Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

“I loved you in every life. That’s the problem.”

Heeseung wasn’t supposed to be home when the letter came.

He told himself he would leave the apartment today. Go somewhere crowded. Buy something he didn’t need. Breathe air that hadn’t been recycled through the same vents and regrets for the past three years.

But it was raining. The kind of rain that didn’t fall, just hung in the air like a weight. So he stayed. Sat cross-legged on the floor, laptop balanced on a chipped coffee table, scrolling job boards he didn’t believe in anymore. Watching the city blur through his window.

Heeseung didn’t expect anything to happen. That was the whole point of a day like this. No surprises. Just time to drift, quiet and unseen.

So when the envelope slid beneath his door, he didn’t move right away.

It made no sound. No knock. Just a faint scratch of paper against tile. White. Too white. Clean edges and calligraphy ink, the color of old blood. His name — written by hand.

He stood up slowly, toothbrush still in his mouth, socks cold against the floor. The envelope looked like it belonged somewhere older. Somewhere quieter. Somewhere with cathedrals instead of convenience stores.

He didn’t recognize the handwriting, but the back of his neck prickled like something had recognized him.

He peeled it open.

You have been selected for the Crimson Oath.

Your presence is required before the Council by moonrise.

Coordinates are enclosed. Bring no one.

No explanation. No name. Just a location, a time, and a command written like a prophecy.

He read it twice. Then again.

Part of him laughed. Just a short breath through the nose — not humor, but disbelief. He dropped the letter on the counter and leaned over the sink.

There was no one in his life who would prank him like this. No one close enough. No one who would call back something he hadn’t even named.

But something in his chest pulled. Not curiosity. Not yet. Something heavier. Something like… recognition.

His reflection in the mirror looked back at him like he’d already decided.

The tower wasn’t listed on any maps.

It rose out of Gangnam like a scar — dark glass and jagged steel, the kind of building you weren’t supposed to notice. The kind that erased its own footprint the moment you stepped away. Heeseung stood in front of it, hoodie damp from the walk, hands buried in his pockets, trying to look like he belonged anywhere else.

No one else seemed to see the building.

The glass door slid open without a sound.

Inside, the air felt filtered and expensive. Like someone had scrubbed the city out of it. Black marble floor. No lights. No front desk. Just a single elevator, waiting with its doors half-open like a mouth about to close.

There were no buttons inside. No indicator. Just a silver panel that glowed softly as the doors shut behind him.

Heeseung let himself exhale — slowly, like it would make a difference.

The elevator began to rise.

Around the 17th floor, the reflection in the metal door shifted. Someone stood behind him — tall, still, watching.

He turned.

There was no one there.

But the space didn’t feel empty.

The chamber was cathedral-dark. Echoing stone and a ceiling too high to see. A circle of chairs carved from what looked like bone and obsidian. Figures cloaked in navy and shadow sat silent, watching him from beneath hoods that didn’t quite hide their faces.

He stood there. Dripping. Underdressed. Out of time.

“Lee Heeseung,” one of them said. Her voice was clear and sharp. “Born of the Hanseong line. Unawakened, but chosen. Your blood remembers. The pact calls.”

He blinked.

“I’m sorry—what?”

Another figure stirred. “You’ve been selected for the Crimson Oath. You will bond with the heir of the Sangjeon bloodline.”

“This is some cult shit,” he muttered, mostly to himself. “What even is a Crimson Oath? Is this—blood magic or something?”

No one answered.

But somewhere, under the silence, he remembered stories. Not the ones told out loud — the ones whispered at the back of classrooms, in chatrooms, behind hands. Stories about people who disappeared after dark. About families that never aged. About blood banks that didn’t always serve hospitals.

He’d never believed them.

But this place — the shadows that moved too slowly, the way their eyes caught light like glass — made him wonder if he’d been wrong.

If monsters had just learned how to wear suits.

“None of this makes sense,” he whispered, almost too quiet to hear. “Vampires aren’t real.”

But one of the Council members smiled.
Not kindly.

The circle parted, and someone stepped into the center.

Heeseung stopped breathing.

The boy looked like he’d been carved from dusk and silence. Black hair. Feline eyes that gleamed gold in the low light. He was dressed in black — sharp, tailored, effortless. Every movement, economical. Controlled.

Heeseung didn’t know him.

But his body did.

Something in his pulse shifted, like it had just remembered a rhythm it had forgotten for centuries.

“This is Yang Jungwon,” the woman said. “Your counterpart.”

Jungwon didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. Just stared at Heeseung like he’d seen him before, and hadn’t yet decided if that was a good thing.

Heeseung took a step back. His body was still. His thoughts weren’t.

None of this made sense. He didn’t believe in—

But belief was a luxury that didn’t survive direct eye contact with a boy who looked like he’d never bled, and a Council that watched him like they already knew how the story ended.

“You’re mistaken,” he said. “I’m just—nobody.”

But the words tasted false in his mouth.

One of the Council members tilted their head. “You’ll understand soon.”

He stumbled out of the tower sometime past midnight.

The streets were washed clean with rain. The city still moved around him — neon signs blinking above, taxis swerving, couples laughing under umbrellas — but it all felt far away. Muted. Like he’d been watching it from behind glass for years and had only just now stepped outside.

He stopped in an alley behind the tower, pressed his back to the wall, and breathed like someone trying to relearn the shape of their lungs.

This wasn’t real.

Except it was.

That boy — Jungwon. The way he looked at him. Not like a stranger. Not even like an enemy.

Like someone disappointed to find him again.

Heeseung wiped rain from his eyes.

A man passed by on the street just beyond the alley. He was on the phone, voice too low to make out at first — then louder, as he laughed and said:

“I loved you in every life. That’s the problem.”

Heeseung froze.

He didn’t know why it hurt. The phrase wasn’t meant for him. Just someone else’s offhand sadness, carried off on the wind.

Still… it stayed. Long after the voice was gone.

That night, Heeseung didn’t sleep.

He lay in bed with the letter beside him, unfolded. The words didn’t change but his world already had.

When he finally drifted off, sometime near dawn, he dreamed of hands he didn’t recognize and a silver ring too heavy to wear. Of bleeding light. Of a voice that called his name like it had done so many times before.

And when he woke, he felt like something had been taken from him.

Something he hadn’t known he was still missing.

Chapter Text

The cathedral ruins didn’t belong in Seoul.

They belonged somewhere half-buried in myth. With a name carved in stone and a silence you could drown in.

Heeseung stood at the threshold, eyes fixed on the hollow bones of the ceiling, ribs of stone arching upward toward a sky too wide to belong to the living.

Everything in him said he should leave.

Not just his brain — his body. His muscles tensed, heart jittered, lungs shrinking with every breath. He didn’t know what this was. Didn’t know these people. Didn’t understand why his name had been tied to ancient bloodlines and rituals that tasted of iron and ash.

And still—

He stepped inside.

Because something deeper than fear was pulling at him. Something older than doubt.

Like a string looped around his spine, tugging him forward through a story he hadn’t agreed to write.

The candles circled the dais like watchful eyes. The Council stood robed and silent, their shadows long against the broken walls. And in the center, as still and dark as a storm waiting to happen, was Jungwon.

He looked like a curse spoken too softly.

Black gloves. Collar etched with silver script. A face that didn’t belong to someone young. Not really. There was weight behind it — a history pressed into every stillness, every glance that cut sharper than it should’ve.

Heeseung couldn’t breathe.

Not from awe.

From recognition.

From the unbearable feeling that he’d been here before.

That he’d stood in this very room, in another life, and said yes to the same ruin.

“The blood remembers what the mind forgets.”

The officiant stepped forward, her voice cutting through the cold like smoke through glass.

“Tonight, the Crimson Oath binds not just bodies, but time itself.

One soul chosen by the bloodline of Sangjeon.

One soul called from the legacy of Hanseong.”

Heeseung’s hands clenched at his sides.

This wasn’t happening.

This wasn’t real.

Except — it felt real in a way nothing else ever had. Every cell in his body was waiting , like a machine powered by memory. His mind was screaming. But his blood hummed.

Like it was waking up.

“Yang Jungwon,” the officiant said. “Do you accept the binding?”

Jungwon didn’t speak at first.

Then:

“I do.”

A voice like velvet cut with steel.

“Lee Heeseung. Do you accept?”

Heeseung almost laughed. Almost cried.

I don’t even know what this is.

I don’t believe in fate.

I should say no.

But his lips moved.

“I… I do.”

The wind stilled.

The candles flared.

And the air between them shifted.

Jungwon stepped forward and peeled off his glove. The motion was slow. Reverent. Not hesitant — controlled. A prince offering a hand not in mercy, but in law.

His palm was pale and precise, veins laced like frost beneath the skin.

A blade appeared in the officiant’s hand — obsidian, thin as moonlight. It kissed Jungwon’s hand. Blood welled up: not red, not quite — more like garnet and silver, rich with something that didn’t belong to this century.

Heeseung stared.

He didn’t remember moving, but suddenly his hand was outstretched. His pulse stuttered.

This isn’t me.

I don’t do this. I don’t bleed for strangers.

And yet—

He didn’t flinch as the blade nicked him.

Their blood touched.

And the world cracked.

Not loudly.

Not like thunder.

But like silk tearing — quiet, irreversible.

The moment their palms pressed together, something awakened .

Light bloomed between them — soft at first, then searing. A ring of pale gold circled their joined hands. The air shimmered like heat on pavement. Symbols—ancient, foreign, burning—etched themselves into the skin of Heeseung’s wrist, just below the bond.

A mark.

A crown of thorns. A sigil made of blood.

Heeseung gasped.

And for one breathless second, he swore he could see stars behind his eyes.

His knees buckled slightly. Jungwon’s hand gripped his.

Only for a moment.

But it was enough.

““I loved you in every life. That’s the—”

The officiant stopped mid-sentence.

Eyes wide. Voice stolen.

Something unseen passed through the room, like a ghost brushing past every shoulder.

She never finished the phrase.

The bond settled into silence.

No fanfare. No explosion.

Just a deep, vibrating ache in Heeseung’s chest. Like something had been sewn into him — and it didn’t quite fit.

He pulled his hand back.

The mark on his wrist pulsed once, then dimmed. Not gone — just waiting.

He looked up.

Jungwon’s expression hadn’t changed.

But his hands… his hands had curled just slightly. Like he wanted to hold on. Or hold back.

And then he stepped away.

The Council vanished like shadows unspoken.

The candles burned low.

Rain began to fall.

Jungwon stood under the arch again, silent. Watching the city in the distance.

Heeseung didn’t join him.

He stepped into a separate archway, parallel but apart. He couldn’t explain why. He just knew — they weren’t meant to share this moment. Not yet.

Their shoulders aligned only from a distance.

He stared at the mark on his wrist.

It didn’t hurt.

But it didn’t feel like it belonged to him either.

“I loved you in every life. That’s the problem.”

The words echoed in his chest.

But no one said them aloud.

Chapter Text

The Court had no clocks.

Heeseung noticed it around the third day. Or maybe the fifth. There was no way to be sure. The marble halls never changed. The windows let in light that didn’t feel like sunlight. And the people — if they could be called that — moved as if time was ornamental, not essential.

He hadn’t seen Jungwon in two days.

Not really. They passed each other sometimes. Shared glances that felt heavier than words. Sat at opposite ends of meetings and meals that meant nothing. But they hadn’t spoken — not since the binding. Not since the sigil burned into their wrists and something ancient whispered his name behind his eyelids at night.

Heeseung told himself it didn’t matter.

But the dreams said otherwise.

The dreams had changed. They weren’t flashes anymore — they were fragments of full lives.

A battlefield under a red sky. Jungwon shouting his name across smoke and blood. A palace with gold windows. A garden where they kissed in secret.

And then always — always — the fall.

His fall.

Sometimes from a blade. Sometimes from fire. Sometimes from time itself.

He woke every time gasping, reaching out for a hand that was never there.

He asked about the archives.

The guards didn’t question it. Just led him down a winding stair of pale stone into a vault that smelled of burned incense and centuries-old sorrow.

He was halfway through an account of a Blood War — some forgotten uprising Jungwon had apparently crushed — when a shadow moved behind him.

Jay.

He stood in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, dressed in fitted black and quiet rage.

“Didn’t think they’d let you down here.”

His voice was smooth. Not mocking. Not friendly.

Just observing .

“Why wouldn’t they?” Heeseung asked, not looking up.

“Because this place holds names older than yours.”

Heeseung shut the book.

“You’re Jay,” he said. “Jungwon’s—”

“Second,” Jay finished, stepping into the light. “Advisor. Sword. Occasional ghost.”

Heeseung took him in properly now.

Jay looked like someone who had once been beautiful in battle. There was a quiet grace to him — the kind worn by those who had lost too often to take victory personally. His eyes were tired in a way immortals rarely admitted to being.

“You fought in the wars with him.”

Jay smiled, faint and sad.

“I bled beside him. Killed for him. Died for him, once.”

“And yet I’m the one he’s bound to.”

It slipped out before Heeseung could stop it.

Jay didn’t flinch.

“You think I’m jealous,” he said.

Heeseung didn’t respond.

“I’m not,” Jay continued. “Not in the way you think.”

He stepped closer, slow, deliberate.

“You were made to fit into his heart like a key. I’ve only ever been the doorframe. Holding shape until he walks through.”

Heeseung swallowed.

“That’s still love.”

“No,” Jay said. “That’s faith.”

Jay left him with that.

And Heeseung felt lonelier than before.

Not because he didn’t belong.

But because part of him knew he hadn’t earned any of this.

The bond.

The history.

The way Jungwon looked at him and then immediately looked away.

He wandered after that.

Let his feet take him down a corridor he didn’t recognize.

Until he found the Hall of Mirrors.

He hadn’t been told about it. But something inside him — something old and quiet — knew this place was waiting for him.

The doors opened without a sound.

The Hall was a cathedral of glass.

Mirrors on every wall. Some shattered. Some cracked. Some so clean they looked like water. The ceiling arched into darkness, and the light inside shimmered like moonlight caught in a web.

Heeseung stepped inside.

The air shifted.

And in the mirror across from him—he didn’t see himself.

Not exactly.

The face was his, but older. Harder. A scar across his mouth. Hair longer. Clothes from a century that no longer existed.

Behind him: Jungwon. Smiling like someone who never did.

He blinked.

And it was gone.

Just his own reflection again. Pale. Uneasy. Reaching.

Jungwon found him there.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said quietly.

Heeseung didn’t turn.

“You think that still means anything to me?”

A pause.

Then Jungwon stepped closer. Their reflections multiplied, layered. Different lifetimes staring at them from every angle.

“This place shows what once was,” Jungwon said. “And sometimes… what never was.”

“I saw you.”

“You’ve seen me a hundred times.”

“Why are you avoiding me?”

“Because I’m trying not to break again,” Jungwon said.

It was the first time his voice cracked.

Heeseung turned.

Jungwon was staring at a fractured pane of glass — one that showed them dancing. Somewhere grand. Somewhere gone.

“You loved him, didn’t you?” Heeseung asked. “The other versions of me.”

“Every time,” Jungwon said. “And every time, you die.”

The silence was unbearable.

“Maybe I won’t, this time.”

“You say that every time.”

Heeseung moved closer.

Their reflections blurred.

And something glinted in the corner of the mirror.

A letter. Yellowed. Folded neatly into the edge of the frame.

Heeseung reached for it.

The paper trembled in his hands.

It was his handwriting.

I loved you in every life. That’s the problem.

He turned it toward Jungwon.

Jungwon looked like someone remembering the worst day of his life.

“I’ve kept every version of that letter,” he said. “Even when you didn’t mean it. Even when you forgot.”

Heeseung didn’t touch him.

But he wanted to.

More than that — he wanted to remember .

All of it.

Chapter Text

Heeseung had never liked heights. Not really. But ever since the binding, he'd been craving altitude — rooftops, ledges, windowsills. Anywhere above the ground, above the stillness of the Court’s marble bones.

The static had started in his bones that morning. A low, restless hum that crawled along his spine. Not pain, not exactly. Just pressure. Like something inside him was winding too tightly, waiting to snap or uncoil.

He ignored it. Walked the halls. Read names etched into old war logs. Tried not to count how many times “Yang Jungwon” appeared beside words like bloodletting, victory, and last survivor.

And then—he climbed. Without thinking. Without planning. Like something in him was reaching for air he didn’t know he was missing.

The rooftop offered no railing, no warning signs, no comfort. Only the edge. Only wind. Only the city, flickering like a dying constellation

Heeseung stood near the ledge. Hoodie damp. Fingers cold. Wrist aching faintly where the sigil still lived, barely visible under the cuff.

He closed his eyes and exhaled.

“You used to come here.”

The voice was familiar and sudden. Steady as breath, cold as regret.

Jungwon.

Heeseung didn’t turn around. “Did I?”

Footsteps on wet stone. Measured. Careful. The kind of caution meant for wild animals or things already half-broken.

“In another life,” Jungwon said.

They stood in silence. Side by side. The city distant beneath them, the rain misting like static electricity.

“Did you come with me?” Heeseung asked.

“You brought me here,” Jungwon replied. “You said it was the only place that didn’t lie.”

Heeseung huffed a laugh. “Sounds like me.”

“You always hated marble.”

“Still do.”

The hum in his chest flared. Bright. Sudden.

Heeseung swayed forward. His vision blurred. The world twisted — not around him, but through him.

Jungwon caught him before the fall even began.

Arms wrapped tight. One hand cradling the back of his head. The other braced against his back like he was something precious and already slipping.

“It’s okay,” Jungwon said. “It’s just the bond.”

“Feels like dying.”

“It usually does the first time.”

Heeseung’s fingers curled into the fabric of Jungwon’s coat. Breathing ragged. Not afraid. Not yet.

“Why me?” he whispered.

Jungwon’s jaw tensed. “Because fate has a sense of humor.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Jungwon’s hand slipped to his marked wrist, thumb grazing the edge of the fading sigil.

He didn’t speak for a long time. Then, quietly:

“I loved you in every life.”

Silence.

“That’s the problem.”

Heeseung looked up. Rain ran down his cheeks like tears he hadn’t earned yet.

“Why is that a problem?” he asked.

Jungwon met his gaze. No cruelty. Just the kind of grief that knew its own shape too well.

“Because you never remember me. And I never forget you.”

Heeseung’s throat closed. His heartbeat stuttered.

“Do you hate me for that?”

“No,” Jungwon said. “I hate fate for giving me just enough of you to survive losing you again.”

Heeseung shivered. Jungwon didn’t move away. He only held him tighter, until the trembling stopped.

The wind howled past them. The rain softened.

Below, the city lights pulsed like memory. Above, the sky didn’t open — it simply watched.

And between them, the silence didn’t ache as much anymore.

Heeseung dreamed of a garden that night. A rooftop full of roses. A hand holding his, marked with the same sigil, warm and waiting.

But when he turned to look, the face was already fading.

Chapter Text

“You fight like someone who’s done it too often to care.”
“I don’t fight. I correct.”

The underworld club didn’t have a name. Only a sigil carved into the wall beside the alley door — a fang wrapped in ivy. Heeseung had been told it was neutral ground. He was starting to learn that in vampire politics, “neutral” just meant “no one will help you when you bleed.”

Jungwon had insisted he come. Not out loud. Not in words. But he’d left the door open that night. Heeseung followed.

The club was beneath the city. Low ceiling. Red lights. Walls like the inside of a coffin. Vampires of all kinds drifted through it — ancient, half-turned, human-adjacent. The kind that smiled with too many teeth and watched with too much stillness.

Heeseung stuck close to Jungwon. Not because he was afraid.

Because he wasn’t. And that was what scared him most.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Jay appeared beside them, all sharp collarbones and tighter-than-regulation sleeves. His eyes didn’t land on Heeseung. Only on Jungwon.

“Council said this place was off-limits tonight.”

“I’m not here on Council business,” Jungwon said. “I’m here for him.”

Jay’s jaw clenched. His mouth said nothing. But his silence was louder than most screams.

Heeseung stepped slightly behind Jungwon. Not because he meant to hide. But because Jay looked at Jungwon like he still hoped one day he’d be seen — and looked at Heeseung like he was in the way of it.

Someone bumped into them. Tall. Pale. Wrong smile.

“You’re the bonded one, aren’t you?” the stranger asked Heeseung. “Smells like it.”

Jungwon didn’t move.

The stranger’s fingers grazed Heeseung’s shoulder — too familiar, too deliberate.

Then there was silence.

And then: movement.

Heeseung didn’t see Jungwon draw the blade. Not really. One moment, the air was still. The next, it had been sliced in half.

The stranger’s hand was no longer attached to his body. It fell to the ground with a sound like dropped fruit. Blood sprayed. The club didn’t scream — it hushed.

Jungwon turned his head, just slightly. His face was expressionless.

He didn’t blink.

The next vampire lunged. Heeseung didn’t even have time to gasp.

But Jungwon — he was already there.

His movements were fluid. Controlled. Not flashy. Not cruel. Every strike was efficient, almost surgical. He didn’t roar. He didn’t bare fangs. He moved like water taught to cut.

One. Two. Three bodies crumpled. None dead. All humiliated.

The floor was slick with blood.

Heeseung stared.

Not in fear. Not exactly.

In awe.

Jungwon turned to him, breath even. Glove untouched. Collar still sharp.

“You’re safe now,” he said.

Like it was obvious.

They didn’t speak on the way back.

Jay followed from a distance. Silent. Watchful. Bruised by something deeper than blood.

Heeseung watched Jungwon’s hands the whole way.

He hadn’t trembled once.

The Council watched the footage the next morning.

No one spoke.

They dismissed the meeting early.

Heeseung wasn’t told what they saw. But he knew.

They had forgotten who he was.

Jungwon reminded them.

That night, Heeseung sat on the edge of his bed, staring at his wrist.

The sigil there pulsed once — as if it, too, remembered something new.

Jungwon knocked once and stepped inside without waiting.

“You shouldn’t have had to see that,” he said.

“Why not?” Heeseung asked. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

“It’s a version of me I don’t like you knowing.”

Heeseung looked up. Their eyes locked.

“Then why do I feel closer to you now than I did before?”

Jungwon didn’t answer.

But he didn’t leave, either.

Heeseung didn’t move away when Jungwon sat beside him.

The air between them changed. Not heavy. Not light. Waiting.

If this had been any other life, maybe they would’ve kissed. Maybe they would’ve ruined it early, too soon, too fast.

But Jungwon had learned to wait. And Heeseung hadn’t learned enough to ask.

So they sat. Shoulders touching. Not speaking.

The bond pulsed between them like a heartbeat.

And the silence wasn’t empty anymore.

Chapter Text

Heeseung woke to the absence of breath beside him.

The memory of the night before was already slipping into fog — not because he forgot it, but because it hadn’t fit into the way reality usually felt. Jungwon’s weight at his side. The silence they didn’t dare touch. The warmth that came from proximity, not contact.

Now, the bed was too large. The room too quiet.

His room — east wing, third door from the central atrium. Lavish but impersonal. Like someone had asked, “What would a human like?” and then picked items out of a catalogue with too much gold in the borders.

The walls didn’t echo. But they listened.

Jungwon’s room was three doors down.

Heeseung had tried to ignore that fact. Now, he couldn’t stop hearing it. Every time he turned over, his body leaned slightly toward the hallway.

He got up. The floor was cold. Sunlight didn’t reach these windows. Only the faint blue glow of whatever magic filtered through the wards.

He dressed in silence. Breakfast came on a tray — untouched. Delivered by someone who never spoke. When he opened the door, **Sunghoon** was already waiting.

“You’re not eating,” Sunghoon said, following him at a polite distance.

“I’m not hungry.”

“You weren’t yesterday either.”

“Maybe I’m dead already and no one told me.”

Sunghoon didn’t laugh. “You’d know.”

Heeseung slowed. “Do you always shadow people like this?”

“Only the dangerous ones.”

Heeseung turned his head. “Do you think I’m dangerous?”

“I think you’re changing something,” Sunghoon said. “And this place doesn’t like change.”

The east corridors narrowed. The further Heeseung walked, the colder the walls became — as though the stones were forgetting how to hold heat. He’d walked this path before, but today it felt different. A pull. Faint but steady, like a thread wound around his ribcage.

Heeseung stopped before a hallway he didn’t remember seeing.

“Sunghoon?”

But when he turned around — the corridor behind him was empty.

Heeseung stepped forward.

The walls here were carved with faded runes. The light was wrong — too yellow, like flame instead of magic. The scent in the air shifted: parchment, dust, and something sweeter. Familiar. Like old perfume. Like grief.

At the end of the hallway was a door.

No knob. No handle. Just a faint pulse of light — the same shade as the bond mark on his wrist.

He touched it.

The door opened.

The room inside wasn’t empty. It was waiting.

Rows of shelves. Letters bundled in silk. Stacks of paper weighted down by stones that looked like bone. A single table in the center, ringed by candles that hadn’t melted.

And everywhere — his name.

Not written once. Written dozens of times. Different hands. Different inks. But every curl, every pressure of the pen — his.

Lee Heeseung

He moved toward the table like sleepwalking. Picked up the first letter with shaking fingers.

It read:

“If I hadn’t left that day, would the river still have taken you?”

The next:

“He said my blood would always remember. I didn’t believe him. I do now.”

Each letter was from a life he hadn’t lived — and yet had. Written in voices he recognized and didn’t. Some poetic. Some blunt. One simply said: “I wish I could have stayed.”

He found one folded tightly, sealed with wax melted into the shape of the bond sigil.

When he opened it, something in his chest stopped.

“I loved you in every life.”
“That’s the problem.”

His breath stuttered. He ran a hand over the page like he could feel the echo of his past self, still warm in the ink.

Behind him — footsteps.

“You weren’t supposed to find this room.”

He turned. Jungwon stood in the doorway, candlelight catching on his collar.

“Then why was it calling me?” Heeseung asked.

Jungwon stepped inside. The door closed behind him without a sound.

“This room was made for you,” he said. “For every you. To hold the pieces that didn’t fit anywhere else.”

Heeseung looked down at the letter again. “I don’t remember writing this.”

“You did. You always do.”

Heeseung’s voice cracked. “Then why does it still feel like I’m a stranger to myself?”

Jungwon was quiet for a long time.

“Because this life is different,” he said.

Heeseung let the letter fall back onto the table.

“Just turn me,” he said. “Make it stop. The forgetting. The dying.”

Jungwon flinched — almost imperceptibly.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it would destroy you.”

Heeseung stepped closer. “You’re strong enough to save me. I know you are.”

“It has nothing to do with strength,” Jungwon said. “It’s your blood.”

He reached for Heeseung’s wrist — the bond mark. As his fingers brushed the skin, the sigil pulsed, glowing faintly, then sparking gold before dimming again.

“Your bloodline was created to anchor magic,” Jungwon said. “One of the few left. You’re human, yes. But not ordinary. Your body carries a tether that keeps the Council stable. If I tried to change that — to change you — the backlash would destroy everything.”

Heeseung stared at him. “But I’ll die anyway.”

“Yes,” Jungwon said, his voice breaking. “But slowly. Not like this.”

Heeseung pulled his hand away. “So I’m just a candle in a room full of statues.”

Jungwon didn’t deny it.

He just looked at the letter again — the one with the line that echoed across lifetimes.

“You used to leave that one for me,” he said. “Every time. Sometimes in a drawer. Sometimes under my pillow. Once — carved into a stone I carried through five cities.”

“Why do you keep it?” Heeseung asked.

“Because it’s the only version of you that ever admitted it was love.”

Heeseung said nothing.

Jungwon looked at him like someone who had known him in too many versions. Someone who had watched him live and die like the turn of a page.

“I don’t want you to disappear again,” Jungwon whispered. “But I can’t make you stay.”

They stood in silence, with lifetimes between them.

And outside, somewhere deep in the heart of the Court, a clock chimed a time that no one remembered setting.

Neither of them moved.

And the paper cranes, folded centuries ago by someone with his handwriting, trembled slightly in the candlelight.

Chapter Text

"You always find me."
"And I always lose you."

In the dream, it was raining — not the real kind, but the kind your mind invents when you’re trying to remember how something ended.

Heeseung stood on a cracked stone path, soaked to the skin. His boots were muddy. His hands were shaking.

Jungwon was lying beside him, half-curled, one arm pressed to his side where something sharp and invisible had gone in. He wasn’t bleeding. Not really. But his expression said enough — this had happened before.

“I stayed this time,” Heeseung whispered. “I didn’t run.”

Jungwon’s eyes fluttered open. They weren’t angry. Just tired. Older than they should have been.

“You never run,” he said. “You just forget.”

Heeseung dropped to his knees, water splashing around them. “I don’t want to forget anymore.”

“Then remember,” Jungwon said, voice fading. “But don’t make promises you’ve broken in every life.”

And the rain turned to ash.

Heeseung woke in Jungwon’s bed, heart thundering.

The sheets were soft. Crisp. Everything smelled faintly of incense and cold stone. The room was lit only by moonlight and the pale shimmer of warded windows.

He was alone — or thought he was, until he turned and saw Jungwon standing near the door.

Still dressed in black. Eyes fixed on him.

Heeseung sat up slowly, the bond mark on his wrist tingling faintly like a phantom bruise.

“Did I—did I walk here?” he asked, voice hoarse.

Jungwon didn’t move. But his fingers twitched once at his side.

“The tether,” he said softly. “It brought you.”

Heeseung tried to laugh. It came out like a cough. “What, like sleepwalking?”

Jungwon didn’t answer. His eyes — usually unreadable — were flickering too fast. Catlike. Calculating and uncertain. Like he was studying something he couldn’t bring himself to touch.

“You were dreaming,” Jungwon said, finally.

Heeseung looked away. “How would you know?”

“You said my name.”

The silence that followed could’ve cracked marble.

Jungwon stepped back, slow, controlled, like every motion was practiced restraint. He reached for the door, paused — and this time, his jaw clenched hard enough that Heeseung could see it. Like there was something he wanted to say and didn’t trust himself to survive it.

Then he left.

Sunghoon was waiting when Heeseung emerged an hour later. No comment, no questions. Just a nod and a shadow’s pace at his side.

“Why do you do this?” Heeseung asked as they moved through the eastern corridors, where the walls still whispered old names and the windows never opened.

“Do what?”

“Follow me around. Babysit me. Pretend like this is normal.”

Sunghoon’s mouth twitched — not quite a smile. “Because someone has to remind you you’re not a prisoner.”

Heeseung snorted. “Aren’t I?”

“Not in the way you think.”

They turned a corner. The court ahead was dim, hushed — high ceilings, robed figures, and tension that didn’t speak but pressed in like fog. Heeseung could feel it now. The unease. Like the bond wasn’t the only thing cracking.

Sunghoon said, “They’re afraid of Jungwon.”

“He’s their prince.”

“He’s also a weapon they can’t control.”

Heeseung paused, turning to face him fully. “And what about you?”

Sunghoon met his gaze, calm. “I think he’s preparing to lose something. Maybe everything.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because he watches you the way people look at things they won’t get to keep.”

Jay passed them in the atrium. No words, no nod. Just a glance — heavy, hollow, resigned.

Heeseung almost stopped walking.

“He used to talk to me,” he said to Sunghoon, quieter now.

“Jay doesn’t talk when he’s grieving,” Sunghoon said. “He waits until it’s too late, then blames himself.”

“Grieving what?”

Sunghoon didn’t answer. Just looked up toward the ceiling as if the stone might crack open and drop the truth in their laps.

They reached the courtyard at dusk.

The Veil shimmered faintly overhead — a curtain of magic separating the vampire realm from the world of humans. Heeseung stared up at it, the pulse beneath his wrist matching the flicker of the sky.

And there, standing near the fountain: Ni-ki.

He was younger than the others. Taller than Heeseung expected. Eyes darker. Clothes sharp and ceremonial. He watched Heeseung approach without moving. Without blinking.

The youngest among Jungwon’s very loyal — and very few — inner circle. Jay, Sunghoon, Ni-ki. Trusted not just with secrets, but with silence. That’s why Sunghoon escorted him. Why Jay watched from a distance. Why Ni-ki’s stillness felt more dangerous than any sword.

Sunghoon nodded at Ni-ki, then moved to the side — letting Heeseung take a few steps forward alone.

Heeseung felt it before he could name it. The heat. The pressure. Not magic, not bond. Something more personal. More fractured.

“You’re the reason,” Ni-ki said, voice low. Measured. “Aren’t you?”

Heeseung blinked. “What?”

“You came back, and now he’s breaking.”

“I—what do you mean?”

Ni-ki tilted his head. “He was calm before. Even when he was cruel. Now he’s… not.”

“Maybe that’s good.”

“Not for the rest of us.”

The wind shifted. The Veil above crackled. Ni-ki took a step closer. Just one. But it felt like the air thinned around them.

“He thinks you’re special,” Ni-ki said. “But you feel like a prophecy that never ends well.”

Heeseung didn’t respond. Couldn’t.

Ni-ki looked him over once more — not with hunger, not with hate. With possession.

Then he turned and walked away.

Sunghoon reappeared at his side, breath steady. “He’s close,” he murmured. “To slipping.”

“Rogue?”

“Emotionally, first. Then… we’ll see.”

“Does Jungwon know?”

“He raised him. Of course he knows.”

That night, Heeseung wrote.

He sat in his bed, the one that still smelled too much like borrowed magic and the cold side of a memory, and tried to put the dream into words.

He wrote: “You said I always leave. But I think I was just late.”

Then: “If I’m finally on time, what do I do with the part of me that remembers failing you?”

The ink shimmered gold before sinking into the paper.

The door creaked open.

Jungwon stood there, backlit by corridor light. Silent.

Heeseung didn’t move. Didn’t speak. But the bond between them tugged like a pulled thread in the fabric of something ancient.

Jungwon didn’t step inside.

He just met Heeseung’s eyes.

And the look said everything:

I want to reach for you. But if I do, I won’t stop.

Heeseung whispered, soft as breath: “You always find me.”

Jungwon’s expression didn’t change. But his eyes — feline, haunted — flickered with something close to grief.

He whispered back: “And I always lose you.”

Chapter Text

“You always protect me.”

“Not well enough.”

The words hung between them, heavy with all the times Jungwon had failed himself before he ever failed Heeseung.

The Court was too quiet — the first warning.

Heeseung stood beside Jungwon beneath the stained-glass dome of the Hall of Judgment — light bending through crimson and bone. Mirrors lined the walls — too many eyes, too many gloved hands just shy of swords. Vampires did not need weapons to kill. But they liked the tradition of it.

Jungwon’s expression was unreadable, but Heeseung could feel it — an ancient leash tightening around something inside him.

Behind them, Jay remained silent. Sunghoon stood just a step too close—an unspoken shield.

Ni-ki stood unnervingly still, taut as a coiled spring.

Heeseung’s voice barely above a whisper, tinged with uncertainty

“Why am I really here?”

Jungwon’s reply was low and steady—not cold, but resolute.

“Because they want to see if I’ll protect you.”

And oh — he would.

The discussion was a blur of Council protocol and veiled threats. Heeseung heard the word temporary more than once. Incompatible. Draining. Disposable.

Heeseung flinched. Just barely.

Across the marble hush, something snapped.

Then — Ni-ki moved.

Not toward the speaker. Toward Heeseung.

A blur — elegant, silent, deadly. The youngest in Jungwon’s inner circle, trained by the prince himself. Loyalty warped by grief. Love twisted into obsession. Jungwon had raised him. And that meant Jungwon had ruined him too.

“You don’t belong here,” Ni-ki said, voice trembling from too many held-back years. “He only loves you because he’s cursed to.”

Heeseung opened his mouth to speak — but the world had already shattered.

Jungwon moved first.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t breathe. Just vanished from Heeseung’s side and appeared in Ni-ki’s path like a shadow resurrected.

Every movement was perfect. Not fluid — fated. Like the fight had happened a thousand times before—muscle memory from another world.

Ni-ki struck low. Jungwon blocked without flinching.

They moved like silence being torn.

The Court backed away, stunned into stillness. The mirrors cracked. Magic pulsed through the floor.

Jay didn’t move. His jaw was tight. His eyes on Jungwon’s back like he was watching history unmake itself.

Sunghoon pulled Heeseung behind a broken pillar. Heeseung could still see everything.

Ni-ki howled once — not rage, not power, but heartbreak. “You said I was enough!”

Jungwon said nothing. He pivoted, twisted, drove Ni-ki back with a series of strikes too elegant to look like violence.

Each blow was precise. Beautiful. Centuries of power finally freed.

Ni-ki was strong — impossibly so. But this was Jungwon in full. The prince ungloved. The monster made art.

Until he staggered — once.

Just once — like a hairline crack fracturing ancient glass.

A flash of silver slashed across his side — the cold, unforgiving bite of a blade forged to wound the eternal.

A shallow cut, delicate and precise — yet it bled.

The Court gasped, breath stolen by disbelief.

Heeseung was rooted in place — part fear for Jungwon’s wound, part awe as the bond flared, roaring to protect its other half, lighting him up from the inside out.

He reached for Jungwon—not with hands, but with something older, deeper.

Something inside him cracked.

Golden light laced through the air. Soft. Devastating. From the mark on his wrist to the very edge of the broken marble.

Ni-ki stopped mid-swing. Stumbled.

His mouth opened. “What—”

Jungwon grabbed him by the collar. Whispered something too quiet for anyone else to hear.

Ni-ki dropped to his knees.

And wept.

The room didn’t breathe.

Then Jay stepped forward.

He stood between Heeseung and the Council’s slow-approaching guards.

He drew no blade. Just raised one hand.

“No one touches him.”

He didn’t look at Heeseung when he said it.

He looked at Jungwon — the man he’d followed into ruin and never once blamed.

And Jungwon… nodded.

Later, the Court emptied. The mirrors cracked, splintering light like fractured memories. Ni-ki was led away—not restrained, but gently, his head bowed as Jay escorted him out.

Sunghoon guided Heeseung to Jungwon, who sat half-slumped on the edge of the dais, gloved hands stained with another’s blood—and a faint trace of his own.

Heeseung knelt beside him.

“You’re bleeding,” he murmured.

Jungwon’s voice was rough yet steady. “I’ve survived worse.”

“You shouldn’t have.”

Jungwon’s eyes met his—no longer red, but faded violet, storm-split and weary.

“I told you to stay away.”

Heeseung pressed a cloth to Jungwon’s ribs. The wound hissed softly, magic resisting, but began to close beneath his touch.

“I tried.” he whispered. “But the bond never let me.”

Deep inside, he knew it was the truest thing he’d ever spoken.

A final shard glinted on the floor nearby — small, sharp, impossibly clear, like fate itself fractured.

Reflected in it: Heeseung’s eyes, gold-lit with magic. Jungwon’s silver ring, heavy with meaning. And between them — a smear of blood, dark as a closing omen.

Chapter Text

"If this is the only night we aren’t a prophecy, let it be the one thing we write for ourselves."

The room was quiet when Heeseung returned.

Not silent — the Court didn’t know silence. There were always distant footsteps, shifting candlelight, echoes that never quite faded. But in Jungwon’s private quarters, it felt... removed. Like this part of the world had been sealed shut centuries ago and was only now being forced open again.

Jungwon sat on the windowsill, gloves gone, coat abandoned on the floor. His shirt was half undone, the bandage on his ribs dark with old blood. His head was bowed. The moonlight touched only his jaw and the fine tremor of his fingertips.

Heeseung didn’t speak. He closed the door behind him and waited for something — permission, acknowledgment, a breath — but Jungwon gave him nothing.

He stepped forward anyway.

“You should be resting,” Jungwon said at last, his voice so quiet it barely stirred the air.

“I did,” Heeseung answered. “In every life.”

That made Jungwon look up.

His eyes weren’t unreadable tonight. They were sharp — violet flickering with gold — and heavy with something Heeseung couldn’t name yet, but felt like a goodbye that hadn’t been said aloud.

Heeseung gestured to the stack of letters on the low table. “Are those mine?”

Jungwon didn’t move. “Some of them.”

Heeseung picked one at random. The seal was cracked, the ink faded. It smelled like smoke and rain.

You told me you would stay. And I told you I would believe you. That was the first lie we forgave.

Heeseung swallowed. “This was one of the lives where I broke it, huh?”

Jungwon said nothing.

Heeseung placed the letter down with more care than it deserved. “You never told me how I died.”

“Does it matter?” Jungwon asked. “You always do.”

That should’ve stung. Maybe it did. But the pain settled somewhere behind his ribs — familiar, faintly warm.

Heeseung walked toward him, slow and careful, like crossing a frozen lake. “Why do you still let me close, if you know how it ends?”

“Because,” Jungwon whispered, “I never learned how to let you go first.”

The bond mark on Heeseung’s wrist flared once, gold and tender.

He reached out — not bold, not urgent — and brushed his fingers against Jungwon’s hand. Jungwon didn’t pull away. His hand twitched under Heeseung’s, then settled.

Heeseung studied him: the stillness that was always just a breath away from breaking, the mouth that never lied but rarely told the truth, the eyes that held a thousand lifetimes of restraint and only one of this.

“You always protect me,” he murmured.

Jungwon’s voice caught. “Not well enough.”

So Heeseung kissed him.

It wasn’t desperate. It wasn’t even brave. It was soft — and reverent. The kind of kiss you offer someone you once promised to love better next time.

Jungwon didn’t kiss back at first. Then he did. Slowly. Like he’d been waiting for this moment and feared it would collapse if he touched it too hard.

Heeseung let the bond pull them closer. The magic hummed beneath their skin — not loud, just sure. Like a thread drawn taut after lifetimes of unraveling.

When Jungwon lifted him onto the bed, it wasn’t with urgency. It was with care. Heeseung’s shirt was unbuttoned like a page being turned. His neck kissed like a prayer being said under breath. Every part of him was touched like a wound being remembered.

Jungwon hovered over him, breath shaking, gaze blown wide.

And then — his eyes changed.

Violet bled into gold. The same gold that shimmered on Heeseung’s wrist. The bond was singing now — low, slow, vibrating through skin and breath.

Heeseung reached up and ran a thumb along Jungwon’s bottom lip — and felt the slight graze of a fang.

He inhaled, spine arching. “Are you going to bite me?”

Jungwon’s laugh was soft. Pained. “Not tonight.”

“Why not?”

“Because if I taste you,” Jungwon said, “I won’t stop.”

Their bodies moved like they remembered each other. Like this wasn’t the first time, or the tenth, or even the last.

Heeseung felt everything. The weight of Jungwon’s hands. The slow, grinding rhythm of hips and skin and heat. The way their mouths kept returning to each other between gasps and half-swallowed moans.

Heeseung’s thoughts blurred. His body trembled. But the bond kept him tethered — not to the bed, not to Jungwon’s chest, but to now.

He was here. Awake. Wanted. Remembered.

Jungwon murmured his name like an apology. Like a warning. Like a vow.

When Heeseung came, it was with a broken cry and Jungwon’s hand locked around his, their bond mark glowing like fire between their palms.

Jungwon followed with a stuttered groan, face buried in Heeseung’s neck, his fangs pressing — — but not biting.

They collapsed together. Shaking. Breathing like they were both alive for the first time.

Much later, when the candles had melted low and the bond had softened to a faint shimmer, Heeseung traced a mark on Jungwon’s chest.

“If I die in this life too,” he whispered, “will you remember this night?”

Jungwon didn’t answer.

Heeseung didn’t ask again.

That night, Heeseung dreamed.

He was standing in a room made of nothing but shadows and stars. A voice spoke to him in a language he didn’t understand, but felt in every bone.

He woke with the words in his mouth. The phrase burned like gold behind his eyes.

I loved you in every life. That’s the problem.

Chapter Text

“He asked if I would remember.
I already do.”

Heeseung sleeps like he’s never been hunted by time.

One arm flung across the pillow. Lips parted. Bond mark quiet beneath his skin, still glowing faintly in rhythm with Jungwon’s pulse. His breathing slows. Evens. The room settles with him.

And still, Jungwon watches.

He doesn’t remember falling into the bed beside him. Only the moment his fingers touched Heeseung’s wrist — the gold light bleeding between them — and the sudden understanding that he was still here.

Alive. Warm. Tangled in sheets that smelled like burnt magic and lavender.

Heeseung had asked him, hours ago, “Will you remember this night?”

And Jungwon hadn’t answered.

Because he already did.

There have been too many lives. Too many variations of this moment. In one, Heeseung died before they kissed. In another, Jungwon never touched him at all.

But this? This was a version Jungwon had never let himself imagine: Heeseung in his bed. Not claimed. Not bitten. Just… here.

He turns his face into the pillow and breathes in the scent — human warmth and want and something that wasn’t just fate. Something chosen.

Heeseung shifts in his sleep. The blanket slips down. Jungwon catches a glimpse of his collarbone, the bond still faintly shimmering just above it.

He could mark him.

Just a bite. Just a taste.

But he won’t.

Because if I do, I’ll never let him go again.

Outside, the Court is still reeling. Mirrors cracked. Loyalties fractured. Jay silent. Ni-ki locked in a silence that hurts more than screams.

Jungwon knows what they saw. He knows what they’ll say.

The prince bled. The tether flared. The mortal survived.

And all of that would be easier to dismiss if it hadn’t felt right.

Like something that wasn’t just ancient magic, but a promise coming home to itself.

Heeseung hadn’t stopped Ni-ki. But something inside him had.

Something that wasn’t just power. It was presence. Belonging. Like the world had been waiting for him to return and he had, at last, stepped into its shape.

Jungwon presses the heel of his hand to his eyes.

He can’t protect him from what’s coming.

He can’t save him.

But maybe, if he moves fast enough — if Jay finds the right spell, if Sunoo’s visions hold — maybe this time the story ends differently.

Maybe this time, Jungwon is the one who breaks first.

He turns to face Heeseung again. Studies the small details. The lines between his brows. The way his fingers twitch in sleep. The scar along his hip — not from this life, but one before. Heeseung doesn’t remember how he got it.

Jungwon does.

He remembers all of them.

Their first fight. Their first kiss. The first time Heeseung said, “I’m not ready,” and meant it.

The first time he died. And the second. And the tenth.

It never gets easier. And still, Jungwon chooses this.

He always chooses him.

Heeseung stirs — not awake, not dreaming. Somewhere between. His breath catches. His lashes flutter. Jungwon holds his breath, waiting—

But he settles again. Rolls toward Jungwon, an arm draping over his chest in sleep. Their bond pulses once, gold and warm.

It feels like forgiveness. Or mercy. Or both.

Jungwon doesn’t move.

If this is the only night he gets to have him without loss at the edges, he’ll take it. And burn for it later.

“I loved you in every life.”

The phrase hums in his chest. A mantra. A curse.

“That’s the problem.”

He closes his eyes. Lets Heeseung’s weight anchor him.

And for one fragile breath, he lets himself pretend that memory won’t be the only thing he has left.

Chapter Text

Excerpted from Codex Nocturna, Vol. VII — Circulation Forbidden Outside Council Walls

Entry 7.11: The Bonded Tether (Immortal-Mortal Variation)

Of all ancient bindings, the tethered bond is the most volatile — and the most rare. It is not created. It is not chosen. It arrives, always at a cost.

A soul tether, once formed, connects one immortal being with a mortal counterpart born once per cycle — across time, across memory, across the veil of death itself.

Contrary to public belief, the bond is not inherently romantic. But when paired with emotional proximity, it often becomes fatal. Especially when left to completion.

The tether does not end with death. That is the curse.

Entry 7.14: The Merge

In rare cases — approximately once per millennia — the mortal recalls fragments of past lives. This event is called The Merge.

Signs include:

• Unprovoked déjà vu
• Dreams that carry emotional weight or pain
• Recognition of places never visited
• Physical resonance when touched by the bonded immortal

If the merge is not interrupted, the mortal soul begins to absorb memory from all previous lives. Once this threshold is crossed, the mortal may:

• Exhibit latent magic (bond-sourced)
• Spontaneously recall previous deaths
• Trigger rogue instability in nearby immortals

Important: If the bond completes and the mortal survives, the tether becomes permanent. This has not occurred in recorded history. Every known merge has resulted in mortal death within one lunar cycle of completion.

Entry 7.19: The Immortal Rule

The Vampire Court forbids immortals from bonding with mortals due to the destabilizing nature of the tether. Emotional intensity leads to blood volatility. Volatility leads to rogue behavior.

See Addendum 9.2: The Fall of Lord Taerin — whose bonded mortal lived 37 days post-merge. On the 38th, Taerin turned rogue and consumed six noble lines.

Bonding is therefore classified as a Class Red threat to Court survival.

Entry 7.22: On Turning the Mortal

Q: Can the bonded mortal be turned into an immortal to preserve the bond?

A: No. Mortal tethers are encoded with , older than vampirism. Once bound to mortality, the soul cannot transition across planes.

Heeseung’s bloodline, in particular, is believed to be Vessel-Encoded. His soul acts as a key, anchoring magic that preserves the realm’s balance.

Turning him would corrupt the tether, disrupt the Veil, and possibly accelerate the rogue plague.

In essence: he is irreplaceable, and unconvertible. The bond cannot be cheated. It can only be ended.

Entry 7.29: What Happens If—

[The rest of the page has been blacked out with a scorched rune.]

Handwritten note in the margin:
“He remembers too much already. Burn this before he finds the rest.”

Codex Status: Sealed by Council Order

Access granted to: Jay (Strategist), Sunoo (Lorekeeper), Jungwon (Prince)

Chapter Text

The cell wasn’t locked. No guards posted. No runes etched into the stone to keep him contained. Just still air, a too-clean silence, and the weight of a name Ni-ki wasn’t sure he deserved anymore.

He sat cross-legged on the cot, elbows on knees, fingertips pressed together in the kind of prayer only the guilty know. The room smelled faintly of wax and iron, like old magic left to rot. Overhead, a single sconce flickered as if uncertain it should still burn.

His gloves lay in his lap, bloodless now but still stiff where the fabric had dried after the court. He hadn’t tried to clean them. He hadn’t tried to speak.

Jungwon hadn’t come.

Not yet.

He hadn’t been told he was forgiven, or condemned. He only knew he was still breathing, and that felt both too much and not enough.

The door creaked open behind him. He didn’t look up.

"You always liked silence," Jay said. His voice was soft. Heavy. The kind of quiet that came from mourning something that hadn’t died yet.

Ni-ki didn’t move. "Still do."

Jay stepped inside. The sound of his boots on the stone was deliberate, but not loud. Not a threat. Not quite.

"You’re not a prisoner," he said. "You know that."

"Don’t feel like much else."

Jay exhaled. The cell was bare save for a cot, a stool, and a basin. He sat on the stool and studied the boy across from him—no, not a boy. Not anymore.

"I was like you once," Jay said. "Not the rage. But the ache. The feeling that if he looked at someone else, I’d disappear."

Ni-ki’s jaw flexed. "You loved him."

Jay nodded slowly. "Still do. But love’s not what saves you. Sometimes it’s what ruins you."

Silence stretched. The flickering light painted Jay’s face in gold and shadow.

"I was raised to protect him," Ni-ki said. "Then he brought someone else into the room. And suddenly I didn’t know who I was."

Jay didn’t respond. Just watched. Waited.

"I wasn’t trying to kill Heeseung," Ni-ki said.

"But you wanted him gone."

Ni-ki closed his eyes. "I wanted to go back. To before."

Jay stood, brushing invisible dust from his sleeves. "There is no before, Ni-ki. There’s only what you do next."

He paused at the door.

"You can still fight. But next time—do it for something that doesn’t make you bleed in the wrong direction."

When he left, the silence felt colder. And Ni-ki finally breathed.

When Jungwon came, he said nothing at first.

The door shut with a soft click. He walked to the far wall, leaned against it, arms crossed, sleeves rolled. The cut on his ribs was still healing. Ni-ki looked at it and felt the room tilt.

"It should’ve been deeper," Ni-ki said.

"It wasn’t."

"I should’ve been stopped."

"You were."

The quiet between them was not empty. It was waiting.

Jungwon finally spoke. "You weren’t turned young. But you were turned with a young heart. And I didn’t teach you how to carry loss. I only taught you how to hold a blade."

Ni-ki swallowed. "I didn’t mean to make you bleed."

Jungwon stepped closer. Not enough to threaten. Enough to feel real.

"You didn’t. Not just me. You cut yourself too."

Ni-ki looked up. His eyes were wet, but not falling. Just full.

"Do I still have a place?"

Jungwon nodded. "Not the one you had. The one you’re about to make."

He reached into his coat and pulled out something small. A folded piece of black cloth. He tossed it onto the cot.

"Clean gloves," Jungwon said. "If you want to fight again, you’ll need them."

Then he turned to leave.

Ni-ki stared at the gloves for a long time. Then picked them up.

They fit.

Outside the cell, the halls of the Court were quieter than usual. The runes that lined the ceilings were dim, as though conserving power.

Jay stood beside the atrium gate, arms folded, gaze lifted toward the Veil where it shimmered pale and frayed.

"He’ll come back," Jungwon said.

Jay didn’t look at him. "He never left. He just forgot who he was."

Jungwon nodded. "Don’t we all."

Heeseung passed Ni-ki later in the corridor.

They didn’t speak.

But they didn’t flinch either.

And sometimes, that’s enough.

Far below, in the lore vault, a candle flared.

Sunoo opened a scroll with trembling fingers. The sigil on the page pulsed gold—not fading. Growing.

Heeseung’s reflection flickered in the glass.

And the bond began to whisper.

Chapter Text

The air in the lore vault did not move. It listened.

Somewhere above, in the far halls of the Court, the world trembled quietly—runic sigils dimming, enchanted glass twitching in its panes. But down here, beneath the stones worn smooth by centuries of footsteps and secrets, everything was still. Everything but the bond.

Sunoo walked in silence, the sleeves of his robes trailing like breath over marble, bare feet leaving no prints. He moved between towering shelves of codices and relics, each older than language, each humming with a magic that had long since grown resentful of being stored. Candles along the walls flared as he passed, not from air but recognition. The vault knew its Seer.

He stopped before Entry 7.14.

The page in his hand shivered.

The Council Codex I bled faintly at the spine as if remembering its own origin. He opened it carefully, the ink still wet despite being centuries old. Sunoo’s breath fogged slightly in the cold. The tether was shifting. Faster now.

He read aloud:

“In rare cases—once per millennia—the mortal recalls fragments of past lives. The Merge.
If the bond completes and the mortal survives, the tether becomes permanent.
This has not occurred in recorded history.”

His voice did not echo. The vault did not allow such things.

A candle to his left surged into brightness before extinguishing entirely. The mirrored glass beside it cracked down the center. In the broken reflection, Heeseung’s face shimmered—gold eyes, blood not yet spilled, hands trembling as if holding something too heavy for this world.

Sunoo closed the Codex and whispered to the dark:

"The tether isn’t stabilizing. It’s merging too fast. If it completes, it won’t bind the world."

His throat tightened. The silence pulled taut.

"It will rewrite it."

Above him, something howled beyond the Veil.

Jake arrived at the Council not with fanfare, but with precision. His coat was crisp, boots quiet, eyes two shades too bright to be called warm. He bowed once before the Council, unhurried, unshaken.

"You summoned me."

The Head Councilor didn’t nod. They never did. Their voices always sounded like verdicts.

"Heeseung is awakening."

Jake folded his hands behind his back. "Then you fear the Merge."

"We fear what permanence means," came another voice—ancient, brittle, cracking beneath its own age. "The tether was never meant to be forever."

"If he survives, he becomes the root," another Elder said. "The anchor becomes the source. The cycle breaks."

"And without cycles," the Head murmured, "there is no control."

Jake didn’t flinch. He had been trained too well for that. But he tilted his head slightly, as if examining the fear beneath their logic.

"You fear love," he said. "But it's memory that terrifies you."

The Council did not answer.

They didn’t have to.

There was an old sanctuary hidden behind the Eastern Wing. A garden overrun with ivy and silence, where tethered pairs had once come to say vows or goodbye.

Jungwon sat on the stone ledge of the central arch, fingers brushing the petals of a bloom that hadn’t existed the day before. White, veined in red. The tether remembered this place.

Heeseung stepped into the clearing like he’d been here before in another body. Maybe he had. The tether was beginning to pull memory from marrow.

Neither spoke at first. They didn’t need to.

Heeseung crossed to Jungwon and placed a hand on his shoulder, quiet and steady. Not clinging. Not pleading.

“Do you think the bond remembers this place?”

Jungwon looked up, smile soft but wan. “I hope it forgets. So we can pretend it’s new.”

The silence between them was sacred. Jungwon’s fingers found Heeseung’s briefly—an anchoring touch, not possession. Heeseung’s pulse, where it pressed against Jungwon’s, thrummed gold.

It didn’t feel like tethering.

It felt like becoming.

Later, Heeseung screamed in his sleep.

Jungwon was already there.

He had been standing by the window for hours, watching the wards flicker like nervous stars across the rooftops. He didn’t sleep anymore, not really. Not when the bond pulsed louder than silence, not when Heeseung’s breathing changed in the middle of the night.

When the scream broke through, Jungwon didn’t flinch—he moved.

He reached the bedside as the sigil on Heeseung’s wrist flared. The air stung with ozone. Every mirror in the room fractured at once, like memory refusing to be held in pieces.

Jay and Sunghoon arrived next, blades already drawn.

Ni-ki came last.

Heeseung's skin flared hot. The sigil on his wrist glowed through the bandages. His breath hitched, chest arching. His eyes opened and they weren’t just gold—they were splintered light.

“What's happening,” he gasped. “It’s burning. Inside. I can’t—”

Ni-ki knelt beside the bed and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“I know,” he said. “You think you’ll lose yourself. I did too.”

Heeseung met his gaze. Not forgiveness. But another chance.

The tether pulsed once, gold and unyielding.

Sunoo’s voice carried from the threshold.

“It’s not the bond. It’s his blood. It’s replacing the anchor.”

Jay turned to him sharply. “What does that mean?”

Sunoo’s eyes were full of centuries and certainty.

“If it completes, there’s no choosing another. The tether won’t need anchors. It will become root and world and memory itself.”

“Then why are the rogues—” Sunghoon started.

“Because they’re feeling it,” Sunoo interrupted. “The closer Heeseung comes to merging, the more unstable unanchored vampires become. The Veil is unraveling.”

A horn sounded. Three notes. East perimeter.

Not scouts.

Not wards.

An army.

Preparations moved quickly. The Veil at the border had thinned too far. Rogue vampires were breaching the edges, driven not by hunger—but by something older. They were responding to the Merge the way animals sense earthquakes: instinct, dread, the certainty of change.

Jungwon stood before the others in the atrium, coat half-fastened, blood still drying on his cuffs.

Ni-ki approached him slowly, gloves in hand.

“I’ll fight,” he said.

Jungwon didn’t nod. Just met his eyes.

“Not for me.”

Ni-ki looked toward Heeseung, who stood with Sunoo beneath a warded arch.

“No,” he said. “For him. For what he could become.”

Their eyes locked. Jungwon passed him a blade he hadn’t used in years.

Jay and Sunghoon flanked the doors, both already armed.

Four of them.

The last line before everything shattered.

Chapter Text

The storm never arrived with thunder. Only silence.

The Eastern perimeter was already burning by the time the four of them reached it, veiled sky streaked red with the kind of light that never came from dawn. The Veil had split wide open like a wound, magic fraying at its seams. And through it poured an army of rogue vampires—eyes feral, movements fractured, tetherless and drawn by the pulse of something they didn’t understand but hungered for all the same.

Heeseung.

The Merge had called to them.

Sunoo said it best before they left: “They are not coming for blood. They are coming for memory. To either take it—or destroy it.”

Earlier that night, in the quiet before ruin, Heeseung helped Jungwon dress for battle.

The chamber was dim, lit only by flickering wardlight from the glyphs embedded in the stone walls. Outside, the air held its breath. Inside, so did they.

Jungwon stood with his back to Heeseung, bare to the cold. Pale skin, healed scars, old wounds memorized by time. Heeseung moved slowly, reverently—fingers brushing over collarbones and the curve of a shoulder as he draped the coat into place. He fastened the clasps, one by one, smoothing each seam like he was tucking away a prayer.

Their silence was full, not empty.

Heeseung's hands lingered.

“If this is the last time we see each other,” he said, voice softer than the flamelight, “pretend I said everything right.”

Jungwon turned, the faintest of smiles tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“You already did,” he said. “Just not in this life.”

Heeseung nodded, gaze locked on him. He didn’t step closer.

And Jungwon didn’t ask him to.

They didn’t kiss.

They didn’t need to.

Now, on the battlefield, memory bled into motion.

The four of them stood as the first wave broke over the ruins of the East Wall. Rogue vampires came like water over stone—howling, shattering wards, clawing through spells.

Jay moved first.

His twin daggers caught the moonlight and threw it back. He spun between attackers, each movement a breath, each kill an elegy. The blades weren’t just weapons—they were mourning made real. Each strike said a name he’d never gotten to grieve.

Sunghoon followed.

He held the line like it was sacred. Enchanted glaive gleaming, he pivoted with spell-anchored precision. His steps were runes in motion—measured, holy, unbreaking. One rogue lunged. He didn’t blink. The glaive split the air with a quiet hum, and the rogue fell in pieces.

Ni-ki disappeared into the fight like a shadow let loose.

He moved with feral grace—shoulders squared, eyes unreadable. He fought in silence, but his silence screamed. When two rogues came at Heeseung’s rooftop warding, Ni-ki was already there, blades singing through bone. His body a blur. His mind a line of resolve.

He didn’t look at Heeseung until the dust settled.

Then—

“That was me, wasn’t it?” he said, staring down at the twitching body of a rogue who had looked too much like him.

Heeseung stood above, wide-eyed, protected by a ring of spellfire.

“Not anymore,” he said.

Ni-ki smiled, just barely. Then vanished into the fray.

Jungwon was the eye of the storm.

He needed no blades. No spells. Only his breath and the shadows that answered it. His gloves were gone. His sleeves torn. His fangs bared without apology.

He moved like sacrifice incarnate—silent, fluid, exact. Every rogue that came too close dissolved under his command, sigils erupting from the ground at his feet. His face was streaked with blood and serenity. He was every heir he had ever failed to be.

Ni-ki fell into place at his back.

“Like we trained?” Jungwon asked.

Ni-ki nodded. “Better.”

Jay and Sunghoon flanked them—two guardians, one cause. Together, they formed the last line before the end.

Heeseung watched from above, beside Sunoo.

The bond pulsed gold at his throat, where the sigil had begun to glow like a second heartbeat.

But it was dimming.

The tether was holding—for now. But memory was rewriting everything.

The battlefield shimmered with not just blood, but grief. With every strike, they carried not just the weight of the fight—but of those they hadn’t saved. Those they wouldn’t.

The Veil screamed.

And the world began to change.

Chapter Text

Some love cannot be survived. Only remembered.

Smoke still clung to the corridors. The scent of charred sigils and ash drifted in from the open arches, where the wind carried whispers of a battle already receding into story.

Jay sat on the steps of the central fountain, sharpening his blades with motions too precise to be unconscious. Blood clung to the sleeves he hadn’t bothered to change. His eyes were distant—counting losses that hadn’t been named aloud.

Sunghoon stood sentinel by the shattered outer gate. He hadn't spoken since the last ward fell. He just watched the horizon, shoulders squared, like he feared the silence more than the next fight.

Ni-ki paced the northern wallwalk. Not frantic. Focused. He’d fought beside Jungwon again—and didn’t quite know what to do with the quiet that followed. Every few steps, he glanced toward the healing chambers, where Heeseung rested behind runes and wards that still pulsed gold.

Jungwon walked alone through the hall.

Not because he didn’t need the others.

But because what he carried now could not be shared.

The war room was emptied of its urgency. No maps. No drawn sigils. Just him, Sunoo, and the weight of a decision that could rewrite everything — or end it.

The scroll was bound in dark thread. Iridescent at the edges. It pulsed when Jungwon touched it, as if recognizing him. Or warning him.

“The ritual is irreversible,” Sunoo said. “It would sever the tether completely. No more Merge. No more remembering.”

Jungwon didn’t ask what would happen to Heeseung.

He just nodded.

There was a silence between them. Not empty. Just full of things they wouldn’t say.

“If you do it,” Sunoo added softly, “Heeseung lives. But the world forgets.”

Jungwon held the scroll like a blade. Like it might cut him anyway.

He remembered Heeseung’s hands, gentle at his collarbone. The way his voice broke when he asked him to pretend this was enough. The tether pulsed at his chest now — dimmer, yes, but still beating.

And part of him wanted to forget. To be ordinary. To stop being the heir, the weapon, the boy who never got to stay.

But forgetting Heeseung… even one life — felt like dying another way.

The scroll still pulsed faintly in Jungwon’s hand when he left the war room. He didn’t take the usual path back to his quarters. Instead, he walked the halls like a ghost retracing the edges of something lost — walls he had bled against, shadows that still remembered his name. He passed no one, but felt everything.

Heeseung, meanwhile, slept under three layers of protective sigils, not from danger — but from memory. The bond had worn him thin. And where exhaustion took root, dreams followed.

Heeseung dreamed of a life that had never existed.

There were no sigils in the walls. No blood-etched oaths. Just white curtains billowing at an open window and morning sun painting lines on his arms.

The kitchen was small. The kind built for one person, but they made it work. A frying pan hissed on the stove. Jungwon stood barefoot on cold tile, hair a mess, sleeves rolled to his elbows.

“Don’t burn it,” Heeseung warned, grinning.

Jungwon scowled in mock offense. “This is a sacred ritual, not just breakfast.”

There were two mugs on the counter — chipped but loved. Steam curled from them, carrying the scent of rosemary and honey. Outside, someone watered their plants. Inside, the world was soft.

They sat cross-legged on the couch, knees bumping. Jungwon leaned against Heeseung’s shoulder like gravity had decided that’s where he belonged.

“I think I loved you in every life,” Heeseung said suddenly.

Jungwon smiled, lazy and golden. “That’s the problem.”

They laughed. And it didn’t feel tragic.

It felt like sunlight that would never leave.

Heeseung woke crying.

The scent of rosemary still lingered, though there were no herbs in the room.

Outside his door, Jungwon stood with his hand resting on the wood. He didn’t knock. He didn’t need to.

He could feel the dream pulsing beneath Heeseung’s skin. He felt it too — like maybe they had lived it somewhere. Or maybe the bond had made it real, just once.

Jungwon whispered through the wood:

“I wish we had time to grow old.”

Heeseung whispered back:

“We did. Just not here.”

The silence that followed stretched long and unbroken.

Then, Heeseung opened the door.

And there they stood — just inches apart, two bodies holding centuries in their bones. Their eyes locked. Not wide with wonder. Not soft with safety. But with the raw weight of everything they never got to say in all their lives before this one.

No one moved. They didn’t have to.

Because in that long, held breath between them, they said everything:

I remember you.
I lost you.
I chose you anyway.

And Jungwon smiled — not because it didn’t hurt. But because it always had, and he still stayed.

Heeseung touched his hand.

And for a moment, they weren’t a prince and a tether, a weapon and a curse.

They were just two people who’d never had enough time — and were loving each other anyway.

The Letter Room felt different now.

Where once there were hundreds of floating pages, now there were gaps — fragments half-vanished, sentences left mid-thought. The tether was remembering too much. And so the world had begun to forget.

Jungwon stood before the last wall and placed his final letter there. The ink had barely dried before the page began to fade.

Sunoo appeared behind him like breath.

“It’s happening faster now,” he said. “The Merge is pulling too hard. The bond remembers every life. The world is trying to correct it.”

“By erasing it,” Jungwon murmured.

Sunoo nodded.

Jungwon stared at the vanishing page.

“I don’t want to forget the lives where I lost him,” he said. “Even those mattered.”

Sunoo didn’t reply.

Some things weren’t meant to be comforted.

Jake found Heeseung alone in the garden. Not training. Not hiding. Just sitting with his knees pulled to his chest, fingers curled around a wardstone.

The bond pulsed at his throat, weak but steady. Like something trying to breathe through water.

Jake stepped forward. Drew his blade. And hesitated.

—

He remembered the battlefield. The sky cracked open. Heeseung standing in gold light, not attacking — anchoring. Holding the Veil with nothing but memory and grief. Jungwon, crumpled nearby, had risen because Heeseung had reached for him.

Not with hands.

With remembrance.

And in that moment, Jake saw it:

The Council feared not death. But devotion.

Not rebellion. But love.

—

Jake lowered the blade.

“I was sent to kill you,” he said. “Now I think I’d die for you instead.”

Heeseung didn’t smile. But he didn’t cry either.

“Then you understand,” he said.

Jake nodded once.

“I do now.”

Interlude: Before the Breaking 

Jungwon sat alone in the atrium beneath the ruined sigil-glass dome, where moonlight filtered in through jagged holes. The Severance Scroll lay in his lap, unopened, yet heavy in a way that felt like memory pressing into bone.

He had walked this choice in every life before. Let the bond complete. Let Heeseung die. Mourn him. Carry him. Wait for the next cycle. Always the same script. Always the same grief.

But not this time.

This time, he would choose. Not fate. Not prophecy. Not the tether.

Him.

He whispered into the quiet, not knowing if the stars or gods or ghosts were listening:

"I loved you in every life. That’s the problem."

It wasn’t said with resentment. It was said like surrender. Like truth finally spoken without fear.

He opened the scroll.

The runes lit gold, then red.

Sunoo had told him: If the ritual succeeds, and Jungwon dies tethered, the bond becomes root — permanent. Without an anchor. Without needing Heeseung.

The vampire world would stabilize again. But differently. Without him.

Jay would carry the command mantle. He wouldn’t wear it like a crown — but like armor made of grief.

Sunghoon would stay at the gate. Forever the first to see the next threat. The last to flinch.

Jake would walk the line between Council and rebellion, changed by what he chose not to kill.

Ni-ki would guard the bond. Not because he had to. Because he finally understood what it meant to fight beside someone, not for them.

Sunoo would witness. And record. And whisper the truth into the next lifetime, if the world ever needed to hear it again.

And Heeseung...

Heeseung would live. Would grow old. Would forget just enough to stay sane. But not so much that he didn’t look up some nights and feel like something eternal had once held him.

That would be enough.

Jungwon held the scroll to his chest.

He was no longer choosing to survive.

He was choosing to end it — so Heeseung didn’t have to.

That night, in the stillness before the bond could break again, Jungwon climbed into bed beside Heeseung.

They lay facing each other. No rush. No tragedy. Just tired eyes and hands finding hands.

Their fingers rested over the mark — the sigil that had followed them through lifetimes. It pulsed once, then stilled.

Jungwon hummed a lullaby.

Heeseung joined him on the second verse.

It didn’t matter if they got the words right.

They remembered the melody.

“Stay with me,” Jungwon whispered.

“Until the end,” Heeseung replied.

And they didn’t need to sleep.

Because some goodbyes are said in silence.

And some are said with a song.

Chapter Text

The throne room was quiet.

Not silent. The Court never truly slept. Somewhere beyond the blackened windows, night creatures moved through the shadows, and ancient spells hummed low in the walls like an old song forgotten by its own singer. But in the chamber where power once gathered like stormlight, there was only the hush of endings.

Jungwon stood alone.

No crown. No sigil carved into the marble dais. Just the soft rustle of his robes as he moved through what used to be his world.

He had already sent the summons. There would be no ceremony. No final address. Only names.

He looked once—only once—at the mirror that hung behind the dais. Cracked along one edge, dust gathering in the corners. The reflection didn’t show a prince. Just a boy grown too old for the war he was born into.

Sunghoon was the first to arrive, as he always was. Silent, composed, dressed in gray with gloves tight over his hands. His eyes were unreadable, but his posture spoke of knowing. He had seen this coming. Perhaps he had always known this would be how it ended.

"You're certain," Sunghoon said.

"Yes."

No hesitation.

"You’ve ruled longer than any of them expected," Sunghoon added quietly. "And better. They’ll remember that."

Jungwon didn’t respond to praise. But something in his jaw eased.

Jay came next. He entered without fanfare, but his presence always bent the room. He stood beside Sunghoon, hands folded behind his back, gaze fixed not on Jungwon, but on the old seat behind him.

"This isn't surrender," Jay said. "Not if you're walking away with your own name."

Jungwon gave him a small, tired smile. "Then let me name what comes next."

He reached into his sleeve and pulled out a folded scroll. Sealed in blood and bound by sigil.

"The Council, as we knew it, is dissolved."

He placed the scroll on the table between them. The marble hissed faintly where the wax touched. Sunghoon didn’t react. Jay exhaled through his nose.

"Effective tonight," Jungwon continued, "the Court will be led not by shadow and decree, but by choice."

He looked to the shadows where Jake waited, younger, sharper, still too earnest. Jake stepped into the light, every inch of him trying to appear taller than he was. The flickering torches caught in his eyes, bright with resolve and fear.

"Jake will lead. Not as Prince. As Head of Council. He believes in bridges, not walls. That will be needed."

Jake bowed low. "I won't fail you."

"Don't swear that," Jungwon said. "Just don't forget who you serve. Not the Court. The realm."

"And if the realm forgets me?" Jake asked quietly.

Jungwon's gaze softened. "Then remind them with mercy. Not blood."

Then—

A pause. A breath.

He turned as Ni-ki entered.

Not the soldier. Not the rogue. Just the boy Jungwon had raised from fledgling to fury. The boy who had once wept over the corpse of a crow he couldn’t save. The boy who had grown teeth to keep from being devoured.

Ni-ki didn’t bow. Didn’t speak. The cut on his cheek was new. The grief in his eyes was not.

Jungwon approached him, slow and without caution. "You broke something in me once," he said. "And then you protected the pieces. I can’t take you with me. But I can free you."

Ni-ki’s voice was gravel. "What do I do now?"

"You live. You forgive yourself. And maybe one day, you’ll teach someone else how to survive loving what they were never meant to keep."

"You were mine too," Ni-ki whispered. "Even if they never said it."

Jungwon’s hands hovered, then closed gently over Ni-ki’s shoulders. "You are still mine. Just no longer to protect."

A long silence passed between them. Then Ni-ki stepped forward and pressed his forehead to Jungwon’s shoulder.

No words. Just weight.

Jungwon closed his eyes. For a moment, he was just someone’s brother.

And then, the moment passed.

Before the end, Jungwon made one final stop.

The Letter Room.

He lit the candles with a wave of his hand. Shadows danced across every wall. The air smelled like old ink and magic. He added a final letter to the shelf. Sealed in gold. Addressed to no one.

Let this stand as record: I ruled, but I did not remain. The realm will hold, not because of my name — but because I dared to leave it behind.

Below it, he placed another.

If the boy I loved ever finds this room, tell him I left the door open.

He ran his fingers once along the shelf — dozens of letters, fragments of grief and memory. Some were Heeseung’s. Many were his. All of them, traces of a love the Court would never fully understand.

The High Council, once untouchable, had been summoned one final time. Each of the twelve seats stood full, for once. No absences. No distractions. Only inevitability.

Jungwon entered without armor. Only the crown, simple and black, resting above his brow like dusk.

He gave them a choice:

Step down and live in exile.
Stay and swear fealty to the new order.
Or die.

Three walked out, heads lowered. Four swore loyalty with trembling voices. The rest... didn’t get the chance to choose.

By dawn, the council chamber no longer existed. Only scorched stone and one name carved into the central dais:

Y.J.W. — the boy who ended an empire so another could rise.

Jay was named successor — not Regent. Not proxy. But ruler. The one to prepare the vampire realm for what the tether would become. For the permanence that would soon no longer require an anchor. This was not a reward. It was responsibility, passed forward by someone who would not be there to carry it any longer.

Elsewhere, in the east wing, Heeseung stirred.

He didn’t know. Not yet.

Jungwon had kept the plans from him — gently, entirely. There had been no reason to wake him. Not when the burden could be carried alone for just one more day.

So Heeseung walked the palace gardens that morning, unaware. A blanket around his shoulders, his breath fogging in the cold. He paused by a window that overlooked the council wing and felt something shift in the air — not quite wind. Not quite sorrow.

He hummed a tune he didn’t remember learning.

The guards didn’t meet his eyes.

Later, Sunoo would distract him with tea. With soft conversation and questions that didn’t mean much. The kind people asked when they were trying to hold time still.

Heeseung would smile, but his fingers would rest lightly over the sigil on his wrist.

And he would wait, not knowing what he was waiting for.

By the time the last name was written and the last seal pressed into wax, the room had grown lighter.

Not in sun. But in burden.

Jungwon left his gloves on the table. Left his sword on the dais. Left the ring once passed down through a dozen lifetimes resting in the center of the throne’s shadow.

"I'm not dying," he said softly. "But the part of me that ruled needs to rest."

Jay stepped forward. "Then rest. We'll carry the name, but never the weight. That was always yours."

Sunghoon bowed first. Jay followed. Jake, last, with trembling knees.

Jungwon looked to each of them — Sunghoon, his mirror; Jay, his history; Jake, his hope; Ni-ki, his heart.

He bowed.

Not as ruler.

As man.

And in that gesture, the reign ended more completely than if he had fallen in battle.

He turned toward the corridor that led to the east wing.

To the room where Heeseung waited.

To the life he'd almost never let himself choose.

And with steady steps, he left the throne behind.

Forever.

Chapter Text

The Court — or what’s left of it — sleeps poorly these days.
Even the shadows twitch — restless, like they're starting to remember hunger.

But tonight, the halls hush around Jungwon like they know better. He walks without his gloves. Without the weight. No sword. No sigil. Just a single folded jacket and a lie he’s practiced in the mirror:

"Come with me."

Heeseung answers the door before Jungwon knocks. He’s barefoot, lips cracked from sleep, and there’s ink smudged across his wrist — runes he doesn’t yet know the meaning of.

"You’re not supposed to be outside the Court," Heeseung says, though he doesn’t move aside.

Jungwon doesn’t smile. But he softens.

"That makes two of us."

They stand like that for a moment — almost strangers, almost home. Then Jungwon gestures, casual as breath, toward the moonlit corridor behind him.

"I need a favor."

Heeseung arches a brow. "And what's that?"

"A break," Jungwon says. "For both of us. Just a few days. Outside."

Heeseung blinks. "...Outside as in...?"

"Your place. The city. A few floors above a convenience store with terrible ramen and too many light leaks."
Jungwon meets his gaze evenly. "I want to see what the world feels like when it doesn’t know it’s ending."

A beat.

Then:
"...You're joking."

"I'm not."
A pause. "I’ll walk in daylight. I have before. You just didn’t see me."

The words lodge somewhere just under Heeseung’s ribs.

Heeseung studies him again, this time slower — and notices the details he missed the first time:
The faint shimmer of a glamour charm at Jungwon’s throat. The edge of a contact lens softening his gold gaze to human brown. No fang flash. No royal insignia.

Heeseung’s mouth parts. "You’ve done this before."

Jungwon nods. "Once. Twice. Enough to know where your university library keeps the sad poetry. Enough to know you fall asleep in the second row of lecture halls if the professor starts with Kant."

Heeseung’s breath catches.

"You saw me."

"I always do," Jungwon says simply. Then, softer:
"Before the Oath. Before the remembering. I still knew it was you."

A silence, tender and sharp, stretches between them.

Heeseung doesn’t know what to say — so he doesn’t.

Jungwon shifts the bag on his shoulder. "Come on. Just for a day or two. No archives. No Council. Just a couch and maybe some music you don’t have to translate into survival."

It’s a terrible idea. Dangerous. Reckless.

So of course, Heeseung says:
"...Okay."

The Veil is thinner here. Not torn, not frayed — just stretched enough for longing to slip through.

They arrive before dawn.

Jungwon doesn’t blink at the noise. The flicker of neon over asphalt. The smell of oil and carbon and fried fish cakes. He breathes in Seoul like it’s the first true thing he’s tasted in centuries.

Heeseung watches him fumble briefly with the keypad lock. Laughs when Jungwon guesses wrong. Lets him in anyway.

The apartment is small. Slightly too warm. Still smells like laundry detergent and secondhand books. Jungwon steps inside like it’s hallowed ground.

Heeseung leaves him standing there for a second, just watching.

"You don’t have to act like I’m letting you into a temple," he mutters, tossing his keys onto the counter.

Jungwon’s eyes are wide. Not with awe — not quite. Just the kind of silence people wear when they remember what it meant to be human.

"It’s yours," Jungwon says. "Of course it’s sacred."

Heeseung swallows, hard.

Jungwon steps past him, runs his fingers along the spine of a book shelf, lets his palm rest on the back of the couch like he’s feeling for a pulse.

"Do you—" Heeseung starts, then hesitates. "Do you do this a lot?"

Jungwon tilts his head. "Hide in plain sight? Sometimes. Not since the last war."

"And before that?"

A pause. Then: "I used to walk among cities. Every decade or so. The daywalker’s gift. Glamour runes. Contacts. Pretend teeth."

He smiles, sharp and brief. "Once, I passed as a student for six months. Just to see what made your kind love poetry so much."

Heeseung snorts. "And?"

Jungwon shrugs. "Still don’t get Yeats."

They laugh. The sound fits in the apartment like it’s been waiting there, tucked behind the curtain seams.

"Come on," Heeseung says eventually. "You said a break, right? I’ve got instant curry and a couch with your name on it."

Jungwon follows him — unarmed, unguarded — into the first peace he’s dared to let himself feel in centuries or lifetimes.

And outside, the city keeps spinning. Oblivious. Unaware.

For once, that feels like mercy.

While Heeseung sleeps, Jungwon moves.

Sunoo had warned him: when the Severance Rite succeeds, the mortal forgets. Entire lives, entire histories — gone, like mist under sun. Heeseung would forget the bond, the Oath, the Court — him.

And maybe that’s mercy. Maybe it’s the first time the curse will let him live instead of just dying prettier each cycle.

This time, Jungwon thinks, Heeseung might actually grow old. Grey at the temples. Smile lines carved deep. Someone human beside him who loves him without runes or prophecy. A child, maybe. A garden. Peace.

For that to happen, Jungwon has to make sure there’s something left to land on when memory collapses.

So he moves.

Not loudly. Not hurried. Just with intent — quiet and merciful.

He sits at Heeseung’s desk, unlocking his laptop with a whisper and a rune-slick touch. The glamour keeps his presence from logging. The rest is muscle memory, the kind forged over lifetimes of ruling kingdoms and signing death warrants.

He opens an encrypted connection — Sangjeon-level clearance — and contacts a broker who owes him a life-debt and several fortunes. The apartment building is bought within the hour. Transferred, quietly, to Heeseung’s name. Nine units total. Enough to offer comfort. Enough to start over.

Jungwon wires the rest.

A fortune — old, bloody, and buried under centuries of Sangjeon holdings — lands in Heeseung’s bank account as a fabricated inheritance. The name on the legal notice is someone Jungwon once was. Someone no one will trace.

He leaves a letter in the drawer. Short. Without embellishment:

You asked me to stay.
This is the closest I could come.

Then he erases the trail.

He pauses, just for a second, hand resting over the drawer where the letter sits. The myth echoes in him — the one that built their curse:

One immortal. One mortal.
The vampire remembers. The mortal returns.

Always. Until now.

Maybe this time, return won’t be necessary.

Maybe this time, forgetting is freedom.

Not even the new Council will know. Not Jake. Not Sunoo. Only Jay might suspect, and Jay has always known how to keep a secret bleeding quietly in the dark.

The morning is quiet.

Not Court-quiet — not the kind scrubbed clean by marble and echo — but human-quiet. A refrigerator hum. The distant shuffle of someone walking their dog three floors down. Music bleeding faintly through a wall.

Heeseung wakes first.

His Merge symptoms have eased — not gone, but quieter. Less like screaming. More like memory breathing just beneath the skin.

Jungwon is curled on the couch, one hand tucked beneath his cheek, the other still wrapped loosely around the edge of Heeseung’s blanket like he meant to let go but forgot.

Heeseung doesn't wake him.

Instead, he pads into the kitchen and burns the toast. Twice.

The eggs are edible. The coffee is not. He drinks it anyway.

Jungwon stirs only when the second kettle clicks off.

"You don’t own a single decent pan," he mumbles, voice still soft with sleep.

"I’m mortal," Heeseung says. "My kitchen reflects my fragile, imperfect nature."

Jungwon hums. "You’re fragile in exactly no ways that matter."

They eat on the floor. Plates balanced on knees. Knees touching. A small act. A larger one.

Halfway through a bite, Heeseung pauses.
"Wait," he says, frowning at Jungwon’s plate. "Can you even eat this?"

Jungwon glances down at the half-burned toast, then at Heeseung, expression unreadable. "Technically? Yes. Enjoy it? Not really."

"Then why—?"

"Because you made it," Jungwon says simply, taking another deliberate bite. "And because it makes you smile."

Heeseung stares at him for a beat longer, then laughs. "You’re ridiculous."

"You’ve known that since the first life," Jungwon murmurs. "And that’s the problem."

The sun spills into the room like a blessing Jungwon doesn’t trust.

"Play me something," he says.

Heeseung arches a brow. "Music?"

"Yours. Something I wouldn’t hear in the Court."

Heeseung scrolls through his playlist, pauses, then taps play.

It’s low. Raw. The kind of voice that bleeds when it sings.

Jungwon closes his eyes. Listens.

"This one," he says, when the lyrics whisper I loved you in every life .

Heeseung tenses — just barely.

"That’s the problem," he murmurs. Doesn’t know why he said it.

Jungwon’s hand brushes his. He doesn’t answer.

Later, they walk by the Han River.

There are children playing. A woman feeding pigeons. A busker with an out-of-tune guitar.

Heeseung reaches for Jungwon’s hand.

Jungwon doesn’t flinch. He lets their fingers twine.

The bond glows — barely. Just a pulse under the skin.

"You always bring rain," Heeseung says.

Jungwon glances up. "Not this time."

The clouds hold. The light stays soft.

Heeseung leans into him. Shoulder against shoulder. Pulse to phantom.

"You look different here," he says.

Jungwon hums. "Less doomed?"

"No," Heeseung says. "Just... more you."

They don’t talk about the bond. Or the Rite. Or the hours they’re stealing from fate.

They don’t need to.

Jungwon watches the wind ripple across the river like memory.

And when Heeseung says, "Let’s go home," he follows.

That night, the city glows for them.

And Jungwon lets himself pretend — for one night — that forever could begin here.

The door clicks shut behind them.

Jungwon doesn’t bother turning on the light. The glow from the hallway fades, but he sees Heeseung anyway — in pieces, in outlines, in every breath they haven’t taken yet.

Heeseung doesn’t speak. Just steps closer.

They kiss like it’s instinct. Like it’s the last thing they’ll get to choose.

No audience. No ancient Rite. Just two hands curling into fabric. Just warmth and want and the fragile ache of something not meant to last.

Jungwon’s jacket hits the floor. Then Heeseung’s shirt.

There is no rush. No violence. Just the careful undoing of reverence. Just mouths against collarbones. Just fingers memorizing what they’ll have to forget.

Jungwon touches him like he’s praying.

Heeseung pulls him closer like he’s drowning.

The bond pulses — electric, quiet — behind their ribs. A tether pulled tight by longing. Not ceremony. Not magic. Just want.

They move together slowly. Deliberately.

Jungwon whispers his name only once, and Heeseung swears it echoes.

No blood is spilled. No vows are spoken. But still, it feels like a binding.

After, Heeseung lies with his head against Jungwon’s chest, listening for a heartbeat that’s never been there — and still finds peace.

Outside, a train passes. Distant. Uninterested. The world keeps turning.

Inside, Jungwon watches the ceiling. Eyes wide. Awake.

He doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t need to. Not when time is this thin.

Heeseung mumbles something in his sleep — a name, maybe. A promise half-formed.

And Jungwon just holds him tighter.

Tomorrow, he will die to save him.

Tonight, he is allowed to love him.

Chapter Text

They return hand-in-hand.

Back through the Veil. Back into cold stone and flickering braziers and a realm built on silence.

But for the first time in lifetimes, Heeseung isn’t afraid of the dark.

He is full. Steeped in it. In laughter, in touches that meant nothing but joy. His bones feel less hollow. The Merge aches, but doesn’t burn. His body holds too much warmth to be a vessel now.

He thinks: maybe we’ll be okay.

Jungwon hasn’t let go of his hand. Not even once.

Until they reach the inner hall.

Then, he does. Gently. Too gently.

“I need to take care of something,” Jungwon says, voice almost light. “I won’t be long.”

Heeseung catches the smile. The way it falters around the edges. The way it looks like punctuation — not a comma, but a full stop.

“I’ll come with you.”

“No,” Jungwon says, too fast. “Stay. Rest.”

Something goes very still in Heeseung’s chest.

He nods. But when Jungwon walks away, he hesitates.

Sunghoon steps in, quiet as a closing door. “He left instructions.”

Heeseung narrows his eyes. “Instructions?”

Sunghoon doesn’t elaborate. Doesn’t meet his gaze. Just stands between him and the hallway like stone.

“Why?” Heeseung presses. “What is he doing?”

A pause.

“He didn’t say.”

“That’s not like him.”

Another pause.

“No. It’s not.”

Heeseung’s frustration boils over. “You know something.”

“I know he asked for time.”

“For what?”

Silence. Not defiance — resignation.

“Will you tell me what’s happening?”

“I’ll tell you this,” Sunghoon says finally. “If he’s doing what I think he’s doing… he wanted you far from it.”

The words land like ice.

Heeseung takes a step forward. “Then why aren’t you stopping me?”

Sunghoon’s jaw tightens. “Because some endings aren’t meant to be guarded.”

He gestures toward the guest wing. “You can wait. Or you can run. But the outcome is already written.”

Heeseung doesn’t move.

Not yet.

In a room cloaked with silence, Jungwon kneels.

The scroll and an old spell book lies open before him — one of the last relics of the Sangjeon bloodline. The ink is fading. The pages hum with dormant power.

He draws the circle slowly, each line carved into stone with his own blood. No assistants. No audience. This ritual is not one for spectacle. Only for love.

He presses a kiss to the final rune. It burns into his skin.

He remembers Sunoo’s words: "When it’s done, he will forget everything. Even you."

He hadn’t flinched then. But now — alone, with time collapsing in on itself — he breathes like someone preparing to drown.

He lays down the final charm. Ties the lock of Heeseung’s hair into the center. Speaks the vow.

“Let him live. Let him leave this behind.”

The room exhales around him. The magic begins to wake.

And Jungwon — heir, monster, martyr — stands, eyes closed.

It’s time.

Heeseung does not move. Not immediately.

But the bond inside his chest does.

And when the pull begins — not a whisper but a scream — he bolts.

He bolts past Sunghoon, who doesn’t stop him this time. Who only closes his eyes as Heeseung runs.

And the Court — what’s left of it — makes no effort to stop him.

That’s the first sign.

Guards along the hallways avert their eyes. The shadows don’t echo his steps. It feels like they’re all in on a secret — one Heeseung was never part of.

He looks back.

Sunghoon — his escort, his shadow, his tether to some kind of structure — walks three paces behind instead of beside.

His jaw is tight. His mouth set. Silent, as always. But this time the silence feels... deliberate. Like a secret biting into the back of his throat.

That’s the second sign.

Heeseung turns. “What’s really going on?”

Sunghoon doesn’t answer. Doesn’t meet his eyes. Again.

That’s the third.

He feels a nudge. Another pull. Subtle. Internal. Like the bond itself has begun to unravel — not breaking, not yet, but warning.

Heeseung stumbles.

The tether inside his chest hums sharp and wrong — a thread pulled too tight. The kind of ache you get when someone’s about to leave — not the room, but the world.

“Jungwon?” he whispers, already moving.

He doesn’t know how he knows where to go.

Only that the bond does.

He runs.

The temple breathes around him.

Walls carved from stone older than time, pulsing faintly with ancient runes. The ceiling, lost to shadow. The scent of blood-iron and old magic thick in the air.

Heeseung slams through the last archway, lungs on fire.

And finds Sunoo waiting.

He’s not smiling.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Where is he?” Heeseung’s voice shatters. “Where is he?”

Sunoo steps aside. Doesn’t speak.

A staircase spirals down into obsidian.

Candles line the descent. Not fire — memory. Each one a life. Each one flickering.

Heeseung doesn’t thank him. He just runs.

Jungwon stands at the altar.

Barefoot. Cloaked in Sangjeon black.

Runes spill from his skin — ink that remembers, ink that mourns.

The ritual ring is carved deep into the stone —

silver gleaming like bone,

blood dried to rust,

salt in a jagged circle that promises no return.

He does not flinch when Heeseung bursts in —

wild-eyed, breath sharp,

stumbling like the world already ended

and he’s the last one still pretending it hasn’t.

The bond between them is burning.

“Stop it,” Heeseung gasps.

Then louder — cracked open, hoarse —

“Jungwon, please. Get out. Get out of the circle.”

Jungwon turns.

His smile is small. Wrecked.

Final.

“You weren’t supposed to see this.”

Heeseung steps forward —

but the tether snaps.

Like a scream pulled taut through his ribs.

Pain floods in. White-hot. Brutal.

He chokes. Collapses.

Breathing like drowning on dry land.

“You said—”

“I lied,” Jungwon says. Soft. Devastating.

“Because I loved you. And I knew you’d try to stop me.”

Heeseung screams — wordless, gut-torn.

He lunges.

The ritual circle rejects him.

A shockwave of light tears through the air, slams him back.

He hits stone hard enough to bruise the memory.

“You don’t get to decide this alone!” he sobs.

“You don’t get to die for me—”

“I do,” Jungwon says.

“Because I let you die every time before.”

His voice cracks.

“Every lifetime, I stood back and let fate take you.

I thought I had no choice.

But I was wrong. I have this.”

The runes flare.

Glow like veins splitting open.

Heeseung crawls to the edge of the circle.

Claws at it. Fingers bleeding.

“Jungwon, please—”

Jungwon meets his eyes.

And for one impossible second —

he’s just a boy again.

“You asked me to stay.”

Heeseung sobs — shaking, breaking.

“So this is how I do it,” Jungwon says.

“Not as your bond. Not as your fate. But as the one who remembers. As the one who chooses.”

He closes his eyes.

“I loved you in every life.”

A breath. A pause the universe seems to hold.

“That’s the problem.”

The light consumes him.

He does not scream.

Does not burn.

He dissolves —

starlight, ash, memory.

The bond snaps.

And Heeseung forgets.

Chapter Text

Jungwon stands at the altar.

The stone is cold beneath his feet.
He likes it that way — it makes the pain sharper. Real.

The runes on his skin burn steady now.
Not with heat, but memory.
They don’t hurt anymore. Not in a way that matters.

His cloak is heavy — Sangjeon black, soaked in old rites and older griefs.
He wears it like penance.

The ritual ring hums around him.
Silver, blood, salt.
A circle drawn to sever, not protect.

This is the only way.

He keeps his eyes on the stone —
on the place where the tether will end.

But then —

crash.

A door. A voice. A name — his name — shouted like a curse against fate.

Heeseung.

Of course he came.

Of course the bond betrayed him.

Jungwon doesn’t look up. Not yet. He doesn’t need to.
He feels Heeseung’s panic like a thunderclap through the tether.
Feels the burn of recognition, the staggering of limbs, the gasp of something ancient waking up too late.

And the bond —
the bond is screaming now.

He turns.

Just enough.

“Stop it,” Heeseung cries, eyes wide and wet.
“Jungwon, please. Get out. Get out of the circle.”

Jungwon smiles.
Or tries to.

It breaks on his face like a wave on stone.

“You weren’t supposed to see this.”

Heeseung steps forward —
and the bond snaps.

Jungwon flinches. Only barely.
But he feels it — the scream of it inside his chest.
The way it tears through Heeseung like lightning made of memory.

He watches him fall.

He wants to go to him. God, he wants —

But he doesn’t move.

Heeseung’s voice cracks.

“You said—”

“I lied,” Jungwon whispers.
He keeps his voice gentle, like that will make it hurt less.
It won’t.

“Because I loved you. And I knew you’d try to stop me.”

Heeseung lunges — desperate, raw —
and the circle throws him back like the world itself is rejecting mercy.

The sound of his body hitting stone breaks something in Jungwon’s throat.

“You don’t get to decide this alone!” Heeseung sobs.
“You don’t get to die for me—”

Jungwon closes his eyes.

“I do,” he says.
“Because I let you die every time before.”

And there it is — the truth that has hollowed him out across lifetimes.

“Every time, I stood back. Let the wheel turn.
I thought I was powerless.
But I was just… afraid.”

The runes begin to glow.

Magic rises — not violently, but like mist. Like breath held too long.

Heeseung’s hands are on the edge of the circle now. Bloody. Trembling.

Jungwon looks at him.
Takes him in like a last sunrise.

For a second — just one —
he’s not a prince. Not a ritual. Not a fate.

Just a boy. Just a boy in love.

“You asked me to stay.”

Heeseung breaks. Right there on the floor.
A sound like something being ripped from the center of a soul.

Jungwon nods. Once.

“So this is how I do it,” he says.
“Not as your bond. Not as your fate.
But as the one who remembers.
As the one who chooses.”

He breathes in.

It smells like ash. And blood. And love that came too late.

“I loved you in every life.”

The bond flickers.
Like it wants to scream too.

“That’s the problem.”

And then — the light takes him.

It doesn’t hurt.

Not the way it used to.

He feels himself unravel — not torn, not destroyed —
just released .

He becomes what he always was meant to be:
starlight. ash. memory.

And as the bond collapses,
as the tether breaks its spine to let Heeseung live—

he feels it.

The forgetting.

Heeseung’s love unspooling like thread cut loose from the needle.

The worst part isn’t the end.
It’s that he won’t remember why it mattered.

And still—

Jungwon smiles, one last time, inside the light.

Because this time, he stayed.

The bond snaps.

And Heeseung forgets.

But Jungwon remembers. Always.

Chapter Text

The world rewrites itself.

The letters burn. The names fade. The Council reshapes around an empty throne.

Jay kneels beside Heeseung’s collapsed body. Holds him the way grief teaches — gently, like touch might fix it. His hands are steady, but his shoulders shake. The grief is bone-deep, worn in silence, etched into marrow. His prince is gone — but more than that, his anchor. His command. His purpose.

Jungwon had chosen him — not just as second, not just as sword, but as the one to carry what remained. Jay had bled for him. Had died once, long ago, in a riot of fire and betrayal, because Jungwon needed a doorway and Heeseung was waiting on the other side. He would have done it again. A thousand times.

But not like this.

Not alone.

Jay bows his head. Presses his forehead to Heeseung’s and whispers words meant for the one who shaped his loyalty, the one he’d never stopped following — not a brother, but something older, something deeper, a vow made flesh and now turned to ash. Not prayers — just truths. Just grief with no place to go.

He doesn’t weep. But in that moment, the crown Jungwon left behind feels heavier than anything Jay has ever carried.

Ni-ki watches from the edge of the hall, shattered in a way he doesn't know how to show. Jungwon had raised him, taught him how to hold a sword and how to wield silence. Had given him a name when all he had was instinct and fury. He was not just prince — he was home. And now he is gone.

Ni-ki does not cry. He trembles. He shakes. His fists are clenched so tightly the runes at his wrists pulse like they’re screaming. He had believed — naively, stubbornly — that this time love would be enough. That this time, his family wouldn’t break itself to save someone else.

But the circle is empty. And Ni-ki is alone again.

Sunghoon stands behind them both. Rigid. Jaw locked. His glaive unsheathed but useless now. There is no one left to protect. And he doesn’t know how to guard a memory.

Jake stands beside Sunoo, who has not moved from the archway. Their eyes are trained on the last glow of the circle. Jake’s voice is low, nearly broken: “He really did it.”

Sunoo nods once, like a bell tolling for something only seers can name.

Heeseung remains unconscious.

His breathing is shallow, but steady. The temple is still.

Inside him, something begins to fade. Not with violence — not at first — but with a gentleness that feels like cruelty.

The names begin to slip. The seasons he lived through, the cities he died in. The letters Jungwon once wrote him in a past life and tucked under floorboards. The way blood tasted when he was nineteen and thought — foolishly, desperately — that turning might be the only way to stay, not yet knowing that anchors cannot be turned, that even desire becomes tragedy when the bond forbids it. The way it felt to be chosen.

They go.

One by one.

The bond that once moored him to an immortal begins to dissolve, not into pain, but into unbeing. Memory curling in on itself like paper in flame.

He sees flashes — a rooftop under monsoon rain. A burning temple. A letter room. Jungwon’s eyes, over and over again, saying I’m sorry without words.

And then nothing.

The Merge breaks.

The tether unravels.

And Heeseung, unanchored, begins again.

Because the world as he knew it is changing.

Saved by a boy it had to forget.

The mortal lives.

The immortal prince chooses flame.

And the tether that once frayed beneath the weight of love now binds unbreakably —

but only through sacrifice:

burned letters, broken names, a ritual ring, hollowed of power.

Somewhere, a mirror cracks without sound.

Somewhere, a crown rusts in silence.

And the world writes over their names — but not cleanly.

Not yet.

Chapter Text

“Some empires burn for power.
His only ever burned for love.”

The Severance was not witnessed by many. Nor was it meant to be.

I stood at the archway as Jungwon lit the final candle. No fanfare. No armor. Just the markings of an old rite remembered too well.

He did not speak my name. But I had always known when I would be needed.

The spell required balance — a seer to bear witness, to anchor the unseen. He drew the circle with bare fingers. Cut his palm with his own blade. Marked the floor with blood not as symbol, but as signature.

As the bond began to loosen, he spoke three lines:

“I remember.
I release.
I remain.”

The air trembled.

Gold light — once a thread between two souls — curled into the stone like a kiss returned to earth. And then, silence.

I logged it immediately. Not for the Court. For the record that must remain when stories blur into myth.

Let it be known:

• Prince Yang Jungwon, last of the Line of Sangjeon, chose not power, but peace.
  
  
• He named his successor not by blood, but by trust. Jay, of the Shattered Crest, took the throne with no rebellion. Only reverence.
  
  
• The High Council is no more. The seats that remain do so under oath to a new order — one ruled not by memory, but merit.
  
  
• The bonded mortal is to be returned to his home. Per Jungwon’s final command: “Let him wake to love, not sacrifice.”
  
  
• The Severance Ritual succeeded. The tether did not collapse. The Veil holds.
  
  

One last note, unfiled but remembered:

He walked toward the east wing with quiet steps. His gloves left behind. His crown abandoned.

I asked no questions.

But I recorded his silhouette as it vanished into dawn.

The boy who remembered everything chose, at last, to be held — not obeyed.

And in doing so, saved us all.

—Sunoo
Lorekeeper, Seer, Keeper of the Last Rite

Chapter Text

The garden was once hidden behind the Eastern Wing, veiled in quiet and crawling ivy — a place where tethered pairs came to say their vows or say goodbye.

Now, it lives again.

Not as a sanctuary of the old realm, but a different version of it behind a modest building in the human world, tucked behind rusted gates no one unlocks. It should have withered with time, but the blooms here are stubborn. White petals, also veined in red. A flower that should not exist — yet insists.

Heeseung doesn’t remember planting it.

He doesn’t remember the garden at all. But something in his body moves with reverence when he enters it.

Some mornings he wakes with dirt under his fingernails, unsure if he dreamt of pruning the ivy or actually did it. The archway stands at the center, worn down by time. He touches it sometimes. Just to feel it.

It hurts in a way he cannot explain.

He lives quietly now. In a building he technically owns but doesn’t remember buying — three stories, nine apartments, tucked in a neighborhood where time forgets to move quickly.

Jungwon had bought it before the Severance. Paid in silence and old names. Transferred everything to Heeseung’s name with a forged will and a blessing stitched into the paperwork. Heeseung thinks it came through some distant uncle he never met.

There’s too much money in his bank account. He tried to ask the teller once — she just smiled and told him he must be lucky.

His sunlit flat is above a sleepy store that sells soy milk, day-old pastries, and cigarettes behind the counter.

His apartment is filled with the soft disarray of a life trying to be normal — mismatched plates, a calendar he never updates, a watch that runs three minutes slow no matter how often he resets it.

He listens to music he doesn’t remember liking. Some songs make his chest tighten. Certain names sting. Rain makes his bones ache.

He wakes up crying more often than he admits.

There’s a letter in the drawer of his desk.

Short. Folded neatly. No name.

You asked me to stay.
This is the closest I could come.

He doesn’t know where it came from. Doesn’t remember opening it. But sometimes, when the rain lingers on the windowsill, he pulls it out and just… looks.

The handwriting is unfamiliar. And still, something in his chest curls inward when he sees it.

There’s also a photograph on his nightstand. The boy in it is smiling, but the face is blurred.

Heeseung tells himself it’s just loneliness. That everyone dreams like this, sometimes.

Jay visits once a month. Always on the same day. Never says why.

He brings books Heeseung never asked for and never takes them back. Heeseung reads them out of politeness. They’re always underlined. Margins full of notes in a handwriting he finds strangely familiar.

Sometimes they sit in the garden together. Jay doesn’t speak much. Just watches.

One day, Heeseung asks, "Do I know you?"

Jay looks away. "Not anymore."

He leaves behind a book that day — a thin volume with no title, only a symbol on the cover: a crimson mark that aches behind Heeseung’s eyes.

He opens it. Just once.

Inside, a single sentence:

"If love is memory, then to save him, I choose to be forgotten."

Heeseung closes the book. He doesn’t open it ever again.

Far across the sea, Sunoo walks the Eastern cliffs. He still serves as the Seer and Lorekeeper of the new Court, he still keeps the records.

He gathers the letters Jungwon left behind — the ones never delivered, the ones sealed in runes. He copies them by hand. Compiles them not as history, but as a myth.

He names the scroll The Crimson Oath.

He binds it with black ribbon. Buries it beneath the archway of the old garden — the one behind the Eastern Wing, where tethers once tightened or were torn. Where Jungwon last sat with blood on his palms and memory in his mouth.

The bloom returns there every year.

Heeseung tends a different garden now — human and soft and veined with absence. But sometimes, when his hands touch the soil, something trembles deep in his bones. Like a thread trying to tighten. Like grief that never learned to speak.

He never finds the scroll.

But sometimes his hands tremble when he touches the soil.

Ni-ki trains alone. He carves names into trees he cannot say aloud. He bleeds in silence. He heals. And he waits.

Jay and Jake lead the new Court now.

Not from a throne, but from the field — sleeves rolled, voices quiet, hands always busy. They were chosen not because they craved power, but because Jungwon trusted them with what remained.

The transition was not loud. There was no rebellion, only reverence.

On nights when memory grows too heavy, Jay still walks the borderlands. Keeps the wards intact. Makes offerings at old altar stones.

And when the wind goes still, he sings lullabies to the Veil — the ones Jungwon used to hum when he thought no one was listening.

Sunghoon stands like a statue in the courtyard. Some say he’s waiting for orders. Others say he’s waiting for a miracle.

They remember too much.

It should crush them.

Instead, it holds them upright.

Because memory, when carried properly, becomes a spine.

One night, Heeseung walks past a bookstore. In the window: a crimson symbol.

He stops.

Stares.

Doesn’t go inside.

But the next day, he dreams of white flowers veined in red.

Of hands around his face.

Of a voice saying, I loved you in every life.

And that’s the problem.

Heeseung wakes up sobbing.

But doesn’t know why.

The garden doesn’t ask for anything.

It just continues.

Blooms where it shouldn’t.

Listens when no one speaks.

And beneath the soil, the tether still glows faintly — like a star behind fog.

Waiting.

Not for resurrection.

But for love to find its way back in its own time.

The world does not remember them.

But it grows quieter around the places they once stood.

And somewhere, in a dream or something close to it, someone says his name.

Heeseung doesn’t turn.

But he smiles.

Chapter Text

There were nights I didn’t think I would finish this.

Not because I didn’t love the story — I did. Too much, maybe. Enough that it hurt to hold. Enough that walking away felt easier than staying with it long enough to say something true. But I kept returning. Not out of discipline, not even out of hope — but because these characters wouldn’t let me forget them.

This story broke me open more times than I can count. I wrote Jungwon’s grief in the middle of mine. I wrote Heeseung’s dreams after nights I couldn’t sleep. The tether, the bond, the ache of remembering — those weren’t just plot points. They were echoes of real things I couldn’t name until I saw them on the page.

There were entire days when writing this felt like bleeding with elegance. Other days when it felt like I was folding a letter to someone I’d never meet, sealing it with the hope they’d understand anyway.

And still — I kept going. Chapter by chapter. Scene by scene. Sometimes five lines in an afternoon, sometimes five thousand at dawn. I rewrote confessions until they sounded like the silence before heartbreak. I built rooftop scenes out of my own longing. I made a boy into a ghost, then gave him a home in someone else’s memory.

If you’ve read this far — thank you. For sitting with these lives. For letting them hurt. For letting them hope.

I didn’t write this story to be remembered.
I wrote it because some quiet part of me was afraid I wouldn’t be.

Because sometimes, when the nights are too long and the world forgets your name too easily, you create something — not to be seen, but to prove you were here. To leave a mark that doesn’t fade when the moment does.

This story became that mark.

And now, somehow, it’s not just mine anymore.
It’s yours too. You found it. You stayed.

So let me leave you with this:

In every life, I loved them.
In this one, I got to keep them a little longer.

...And maybe — just maybe — there’s another ending. A gentler one. A file tucked away where the garden still blooms and the boy remembers. But I haven’t decided if I’m ready to share it.

— Ppalgan7