They entered like they owned the world.

The armory doors finished their slow, theatrical groan and slammed to a halt, and there they were, framed by shadow and dust and memory, my two brothers stepping forward in perfect, infuriating symmetry.

Shoulder-length white hair, the exact same shade as mine, tied loosely back as if effort itself was beneath them.

Blue eyes, cold and sharp and empty, the kind that never looked at people so much as through them. They were tall—obscenely so.

Both well over six feet, broad shouldered, thick necked, built like war golems rather than princes, their bodies honed not by battle but by excess, indulgence, and the luxury of time.

Even standing still, they took up space, casting long shadows that stretched across the cracked stone floor and swallowed my feet whole.

I didn't even reach their shoulders.

Not in this body.

Not as I was now.

They wore black military armor, polished to a dull sheen, plates fitted perfectly to their frames, engraved with imperial sigils they had never earned.

It looked ridiculous on them. Offensive, even.

Neither of them had ever stepped foot onto a battlefield.

Neither of them had ever smelled blood that wasn't someone else's.

They had never faced death, never stared into the abyss and felt it stare back. They were unawakened, painfully weak, so weak it was almost funny, relying entirely on their status as imperial princes to do what their bodies and souls never could.

They bullied nobles.

They crushed commoners.

They threw their weight around because the world had never once told them no.

They were the purest form of the young master stereotype.

The kind that existed only to be humbled.

The kind that, in any half-decent story, would be beaten into the dirt by the protagonist somewhere along the road to greatness.

Except this wasn't a story.

This was my life.

And they had made sure of that.

"Well, look at this," the one on the left said, his voice smooth and dripping with mockery, every word sharpened to cut. "Did you miss us, little sister?"

The other laughed, a low, ugly sound, and stepped closer, his boots heavy against the stone. "Of course she did. Look at her. Back where she belongs."

They circled me slowly, like predators who already knew the outcome of the hunt. I could feel their presence pressing in from all sides, hear the faint creak of their armor, smell the oil and metal and faint rot of old memories clinging to them.

One of them leaned down slightly, just enough to bring his face closer to mine, blue eyes glinting with cruel amusement.

"Still small," he said. "Still weak. Guess some things never change."

They talked and talked and talked.

They always had.

They taunted me about my height, my strength, my voice, my existence. They mocked the way I used to flinch when they raised their hands, the way I used to freeze when they cornered me in places just like this.

They reminded me of the nights they'd locked me in here, thrown me into the armory and sealed the doors behind them while laughing on the other side.

They joked about the rats, about the hunger, about how long I used to cry before my voice gave out. They spoke as if it were all some grand, nostalgic game, something fondly remembered rather than the foundation of years of fear and pain.

I let them talk.

I didn't interrupt.

I didn't react.

I just stood there, breathing slowly, feeling the cold stone beneath my bare feet, listening to their voices wash over me like noise rather than truth.

When they finally ran out of things to say, when the silence stretched just long enough to make them uncomfortable, I spoke.

"When I first arrived here," I said quietly, my voice steady despite the body it came from, "I thought I'd be scared."

They stopped moving.

I lifted my head and looked at them properly, really looked at them, not as the giants of my childhood but as what they actually were.

Weak.

Hollow.

Pathetic. Wearing armor they didn't deserve, clinging to power they'd never earned.

"I thought I'd flinch when I heard your voices," I continued. "Thought my hands would shake. Thought my chest would tighten and I'd feel that old fear crawl back up my spine."

I took a step forward.

Neither of them moved.

"I thought seeing your faces again would hurt," I said. "That I'd feel angry. Or sad. Or broken."

I laughed softly, the sound low and almost surprised. "But when I look at you now?"

I met their eyes, one after the other.

"There's nothing."

No fear.

No rage.

No grief.

Just emptiness.

"You're not monsters," I went on. "You're not even villains. You're just… small men who needed a smaller girl to feel big."

For a split second, something ugly flickered across their faces. Anger. Confusion. The brief, horrifying realization that they no longer held power over me.

That second was all I needed.

I moved.

I dashed forward, my small body surging with sudden, focused intent, every ounce of hesitation burned away. My foot came up fast and precise, driven by clarity rather than strength, and I kicked the right twin straight in the nuts.

Hard.

The impact was immediate and spectacular.

He screamed.

A raw, animal sound tore out of him the instant my foot connected, a sound so loud it seemed to rattle the weapons on the racks and shake dust from the ceiling.

He stumbled back, hands flying instinctively to his groin, face contorting into something ugly and unrecognizable.

For half a heartbeat, I almost didn't recognize him as my brother at all. He wasn't a prince in that moment. He wasn't even a bully.

He was just a man in pain.

Then the pain turned into rage.

His hands opened wide, massive and shaking, fingers spread as he lunged toward me with a hoarse, wordless roar.

I saw exactly what he intended in that instant.

He wasn't thinking.

He wasn't calculating(His fat brain didn't work like that).

He just wanted to crush my face, to erase me the way he always had, to make the world go quiet again by silencing the thing that had dared to defy him.

I jumped.

My body moved before fear could catch up, before memory could drag me back into that cornered little girl.

I spun in the air, small and fast, and kicked his hand aside with the heel of my foot.

The impact jolted all the way up my leg, rattling bone and muscle, but it was enough. Enough to redirect him. Enough to break his balance.

I came down hard.

My knee slammed into his chin with a sharp, sickening crack.

His head snapped back.

I felt it, felt the give, felt the moment his strength failed him.

His mouth burst open in a strangled sound as his teeth shattered against each other, the force driving him backward like a felled statue. He hit the stone floor with a heavy, final thump that echoed through the armory.

The sound broke whatever spell his twin had been under.

I heard him gasp, a sharp intake of breath, followed by a panicked shout. He finally moved, finally reacted, finally realized this wasn't a memory he could control anymore.

Too late.

I was already turning.

I grabbed the first thing my hand found—a broken, rusted spear leaning crookedly against a rack.

It was old, pitted, barely fit for training, let alone combat. I didn't hesitate. I stepped forward and drove it into his stomach with everything I had.

The resistance shocked me.

It didn't slide through cleanly.

It punched in, stopped, bit into flesh and muscle and refused to go any further.

He screamed, a high, broken sound, and his hands flew down to the shaft, gripping it desperately as he tried to shove it back out of himself.

I didn't let him.

In my other hand, there was a sword. I didn't even remember picking it up.

I swung.

Steel met flesh with a dull, jarring impact. His scream jumped in pitch, turned hysterical as four of his fingers came away in a spray of pain and blood.

The sword lodged itself into the shaft of the spear, metal biting into metal, locking the weapons together in a grotesque embrace.

He collapsed to his knees, howling, his voice cracking, his body shaking violently as blood pooled beneath him. He wasn't shouting insults anymore. He wasn't laughing. He was begging, choking on his own breath, sobbing in broken, meaningless sounds.

I walked forward.

Slowly.

Each step felt heavy and light at the same time. I picked up another sword from a nearby rack. It felt balanced in my hand, familiar in a way this child-sized body shouldn't have understood.

I looked him in the eyes.

He looked back at me with something I had never seen there before.

Fear.

I shoved the blade straight through his neck.

The sound he made cut off instantly.

His body jerked once, twice, and then went slack, collapsing forward onto the stone like a puppet with its strings cut.

I didn't stop.

I turned.

The other twin was trying to crawl away, dragging himself across the floor, leaving a dark trail behind him. He made wet, choking noises, his hands scrabbling uselessly against the stone. When he saw me approach, his eyes widened, and he tried to speak.

I didn't give him the chance.

I drove the sword into his heart.

The resistance was brief. Then it was gone.

He went still.

The armory fell silent again.

I stood there, breathing hard, my small chest rising and falling as my hands trembled around the hilt of the sword. My brothers lay dead at my feet, their armor dull and meaningless, their power finally stripped away.

I didn't feel triumph.

I didn't feel relief.

I just felt… done.

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