Defiance in Silver

The red glow bled across Barkel’s skin, veins of light wrapping him like a living forge. He stepped through the ruins.

Then…

The world tilted.

The ground rolled like water under his boots. The sky cracked into mirrored halves.

The voice of the girl, lilting, mocking, everywhere.

“Slow down. You’re making such a mess of things.”

A shadow of a girl could be seen, just an outline in the distance.

Barkel swung a fist towards it, red flame snapping outward in a wide arc. His power tore through nothing. His strike hit air, and the air responded with laughter.

Hanel moved.

Golden wards rushed back into place, the little remains of magic forming sharp blades, speeding one after another towards Barkel. Hanel had been waiting for this distraction, for this moment.

Barkel’s punch slipped past the first blade as in his eyes it turned into two, then three. His footing faltered. His power overshot, the ground beneath him swaying. Each blade found its mark in his torso, his arms, his legs.

Barkel fell to his knees. Pain made him scream in frustration as he tried one more attack on the man who stood before him bleeding but refusing to give up. A phantom yawned at his feet. He froze, not real… he knew it wasn’t real… but his body hesitated all the same.

In that stutter, Hanel struck again.

He pressed his palm to the courtyard stone, threads of sigils racing outward in a golden grid. Anchored Impact flared beneath Barkel’s body. His legs locked, momentum seized.

He gritted his teeth, red sparks snapping as he tried to burn through the bindings. His voice came ragged, raw with fury. “Tricks! Illusions! Cowards’ tools!”

Hanel’s green eyes narrowed. His voice was calm. “And yet, they are the work of the blessing.”

And Ayen’s laughter echoed, closer now, carrying pride. “See, Father? It is more fun when we fight like a team.”

For the first time, they fought together, father and daughter.

Ayen had no offensive power, not physically at least. Their abilities complemented each other so well.

Hanel bent reality with wards and sigils, locking Barkel’s body in place. Ayen bent perception, twisting the man’s focus until his strikes faltered against phantoms. One wove magic in the world, the other affected the mind.

It might have worked.

But Doravis raised her hands again.

Silver threads of moonlight poured across the courtyard. Barkel’s wounds knit again. His breath steadied. His limbs strengthened. Every cut Ayen’s illusions helped inflict, every hesitation Hanel forced, Doravis unwound with steady desperation.

Barkel roared, shattering Hanel’s sigils with a burst of crimson, shrugging off the phantoms with renewed stamina.

Hanel staggered back, his advantage already unraveling. His jaw tightened. As long as she keeps him whole, he’s unstoppable.

And Ayen understood it too. Her voice lost its mocking lilt, sharpening to a razor.

“Oh. I don't think I like you very much.”

Doravis froze, eyes darting toward the mist that curled around her boots.

Ayen’s laughter slid into her ears, her memory. The yard blurred. The smell of smoke and iron filled her nose. Her own past surfaced, fast and sudden. Her parents’ faces flickered before her, the sound of a door slamming, the press of cold cuffs around her wrists. She gasped, the healing light faltering.

“No!” she hissed, clutching at her head. “Stop…”

But Ayen’s illusions closed in, twisting around her like vines. Her voice pressed soft against Doravis’s ear, mocking and pitying at once. “Poor thing, they told you this was strength. But it’s just a cage so they can use you how they please.”

Doravis cried out, shoving her light harder, forcing it through her own confusion. But it was aimed at nothing. Barkel stood taller, red arcs splitting the air. Hanel braced, golden wards flickered in and out as he was near his ending point. His head throbbed as much as his injuries. He could taste blood in his mouth. He kept pushing, he will cause himself damage that can't be repaired. Become even one of those sorcerers who had their agility eaten up and burned through their own flesh.

The battlefield fractured into layers.

Barkel against Hanel, the storm hammering the fortress.
Ayen against Doravis, the illusionist unraveling the healer.

Hanel managed a cut or a sigil; Barkel tore it apart with flame, healed as fast as he bled.
Ayen made Barkel stumble against imagined threats; Doravis steadied him with light.
Ayen laced Doravis in memory of her own; Doravis fought back with silver threads, clutching desperately to Barkel’s strength.

The courtyard seethed with gold and red, silver and shadow, each breath a contest of wills.

****

Doravis could not breathe.

Her hands still glowed faintly with silver threads, but they slipped from her grasp and vanished. She stared at the courtyard where Barkel lay, broken and unmoving. His red glow was gone. His chest did not rise.

Dead.

Ayen’s voice slithered through her thoughts like smoke, as close as it was certain. “That’s what your loyalty bought you. He fought, he bled, and in the end… You couldn’t even save him. And now you won’t save yourself either.”

Doravis’s throat closed. Her whole body shook. She dug her nails into her palms, trying to hold on to something real. But the images pressed harder. Barkel’s body cooling. The smell of blood. Silence where there should have been a burning flame.

Her lips trembled. “No, no, no…”

She curled forward, wrapping her arms around herself. She could not fight anymore. What was the point? Without Barkel, she had no reason. This was his fight, his mission. Even if she ran, she could not return to Ralensa with this failure. The camp, the cuffs, the punishments… that was her only thing waiting for her now.

And yet… she remembered something. A warmth. A pulse in the air from long ago, softer than Barkel’s flame, gentler than the silver threads she spun herself. A magic signature that had brushed against hers once, in childhood, before they took her. Someone had loved her then, someone she had lost.

She wished they were here now.
She wished she had never been taken.
She wished someone like Hanel, like Ayen, had fought for her, too.

Her shoulders quaked. The silver light sputtered and died in her hands. She sat crying in the ruined yard, helpless, lost in illusion and memory.

The image of Barkel’s dead body suddenly dimmed, then vanished in a faint silver light.

She heard Ayen’s voice as she sighed, “It is not fun if you're just going to break easily and cry.”

“Do you even know why you’re doing this?” Ayen murmured, her voice threading between Doravis’s own thoughts. “Is it loyalty? Fear? Or just the training they ground into you until you forgot you had a choice?”

Doravis tried to force the words out: I have no choice.
But they caught in her throat.

Her gaze drifted to Barkel. The real, life one. His face was iron even now. He never looked at her as a person. She was a tool in his arsenal, a regimented part of his machine.

And yet…

When she looked at Hanel, she saw something Barkel had never given.

Despite the blood soaking his clothes, despite the way his wards sputtered as he reached past his limits, there was still gentleness in his eyes. Not for himself, but for Ayen. For the children. He bled and fought and broke with love in him.

Her chest heaved.

Love.

The word scalded her worse than any flame.

“No,” she whispered. “No, this isn’t loyalty. This isn’t…”

Barkel’s voice thundered, snapping her back. “Focus, Doravis!”
His command cracked like a whip. “Do your duty!”

The scarred line of his jaw stood out as he ground his teeth in fury. He needed her. And yet his words carried nothing but command, never care.

And suddenly she saw it clearly: she had always been fighting for chains.

The silver light ignited back in her hands, but this time she did not aim it at Barkel.

Her voice broke as the words tore out of her, cheeks wet but eyes hard with a newfound resolve: “I am the youngest Ralensa sorcerer. I’ll make sure I remain the last.”

The healing threads cascaded across the courtyard, spilling over Hanel’s collapsing form, soaking into his wounds. His chest rose with a ragged gasp as strength returned to him.

Barkel’s head whipped toward her. His eyes burned brighter than the fire along his arms.

“Doravis!” His voice was raw with betrayal. “Do you understand what you’ve done? This is treason. You’ll be executed for this.”

Her hands shook, but she did not stop. The moonlit threads wove faster, closing Hanel’s gashes, mending shattered veins of blood.

Her voice came low, but steady. “Then let them. At least no more children will suffer like I did.”

****

Barkel’s face hardened. “You were made for this. The system shaped you…”

“No.” Her voice cracked, then steadied, rising against the roar of his flames. “It broke me. And I thought that was all I could be. But Hanel was right. I have a choice.”

Ayen’s laughter rang sharp, triumphant. “Finally. Took you long enough.”

Barkel’s flames raised high, fury making him monstrous. But his steps faltered. Ayen had sunk him deeper into her woven visions, each sense stripped one by one. Sight fractured into blackness, sound drowned beneath silence, and even the weight of his body lost its anchor. He lashed out blindly, each strike colliding with phantoms.

Hanel groaned as Doravis’s healing light sank into him fully, sealing the worst of the damage. The bleeding stopped, his chest steadied, but his strength was another matter. He staggered upright only through will, sweat plastering his dark hair to his brow. His body was a husk, drained of energy, and he leaned heavily on a broken column to steady himself.

His green eyes lifted to Doravis, wide with something like shock, then gratitude.

She kept her focus on him, forcing more power through her arms until her own body shook. “Stay alive,” she hissed. “Don’t waste this.”

Barkel roared, thrashing against the invisible prison Ayen held him in, his voice shattering the courtyard air. “Doravis! You are nothing without discipline! They will tear you apart!”

She looked at him, her eyes blazing with wet defiance. “Then let them. At least it will be my choice.”

The courtyard split in fury and light…
Ayen’s shadows deepened, swallowing Barkel whole in a void of silence and blindness, his strikes collapsing in panic.

Then Ayen collapsed to her knees. Appearing suddenly beside Hanel, where she was vialing herself with magic.

Her hands dug into the stone, breath coming sharp and ragged. Even illusions had limits, and what she held now wasn’t just an illusion but deprivation, cutting Barkel off from his senses entirely, drowning him in a world of nothingness. Her lips were white, her body trembling with the strain.

****