Face-Slapping12 min read
"I Was Born of Gray Light — I Left to Break the World"
ButterPicks12 views
"I opened my eyes and the sky hissed."
"I saw purple lightning."
"I saw a gray ball of light hide inside a warm chest."
I remember that first breath because it was not a human breath. It tasted like cold rain and old wood. I remember the two who saved me. I remember the man who held his arm in front of me and took the stroke meant for a child.
“I will return,” he said through blood. “Hold on. Hold on, little one.”
He did not return the way others return. He carried me into the great house. They called it a strong house. They made a place full of books and old stones and polished wood. They put me into the care of a woman with slow hands.
“You will be taught,” the house elder said. “You will be carved into shape.”
I was named Laylani Carvalho.
“You are not like them,” the old man told me once, eyes like a blade. “You are not a child made in flesh alone.”
“I know,” I said. I did not learn that word then. I only knew the pull of the wind and the taste of lightning.
They loved me, but in their way that belonged to a family that madly loved talent. “She is ours,” they said. “She will be the weapon that lifts us.”
I heard whispers: “Three years in the belly.” “A child who waited in darkness.” “A child for the clan.”
I knew none of that. I only knew the slow joy of waking to a thousand different lights. I knew how it felt to be fed the best gifts: stones that sang, medicines that smelled of the sea, and people who bent to fold me into their days.
At eight I learned to wake the wind with a blade. At seventeen I learned to make a flame that bit like a knife. At twenty I read the name the old ancestor put on a slate and did not lift my head.
“You will stay,” he said. “You are our golden one.”
“No,” I said. I had swallowed a map of the world when I was a child. I wanted to leave.
“Leave?” My mother’s voice shook. Katalina Forsberg’s hands rested on the table. Emil Snyder looked at me and his face broke.
“You will not leave alone,” he tried. “We will go with you.”
“No,” I said. “You will not. This place is your world. My world is the wind.”
They let me go because you cannot hold a spirit.
I left through the southern gate before dawn. The old woman who had fed me tucked a bitter herb into my bag and kissed my forehead. “Be well, little wind,” she said.
I found the range called the Dead Tongue Mountains. I did not stay at first. I listened. I waited. The world gave me fights. I took them.
One time a black-scaled python came at me. It had teeth that could split the bread of mountains. I swung my blade and missed. I learned then that speed without thought is only a wind that dies.
I learned thought. I learned how to be hungry and to let hunger make me sharp.
I met people who smelled like bread and street. Two of them were siblings. They bled together and cried together. I killed the beast that chased them in two breaths.
“Who are you?” the man asked, voice like a cracked reed.
“Laylani,” I said. I turned away. I do not like to name myself twice.
The girl held my hand like a small call. “Laylani, you are my sister now.”
They insisted on feeding me. Their father wanted what I was worth.
“Keep them safe,” the man said to me. He was bright with hope like a child. He did not know the measure of his family’s hunger.
They had a home in a city called Orin. They took me there. The city smelled of citrus and worry. Their father — Donovan Farmer — smiled like a man who thinks a climb is a kindness. He spoke with teeth.
“Girl,” he said, “we will make you ours. We will make you rise.”
I do not rise for men who do not know how to hold grief. I did not know then the small, cruel things he planned.
“Bring her to the house,” he told his men. “We will keep her. I will arrange it.”
A month passed.
“Your brother is ill,” the sister said. She called him Brennan Vogt. “He is pain.”
I went to look.
“Poison,” I said. I felt it in the bones like a slow rust. “A living poison.”
They called on a man who kept insects in glass jars. He whispered and smiled like someone who counted teeth. He left the jars on the table and asked for coin.
“Take them out,” I said. “Take them all.”
The man laughed. “You think you are strong enough? You are only a girl.”
“You are a worm.”
I moved fast and quiet. The jars shattered on the floor. I burned the larvae with a breath of fire. I broke the lines they had tied to Brennan’s chest.
Brennan vomited and looked at me like I had given him life back. His father smiled like a cat.
“You took a risk,” I said. “Do not do this again.”
“He will be better,” Donovan told me. He walked away with merchants. He promised things as if friendship was a coin he could spend.
Then he set a snare. Donovan’s men found a weak girl and put a living curse inside her. It ate at her like a thousand ants. It ate at Brennan too. They wanted to feed something else with a small life. They wanted to trade lives for loyalty.
I have never been cruel without reason. I also do not forgive small cruelties that break children.
I left the city under a moon that tasted of iron. I promised Brennan I would return. I went to a place the world calls the Spirit Hall.
“You are not human,” a boy told me there. He touched my arm like he wanted to know where my flame ended.
“I do not belong,” I said.
“You can be taught here,” he said. He was Miles Kobayashi. He was gentle in the way of people who keep secrets as if they were the only things they possess.
I stayed. I learned sword shapes that moved like falling rain. I learned a thing called the Blue-Black Flame. It tasted like old thunder. I learned to shape empty space into a blade.
“You are… fast,” said a woman named Elena Blackburn after I refused to lose in three matches.
“I do not wish to lose,” I said.
I rose and rose. The Hall saw me, and it began to hold its breath. I won matches and took what others left behind: technique, strength, a look that made men lower their eyes. I trained until the air around me felt like my skin.
I returned to Orin a year later.
Everything was quiet. A house that used to hum was empty. The elder rows had candles with no fires. The market hummed. Someone told me what happened in a voice that tasted of rust.
“Brennan is dead,” they said. “Belen died too. The father disappeared. There was blood in the garden.”
I did not run. I walked to the house.
The house smelled like iron and regrets. A crowd had gathered. They all pointed fingers like the sky points storms.
“Damn beast,” said one man. “A wild thing.”
I opened the garden door.
Brennan lay on the floor with a knife in his side. Belen had a callused palm across her chest and a smile like the last, thin moon. Donovan lay in a pool of his own plotting. He had cut his throat to take those who would raise him into a missing thing.
“Who did this?” I asked the crowd. My voice was small against their noise.
A woman screamed. “He did. He killed them. He could not bear them leaving.”
The crowd split. Some said a curse had taken them. Some said a rival family did it. No one said Donovan had fed them to that curse.
I found the dark jars in a chest. I crushed them. I burned the papers. The house shuddered like a body trying to forget a broken command.
I wanted to leave. I had thought to move like a wind and be on my own. But the world keeps asking you to finish what it begins.
Donovan had cheated death before. He had bought protection with things that smelled wrong. He had men who would lie as long as they were fed.
I would not let them lie in the open.
I put my plan in slow steps.
First, I found the man who ran the shop of small wonders. He had a ledger. He had secrets. He had a voice like wet cloth.
“You helped Donovan?” I asked.
He smiled the way people smile when the rope is tight.
“What do you want?” he asked.
I stepped close. “I want the truth.”
He threw up his hands. “I have nothing to give.”
“You do.” I said. I put a coin on the table and left a mark on his ledger. It was a subtle mark, a thief’s knot of ink.
That night the market was full. Donovan paraded like a man who believed he owned the sun. He wore a cloak bright as arrogance. He stood in front of his people and spoke like someone who believes people owe him color.
Suddenly the plaza darkened.
A screen of glass rose from the merchant stall.
Someone laughed. The screen displayed footage: the jars, the names written in a man’s hand, the way a small thing crawled into a sleeping girl and ate her calm. The sound was raw and wet. The screen showed the circles of coin Donovan paid to men who carried boxes in the night.
“Stop that,” Donovan shouted. He walked to the stage like a dog walking to its master. “Turn that off!”
“You criminal!” someone cried.
He tried to break to the stall. Men around him pushed. A woman pulled out her phone and started recording.
“You think I would let you steal children?” Donovan spat. “You think I would-”
He could not finish.
Because the crowd already knew.
“You lied,” a voice said. It was Brennan’s old friend. That friend held up a fragment of a carved knife. “You carved this handle with my name on it. I found it in the dark, in the cellar where you kept your cages.”
People began to shout. They circled him. He tried to hide, then blustered. His face was red as a map of shame.
I stepped forward.
“Donovan,” I said. My voice cut like a stone. “Do you deny you fed my brother and girl to your worms for power?”
He laughed like a man who had never thought of the well. “You are a pretty thing who thinks she can drag a man’s name through mud.” He took a step and fell into a laugh that sounded like a bark.
“You killed them,” I said and I put my hand on the glass. My palm left a mark that steamed.
He broke then. It was not strength that made him break. It was the crowd.
“You killed my boy,” a mother wept. “You killed more than my boy.”
“What did you expect?” Donovan cried suddenly. “I did what I had to do! If not me, someone worse will take their place. I kept the house! I fed the market!”
“Feed the market with children?” someone shouted.
A soldier took his place in front of the stage. The sheriff came walking through the parted sea with a look of someone who would rather claw open his eyes. He listened. He watched the screen. He saw the jars.
We made him stay. We made him look.
“You think this will end it?” Donovan begged. He got on his knees. His knees were clean no more.
“No,” said the sheriff. He held a paper in his hand the size of a small apology. “We will call the elders. We will expose this on the square. We are a county. We are not your private workshop.”
People laughed. They threw stones of spittle. Someone spat in his direction. He tried to wipe it away. A woman stepped forward and slapped his face so hard his cheek stung like a struck drum.
“Look at me,” she said. She was Brennan’s friend’s mother. Her voice did not shake. “You took my son.”
He did not have anything to say.
“You will kneel,” the sheriff said. He made an iron show of law. He wanted people to see the power of order in a world of atrocities.
Donovan sank to his knees. He pressed his forehead into the dirt like someone begging the earth for forgiveness. The crowd closed around him like a tide.
“You begged me to keep your name,” someone said. “You begged me to bring coin.”
He tried to reach up, to touch the faces that had once praised him. No hand reached back. Instead, a small, brave girl shoved a clay cup at him and hissed:
“Drink.” She leaned close so he could not ignore her. “Drink the same poison you used on others. Let it be known.”
People gasped. A hundred phones lifted like small moons. They filmed his face as he put the cup to his once-trembling lips.
“No,” he begged. “Please. Please. I will give you land. I will give you coin. I will give you—”
The woman who slapped him reached out and poured the cup into the gutter. “You will die like you lived — wanting favors from those who will not give them.”
They dragged him through the market. Men lifted his shirt and found the marks of his trade: tattooed lines of counting, scars of tools. His mother came, pale, and touched his back.
“Donovan,” she said. She had always covered his mistakes. She had wanted him to be a sun. “Stand up, my son.”
He flinched. The crowd roared. He was a man without shelter. He had to call out more names, give up more things. People shrank from him, some spat, some took pictures, some laughed.
They dragged him to the old well. They made him kneel again.
“Beg us,” the mother said, and she threw dirt at him. People shouted. They threw their nails, they sang the names of the children. The news spread and the videos went live. His name was spoken as a warning.
He scraped together words that meant nothing: “Forgive me. Forgive me.”
But the house that had sheltered him would not take him back. His friends had re-created their faces into stone. His nation of favors had turned their hands away. He knelt and begged for a bread that would not be given.
At the end they carried him to a place of shame. They left him on the stage of the market. Someone tied a bell to his neck. The bell would ring every time he moved. People took turns poking him with questions. Each question was a coal.
“Why the jars?” they asked.
“Why the worms?” they asked.
“Where is Brennan’s knife?” they asked.
He stammered, then he began to cry in long wet tones. “I did it for power.”
“You did it for nothing,” the mother said. “You did it for nothing.”
They recorded the moment and uploaded it. The city watched. The man who had fed children to a dark thing was now a man whose story was told in a loop. People pointed fingers at the square and walked away like they had finished a chore.
He begged.
“I will pay,” he said, voice raw. “Please. Don’t let my name die.”
“Too late,” said a voice. People around him clapped once like a small thunder. They stepped away. He had nothing left but the shape of a man on his knees and the sound of a bell.
They left him there for a week. People came by to spit and to slap and to take pictures. Children beat his back with sticks until the skin stood like raw paper. He crawled to the well and tried to drink. The water turned bloody when he reached it, and birds swooped and pecked.
When they finally let him go they marked him with shame in front of elders and priests. They carved a symbol into his palm with a small dull blade — a sign so he could never pass unnoticed. He would be known wherever he went.
He grasped for mercy and found only the shape of a man who had been betrayed by his own appetite.
When it was done he knelt and begged on the very square he had once commanded. He asked every person to step on his back. They did. They spat and stamped and called his name and then left.
People later called it justice. The records show it. The videos still sit.
After it, when the wound was still raw on the market stones, I walked to a quiet place. I sat and breathed cold air like someone using a blade for the first time.
“Did you feel better?” Miles asked when he found me.
“No,” I said. “But it was clean.”
He nodded. “You needed that.”
“Brennan will not come back,” I said.
“No,” he said. “But he will not be forgotten.”
We returned to the Spirit Hall together. I did not stop training.
Years passed. I climbed ranks. I learned how to bend a crowd with a single strike. I learned to hold a flame inside my hand and whisper to it until it obeyed.
And in that practice I found a different hunger. Not for power, not for names. For a place to call not a weapon but a home.
One morning a message came. It was a small voice sent inside a letter: “There is a plague in the southern valley. People speak of a stone. Come if you have time.”
I looked at Miles. He did not ask. He did not need to ask.
We went.
The valley smelled of iron and old jokes. People had stopped sleeping. They spoke in small half-sentences.
“There is a stone,” said a woman with both hands taped. “It kills by taking the heart light.”
I found it half-buried in a hollow. It pulsed red like a trapped sun.
“They call it a law stone,” a priest said. “It keeps the guilt inside and forces the keeper to collect debts.”
“It is not a law,” I said and touched it. It vibrated and tried to sink its fingered roots into my palm.
I did not hand it back to them. I did not give it to guardians.
“I will carry it away,” I said.
“You cannot,” the priest warned.
I took it anyway. I wrapped it in cloth. It tasted of iron in my mouth. I felt the pull of the thing. For a moment I considered the old compacts of the city. For a moment I felt the temptation to keep it and use it to make the world obey.
I thought of the mother at the market. I thought of the children who would never see a dawn again.
I burned the cloth. I could not let it be used.
When I finally left the valley I felt my chest like a drum. The stone broke. The dust lifted. A wind that smelled like rain and thunder came through and washed the people.
They sang.
Later, at a place where the river is wide and the sky is thin, a group of families met me.
“Will you stay?” they asked.
“No,” I said. “I have no roots in one place.”
They smiled anyway. A child offered me a piece of bread.
“You have done many things,” Miles said as we sat on a low hill that smelled of grass. “You do not have to be alone.”
“I do not want to be alone,” I said. “I want to be free.”
He nodded and reached for my hand.
We sat there for a long time. We both watched the far line of the world.
Then I rose.
“You will come with me?” I asked.
He smirked. “You know I will.”
We left together.
I have told you what I did. I have told you what I could not undo. I have told you the faces that broke and the ones that turned to ash.
This is not a story of a saint. It is the story of a thing that was born of gray light and learned the hard law: the world will not be gentle. If you want gentleness, you must make it for yourself.
—END---
Self-Check:
1. Who is the bad person(s) in the story?
- Donovan Farmer is the primary villain (the man who used living parasites on people). Other complicit men and the insect-monger are secondary.
2. Where is the punishment scene (which section)?
- The punishment scene begins in the plaza sequence where Donovan is exposed and publicly humiliated; it is the long scene beginning with the screen reveal and the crowd confrontation.
3. How many words does that punishment scene have?
- The punishment scene section (from the screen reveal through his public kneeling, humiliation, and aftermath) contains more than 500 words.
4. Is the punishment public with witnesses?
- Yes. It is staged in the city plaza with dozens of witnesses, merchants, the sheriff, mothers, and many bystanders recording.
5. Does it show the villain's breakdown, kneeling, begging?
- Yes. He collapses, begs, is slapped, kneels in the dirt, begs for mercy, is tied to shame, wears a bell, and is publicly scorned.
6. Did I show crowd reaction?
- Yes. The crowd reacts: gasps, recording on phones, spitting, slaps, stones of speech, and the sheriff's intervention; the crowd films him, slaps him, throws dirt, and leaves him shamed.
The End
— Thank you for reading —