me alive was burning.
"Why?" I asked. "Why did you hurt me?"
Ashton's face lost its calculating ease. He walked to the center, and then—he did something he had not planned for. He took off his outer robe, revealing a sash embroidered with the sign of a clan I had seen only in the old war pages—the Slavine insignia: a fox curled around a blade. He fell to one knee.
"Please," he said, and the word shook. "Please forgive me."
The first reaction was shock. Then whispering like wind through bamboo. Phones raised. People edged back, small ripples of sound. Vendors stopped selling. Someone laughed. It sounded dirty and small.
"We trusted you," said the head elder from the neighboring sect. "You set a trap for a child for your own gain."
Ashton was cornered. He pleaded. "I love— I swear I didn't mean to—"
"Stop," Callahan said. He did not raise his hand. He only did the thing that breaks men: he showed proof. He held up the donation ledger that Ashton had forged months earlier. He had the signatures, the ledger of black candy sales. He had witnesses. He had Harmony's notes showing the poison's trace.
"He plotted to wake an old wound," Callahan said quietly. "He wanted to force danger so the child would awaken as a weapon."
The murmurs hardened into a chorus of anger.
"Confess now," someone demanded.
"I confess," Ashton said, and then he dropped the last mask. "I confessed."
He went from confident to caged in ten breaths. He looked toward the crowd as if pleading with the sea, but the sea had already turned. He dropped flat to his knees on the festival redcloth.
"Please," he whispered. "I wanted power for my clan. I wanted him—"
"Stop!" Callahan's hand caught the words. His face was horror, but he did not look away. "Ashton Poulsen," he said, "you betrayed trust. You set poison. You betrayed the child we raised as kin. For that, the sect will decide justice."
People pulled their hoods. The festival became a court. The sellers and apprentices formed a ring. The seed of spectacle had been planted and it bloomed.
"Ashton." Harmony, who had stood back, spoke. "You tried to use Daria to force her bloodline to wake. You made treaties with those who hurt many. You used sweet words and masked intent."
Ashton’s shoulders shook. He looked at me and—shockingly—he broke down. "I had no choice," he sobbed. "My clan is on the edge. They told me to do it. They promised—"
The crowd's breath turned to stones. A woman began to cry. A boy recorded and streamed. Ten thousand small lights of devices blinked: the world would watch.
"You will stand trial," declared the head elder. "Public confession. Public punishment. For breaking trust like this, you will not be spared."
They dragged him to the central square.
I felt the Koi bar hum. The system whispered: "Expose truth. Gain luck." It did not tell me to enjoy it. It only hummed. I replayed the scene: candies, maps, the fox symbol.
The punishment had to be public and complete. I would not let Ashton vanish quietly. I wanted the world to see.
They laid out the accusations. The merchant who sold the wrappers came forward. The village boy who had been coaxed to sneak into Callahan’s courtyard told how Ashton had promised him gold. Harmony held up jars of poison residue and the test—Ashton’s own handwriting on the oilcloth map which matched the screen.
Ashton tried to plead, tried to bargain. He begged for clemency. He fell to his knees on the redpath. The crowd closed in. They hissed and spat. A woman threw petals, then stomped them underfoot in contempt.
"Forgive me!" he cried. "I will give back everything. I will never speak to the clans again."
"Too late," a man in the crowd snapped. "You made your bargain with death."
They made him kneel and take off his robe. He had expected some mercy, but there was none left. They forced him to claim his deeds in public. He read each line of his treason aloud. Each word dug the pit deeper.
"Why did you think you could poison a child and be safe?" Callahan asked.
"I—" Ashton faltered. Then he made a final, terrible revelation. "They promised me—if I wake her, she will join us. We will take the halls. We will bring back the old order."
The crowd surged. Someone from the market pushed him to his knees and spat in his face. People took out the small charms and banners Ashton had given. They burned them. Someone took a recorder and played back his recorded denials; the truth and the lies made a hard sound together.
Ashton’s face crumpled. He fell forward and begged.
"Please—" he gasped. "Please don't let them take my life. I—I'll give everything back. I'll kneel forever."
They did not kill him that day. They never do in public unless a faster hand demands it. But they made the punishment public and relentless: a month of humiliation, a month of public labor, of cleaning out the poison vats, of standing in the square with his head bowed while merchants spat and children pointed. He was forced to apologize to the child he had tried to use.
At the end of that month, the sect required one final act. Ashton was brought to the main courtyard, where three hundred had gathered. He was made to kneel in the dust at Callahan’s feet. He had to make a full confession in front of all. He had to beg for forgiveness. He had to reveal who had sent him. He had to surrender all his claims.
When he pleaded—flat, thin words—when he dropped to his knees and tears flooded his jawline, the crowd watched. "I was wrong," he said. "I only wanted a future. I did this."
People stepped forward. Many spat. Some slapped him. Women shouted that he had used a child. Harmony, who had held me when I vomited poison, walked up and looked at Ashton as if seeing a man weigh nothing in her hands.
"You're forgiven," Harmony said quietly, and the word made Ashton look up like a drowning man tasting air. "But you must live with what you did. You must work to heal what you broke."
The crowd was not wholly merciful. They wanted spectacle. They wanted retribution. For ten days, Ashton stood in the gate and had his head shaved. Vendors refused him business. Children threw dregs into his bowl. A huge stone slab displayed the script of his crimes for all to read. He was stripped of rank.
On the twelfth day, at dawn, Ashton went to the central square. He practiced saying the names of those he had hurt. He bent before each elder and let them mark a sign of shame on his robe. He was not killed. He knelt. He shook and begged and scratched his name into the ground.
A younger man in the crowd, who had once been Ashton’s friend, walked up and threw a handful of soil on Ashton's head. Others laughed. Some cried. The elders recorded the confession and posted it throughout the districts. The world watched the fall of the smiling third brother.
As he knelt beneath the noon sun, his voice came thin and raw. "I beg you, Daria—"
I watched him kneel. I remember the way his eyes changed when he begged me, the way he asked me to take back the years he had stolen in promises. He was nothing like the warm man who offered candy. He was hollow and small, and he pleaded with me to be more merciful than the rest.
I felt the Koi bar tick. I thought of Callahan and Harmony who had kept me like a living thing. I thought of the fox-runes and the map scrawled in poison.
"I forgive you," I said at last. I sounded like a child who had just been given homework too hard. "But I will not forget. You will sweep the vats. You will stand in the square and tell the truth every morning. You will help the families you spoke against."
Ashton bowed. He sobbed. The crowd was hungry for more cruelty, but the elders had spoken. They had made the punishment public enough to be felt. They had made sure the man would not rise again.
"Let him go to work," Callahan said. "Make sure he returns every coin he took."
They bound Ashton to serve the festival houses for three seasons. They made his apologies part of public law. People watched him for months. They recorded his small acts, every inch of work. He worked, while shame followed him like a shadow.
The video of the confession spread across towns. People replayed the moment he took off his mantle and kneeled. For three days, his face trended. For a year, the story lived in the market gossip.
The Koi bar dinged again. "Lucky Koi +10%. Progress 35%."
After that, the days grew blunt and hard—training, chores, lessons with Callahan. I learned to ride my luck like a rope. Callahan taught me the edges of sword lines and the slow burn of control. Harmony taught me to mix herbs and read reaction.
I learned more about Ashton in the months after: his clan ties, the old war grudges, the promises that had burned him. He was not the only one who wanted to bend the world. Many would try. The world had teeth. People came to the temple to look at the man who had kneaded poison like dough.
I vowed small things in my head and hammered them into practice. I trained. I learned to hear a lie like a splinter in the mind.
Months later, when the old fox spirits tried a midnight raid on a market caravan, I was the one who cut the signal; Harmony and Henry flanked me. Ashton—shorn of rank, hands raw—charged alongside us. He did not speak. He had learned what the cost of shame felt like.
He fought. He bled. He whispered to me as we straightened the tents. "Forgive me," he said again.
"I forgave you before," I said. "But you need to forgive yourself."
He knelt, not before the crowd this time, but before the dull hearth where the injured merchants lay. He helped. He cleaned. He did not ask for praise.
I still do not know if he will ever earn back a place. People remember faces that fail them. The Koi bar hummed and moved, inch by inch, like a small promise. I grew. I grew fast. My luck climbed as I learned to make my own.
Months turned into seasons. I learned to use the red bead I had taken from the black-wolf's head. I learned the meaning of the yellow pulse on my side—the odd vein call that made my breath come with the sea. I learned that being lucky is not a thing that happens to you. It's a thing you press with your hands.
The festival punishment—public, humiliating, thorough—stayed in memory like a stone in the shoe. I would not let men treat me like a tool. If they came to try, the world would see them fall.
When the elders created a new law—no one may harm children for power—the name Ashton Poulsen was written into the charter as example. People nodded and kept their hands to themselves.
At night, Callahan read me ancient pages about odd roots and glowing veins. Harmony taught me how to soothe my burning when new lines opened in my chest. Henry stopped sneering and became a kind rival who sometimes brought me food. Ashton walked a path of hard repair, never again smiling the easy smile of a man who planned in the dark.
I watched him kneel in the sunlight and I felt both pity and a small, cold relief. The world had watched the lie break.
The Koi bar crept. The system hummed.
"Progress 60%."
I smiled like a kid who had found a safer place to hide.
The End
— Thank you for reading —