Your Hurt, My Hurt

Kade breathed hard, chest rising and falling with effort as he adjusted his stance, the ache of his earlier wound pulsing in time with his heartbeat. Across from him, Eurnar stood tall and composed, the dark ink of her facial tattoo stark against the sheen of sweat on her pale skin. Her light-formed blades flickered softly, but her eyes, those sharp, glinting things, never wavered.

Stillness clung to the ruined corridor. Debris crackled underfoot. His summoned constructs, dragons, strange, shifting, circled loosely in the air, waiting.

Kade tilted his head and asked softly, without pretense, “What do you want?”

His words were simple. Honest. Yet Eurnar’s face grew darker.

“I mean it,” Kade said, stepping forward just enough to show he wasn’t afraid. “You keep fighting me, trying to hurt people I care about. Why?”

Her lips twitched. But her silence pressed. It felt odd after her talking nonstop earlier.

Kade continued. “I won’t let you hurt anyone in this house.”

That, oddly, was what broke her stillness.

She moved.

Faster than before. She jumped forward, her two knives made arcs of light through the air. Kade leapt back, calling to his magic instinctively.

The little dragons swooped and formed a shield in front of him just in time to take the brunt of her strike. The blow rang, and cracks spiderwebbed through his creatures, some of them dissolving.

Then another strike.

And another.

She pressed harder, fierce and furious. Her feet struck the walls, the ceiling, magic platforms boosting her with each sharp leap, letting her bounce through the corridor. Kade barely kept up. His constructs snapped at her heels, birds darting in and out, claws flashing, but she slipped past them all, relentless and deadly. Coming for him. Always for him.

And underneath it all… Kade felt something strange.

The texture of her magic.

It wasn’t clean or controlled. It stung. It churned with anger and pain. Her spells tasted like betrayal and disappointment. Even the air around her pulsed with it, vibrating against his skin like a struck nerve.

It overwhelmed him.

Kade faltered for a moment. His arms dropped slightly.

His vision blurred with something potent. A flash of something familiar carrying those same feelings.

A room.

White.

A girl sitting beside him on a hospital bed, reading stories to him. Her voice gentle and warm. Tales of worlds with flying beasts, brave children, and cities made in the sky.

Kade staggered.

A blade nicked his shoulder, blood bloomed.

The memory slipped away.

Gone.

Swallowed whole.

And he felt it leave. Felt the magic seal the tear behind it, like a wound being bandaged too quickly. His chest heaved. The absence echoed louder than the pain of his wound.

He looked up at Eurnar, throat tight.

Her eyes narrowed. “Give up.”

Kade said nothing.

“Come with me,” she pressed, voice low but sharp. “You’ll be worth a fortune. The Guild will train you. They’ll give you control. You’ll be respected. You’ll be someone.”

He exhaled slowly. “No.”

Eurnar tilted her head. “No?”

“I’m not leaving my family.”

“You mean the Badanias?” she scoffed. “We didn't know you existed even though we gathered intel on this family. Why were they hiding you if they are your so called family?”

“It doesn't matter why.” His voice was quiet, but steady. “They’re mine now, they care about me, and I care about them.”

“You’re either weak,” she said coldly, “or a liar.”

Kade’s expression didn’t shift. “That’s a strange thing to say.”

“I don’t like liars,” she said, almost to herself.

“And I don’t think someone who breaks into people’s homes and tries to kill them gets to judge anyone.”

That did it.

She screamed, wordless, and launched herself toward him again. Kade met her, his constructs flaring to life. His dragons of light darted ahead, swarming her path. Eurnar dodged two, kicked the third, and vaulted off the fourth’s wing in mid-air, blade flashing toward his throat.

Kade dropped low, sliding beneath her.

She landed hard. He turned, hand raised. A new creation was taking shape behind her, a long-limbed beast with too many eyes and arms as long as tentacles.

The thing struck.

Eurnar was fast, but not faster than the construct's reach.

The construct seized her. Wrapped her tight in glowing cords of blue energy.

She thrashed, gritting her teeth, trying to twist free. But the thing's grip held.

Kade stood before her, panting, one hand extended.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said.

She looked at him and laughed.

“You think you’ve won?” she asked.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Let me go. I will cut you into pieces! Make you watch your precious family die before your eyes.”

“I don’t think so. The word family hurts you. I can see that.”

Something flickered across her face, something raw. Her gaze dropped.

Then, in a low, bitter voice: “Family, care… you think it matters. That’s a privilege. A silly little idea only a brat from Lunavin could afford. It is nothing short of a lie.”

Kade’s brow furrowed.

And then, his eyes widened.

He could feel it.

Her magic.

Even though she wasn’t moving, wasn’t casting, he felt it ripple outward. A presence. A resonance.

Like an aura, invisible and vast.

It called to him. Speaking in a language his magic understood.

It reached for him.

And, without thinking, Kade responded.

His magic, living, dreaming, ever curious, extended itself toward hers. As a question.

And something clicked.

A shift. Like gravity realigning.

Kade's constructs went still.

He looked at Eurnar.

Her expression had changed.

Still furious.

But not unreadable anymore.

Her eyes widened like she felt it too.

Whatever had just happened…

Wasn’t part of the fight.

It was something else… something vast, and old, and reaching.

And it was taking him under.

****

It began like a fall, sudden and impossible to stop.

Eerily similar to that time in the orphanage.

Kade didn’t remember closing his eyes. One moment he was standing in the corridor, his construct holding Eurnar down. The next…

Cold.

Wind, biting and sharp. Snow crunching under boots far too small to be his.

And he wasn’t himself anymore.

He was her.

Not entirely. He still knew he was Kade, but it was like standing behind the eyes of a girl whose memories were not his to hold, whose bones he borrowed like a second skin. The taste in his mouth wasn’t his own. The breath misting from his lips wasn’t drawn by him.

Eurnar was small. Barely six, maybe smaller. And the city around her was made of steel and stone, built into the sides of a mountain range so vast it swallowed the horizon. She looked up and up, the sky a silver bruise over the snowy peaks, the wind cutting down between buildings like a blade.

She was cold. Always cold. Her hands ached with it. Her ears. Her chest.

But she didn’t complain.

Not when someone could hear.

The training yard was half-buried in snow. Others stood around her, children her size, older ones too, all in dark tunics with sleeves rolled back, shivering in silence.

A man barked orders.

"Again!"

Her arm burned as she lifted the glowing knife made of her own magic. Her magic was a shade of gold so pale it looked white. Pure. Shaky. She lunged, missed the mark, slipped.

The staff hit her shoulder, knocking her to the ground. Snow met her face with a burn that felt like shame.

Kade flinched in her skin.

"Another failure," the instructor said.

“Don’t want bread tonight?”

She scrambled back up. Not crying. Never crying.

Bread meant warmth. Bread meant the little stove in the dorms would be lit. If she performed well, she would be warm.

So she tried again. And when she finally succeeded, she smiled with her split lip and cracked knuckles, because the instructors liked it when they smiled. Smiling showed resilience and strength and pride. Resilience was rewarded.

And later, when night fell, and the stove was lit, and she was given her portion, the young woman came.

Warm voice. Dark hair braided in rings. She knelt and wrapped a shawl around Eurnar’s thin shoulders.

"Good girl," the woman whispered, brushing frost from her cheeks. "You’re strong. You’ll rise faster than the others. I believe in you."

That voice, that touch, meant more than any warmth.

Her name was Instructor Mai.

No. That wasn’t right.

Kade felt the name shift.

It was Neri.

The name Mai twisted through his own mind like a needle. Then Gone.

Eurnar, small and glowing and desperate, would do anything for Neri.

She bled for her. Trained for her. Rose to top of her peers by nine. Went on her first Calling at twelve.

And then… it all broke.

The memory lurched like a cartwheel down a cliff.

Eurnar cowered behind a ruin, hands over her ears, teeth biting into her lip to stop the screams. She didn’t remember much of the Calling. Just shadows. Roars. Beasts. People torn apart. The taste of copper and the scream of magic tearing the world.

She hadn’t fought.

She had hidden.

They took her in cuffs. The magic-dulling kind, made of that black metal that made her skin crawl.

Her bed was gone. Her dorm gone. Only a cell. Without warmth. Without food.

She waited. Days passed.

Then Neri came.

But it wasn’t Neri.

It was someone colder. Someone with a clipboard. With gloves on.

"You lasted longer than expected," she said, marking a page.

Eurnar cried in relief. Reached for her.

The woman stepped back.

"Stop. You don’t get affection anymore. You failed the trial."

“But… I’m good. I was your best student.”

"You were an experiment," she said. "I was testing whether kindness could outperform cruelty in sorcerer conditioning. It didn’t."

“You said you loved me.”

“I lied.”

Those words cracked something. Sharp. Final.

"You were never special," she said. "Just promising."

The memory shattered.

Kade fell forward, back into his body, but the pain stayed.

Eurnar was still on the ground in front of him, breathing hard, her hands clenched. Her face hadn’t moved. Her magic pulsed erratically, trying to flare but trapped by the construct that bound her.

But he knew her now.

He had lived it. Felt the cold in her bones. The way she learned to mistake love for control.

And for the first time, he saw her magic clearly.

It wasn't just light blades and geometries. It was survival. It was armor and edge and distance. A fortress made from hurt.

Kade’s chest ached with it.

His legs wobbled, but he stood. Breathing unsteadily. His own magic flared around him like mist.

He looked down at Eurnar.

She was watching him now. Quiet. Expression unreadable.

“I saw,” he said softly. “I felt it.”

She said in a low, cold voice.

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know enough. I know you were hurt.”

Silence.

Finally, she said, “It wasn’t yours to take.”

Kade lowered himself beside her, not too close.

“I didn’t take it. You gave it. Your magic… wanted me to see. It was calling out.”

She looked away.

Kade sat there, feeling the bruises in his ribs, the cut on his arm, the echo of her pain still vibrating through him.

His magic, usually warm and light, felt heavy.

Not in a bad way.

Like roots sinking deeper. Finally finding enough room.

“You’re wrong, you know,” Kade said.

“About what?”

“You were special.”

Her breath hitched. Then she gave a bark of laugh, full of mockery.

Kade turned his face toward the ceiling, where cracks split the stone, letting cold air drift in.

“We all want to believe that kindness is real,” he said. “That it means something.”

“And what do you know about that, Badania brat?”

“I think… I think I know because I felt it before.”

She didn’t respond. But her magic, so wild before, curled inward, no longer thrashing against his.

Kade leaned back against the wall. His body screamed. His mind buzzed.

But something had shifted.

Not just in her.

In him.

The memory had shaken something loose.

That name.

Mai.

Mai wasn’t the cruel instructor. No.

Mai was…

…a girl.

With a singing laugh.

Short hair that bounced when she ran.

Kade felt the pain before the memory.

Like something sharp pressing behind his eyes.

She had read to him. Sat beside his bed in that blank white room.

He reached for her…

And his magic flickered. Then came the sensation. Familiar. Tender.

It wanted to help him.

It wanted to erase it again.

Kade stood frozen, heart pounding. That same soothing magic had taken memories from him before, he’d felt it. Moments swallowed whole, stolen and tucked away like fragile things too painful to hold. And he had let it. Again and again.

But not this time.

He reached inward and whispered with intention so strong it rattled.

“Don’t take this from me.”

The blue flame shifted in hesitation. Then… settled.

Permission granted.

And the moment he gave the order, the magic obeyed.

It unfurled.

A deep tide sweeping up through him, cold and sweet and terrible.

The world blurred. The corridor fell away.

And Kade began to fall again.

Into himself.