FFXIVWrite 2025 prompt: Denounce
Sometime during the Garlean occupation of Gyr Abania.
They sat at the table like nothing had happened. Like Johanna’s body hadn’t been discovered floating face down in the lake. Like her parents hadn’t begged on their knees for justice while the whole city turned their backs.
Her father muttered about trade routes and stability, about how things were better now. Her mother chimed in with the same tired litany—cheaper spices, finer cloth, no more raids from beasts. As if a few bolts of silk could buy off the memory of Johanna’s broken body. As if the Empire hadn’t pissed its mark into the very soil they’d once called home.
Shaelen slammed her hand down on the table hard enough to rattle the cutlery. “Better now?” she spat, eyes blazing. “Tell that tae Jo. Tell that tae her parents, if ya can still remember their faces. Or did ya bury them along with yer bloody spines?”
“Shaelen—” her mother started, voice thin with warning.
“Don’t,” Shaelen snapped, standing so fast her chair skidded back and toppled. “Don’t ya dare shush me. Ya watched them. Ya watched them crawl, beg, and ya said nothin’. Ya let those bastards—those boys, not even men—walk away smilin’ while Johanna’s family was run out like criminals!”
Her father’s face flushed, but not with shame. “Careful, girl. Ye think yer brave, but words like that will see ye beaten. Or worse.”
Shaelen laughed, bitter and sharp. “Spoken like a true coward. Is that all ya are now? Bow and scrape, smile at yer masters, pretend their boots aren’t on yer neck? Ya disgust me.”
Her mother reached for her arm, eyes wide with fear. “Please, Shaelen. You don’t understand. We must keep our heads down—”
“Keep our heads down?!” Shael ripped her arm away. “That’s all ya ever done. Heads down, eyes shut, lips sealed. And fer what? So ya can pretend your life still means something? Jo meant something. And ya let them get away with–” She scowled, unable to finish that thought. “Ya let them take everything.”
They stared at her, mouths opening and closing, but no words came. Nothing but the sound of cowards choking on their own excuses.
Shaelen felt the heat of tears but swallowed them down, turned them bitter. They didn’t bother trying to soothe her, the time for that was long gone. And she shut herself in her room, until they left for yet another soiree to court the favors of murderers. Shaelen stormed downstairs and stripped her father’s gun cabinet bare, the weight of each pistol in her arms a bitter kind of justice. She took her mother’s jewelry box too, snapping shut the lid on a lifetime of careful vanity. And for herself, she stole her grandfather’s last bottle of rum—because vengeance went down easier with fire in the belly.
Before she left, she stood in the doorway, brush in hand, her pulse hammering. She dipped deep into the stolen red paint, dragged the Garlean insignia bold and ugly across the clean white wood. The center she scrawled thick, dripping, until it bled down like a wound that would never close.
Let the sun rise on their fine doors tomorrow to that sight. Let the neighbors whisper. Let her parents flinch every time they passed through it.
She dropped the brush, shouldered her pack, and walked into the night without looking back.
And she swore—by Johanna’s name, by every drop of blood that had been spilled—that she would never return.
