Hollow Atonement

Six years ago

WHEN THEY returned to Pallethorpe Village, it should’ve felt like triumph. Instead, Sirius, Lucien, and their officially classified Forsaken-type marks—a black Bishop and a black Knight—were met with scorn and shame. It wasn’t the type that could absolve them of their burden, it was a confirmation of a life they could never return to.

The rain fell hard that day, like an omen arrived.

Sirius entered his home, and shut the door behind him. The sound was dull and final as he pushed his soaked hood back. Water ran down his cloak, pooling at his boots. His parents sat stiffly on opposite sides of the dining table, while his older brother Mirzam stood near the hearth with his arms crossed, jaw set tight. No one welcomed him home.

“Is it true?” his mother asked at last. Her voice didn’t rise, nor did it break, it wavered like thin glass.

Sirius nodded once, and muttered in a hushed tone, “Yes.” Slowly, he raised his left hand, and the black Bishop mark seemed to swallow the light in the room.

Silence stretched. The ticking of the grandsovereign clock felt deafening.

His father inhaled sharply and turned away, his white Rook hand gripping a round prayer sigil to steady himself. “No,” he grumbled. “No, this wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Mirzam gritted his teeth. “So that’s it, then,” he grumbled, stepping forward. “You go to the Lachian Mountains on the God-King’s order, and you come back worse than ever.”

Sirius’s eyes searched the room of scornful faces, feeling something swell in his chest. “Why would you say that?” he spoke quietly, his voice breaking. “I didn’t come back worse.”

“‘Didn’t come back worse’?” Mirzam snapped, and drove forward, fist bunching into the folds of Sirius’s cloak and slamming him back against the wall.

The impact rattled a framed prayer sigil of a crown.

“You worthless fuck!” he hissed. “You were supposed to cleanse it. White. That was the whole point. And you failed. Failed yourself, and you failed us.” He gripped tighter, pushing him harder against the wall. His knuckles dug into Sirius’s collar bones.

“Mirzam—” their father started.

“No! He needs to hear this,” he retorted, eyes bearing down on him. “They’re watching us now. The neighbors. The Gearschron Cabinet. You think they won’t whisper Rexarion the moment something goes wrong?”

Sirius didn’t fight him. He didn’t raise his hands. He just endured.

“Do you even know what they’re saying?” his brother continued. “That our household should be reviewed. That mana like yours doesn’t rot alone.” His grip tightened. “That we’re hiding something.”

Their mother stood abruptly. “You were meant to come back redeemed, Sirius,” she said, voice tight with restrained fury. “After all the prayers. All the concessions we made…what happened?” Her eyes glistened, but they were hard. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to us?”

“I did everything they asked,” Sirius replied in a leveled tone, doing his best to conceal the pain. “Everything, Mirzam.”

“And it wasn’t enough,” his father said flatly, taking a step towards him. “That’s all that fucking matters. And I’m telling you, boy, this will not stand. You’re a threat, a curse to us and this community.”

“A disgrace and an embarrassment to this family,” his mother coldly added.

Sirius’s eyes started to swell with tears as he uttered, “M-Mom, dad…” A single strand trickled down his cheek. “You don’t really mean that, do you?”

“Consider this your punishment,” she stated as she and him stared at their forsaken child with stern eyes. “It’s the least we can do to try and cleanse our house of your filth,” he added, then nodded to Mirzam.

He delivered a gut punch to his brother before his right Rook-marked hand met his face and sent him careening to the side. Sirius could have stumbled a few steps, then balanced out, but he let himself get tossed like a rag doll and fell hard onto the floor. His palms scraped against stone, and the other side of his face made contact, rattling his head. The fight had already left his body.

“Get up,” Mirzam snarled. “I know you can heal yourself with those Bishop powers of yours. You don’t get to lay there like you’re some fucking martyr.” He dug his boot into his body to roll Sirius onto his back.

Blood crept from the corner of his mouth. The left side of his face throbbed, heat blooming beneath the skin as he sucked in air that refused to come fast enough. Before his vision could steady, Mirzam hauled him upright and tore the cloak from his shoulders, then his kurta. It left him bare back, exposed to the unforgiving atmosphere and to what came next.

Neither parent spoke at first.

Sirius’s father crossed the room slowly with a slender reed in his hand, its length polished smooth from age and infrequent discipline. His mother turned away just long enough to retrieve another one, her jaw tight, eyes glassy but unyielding when she readied herself.

There was no ritual spoken aloud, only the unspoken understanding that this was correction, not cruelty. That this was necessary.

“By the authority granted to us by the local clergy,” his father stated with protocol, “we will now administer ten lashes from each family member.”

Sirius gulped, not having been struck by a reed since he was little, and for only once in his life for misbehavior.

Now it was going to be forty times.

At least, he hoped it was only forty and not fifty, because Adhara wasn’t in the room. Sirius held himself against the wall, his body reluctantly prepared for the stinging pain.

There was a deafening silence that even the ticking of the grandsovereign clock couldn’t match.

The first strike cracked across Sirius’s back like splitting wood. He flinched and grunted, but didn’t have time to cry out, as the second quickly followed, burning deeper. The third and fourth drew sharp breaths from his chest, and by the fifth, his nails scraped the wall. At ten, his knees trembled. Each lash was deliberate, but he lost count after his parents. Sirius was barely upright, sweat, blood, and ridges tracing lines across his back, his breathing broken and uneven. His vision swam, the room tilting as though submerged.

It was Mirzam’s turn, and he stepped forward with a seething hatred, gripping the reed, and unleashing his fury upon his younger brother. His strikes were harder than his parents, as if all of the pent-up anger and frustration over the failed promotion was brought forth.

Sirius finally screamed in agony, his body stiffened, stinging, and numb all at the same time. By the twentieth, his body gave out entirely, folding to the floor as if the strings had been cut. But his brother mercilessly continued with ten more lashes for their younger sister, whose small feet thundered down the stairs.

“Stop it! Stop it! Leave him alone!” she squealed as the last strike fractured the reed and left a long gash across Sirius’s back.

Adhara burst into the room and ran straight to him, dropping to her knees and throwing her arms around his shoulders. “Leave Sirius alone!” she cried, pressing her face into his matted hair, his body twitching and trembling violently.

Mirzam sucked his teeth and moved forward to pull her away from him, but their father caught his arm, gripping hard enough to stop him.

He shook his head once. “Enough.”

Mirzam trembled with fury, but he didn’t pull free.

“Let it go, Mirzam,” he said firmly. “We’ve done our part. He’s leaving in the morning.”

The three executioners abruptly dismissed themselves, discarding their reeds, just as they had discarded Sirius, and exited to other rooms in the house.

Ten-year-old Adhara wept over her brother. Her light pink kameez darkened where they brushed against him, stained with blood, sweat, and tears alike. She cradled his head against her chest and rocked him back and forth, small hands trembling as if she could force the pain out of him by sheer devotion alone. Her tears slipped free and soaked into his hair, cool and steady, each drop a gentle contrast to the fire still raging through his body.

They felt almost like they were healing.

Given a moment to breathe, Sirius drew inward at last.

Mana answered him quietly, obedient even now.

The worst of his wounds sealed beneath her embrace, skin knitting itself together while the ache remained, lingering like a memory that refused to fade, just like the scars that garnished his back. A weak, breathless chuckle escaped Sirius. He tilted his head just enough to look at his sister through blurred vision and murmured with a weak smile, “H-Hey… Adhara. I’m back home.”