Ghosts of Lunavin

The guest room they’d been assigned was opulent, almost ostentatious by Ralensan standards. Polished oak floors reflected the golden lamplight, and the heavy drapes with embroidered threads finer than anything found in a soldier’s barracks. A fire burned low in the hearth, its scent unfamiliar, some Lunavin perfume of sweet-burning wood that clung to the senses.

Barkel sat rigid in a high-backed chair, back straight, boots aligned neatly beneath him. Not even the comfort of the cushion seemed to reach him. He wore his uniform like a second skin, spotless, tight to regulation, every seam speaking of discipline. The scar along his jaw, ragged and old, stood out under the firelight. He didn't move or blink. A stone carved by war, shaped by loss, and kept upright by duty alone.

To him, comfort was always suspicious.

Across the room, Doravis stood by the tall window, the city of Lunavin spread out like a painting before her. Her black hair, cropped like his, curled slightly at the ends. She tugged lightly at the curtain’s edge, watching the street below, where coated sorcerers walked openly, some laughing, others exchanging words as though they had never seen the inside of a cell.

They moved with ease. And worst of all… with joy.

They don’t even flinch when they speak, she thought, lips tightening. Not even a glance over the shoulder. Like they’ve never known what it means to be hunted.

“They don’t live like they’re guilty of anything,” she said aloud, fingers tightening on the fabric. “Not a shadow of shame on their faces.”

Barkel’s voice struck the room like a hammer.

“Because shame requires discipline. You’ve been too long from the barracks, Doravis. Our task isn’t to envy them, it’s to correct them.”

Correct them. The word soured in her mouth.

She didn’t look away. “I remember,” she said softly. “Every lesson. Every scream in the dark. I remember the day they took me.”

And she did. Flashes of rain. A door ripped open. A warmth that vanished the moment her feet left that stone threshold.

Barkel’s eyes sharpened, his voice like old iron. “Then remember why. We do not question the orders. We are alive because of the system. It fed you, trained you, made you strong.”

Strong enough to be used, she thought, but didn’t say it.

She let her gaze drift, half-heartedly scanning the streets, until something pulsed. Subtle. Fleeting. A breath of magic, just outside the rhythm of the city’s hum. Most magic signatures were like music she’d heard too often: impersonal, regulated by the sorcerers’ training. But this one…

Warm. Familiar. A memory stitched into her bones. Something she hadn't felt since…

It was gone. Swallowed in the city’s layered aura.

No, she told herself. You're imagining things again. That part of you is dead.

The door creaked.

Barkel turned, hand instinctively moving to the sidearm hidden in his coat, but relaxed a moment later as the intruders proved familiar.

Eurnar entered first, tall and narrow as a blade. She moved like someone who had never once feared consequence. Her blond hair was pulled tight against her skull, accentuating the harsh curve of the black tattoo curling along her cheekbone, the Mark of a Guild-bound sorcerer.

But unlike the Lunavin sorcerers, there was no reverence in that mark. Only proof. That she had survived. That she was owned.

Her black eyes glittered as they landed on Barkel. She smiled.

It was not a friendly smile.

“Hope the palace treated you well,” she drawled, boots clicking on the wooden floor. “You look comfortable, Ralensan.”

Barkel’s expression did not change. “The guild has the family names?”

Eurnar’s smile widened as she moved deeper into the room with the air of someone who’d never needed permission. Behind her, Lantar followed, gaunt, navy curles and beard, eyes like an animal testing every shadow. The tattoo on his face a stark shock. He said nothing. He never did.

“We have the names,” Eurnar replied. “And the quarter’s layout. It will be a clean strike. Minimal resistance.”

Barkel's eyebrows twitched. A warning. “I don’t like your methods.”

“And yet,” she said, leaning forward until her breath brushed the air between them, “you’ll use them. And when it’s over, you’ll thank me.”

He didn’t pull away. But inside, something tightened, the same coil of disgust he always felt in her presence. She had no discipline. The Guild had no chain of command. Just pain, sharpened into ambition.

But she was effective.

Doravis turned from the window, the memory of that fleeting signature still burning at the edges of her mind like a forgotten song.

“So we’re really doing this,” she said, voice low.

Eurnar glanced at her, arching one pale brow. “Cold feet?”

“I didn’t say that.”

But part of her wanted to. Because now that she was here, in the place of her stolen childhood, among people who smiled at sorcerers, who let them walk free, she felt the war inside her waking. The part that remembered warmth. A hand on her head. A lullaby she wasn’t allowed to speak anymore.

And now she was here to kidnap their children.To put them through what she had suffered herself.

The Badania girl is only a year older than I was, she realized, a strange chill settling in her stomach.

“We move at night,” Barkel said. “We hit the marked houses, neutralize resistance, and secure the targets.”

“Neutralize?” Eurnar snorted. “You Ralensans and your pretty words. Just say what you mean.”

Barkel’s eyes met hers. “We take what we came for. We leave no trace.”

Doravis said nothing. She looked down at her gloved hands and flexed her fingers. She had thought this mission would be simple. Thought coming back to Lunavin would make her feel strong.

Instead, it made her feel small.

What if they remember me?

What if I remember more than I should?

Eurnar stepped back, already turning for the door. “Rest while you can,” she said over her shoulder. “Tomorrow, we make ghosts of their children.”

And she was gone.

Lantar lingered a moment, eyes scanning Doravis’s face, and then Barkel’s, before following without a word.

The room fell quiet again.

Doravis stood alone by the window.

Barkel did not look at her. “Clear your head. Regret is a weapon you hand your enemy.”

Her voice came flat. “Is that what they taught you?”

He turned, slowly. “It’s what kept me alive.”

Outside, Lunavin’s lights shone like stars drawn down to earth, brilliant, beautiful, and utterly unrepentant.