Revenge13 min read
The Night My Junior Sister Kicked My Door Open
ButterPicks12 views
I woke to a gust of night wind slapping my face like a cold hand.
"Senior—" came a small voice, and a long shadow filled my doorway.
"Why is the lantern not lit?" I muttered, squinting.
"Senior Lexi," the little figure said, breath visible in the darkness. "I have a treasure to show you."
She stood there with hair messy, pale as if she'd swallowed frost. In her tiny hand she held a long sword like a stick. She looked exactly as she did in daylight: too earnest, too bright. That made her look almost wrong under moonlight.
"Elina?" I rubbed my eyes. "What are you doing here at this hour?"
Elina Forsberg stuck out her chin. "I stole something from Brother Luca's room. I think he plans to sneak away and become immortal alone. He'll leave us behind!"
I sat up and let my fingers find the hilt of my sword by reflex. "What did you steal?"
Elina dropped a book on my straw mattress. It thudded with authority.
"Read it," she urged. "Read it now."
I frowned. The book's cover was plain and dull—like all those old cultivation manuals. Boring.
I peeled the cover off with the tip of my sword like a lazy thief.
"Babe," I said when the hidden title revealed itself, because laughing is the only defense. "This is—"
"Pure Love: The Immortal Master and His Charming Disciple?" Elina read aloud in a voice of triumph.
I stared. My big brother Luca Sherman liked trashy romantic scrolls. He had a face a painter would kill for and a brain that liked mischief more than theory. He was not the sort to study martial poems; he was the sort to cry over dramatic lines and ruin the order of a shelf.
"I told you," Elina breathed. "He's lost."
I pushed my blanket back. "He's harmless. And ridiculous. Put it back before we all become scandal fodder."
Elina blinked. "Senior, what if we—double-cultivate? I heard it speeds up our fate. We could both become immortal!"
"You heard where?" I asked.
She pointed at the open book like it had whispered the secret. "Here."
I slammed the cover closed and snatched my sword away from the bed. "Don't be absurd."
She grinned, unbothered. "Thank you, Senior Lexi. When I'm immortal, I won't forget you."
She dashed off like a moth to a lantern, heading toward Master Gabriel's courtyard.
I waited at my doorway. The mountain wind chewed the smell of pine and old incense. I should have slept. I didn't.
Before dawn, three knocks woke me.
"Lexi! Where are you!?" echoed a voice soft as a bell and sharp as a blade.
Three figures filled my room in quick, ridiculous bursts.
First, a pale-faced youth in white, eyes cold as winter: a ghost asking for a reason. "Why would you hurt my name?" he asked, like a punishment for a sin.
Second, Luca—the handsome loudmouth—pulled at my sleeve, eyes red with pity and confusion. "Someone stole my limited edition romance! I was robbed!" He sobbed into my mat like a big baby. He punched the floor beside my bed because that was how he expressed outrage.
Third, tiny and relentless, Dax Marshall—my small junior disciple—hoisted my legs like they were light bread and insisted we go practice sword. "I will carry you," he announced. He smelled like rain and bread. He was earnest and also a nuisance.
I sat up, blinking at them like a sleepy judge. "Stop. One strike each."
We exchanged one slap apiece. The three thumps quieted the room like a seal.
But the noise had a cost. Master Gabriel blinked awake, disoriented. He muttered and remembered something he'd forgotten for ten years.
"Three months," he said, voice thin. "The grand exam comes in three months. You must be ready."
Luca slapped his own left cheek on cue, as if hearing the word "three" gave him whiplash. He grinned like a fool.
Elina and I shared a look. She winked. "Is he—sick?"
I couldn't resist. "Yes. He's a fool."
Master Gabriel was not a fool. He was cold. He was deliberate. He had a way of slicing an atmosphere with a phrase. He appointed our chores.
"From now on: three watches sleep, five watches rise. You train at night. You read at dawn. You two," he pointed at me and Luca, "you compete for first place. You, Elina, you get extra lessons."
"Senior Lexi," Luca whined. "This is—"
"This is real," I said. "Do it."
Elina squealed like a bird. "Yes! I love learning!"
We left in a rush. I thought we would drag Elina away from her idea of double-cultivation. She had a grip of steel around her dreams. We did not persuade her.
We followed her to the practice ground. She moved like she'd been born in the air, not on straw. She sparred with a wooden post and made it look admirable.
Luca asked, half-jealous, "Does she always do this? She looks so...happy."
I said, "She has no fear of boredom. That's her magic."
At night I dreamed. Dax—soft, small Dax—was there. He was the child Master Gabriel once collected from the road. I remember the day vividly. I had called him "little scrap" once and never meant it.
In the dream Dax offered his hands. "Cut one off and keep it," he murmured like a child testing a joke. He reached up with long, thin fingers.
I laughed and played the fool. "If I cut a hand, keep it neatly. Order is dignity."
Dax blinked. "Will you still be my sister?"
"Yes," I said. Then I woke with my sword clutched and a ridiculous ache in my throat.
Dax had been ours from the trash heap. He had no kin. Master Gabriel had found him and said, "He must stay." Luca made jokes. I fed him. He learned sword shapes like a sponge.
One afternoon I said, casual and with too much truth, "You came back. Have you seen Master Gabriel?"
Dax watched the moonlight on his own hands. "They brought me back," he said. "Am I a replacement?"
"Not replacement," I said. "A warning. Learn what not to be."
I looked up at the night. Dax's eyes gleamed like damp stones. He said softly, "Do you miss him? The one who left?"
I almost told him everything. But that was not for tonight.
Days passed like scraps. We polished our blades. We filled the library. Master Gabriel opened the secret room in the archives. He said the secret books would help us win the upcoming exam.
Luca, of course, had wasted his on romance and paper hearts. I found him crying into a scroll and blamed him.
"You stole the book covers and wrapped your trash in them," I snapped.
He said, "They are collector's editions. They have cards, signed bookmarks."
I glared. "You covered priceless texts with that filth?"
He puffed. "They mean something to me."
I told him to fix the mess. We spent a night returning the books, tucking their spines in like regretful thoughts. Elina hummed and then sang.
She came to the archives again, sniffing at a corner. "There's a smell here," she said. She put her face near a crack. "A bad smell. Like old steel and rotten fruit."
"Your nose is dramatic," Luca said.
"No," Elina said. "It is magic. The smell of the devils. The books smell like the devils."
Master Gabriel's face went slack, like a sword that had left its sheath. "What did you find?"
At once the whole mountain turned from lazy to alert.
I said, "We must tell Master."
He listened. He weighed the words like jewels, slow and cold. "Dax came back," he said after a while. "Why did he return?"
I wanted to say Dax had returned because of me. But I didn't. I had to hold more than one heart in my hands.
Master Gabriel sighed in a way that cracked the dust on shelves. "He left ten years ago," he said. "He took books, he went to the other sect. He thought to be recognized. We lost him."
"I will go find him," I said.
"Go," Master said. "Bring Elina. Be careful. And do not let the others suspect."
We entered the exam mountain—the trial field—and the secret door opened like a mouth.
Others came out from a secret place injured. They smelled of iron and rot. One said, "The devils are here." Another, with blood on his cheek, croaked, "It was Dax who attacked me."
My hand tightened around the sword.
"Move," I told a liar in the crowd. "Stand aside."
Master Gabriel frowned. "We are family. Do not tear each other."
Elina raised her chin and said, "I smell the devil here."
A line of fingers pointed at Dax as if he were a matchstick to be struck.
They wanted to cut his fate open and see whether he had a demon bone. They wanted to prove it by breaking him.
"Don't," I said. "We go into the trial and find him first."
So we entered the secret trial, the place where the mountain's fairness would be tested.
It was a world of moving trees and flowers that sang, a place where the ground breathed. Elina read a strange note and said, "This plant is from the demon lands. Look too long and you fall into its dream."
"How long?" I asked.
"Half a stick of incense," she said. "Too long, and you'll be trapped."
I watched her read like a hand holding a lamp. She looked so small and so brave that my heart forgot to keep quiet.
Later I woke up in an old mud house.
The walls were cracked. The bed smelled like straw. Children crowded the room. "Tomorrow one will be taken to the palace," they whispered. "They will become someone special."
"Who are you?" I asked a woman with eyes like two worn stones.
She stared at me, then said, "You are my daughter. You never left."
The illusion was my past. It cracked and shifted. I saw the day they had taken me at fifteen. I remembered my mother—alone, hand that hit me yet had saved me, kneeling in the dust begging Master Gabriel to take me.
In that dream I learned the truth: my mother had tried to save me from the palace horrors. She begged Gabriel to take me. She wanted me to live. She had not willingly sent me to be made into medicine. She had given everything to save me.
When the dream ended I walked out into a cliff of jade stairs and a man rolled down them like a sack.
Dax lay at our feet, beaten raw. The boys who had thrown him spat like pigs.
"Keep away from him," one spat. "He is a mad dog."
Luca rose like a god. He slapped the arrogant boy down with a fist and put him where he belonged.
Dax trembled in my arms. Fever burned his skin. He muttered, "Mother."
He didn't mean me. He looked smaller than a child.
We fed him herbs. We wrapped him. The little man—Dax—whispered a secret. "If I must be proven, then let the world see the truth. We will unmask him."
"Who?" I whispered.
"Raphael Pohl," he said.
The name was a lantern crack in the dark. Raphael Pohl was the leader of the rival sect, famed for his purity and piety. He smiled like a cat at festivals. Men bowed.
But Dax found something: a book, black with a smell like graves. He opened it and the world sighed.
"This book is the king's bargain," Dax said. "This book is what they give the ruler to make his belly never forget death."
The pages breathed cold. When he read its words aloud, the air thickened. I sneezed.
In the public clearing I held the book out like a torch.
"Master," I called. "Look."
Raphael approached with a legion of followers. He curled his mouth. "What nonsense do you speak?" he asked, voice like silk that hides a knife.
Dax put the black book out like a dare. "This is the book you gave to the human emperor."
The crowd went quiet as a grave.
Raphael's face went white and then red. He took a breath. "This is slander."
"No," said Dax. "Check the binding. The stains. Your sigil."
Raphael's hands trembled as he reached into his robe. He pulled out a collection of yellowed manuscripts and held them like roses.
"They are ours," he said. "If you accuse me, you accuse the heavens. I will not bow."
Master Gabriel's eyes were icicles and then molten.
The men around Raphael stiffened. "He has our witness. He has proof."
I stepped forward and said, "Open the book."
Raphael laughed like a fox with empty lungs. "You would accuse an immortal of crimes? You would see me burned?"
The crowd's chatter rose. Some spit at Raphael. Some swallowed fear.
Dax opened the book and its pages spilled a smell like rain on bones. The crowd moved back. A child in the crowd cried.
"Do you know what this is?" Dax asked in a clear voice. "This is the recipe for life at the cost of blood. This is not a path of light."
Raphael's mouth moved. "You lie. I gave nothing to the emperor."
"Then you can denounce it," I said. "Show us your heart. Deny, and let us check your library."
Raphael's face went through a storm.
First, pride: he raised his chin and spoke with the studied calm of the great. "I—never—" he began.
Then, a sick flicker of panic. He faltered. "You are mad," he hissed.
He turned to his disciples and hissed a command. "Detain them. Do not let them talk."
A dozen swords sang. The mountain air became a cage.
I drew my blade and said, "If you touch them, you touch me."
"She defends a demon," one of the disciples sneered. "She protects a monster."
The claim landed like a whip. People in the crowd gasped and leaned in like they were about to witness a play's final act.
I saw Raphael's eyes. They were no longer the proud gaze of a holy man. They were a drowning man's.
"Look," I said quietly. "Open his own books."
Someone stepped forward, trembling. "He has a private collection in his hall," they whispered.
Raphael lunged for the manuscripts on his belt. He pulled out two volumes—our own sect's old manuals—clutched them to his chest and laughed like he'd consumed poison.
He opened the volumes. His laugh stopped when the pages showed words that did not belong. The carved verses were wrong. They were wrapped in ink of another sort.
His face began to twitch. The public who had once reverenced him watched the transformation.
I will tell you what came next in full, because this is how punishment smells.
He first denied with the arrogance of a man used to power.
"You lie," he said. "You are a pack of thieves. You think to topple me."
The crowd's whispers turned into shouts. People pointed.
"Prove it," I said. "Open the chest in your hall. Let your men look."
Raphael's pupils shrank. Sweat rolled down his temple. He barked orders, but his voice broke.
Then he did the thing all tyrants do when they are cornered: he tried to make the facts smaller.
"These are for research," he said. "The books I hold are for study. To defend the realm."
"To poison the realm," Dax said. "You penned the recipe. You sold it."
Raphael's eyes went wide. He slammed the books down and slurred, "You will not speak of my family! You will not smear me!"
He reached into his robes, palms frantic. He searched for a charm, an oath, a blade.
Around us, those who had loved him all their lives turned silent. The disciples who once praised his name now swallowed and looked at the ground. The elders who had leaned on him frowned like old stones that had lost their moss.
I have never seen faces fall so fast.
He tried to entreat them. "Brothers," he said. "You know me. I would not—"
They looked at one another and shook their heads.
That was the first crack.
He moved to anger next. "You—" he spat at us, "will be tried. You will be cut off."
"Do it," Luca said, loud as an oath. He stepped forward and lifted his chin.
Raphael's face went purple with fury. He wrenched his robes and cried for his guards to seize us.
At that moment, the little figure in the crowd—our small junior Elina—stepped forward. She had a blade so small it could have been a hair.
She moved like lightning.
"Stop!" she cried, voice thin but hard as steel.
Raphael turned, blind with his own storms, and a thin blade found his heart.
It was not a perfect strike. It was a child's hand in desperate weather. It was true.
He staggered, eyes wide, like a puppet whose strings were cut.
He could no longer raise his voice to command. His disciples parted like grass before fire.
He fell to his knees. The world that had bowed to his name fell quiet enough to hear a fly.
The spectators' shock erupted.
"How dare you!" someone yelled.
"Kill her!" another cried.
"Hold!" Master Gabriel bellowed, but his voice shook.
Raphael's face changed again—a theater of denial. He attempted the final mask.
"You traitor!" he squealed, pointing at me as if blame could be thrown like nettles. "You are not fit to breathe!"
The disciples whipped out their swords. The crowd closed in.
Elina knelt, hand trembling. "I did it for the children," she whispered.
Raphael laughed, ragged and thin. "You will burn for this. You will be judged."
But he couldn't stand. His shoulders slumped. Blood darkened his robes. His eyes asked for a mercy his hands had never given others.
"Pity me," he breathed, like a child.
That was the last of his denial.
Then came the reaction of the crowd.
Some wept. Some shouted. Some laughed nervously, as if laughter could fix a broken altar.
Elders who had once touched his robe now spat at his boots. Men who had worshiped him wiped their hands as if caught in a sickness.
Monks drew their blades reluctantly. They surrounded the fallen leader like people forming a wall.
"Search his halls," Master Gabriel ordered. "If he hid such books, burn them. Purge the lies."
They lifted the bleeding body and carried it before the crowd. They took off his outer robe, revealing the embroidered sigils of his rank—symbols that had protected him for years. The crowd stared. Their faces lost the last of their reverence and found in its place only a raw, bruised anger.
They bound him and dragged him to the hall where his books had once been staged like trophies. The colors of his banners faded. The smell of incense turned sour.
They opened the secret chests. Out came more black books, more recipes for ruin. The air thickened and a sound rose—a long human sound, part gasp, part howl.
"Burn them," someone said.
I watched Raphael's face as the flames took the first page. He sputtered and reached out like a child who could no longer breathe.
"No—" he croaked.
They tied him up and led him outside. The crowd had grown heavy enough to press down on his chest. They laid him before a bonfire.
"Tell the emperor," a voice said. "Tell him who sold him the secret."
Raphael tried to speak, but the words fell like stones into a well. He clutched at his chest where the wound bled and his face crumpled. He begged. He pleaded. He sobbed.
I saw his face go through the final stages: pride, shame, plea, collapse. Then silence.
People spat. Others recorded with trembling hands. Some cried softly, because the world had become just this: less certain than it had been.
The elders proclaimed him a traitor. They ripped his banners from the poles and trampled them underfoot.
That day, Raphael Pohl's name drained from the mouths of those who had once said it with devotion. He became a story with a black hole where his honor was.
He had been a man of many faces. He had loved power like a child loved a toy. He had found a way to sell people's lives for a promise of long days.
He got what he deserved: exposure, humiliation, the public burning of the instruments of his betrayal, and, for a brief and sharp moment, the awe of seeing a mighty figure fall.
When the flames died we made plans. The mountain elders decided to burn his house. They wanted to erase what he'd left behind.
We walked home under the ash-scented sky.
I looked at Elina. She was small, cheeks wet. "You were brave," I said.
She nodded. "I only did what I thought right."
Dax came up beside us, quiet. He held out the black book to Master Gabriel. "It was hidden," he said.
Master Gabriel's face was hollow. He said, "The mountain will sleep easier."
That night I lay awake thinking of the past, of the false illusions, of my mother, of the prisoners at fifteen, of the child I once was.
Master Gabriel packed our things. He said the exam was over. He said home would be quiet now.
We walked back to the old routine. Luca read romance and cried. Elina practiced sword moves with a grin. Dax tied his hair like a promise.
Days turned into the soft drum of chores.
We were not the same.
"Will you stay?" Dax asked me once.
"Yes," I said. "We will stay."
"Why?" he asked.
"Because," I said, "family picks up the fallen leaves. We sweep them together."
He smiled like a small wind.
We returned to the rhythms of our strange life—Luca reading, Elina practicing, Master Gabriel scolding, me sleeping in odd hours.
On a quiet night, when the moon hung like a white coin, I called to Dax.
"Come here," I said.
He came, slow as a shadow.
"Will you be sad for him?" I asked.
He looked at me, and in his eyes I saw the clean child again—the one who had not yet decided what to be.
"He died," he said. "But not before the truth came out."
I thought of my mother kneeling on a mountain, begging a stranger to take me. I thought of the little girl who kicked open my door and said she would show me a treasure.
I thought of the book with the ridiculous title and of Luca's ridiculous weeping.
I picked up my sword and set it on the rack.
"Let's go home," I said.
We walked through the courtyard, under the ink-black sky.
Elina said, "Senior Lexi?"
"Yes?"
She reached up and touched my sleeve. "Thank you."
I smiled, because in the end, the mountain had given us back something more than safety. It had given us a clearer story.
We went home.
We would tend the pots and sweep the leaves.
We would laugh at the ridiculous romance Luca read and fix the crooked bindings of the old books.
And if the world ever insisted on trading honor for long days, we'd be ready to throw our little knives into the dark. We had learned to see the smell of rot and call it by name.
We had learned to stand in public and say: this is wrong.
And that made us dangerous.
We went home.
The End
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