Chapter Text
“What are you?” The words leave Felix’s throat with difficulty as he tries to speak around his heavy tongue. He’s frozen on his bed, limbs feeling like lead lying on the mattress, unable to move no matter how hard he tries. His chest is tight with pressure, breathing becoming harder by the second. The monster, or maybe demon — Felix can’t tell — standing beside his bed is eerily still, observing him silently.
A lamp, albeit dim, is lit in the corner of the room, illuminating the monster’s features. Black, lifeless eyes gaze unamusedly at him, serrated nails coming up to swipe away strands of long hair, and large, jagged wings jut from the creature’s back. It yawns, rows of sharp teeth bared to the room, forked tongue quivering, and the piercing in the room of its mouth gleams in the bedroom’s scarce lighting. Fingers twitch at the ends of two sets of arms, three extra pairs of eyes along the monster’s temples blinking sluggishly at Felix.
Feeling slowly creeps back into Felix’s body, and a muscle in his calf spasms uncomfortably. “What are you?” he repeats uneasily, easing himself up and sitting against the headboard.
“Did you think you were safe?” rasps the monster, voice shaking Felix to his core.
“Safe from what?” Felix is growing increasingly alarmed, and he tries not to look at the monster for too long, fear spiraling up his esophagus and squeezing .
The creature’s tongue flicks out a few times to wet its thin lips, and it reminds Felix of a snake. He trembles. “You and your team are playing a dangerous game. The supernatural realm isn’t something to be toyed with.”
Felix’s airway is quickly closing up as the monster continues.
“There is a price for involvement in our dimension. Are you ready to pay it?” The creature steps forward, wings trailing along the floor. When Felix doesn’t respond, mind racing, the monster speaks again, “I find it odd that you haven’t realized the weight of your actions.”
Felix, trying to get a hold of himself, takes a deep breath, turning to the monster. He gazes into its eyes and has to resist the urge to gag. “I’m not afraid of you. This is only a dream, you can’t hurt me.” Felix knows that isn’t entirely true even as he says it. He’s been in the monster-hunting business too long to ignore what’s really going on. He’s in danger, but he doesn’t want to admit it. “We— We have spells for this, you shouldn’t be here.”
The creature tilts its head to the side, black eyes narrowing as it scrutinizes him. It shuffles closer, putting a finger underneath Felix’s chin and angling his neck up to lock gazes. “Even in dreams, there is fear. You should understand that by now, Felix. Would you like me to demonstrate?”
Felix’s breath catches in his throat as the monster’s nail trails along his jawline. How is he supposed to defend himself? What can he do to safely escape the situation? The more time passes, the more he realizes there’s a chance he won’t get out of this alive. He surveys what he can of the room, but nothing he sees looks like it will be of help. “What do you want?” he dares to ask, breathing so shallowly that his chest starts to hurt.
The monster pauses, retracts its arm, clasps its hands behind its back. “A trade.”
Felix is silent, stomach dropping. His panic must be written on his face, because the monster laughs at him, terrifying and mocking. It’s as if multiple people have entered one body, voices overlapping, some deeper than others, and the sound grates on Felix’s ears, a chill running down his spine.
“I don’t understand,” he says because he doesn’t. What exactly did the monster want to trade? He has a hunch, and it has nausea crashing over him in waves.
“You’ve taken many a life from my realm. It is only fair that we take in return.”
“You…” Felix begins to panic properly, the thought of his team in danger sending him spiraling. “Take me,” he’s saying the words before his brain properly registers them, and the urge to throw up on the spot is nearly overpowering.
The monster laughs again. “Yes, that’ll do quite nicely. But nothing is ever that easy, Felix. I’m disappointed that you would be so naive as to think I’d be merciful.”
Before he can reply, the creature is on him, two hands around his neck and the other two pinning his arms to the bed.
“This’ll be fun,” the monster spits, a grin painting its face something grotesque. Felix, horrified and confused, struggles against the creature’s hold, crying out when it only tightens. For a moment, he thinks maybe nothing will happen, because there’s no movement and his ears have started ringing as if the world has gone quiet, but then—
He sees the pain before he feels it. The bone in his left arm has been snapped clean in two, but he doesn’t have it in him to scream. The skin is still intact. His vision goes white, pain erupting along his elbow and through his shoulder, swirling around his collarbones. He shakes terribly, gasps for air, grabs at the monster’s wings with his good arm. It’s no use, though, because then he’s falling, and someone is yelling, and people are crying, and what the fuck is going on—
When Felix wakes back up in his realm, it’s to an agonizing throb in his left arm. Chan is yelling orders to Changbin, who looks frantic, and fuck why is Felix not able to move? He thinks he hears Hyunjin and Jeongin crying into each other off to the side, but he’s too drained to try and look. Seungmin comes running in, or at least Felix thinks it’s Seungmin, and he’s proven right when the man’s face comes into view above him.
“Lix? Lixie, can you hear me?” he asks desperately, trying to move Felix so he’s sitting up. Felix doesn’t respond, body twitching with shock, and Seungmin curses. “I need you to listen to me very carefully. I’m going to move you, and then Changbin is going to help me heal you, all right? You’re gonna be okay, we’re gonna take care of you.”
Felix lies there helplessly, tears streaming down his cheeks and dripping into his hair, and Seungmin curses again. “ What the fuck happened ?” he calls to Chan, still trying to get Felix into a sitting position.
“I don’t know!” Chan cries, and shit Felix doesn’t think he’s ever heard Chan sound so distraught. “One minute he was sleeping just fine and the next he was having a seizure — his arm’s broken, I have no fucking clue—”
“Okay, all right,” Seungmin cuts in, successfully propping Felix up against the pillows. “Changbin, get over here.”
Changbin runs over, eyes wildly searching Felix for any other injuries, and when he doesn’t find any he relaxes only slightly.
“Do you have the spellbook? The potions?” hisses Seungmin, and Changbin holds both things up from where they’re tucked under his arm. “Good, we have to hurry.”
Felix hasn’t registered a word of what’s being said around him, so overwhelmed that passing out sounds leagues above whatever is happening with his teammates, and when he tries to get a sentence out, his mouth feels too swollen. Changbin opens the spellbook, he and Seungmin flip through the pages quickly, and they stop when they get to the section they need.
A small vial is held up to Felix’s lips as he’s urged to drink, so he does, gagging after as his stomach turns within him. There are more curses and someone is still crying, but Felix feels himself start to drift away, head up in the clouds. He’s not quite sleeping, not quite conscious, but it’s a nice reprieve from all that’s happened tonight. With whispered promises of “ we’ll be right here when you wake up, sweetheart,” Felix lets himself slip under, body going completely slack and mind numb.
He’s brought back to reality a few hours later when the potion starts to wear off and his fear starts creeping back in.
“I’m scared ,” he hears someone say. It sounds like Jisung. “How did this happen? Monsters shouldn’t be able to apparate in dreams — especially not with the protection we have.”
“Let’s wait until Felix wakes up, then we can talk about it further, okay? Guessing what happened isn’t getting us anywhere, it might not have been a monster,” comes Minho’s voice, calm but unmistakably shaky.
“Then what could it have been, hyung? You saw the marks yourself, you saw how bad Lix’s arm was. How else would you explain this?”
Felix shifts a bit, groaning when an ache pulses through his body. His eyes flutter open and the voices stop.
“Baby?” Hyunjin calls, hesitant, and Felix groans again, tongue still feeling heavy.
“He’s awake,” says Chan, who has his hands settled in Felix’s hair, combing through it with gentle fingers. The panic from earlier is gone, but the atmosphere is still incredibly tense, and Felix wishes he could go back to the clouds. “Hey, sweetheart.” Chan presses a kiss to his forehead. Felix whines in response, eyes scrunching closed again.
“My arm,” he slurs, throat dry. His voice breaks on the second syllable. “Is it still there?” Talking takes great effort, which Felix finds infuriating, and he huffs after he gets the sentence out. Chan shushes him softly, still scratching along his scalp.
“Your arm is fine, baby.” A beat of silence passes and Chan looks to the others nervously before continuing. “Minnie patched you up, you’re gonna be all right.”
“And me,” adds Changbin.
Chan nods and smiles softly. “And Binnie.”
It’s quiet for another moment, but their silence is interrupted when Seungmin speaks up from where everyone else is seated at the end of the bed. “Can you tell us what happened?”
Felix swallows in an attempt to soothe his raw throat, shifting uncomfortably. “Monster,” he manages, “Came for me in my dreams.”
“I told you,” Jisung whispers, sounding rather nauseated.
Chan tenses and the others barely move when the words are uttered. Felix turns his head to hide his face in Chan’s belly.
“What else?” inquires Minho, face pale in the bedroom’s warm lighting.
“It said I had to pay,” Felix chokes out, beginning to tremble again. “Said— Said it needed me for all the lives we’ve taken from its realm.”
Hyunjin begins to silently cry once more, and Felix presses his face as hard as he can into Chan’s tummy. “You’re okay, you’re safe,” soothes Chan, but Felix feels far from it. Minho pulls Hyunjin into his lap and wraps him in a hug, and Jeongin gently rubs his arm.
“But I’m not . The next time I go to sleep they’ll be waiting for me.”
“We’re gonna figure this out,” Changbin assures, moving closer to smooth a hand down Felix’s leg. “You’re not alone.”
And maybe, Felix can bring himself to believe them.
The next several hours go by in a blur. Felix’s team talks through what happened and plans start to take form in their heads. Seungmin finds a spell he thinks will help, and the others agree, so they try it. He’s sure that the monster won’t be able to come back, and so is Chan, but despite that, Felix barely gets any sleep, too afraid to even close his eyes.
When he finally slips under, the dream realm blinks into focus a little unsteadily, Felix’s vision blurred around the edges. He pushes himself onto his elbows, dread coiling in his gut, and when he looks towards the door, he’s greeted by the familiar face of the monster from last time. “No, no, no, this isn’t happening , we’re not doing this,” he whimpers, flinging the covers back, ready to throw himself from the bed.
“Hello again,” the monster greets, looking far too pleased for Felix’s liking. “I see you’ve recovered from our last encounter.
“ Leave me alone ,” spits Felix. “Seungmin’s spell should’ve fixed this!”
“Seungmin should’ve known that spell wasn’t strong enough. You can’t undo the mark of a beast so simply.”
Wait. The mark of a beast?
“What?” Felix trembles and pales considerably. “I was marked?”
“Foolish human. How did you not work that out on your own?” The monster is advancing slowly, and panic closes in on Felix. Because really, how could he have been so stupid? Monsters can’t reach hunters outside the supernatural realm unless they’ve been marked, but that thought hadn’t even crossed Felix’s mind. He’s being targeted, and he’s racking his brain for anything he might’ve learned in his earlier years on how to rid himself of such dark magic.
“I–I didn’t—”
“Think? Oh yes, that’s quite evident.” The monster stands right next to Felix’s bed. He can smell its breath from where he sits. “Should I take my time with you?” it rasps, eyeing him like something to be devoured. “Where do you think it would hurt the most?” A fingernail is pressed to the side of Felix’s neck, and he recoils, backing into the wall.
“Don’t touch me!”
The creature doesn’t react, just moves closer. Like the first time, Felix isn’t sure when it happens. One minute he’s cowering, the next he’s being slammed into the bed, and the skin of his left leg is being split down the entire length of it. He doesn’t have it in him to scream, just lies there convulsing in shock, blood oozing from the gash. The monster might’ve torn through the muscle, but Felix isn’t sure, too busy reeling from the pain.
Once again, Felix wakes to chaos. It’s more controlled than last time, and he can barely register what’s going on, but it’s still a lot for his brain to keep up with.
Seungmin is quick to be at his side, spellbook in hand, and Felix doesn’t realize he’s been crying until Jisung wipes away his tears. “Why didn’t it work ?” Jisung hisses, trying to stay calm but giving himself away with sweaty palms and shaking fingers. Felix wishes everything would just stop .
“You told me I would be safe,” he chokes, teardrops pooling in his ears.
Seungmin is calling out for Changbin again, and they rush around the room in search of something, though Felix isn’t sure what. He doesn’t understand half of what is being said around him, but when Jisung takes his hands and squeezes firmly to ground him, he focuses on that for a bit, panting heavily, gaze distant.
“You— you said the spell would work,” he breathes, on the edge of consciousness. The pain coursing through him is enough to have him slipping in and out of an agonized stupor.
“I know, I know, I don’t know why it didn’t work, pixie, but we’re gonna fix this, you hear me? You gotta hang on, we’re gonna fix this.”
Chan is off to the side, watching them anxiously, near tears. He looks like he wants to say or do something, but holds himself back as Seungmin and Changbin rush around him.
“Here, try this,” Seungmin shoves a vial into Changbin’s hands and pushes him towards Felix. Changbin rushes to uncap it and holds it to Felix’s lips, muttering something under his breath. The world lurches abruptly to the right after he takes a sip, and he leans over the side of the bed, stomach heaving violently as he vomits. Acid stings his eyes and burns his nose, the taste clinging to his tongue unpleasantly. Chan hurries over, tissues in hand, wiping up Felix’s face as Seungmin curses loudly from further out. Bottles and jugs clatter noisily as he searches for something else. “His body’s rejecting it, we gotta try a different potion.”
“Why don’t you give him what he had last time?” calls Jisung, frantic and a little green after Felix’s mishap.
“We used the last of it that night and there wasn’t enough time to make more,” snaps Seungmin, plucking a ceramic jar from a shelf and removing the lid. It’s filled with a fine, pretty colored powder. “This might work,” he sidles up to Felix and holds the jar under his nose. “Sniff.”
Felix obeys, and immediately — finally — his chest expands with relief. Whatever’s in the jar smells delightful, and he forgets about his pain the second the scent hits him. His mind grows fuzzier, but this time, it’s a pleasant, warm sort of fuzziness, akin to the kind he experienced the first night the monster had paid him a visit. Floaty .
“What is that?” Chan breathes, coming closer, arms crossed, polished nails digging into meaty biceps.
“Dream essence,” replies Seungmin, “Fairies use it in their farming. Keeps the crops healthy year round, and, when filtered properly, acts as an anesthetic — in more concentrated doses, an aphrodisiac.”
Jisung’s brows relax marginally, the creases in his forehead smoothing out a bit. He continues to gently stroke his thumb over the back of Felix’s hands, making himself comfortable where he sits. Felix would be okay.
He would be okay.
“How're you feeling, buggy?”
Felix’s eyes flutter open to see Minho at his side, worried but unmistakably tender. He blanks for a moment, and after a few seconds, everything that happened comes back to him in an overwhelming rush of images and echoes. He sits up abruptly, hands flying out to clutch at Minho’s shirt. “I was marked,” he rasps, “I was marked— you— you have to find where they—”
“Woah, woah, hey, slow down. I’m not going anywhere,” Minho, eyes wide, sits beside Felix, full attention on him. “You were marked ? Where?”
“I don’t know ,” cries Lix, chest heaving. He glances to his leg to see the damage that had been done, but a blanket covers his lower body, and he realizes that maybe it’s best that he doesn’t see what it looks like. “It said Seungmin’s spell was nowhere near strong enough to undo the mark of a beast, but Min, wouldn’t I have felt it? How did we not know?”
Minho’s gaze drops to Felix’s hands and he inhales shakily. “Not necessarily, no. The mark of a beast can’t always be felt — or seen for that matter — which explains why you didn’t know, buggy. You couldn’t have.”
Felix deflates, sinking back into the pillows again. He lets himself cry silently. “I just want this to be over.”
The room’s door is open, and a few of his teammates sit off to the side, the rest of them bustling about the house in hopes of finding something that’ll help in any way. They’re quiet as they watch the two of them converse, but it’s apparent that they’re all shocked by the news, varying expressions of alarm passing over their faces. Minho shuffles closer. “I think I know how to end this.”
Felix frowns. “You do?”
“I think… I think we have to kill the one that marked you. The Nightbridge Tome— Jisung, where’s my copy?”
“In the library,” he responds, already heading to retrieve it. Only a couple of minutes pass before he returns with it, handing it off to Minho with hopeful eyes. Minho, eager and impatient, skims through the book until he finds the chapter he needs.
“Here it is!” He presses a finger to the page, following the letters as he reads. “‘To properly undo the mark of a beast, one must find and kill the monster which afflicted him, but it must be the heart that is cut out and burned, lest the monster is reborn from its old flesh’.” He keeps the book in his lap, meeting Felix’s gaze.
“You mean… we have to face the one from my dreams?”
“It’ll be no different from any other hunt, we can be in and out.”
“Felix isn’t coming,” Chan speaks up softly for the first time in a bit, watching the aforementioned man carefully, concerned.
“Of course not,” agrees Minho easily, shutting the book and standing from his spot on the bed.
“What? No, I’m going with you guys. You don’t even know what the monster looks like.”
“No, you’re not. You’re still recovering, and if you go while you’re marked, you’re much more susceptible to possession. Seungmin can get a read on the monster’s bond with you, we can handle it,” replies Chan, regretting the words as soon as Felix’s features light up in anger.
“I feel fine!”
“It doesn’t change the fact that you’re marked.”
“I’m not helpless, Chan!”
“No, you’re not, but Lix, what if you go in there and get yourself killed? I swore to protect you, but I can’t protect you from everything. It’s too dangerous.”
“You think I don’t know that? I’ve hunted before, this is no different! I was just bleeding out, for fuck’s sake!”
“It is different, Lix. You know that.”
“Enough,” says Minho, coming back in carrying a fluffy throw in his arms. He sets it on the bed. “You’re both emotionally drained, let’s not escalate things. Felix, you’re staying. Chan, so are you.”
Chan turns to Minho, incredulous. “What? We’ve gotta kill this thing!”
“Someone needs to stay with Lixie. The rest of us will go — we’ll be back as soon as we can.”
Crossing his arms and frowning, Chan meets Felix’s eyes before he silently leaves the room. Felix swallows around the lump in his throat. “Be careful,” he whispers, voice coming out hoarse as he feels a few salty tears drip into his mouth. “Please.”
Minho’s face softens as he turns warm eyes to him. “We will. Minnie’s already found a connection, it’s just a quick hunt.”
Nodding, Felix rolls onto his side and curls into himself, gazing ahead at nothing. For a while that’s all it is — it’s just nothing . His mind is elsewhere, and he hears people coming and going, but all he can think about is Chan’s words and how he looked at him before leaving. His heart aches.
Minho comes in after several minutes to tell him they’re leaving, and Felix manages to give him a hug and wish everyone luck, but he goes back to spacing out soon after. He can hear Chan further out in the house, pacing the halls, muttering to himself — probably casting a protection spell over the others.
Felix calls his name softly and the pacing stops. There’s a moment of silence where Chan doesn’t move, but after a few seconds, footsteps sound down the corridor and he appears in the doorway.
“What is it?” he asks, attempting to mask his worry with a frown.
Felix hears it in his tone, though, and his eyebrows draw together. “Please,” he whispers, chest stuttering on a trembling exhale. Chan seems to deflate a bit, expression crumbling, and he shuffles over to Felix. When he’s close enough, Felix pulls him down into a hug, clutching him with all his might. “Don’t leave.”
Chan feels tears spring to his eyes, hesitates, leans further forward. “I won’t, darling. I won’t.”
“Please.” Felix holds him closer still, attempting to take in deep breaths. He’s not quite sure what he’s pleading for at this point — for the others to make it back safely, for this all to be over, for his pain to be taken away — but if Chan were to leave him alone like this, he feels as though he might cave in on himself.
“Hey, you’re all right. Don’t go giving up on me, now. The others will kill the monster and you’ll be just fine, okay? You’re all right, sweetheart.”
Felix nods into his shoulder, shuddering. Chan pulls away to settle into bed next to him, tugging him close again once they’re situated. Lips are pressed to Felix's temple, and he closes his eyes, relaxing into the touch.
“You’re gonna be just fine, baby.”