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“It can complete us, or it can destroy us, and it can change the world. People call it ‘treasure’.”
In the tomb there was only dust and broken pieces. With careful and expert hands Hongjoong picked up a porcelain shard and studied it. It was ancient. In the dim light he could barely make out its royal blue color, golden lines engraved all around it. But it was beautiful, he could tell that much, and it was precious, its weight no joke in his hands. He knew an important artifact when he touched it.
There was an old legend of an arrogant prince who’d been cursed, his gilded world collapsing the moment he’d fallen in love. Historians were unsure who his breakable heart had belonged to, but Hongjoong was nothing if not dedicated and thorough. He knew the answer lay in these broken porcelain pieces. They’d called him crazy for chasing such an old and unreliable legend, full of spirits and gods and cursed princes, but Hongjoong had never stopped believing that it was all real. It went that the cursed prince—leading wars, heir to the throne—had been too arrogant for his own good, bringing his nation into extinction the day he’d died. The legend claimed that the prince had killed a god, and said god had cursed him. Hongjoong found it exciting to imagine a world where gods could be killed, princes could be cursed, and hearts could be treasures.
He’d never let go of this legend, of its legitimacy, even if his colleagues had mocked him and called him delusional. There was a firm belief in the History department of the college Hongjoong taught at that he was wasting his time chasing this myth. But Hongjoong found a crypt, and in it, he located a tomb with a shattered vase of gold and royal blue. The tomb of a prince of a nation that had long been forgotten; its name untranslatable; its language dead. Hongjoong recognized its swirls and curves, and although he could only guess what the words meant, he’d never been more certain of anything in his life.
“Here lies Prince Seonghwa, a god amongst royalty,” he read, finding it a fitting description.
The room of the prince wasn’t big. The rest of the royal family crypt was buried deep under stones and dust, undoubtedly in an unrecognizable shape. He wouldn’t be able to explore them, but it didn’t really matter. Hongjoong had come for the cursed prince, and he had found him.
After carefully wrapping the vase’s pieces in a blanket, storing the package in his backpack, Hongjoong took pictures of the prince’s tomb, the flash lighting up all dark corners, making him notice a small gap in the wall near the entrance of the crypt. He approached it carefully, using his flashlight to see better. The gap was narrow and covered with spiderwebs, but Hongjoong felt a steady breeze coming out of it. He shone his flashlight into the gap, finding a large, dark room. The light didn’t reach all its corners, but he saw something standing in the center of the room. It was about waist high, made of blocks—some of which were corroded and had fallen off. It looked like a well.
Hongjoong stared at it, frowning. He possessed a reconstructed map of the buried palace’s crypt; there wasn’t supposed to be a room there.
Hongjoong knew very well that he could be wrong, that his map wasn’t as accurate as he believed it to be. Still, the room and the well made him halt, a chill creeping up his back. With his breath caught, pondering whether he should attempt to squeeze through the gap or leave it be—it was dangerous to enter tight spaces in ruins as they were in a continuous danger of collapsing—he nearly missed the faint whisper. It seemed to come from the well.
Hongjoong was endlessly curious.
The whisper, at first sounding like the wind, steadily grew into a voice, but it was too distant and muffled for Hongjoong to understand properly. He had to get closer to the well if he wanted to know what that voice was telling him. He left his backpack by the mouth of the gap, and squeezed himself through, then he carefully pulled his backpack after himself. A chill ran up his body, it was colder in this room. He shone his flashlight up, the ceiling was too high for him to see. There were no doors or secret gaps in this room, the only entrance and exit was the one he’d come through.
Hongjoong approached the well, shivers dancing on his skin. He was trembling—both fear and reverence making his body taut. He studied the well: it was filled to the brim, but not with water. He wasn’t sure what he was staring at. It was dark and had the visual effect of liquid swirling around in circles as if an invisible finger was moving it, but when Hongjoong looked closer he could see little wafts of smoke rising at its edges, dissolving. It appeared to be smoke. Hesitantly, he threw a pebble into it. It fell through, smoke pouring out of the collision point.
At first nothing happened.
“Who dares disturb the Spirits of the well?” a distorted voice whispered from the depth of the well, louder than the other whispers.
Hongjoong flinched back, nearly falling.
The dark smoke in the well began to sputter and rise, taking shape. Hongjoong stared in astonishment and fear. He was paralyzed, his flashlight pointing at the floor. He didn’t need it anymore. The well had awakened the room, blue fluorescent lights were dancing everywhere like will-o’-the-wisps. The dark smoke materialized in front of Hongjoong in the form of a young man.
“Who are you, stranger?”
Hongjoong was too perplexed to respond.
The young man approached him, threateningly. He was tall but not too broad. He had raven black hair that fell graciously around his elegant face. If Hongjoong looked closely he could see the edges of the man flicker and dissolve.
“Who are you, awakening the old Spirits of the well? Do you seek advice?”
“N-No,” Hongjoong stuttered.
The young man stared at him, seemingly waiting for Hongjoong to elaborate, so he did.
“I came here to find the cursed prince’s tomb; to see if the legends were true; to find his treasure—”
“His treasure?” the young man interrupted. His gaze was dark and distrustful. “Are you a grave robber?”
“No! I’m an archaeologist,” Hongjoong defended his name. He then nervously clarified, “The broken vase. I found it. I’ll repair it and—”
“It won’t fix the prince,” the young man interrupted him again. “Leave the vase here, with his tomb, where it belongs.”
“But—”
“He reaped what he sowed. It’s his eternal punishment: to remember his mistake.”
Hongjoong wasn’t going to let this strange spirit ruin his lifelong search for the cursed prince’s tomb. He mustered up courage and faced the ghost, challengingly. “Who are you anyway? Will you kill me if I attempt to leave?”
“I will not kill you, I cannot do that,” the young man said. “I am the protector of the well, and once,” he hesitated, his dark eyes searching Hongjoong, “I was a cursed prince.”
The words were heavy, sinking into Hongjoong’s consciousness with such a weight that he realized the spirit—the cursed prince—had been speaking his dead language this whole time, but somehow Hongjoong had perfectly understood him, and vice-versa. He wondered if it was part of this room, some kind of ancient magic. (If he was speaking to ghosts, he wasn’t going to discard the idea of magic.)
“You are… Seonghwa?” Hongjoong wondered with difficulty. The joy of finding the prince’s tomb was slowly ebbing away as another, powerful sensation was rising in him. This was the prince, the legend he’d been seeking. There was nothing more valuable than that; as a historian, to face the figure one had studied for countless hours, knowing them inside out, speculating about every aspect of their life, was bewildering. “You—”
“Indeed. I am Seonghwa, Prince of—”
“My god, you’re real,” Hongjoong muttered, falling to his knees.
Seonghwa’s face was blank, but Hongjoong detected a hint of resentment at being interrupted.
Hongjoong couldn’t help himself, he was overjoyed and excited. Questions upon questions piled up in his mind, sentences built and fell like empires, and he was left to stare at the cursed prince like a child witnessing a miracle. It was a miracle. In all his eagerness, he forgot manners and social politeness, and asked the one question that’d been in his mind ever since he’d learned that Seonghwa had died of a broken heart.
Seonghwa, a youthful and adored prince, but unmarried—unmarried until death. Hongjoong wasn’t one to fill himself with forced hope, he was realistic about his goals and illusions: the cursed prince had always been a tangible finding for him; the idea that the cursed prince had been in love with a man was another firm theory of his. He’d defended dead historical figures and the possibility of queer stories hiding behind them. The cursed prince was such a story, one Hongjoong had fought hard for. It held an important, personal meaning to him.
Without filter or consideration, he asked, “Who was it that you were in love with—that broke your heart?”
Seonghwa stared at him, coldly. “Is that the reason you have seeked the Spirits of the well?”
“No!” Hongjoong squeaked, embarrassed. “Yes?” he added, unsure. Waking up spirits hadn’t exactly been a possibility he’d considered when entering the tomb. He wasn’t sure what he would have asked, knowing he was seeking out ancient spirits—seeking out the cursed prince himself.
“Which one is it, stranger?”
“I want to know,” Hongjoong answered, “but it’s not my reason to have seeked you out. In all fairness, I didn’t know you existed. Not like this,” he explained, hoping to lessen some of the prince’s obvious anger.
Seonghwa stayed quiet for a while, staring at Hongjoong unwaveringly. Then he said, “You remind me of him.”
It was more of an answer than Hongjoong had been ready for. He startled, his cheeks turning pink. Not only did it verify his theory, but it gave him an image of who the prince had once loved.
“I—What?”
“You are like him: lacking any manners,” Seonghwa clarified. “He was an honest and brave knight, but his boldness knew no limits. He spoke his mind without thinking of the consequences too much.” He smiled, wistfully. “His poor wife; she often complained to me about him.”
“In that case, we aren’t that alike. I’m unmarried.”
Seonghwa simply stared at him, unimpressed, and Hongjoong felt another blush creep up his cheeks. “Unmarried at your age?”
Hongjoong frowned. He’d learned not to care much about what others thought of him, but he couldn’t deny that he was a little offended by Seonghwa’s question.
“I won’t marry. It’s not really my thing.”
Seonghwa appraised him for a few more seconds, but then he sighed. “I suppose I am in no place to judge you. I never married myself.”
“And you home-wrecked your knight’s marriage,” Hongjoong added without thinking. He flinched at the harshness of his own words, but thankfully the prince didn’t seem to understand him.
Seonghwa tilted his head. “Home-wrecked?”
“Oh, you know, you ruined it. By falling in love with the knight, you ruined their marriage.”
“Their marriage was not one of love. I hardly ruined it,” Seonghwa defended himself, looking utterly offended.
“Alright. Whatever you say.”
A brief, uncomfortable silence spread out. Hongjoong went over the conversation, a little shocked and spooked that he was actually talking to Prince Seonghwa. He momentarily forgot what he’d even come to the tomb for. He sat down, dust flying up, and just stared at what he was seeing, hoping it would engrave itself into his mind so that he won’t ever forget it.
Seemingly tired of the silence, Seonghwa cleared his throat, and told him, “The vase is irreparable. Kismet made sure of it. I’m afraid you have come for nothing, archaeologist.”
Hongjoong blinked, snapping out of reverie. “Maybe when you were alive it was impossible, but society has progressed greatly since then—”
“You do not listen. Kismet—the one who cursed me—made sure it was irreparable. You can put the pieces back together, but it will just be that, a pretty vase.” He sounded bitter. “A treasure, as you called it.”
Hongjoong’s nose scrunched up in confusion. “Well, what else is supposed to happen?”
“You don’t—You aren’t trying to bring me back?” Seonghwa sounded genuinely surprised. It made Hongjoong laugh.
“I didn’t even know that was possible.”
“It is not.”
Hongjoong humme. “Yeah, you said so.”
It was undoubtedly awkward now. Both of them held wildly different expectations in one another, which were now ebbing out in waves, leaving them with nothing.
“Why have you come here?” Seonghwa asked him after another prolonged silence. He was studying Hongjoong distrustfully, but not meanly, like he was getting used to his strange presence.
“My whole career I was told I was crazy for believing that your story was real, that somewhere your grave existed. I was determined to find you, and your broken heart.” He contemplated his answer, and added, “I never thought I’d actually find you.”
“You gave up on yourself? How pitiful.”
“No,” Hongjoong said, frowning. “I believed you were out there, I just didn’t think I would find you.”
Seonghwa hummed, unconvinced. There was an arrogance to him that made Hongjoong feel a little uncomfortable and annoyed, but he supposed it was normal for a prince to be arrogant.
“What were you going to do with the vase now?”
“Study it, put it back together.” Hongjoong shrugged. “Have it on display in my home.”
Seonghwa pressed his lips together, visibly displeased with that answer. “You should not take it with you. It is a cursed heart, no good will come if you try taking it with you.” The warning was ominous. Hongjoong wanted to inquire about it, but Seonghwa spoke before he could even formulate his question, “You aren’t the first to seek out my broken heart.”
“Oh.” Hongjoong blanched. “Oh. So, others have come to your tomb? Others have known about you?”
Seonghwa nodded. “You are the first one in a very long time.”
“What happened to them? To those that came before me, that tried to take your heart?”
Seonghwa was quiet for a long time, staring into the well. “They perished.”
Hongjoong shivered. The vase suddenly becoming heavy in his bag, his back tingling with the phantom of fear.
“Did they try taking the vase with them like I am?”
Seonghwa shook his head. He seemed reluctant to answer. “Have you ever heard of a dead royal’s blessing?”
Hongjoong swallowed. He thought maybe he knew what direction this was taking, and knew why the others had perished. There was an old legend Hongjoong had often heard as a child, about seeking out a royal’s spirit and asking it for eternal wealth—a dead royal’s blessing, they called it. Except that the gold belonging to the dead wasn’t redeemable. The legend of a dead royal’s blessing always finished the same way: death. The thieves and plunderers died under mysterious circumstances, their stolen treasures staying in the hands of the dead. Once a treasure belonged to death, it couldn’t be retrieved.
Nothing returned from the dead.
“The living always think they can cheat death,” Seonghwa said with contempt. “Once that was my undoing, too. The arrogance of the living knows no bounds.”
“Then I should leave the vase here. Is that what you’re telling me?”
Seonghwa held his gaze for a moment. “You’re the first, in a long time, that has touched my heart.” Hongjoong wrinkled his nose at the oddly intimate undertones of the statement. “It is a treasure. Taking it with you may bestow the dead royal’s blessing on you.”
“I don’t want to risk that,” Hongjoong said, slowly.
Briefly, he wondered whether he should’ve believed in this blessing-slash-curse or not, then he remembered he was talking to the ghost of a prince that materialized out of a well filled with strange smoke, so he probably should believe in the dead royal’s blessing.
Unzipping his backpack, Hongjoong took out the broken vase. He set down the cloth carefully—scared he’d break it further—and unwrapped it. The golden and royal blue colors shimmered beautifully.
Slowly, Seonghwa knelt down, his hands stretched out and trembling, like he couldn’t believe his eyes. Hongjoong realized it’d probably been a while since he’d seen his own heart—possibly since his death. Surprisingly, Seonghwa’s hands didn’t drift through the vase like Hongjoong had expected them to. (It was kind of an unspoken ghost-rule, that they couldn’t physically touch things. At least in modern folklore.)
Seonghwa ran his thumb over the swirls and curls painted on the vase, his face shadowed with sadness and something else—something dark. Hongjoong imagined it must not be easy what he was going through.
“Maybe that’s the problem,” Hongjoong spoke, thoughtful. “You are hoping to fix it, to put it back together. You can’t fix a broken heart.”
Seonghwa frowned. “But my broken heart hardly can be compared with heartbreak. It is physically broken.”
“But it’s still a heart—your heart,” Hongjoong insisted, thinking about the best solution for a broken heart.
The times he’d gotten his heart broken, revenge and dressing dramatically followed for months, but eventually it’d been time and moving forward that had eased it. They still haunted him, but he wasn’t heartbroken anymore.
Snapping his fingers, he turned to Seonghwa, who was startled by the gesture. “Maybe that’s what you need: closure!”
“Closure?” Seonghwa sounded doubtful.
“You were never able to mend your broken heart. To heal. You just died and became a spirit haunting your own tomb.” Seonghwa parted his lips, to protest. “No, listen to me, Seonghwa.” The prince sniffed with offense at the casual way he was being addressed. “Closure is important to be able to let go. Do you want to be in this well; in this cave forever? Until the world ceases to exist? Watching lost travelers and crazy historians stumble upon your tomb, finding your broken heart?”
Seonghwa regarded the idea for a moment. “I suppose not,” he admitted. “But, tell me, how do you know the world will cease to exist?”
“I think it’s inevitable,” Hongjoong replied, swatting his hand in the air. The end of the world really wasn’t the important topic here. “So, what do you say? Should we try finding you closure?”
Seonghwa stilled, tall and prideful, and stared at Hongjoong, taking it into consideration. It was difficult to tell if he’d agree or brush the suggestion aside, his demeanor unreadable. Hongjoong supposed it was a little crass to waltz in there, thousands of years later, and claim to have found a solution to the prince’s curse.
“Okay,” Seonghwa finally answered. “Okay. Let us find closure.”
Hongjoong nodded. Stared at the broken vase, thoughtfully.
“Clay would help. Do you know if there’s any clay in this tomb?”
Seonghwa looked exasperated. “No. There is not. It’s all dust and broken pieces.”
Hongjoong tapped his chin. He studied the well. Often, clay was harbored at the bottom of wells. Now, this well might not have been filled with water and instead with a strange, magical smoke, but perhaps over the time clay had collected. Magical clay, even; if such a thing was real. Hongjoong was ready to believe anything.
“There could be clay at the bottom of the well.”
Seonghwa stared at him, affronted. Hongjoong could tell the prince wanted to protest, but he didn’t utter his disagreement, only staring at Hongjoong as he considered the idea and realizing it wasn’t such a crazy theory.
“I shall have a look,” Seonghwa said, and disappeared.
Minutes passed, and Hongjoong thought that maybe the cursed prince had ditched him, thinking his idea too ridiculous, but then the surface sputtered and Seonghwa reappeared, his arm full of a material that had a fluorescent glow. It dripped as if wet, except that the droplets dissolved. It was indeed clay, ebbed with the same substance that filled the well.
“Would this be enough?” Seonghwa asked as he dropped the magical clay next to the well, near his heart.
“I think so.”
They stared at the clay and broken vase, both unsure how to proceed. There were no instructions for this, it wasn’t even guaranteed that it’d even work. The only reason they’d do this was because they believed it would.
“Alright.” Hongjoong adjusted himself, sitting comfortably. He positioned all the broken pieces of the vase on the cloth he’d enveloped it in. Fourteen pieces in total. “Have you ever worked with clay?”
“I have,” Seonghwa sat opposite from Hongjoong. “It has been… some time since then.”
Hongjoong detected a slightly humorous tone, but he chose not to point it out. Instead he watched as Seonghwa started to play with the clay, shaping and re-shaping it, warming it up. He pulled it apart into small pieces so he could work better once he started to repair the vase.
“What… What was the knight’s name?” Hongjoong asked, eventually. It was awkward to just watch Seonghwa do his craft. He had considered leaving, but this was too important for him to leave. And he wasn’t sure if he trusted Seonghwa to actually do this if he wasn’t present.
Seonghwa stayed quiet for a long time. So long that Hongjoong thought he wouldn’t answer. “San. His name was San.”
“San,” Hongjoong tried the name out. “That’s a pretty name.”
“He was a pretty man.” Seonghwa’s voice was sad. “He—No.” The prince shook his head. “I doubt this will be helpful. I do not wish to talk about him. It pains me a great deal.”
“It might help.”
Seonghwa sighed. “San had hair the color of a moonless night. Wildly framing his face.” A smile hushed over his face. “He never managed to brush it into something tame. But I liked it that way. I loved that he was brash and unrestrained. He had quite a temper.”
Hongjoong hummed, encouraging the prince to keep talking. It wasn’t easy, he could tell as much. Seonghwa’s voice was wavering, as if he was crying, but Hongjoong detected no tears running down his cheeks. He wondered if ghosts were even capable of crying.
Three pieces had already been stuck together, the magical clay’s faint glow disappearing the moment Seonghwa applied it. Hongjoong wondered if something incredible would happen once the vase was fixed, the broken heart mended. It certainly felt like a breathtaking moment, what he was witnessing. Thousands of years of pain finally healing.
Or so he hoped. He really did.
“I met San when I was crowned prince. He became one of my five trusted knights, to follow me to the shores where the end of the world lay. Fourteen years he served me before… Before my demise.”
“Why did you… Why did you die?” Hongjoong asked, carefully. “I mean, I know it’s because the vase broke, but why did it break? Who broke it?”
Seonghwa stilled. Five pieces had been put together already. He set down the half-broken vase and looked at Hongjoong. His gaze was heavy and dark. “I did,” he confessed. “I smashed the vase on the floor of my bedroom one morning. I was frustrated and furious. It was hours before dawn, when the new day was only a faint glow over the horizon. The moment it broke I realized my fatal mistake.”
“Why were you so frustrated and furious?”
Seonghwa smiled, hollowly. He picked up a piece of clay, smoothening it before he attached the sixth piece. “What do you think happens to love when a heart is a treasure? An object?”
Hongjoong shrugged, his breath caught in his lungs.
“No matter how much I wanted to and I desired it, my love was never enough. This vase that represents my heart is hollow inside. My love for San—for anyone—eventually felt hollow. My chest burned and yearned to feel that love, that affection… At some point I just desired to feel, at all,” Seonghwa explained. His bitter and resigned tone was getting to Hongjoong, carving homes in the hollow parts of his soul, those that forever yearned and were never satisfied. “Do you know what it does to a person to never be able to satiate their thirst or hunger? Always just a phantom that fills them? It was driving me mad.”
Hongjoong swallowed.
“That morning the feeling that came to me was anger,” Seonghwa continued. “I welcomed it because at least it was something. After becoming a walking, hollow shell it isn’t easy to deal with something as powerful as anger. Its flame, I let it consume me.”
“What about San? How was he dealing with-with…” Helplessly, Hongjoong gestured at the vase. “How did he deal with the hollowness?”
“He tried,” Seonghwa answered. Eight pieces were now holding his heart together. “He loved me. He was there when I killed Kismet, when I got cursed. He even encouraged me to kill the god. But it was before either of us fell for the other.”
“You couldn’t have predicted, at that moment, the consequences of your actions…”
Seonghwa huffed a quiet laugh, his gaze cruel. “Kismet was clear with his curse. I was foolish to believe I would be spared from ever falling in love, to think my fate wasn’t woven together with that of another person.” He paused, his gaze blank. “Sometimes I even wonder; was I meant to be cursed from the day I was born? Was my life doomed from the very beginning? Or was it all my own making? Could I have had a life with San?”
“Stop,” Hongjoong said. “Those question are only torture.”
“They are, but I feel as if I ought to at least consider them; reflect on my mistakes and choices.” The prince smiled, crookedly. It made him seem almost human. “Closure. That’s what you called this.”
“Fair enough.” Hongjoong nodded, and contemplated his next question. “Do you remember the day you fell in love with San? Or was it something that happened without a moment to pinpoint it?”
“Both,” Seonghwa answered. “I would like to believe it was both. I think knowing someone over the years makes one fond of that person, so naturally I grew fond of him. But there was a moment, I remember it clearly, in which suddenly everything shifted. From one moment to another my feelings for him had changed.”
“Do you want to describe that moment?”
“It’s difficult to describe.” Seonghwa was almost done putting together the vase. “We were in the royal courtyard one spring. I glanced at him and I felt it deep in my chest. At that time it was already hollow, the vase sitting protected in my bedroom, but I could still feel it. Maybe because I felt it in that moment it was able to fade in time, the hollowness becoming too present; unavoidable. Or maybe because my heart was already a treasure I never quite got to feel it in its fullest form, always trying to chase the idea of it…”
Methodically, Seonghwa put the vase back together, broken piece after broken piece, like he was putting together a puzzle and not his shattered heart. He remembered the days of his careless youth; the vase—his heart, his future—in his reckless hands like an anticipated toy in the hands of an overly excited child. He’d let it slip out of his curious and naive fingers—and fallen.
He’d fallen hard, fast, dizzying, breathtaking, scarily.
The old spirits from the well had tried to warn him of it: “Do not take Kismet’s curse lightly, boy. With your condition, there’s a reason it’s called falling in love. When you fall, you’ll crash hopelessly.”
Seonghwa had ignored them.
So arrogant and joyous after killing a god—a god of fate, no less—he’d thought that no curse could touch him and ruin his perfect life, his kingdom, his future throne. But then, within the flutter of wings, a flock of birds lifting off the cherry trees in the royal courtyard, something had changed for Seonghwa. He’d glanced, only briefly, at his faithful knight, San—one who had rode into victory and defeat with Seonghwa, fighting by his side for years—and there’d been a shift. At first subtle, quiet and dragging, like morning fog, until he’d been rendered speechless, utterly decomposed. Seonghwa had stood still in the afternoon sun like the marble statues around him, a wistful, painful expression on his face. (If an artist could have captured the moment, no doubt would it have become a piece to study ‘longing’ centuries, millenia later.) Then, something else had shifted, something deep within Seonghwa: though his chest was hollow, he felt the phantom of it constrict and elate, rise and fall—and he’d known, he was doomed.
Kismet’s words had echoed in Seonghwa’s mind: “You’re made of greed! Look at your robes: hues of gold and royal blue like all you princes and kings; all of you vain and proud. Terrible, terrible! Since you have your heart set on nothing but treasures, shall I turn it into a treasure, too? Something lovely and precious and breakable and weak—irreparable.”
Seonghwa had scoffed in the face of this god of fate, mocking him. What good is my heart anyway? He’d thought, childishly. He’d been too self-important, thinking he could defeat a god, take on the world, and never be concerned with matters such as love.
He’d been a fool.
Defeating Kismet, who’d cursed Seonghwa with a heart made of porcelain, prettily painted in hues of gold and royal blue, had felt like climbing the kingdom’s throne itself. For the briefest of times, Seonghwa had been a god himself—a god of no fears, no weaknesses. But as the old spirits of the well had warned him, killing gods came with consequences; curses couldn’t be broken; princes, no matter how gilded, were only humans, no gods.
And so Seonghwa had fallen.
For seven years Seonghwa lived with the curse. Enduring it; pretending it was not as terrible, as painful, as destructive. Hollowness turned Seonghwa’s love strainful, and soon he could not even stand the sight of his beloved knight. The string holding their fates together snapped. In an attempt to rid himself of the curse, frustrated and furious, Seonghwa smashed the vase, completely forgetting that it was his heart, and with no heart he could not live. The moment the vase shattered on the marble tiles, pieces flying everywhere, Seonghwa collapsed, too. His last breath gone before his body had even touched the ground.
Guards found him like that hours later, in the dawn, with a grayish blue sky muting the world—muting all the golden hues. Seonghwa’s listless corpse surrounded by fourteen broken pieces. Many attempted to repair the vase, putting the porcelain shards together and hoping it would bring the gilded prince back from the dead, but Seonghwa remained dead. A fortnight later, they buried him together with what was left of his heart at dusk, the last rays of the shimmering, golden sun gracing the tomb’s entrance.
For centuries and millennia to come Seonghwa haunted his family crypt, watching many regard his heart as though it was the most priceless object. With time Seonghwa learned to detach himself from his past, from his heart, becoming a spirit of the well who’d whisper secrets and advice to those that listened closely.
Until that curious archaeologist had opened the prince’s tomb and taken his broken heart into studious hands. It had been a while since someone had held Seonghwa’s heart. But unlike many others, Hongjoong hadn’t wanted to steal it; the moment he’d met the owner of that heart, learning of Seonghwa’s story, he’d changed his objective, choosing to help the cursed prince.
Now Seonghwa was fixing his broken heart, putting all fourteen pieces together, giving himself the closure he’d always needed. Because curses couldn’t be broken, but they could be mended.