We used to be a quiet village. Remote, yes. Still, even to the fault of quietness. But we had heart in quiet, tradition in stillness. We adhered to the old way—stone, earth, and sweat. Life was simple. Predictable. Safe.
Until we discovered magic.
It arrived not with fire or thunder. No sign in the skies, no blood moon. It arrived quietly, like a whisper on the wind. A hot coal in a child's palm. A flower that opens too soon. A wound that closed too quickly.
First, no one knew what they were seeing. And then, once they did know, they were frightened.
Fear always spreads more quickly than truth.
They who had touched magic—even just in passing—were unnatural.
They called it corruption. An affliction. Some died quietly, their bodies found in the fields or washed up on the riverbank. "Natural causes," the elders would say, eyes heavy with unspoken judgment. But others… others were made examples. Public hearings. Murders.
Bonfires built not to give warmth but to cleanse.
They were dragged from their homes, screaming or not. Slaughtered in the square. Burned alive in front of the same neighbors who had once shared a meal together. All for having had the audacity to cling to something new. Something that the village didn't understand. Something that challenged the fragile facade of security.
But I wasn't like them.
I did not run from magic. I did not wish to run. To learn. To understand. To look upon it as a key and not a curse—a pening into something beyond our village in time and of greater beauty, than anything the village had ever known. I learned in secret. Studied under moonlight. Shaking hand, thudding heart. Read everything I could find to lay hands on. Stole what I stole. taught myself when teachers were too fearful even to whisper its name.
And I did nothing.
Not even her.
Not my friends. Not my family. I buried it all in the depths of silences and guarded smiles. I made myself a specter in my own life, simply to protect them.
Simply to protect me.
But secrets go rotten in the dark.
Whispers followed me. Glares lingered too long. And then I overheard the truth: my name had been carried to the ears of the village leaders. My friends—the same ones I had trusted with my youth, my tales, my laughter—had been the ones to speak. Maybe they were scared. Maybe they believed they were rescuing me. Maybe betrayal always masquerades as concern.
Either way, it was done.
They put a bounty on my head. Spread my name as threat. Danger. Abomination.
So I vanished.
No one knew where. I lived from breath to breath, in the forgotten corners of the earth. I watched the years go by from under the tree roots and the hollow stones of the mountain. I grew stronger, sharper. I learned all they never thought I could.
But still. I couldn't resist her.
She was the one thread that I couldn't cut.
The last ember of something human that remained inside of me. I loved her. I trusted her. So I told her.
I told her where I was. I let her in. I broke every rule that I had set for myself because I thought she would keep my secret the way I had kept my heart—hidden, but safe.
And she betrayed me.
She gave them everything.
They broke in at night, knives and torches. They did not find me.
They found my Family.
They burned the home I was raised in. Killed my father in front of my little brother. Took my mother's screams as proof of crime. Left their bodies in the snow as a warning to others.
All because of her.
The spell I used to learn for her—for the happiness it brought to her, for the smile she bestowed upon me when I caused the flowers to bloom the first time I did it—I used it against her.
I didn't want to. Even then, even after all that had passed, I didn't want to.
I had nothing left.
She was the first human I ever used real magic on. Not in blind rage. Not in madness. But because justice—no matter how twisted—was all I could provide at that time.
And in the silence that came after, when the spell had set and the fire had burned out, I realized something else:
Love and hate, drenched in magic, are not opposites.
They are mirrors.