Chapter Text
Chapter One
The air sang with the shallow groans of the wooden hull of a ship being whipped continually by violent waves. It echoed around him in every direction, it was oddly familiar, maybe even comforting in a twisted sort of way.
A quick subtle white flash from behind his closed eyelids tore through the room. It roused him just enough, mind still heavy and ensnared by sleep, for a faint murmur of displeasure to escape his throat. A long moment passed as he settled himself back into rest, before an explosive burst of thunder ripped through the atmosphere.
The roaring crack of sound jolted Seonghwa rapidly awake. He shot up from where he lay. Blinking his eyes rapidly, expelling the haze of sleep from his vision. His breath caught in his throat and he panted to regain some composure. He searched his surroundings, breath hitching in his chest. Sure enough, he could see the mildewy walls of a ship cabin around him. But there were no cage bars wrapped around the outside walls.
He tensed his fingers in hesitation under him before casting his gaze down to his hands. Wrapped loosely in the velvety soft fabrics of a warm bed. He shuffled quickly, bringing his knees up to his chest. He made himself small. His eyes darted wildly around the quaint room, taking in any details he could in the limited cool blue moonlight that streaming into the space. Distant rain still pounded down mixing with the harsh waves outside of the ship.
A desk covered in a burgundy fabric, scrolls littered about the table top and the floor. A mantle built into one of the walls, half-melted candles, and what looked to be navigation tools were messily laid around it. The only thing keeping them in place from the steady rock of the waves was a crudely made guard rail that had been half-hazardously nailed into the trim of the mantle.
The floor, mostly barren, had a rug running on the far side of the room, and two distinct piles of clothes were tossed across the floor.
He brought a quick hand to his chest at the sight, his fingers meeting bare skin, feeling his chest unevenly rise and fall. Tentatively, he shuffled to the edge of the bed. He dared to stick one leg out, and then another. His toes touched the cool deck below him. He wasn’t wearing anything except a long semi-sheer white blouse that only just met the middle of his upper thigh-- only buttoned up mid way.
Instinctively, he turned towards the high round window as it was the only thing letting in any amount of light to the room. He looked at his palms before quickly flashing them to the back side of his hands and gaped in shock. He repeated the motion a few more times, daring to stretch out his long fingers and fully admire them. The scratches and bruises that usually overtook them were long gone, his crooked ring finger that had been so cruelly fractured many years before had been properly reset, and his nails were neatly cut and painted a deep black that stood out against his pale skin.
That's when he heard it. A mumble of voices speaking through the walls. His body tensed. He held his breath. Where the hell am I? The voices seemed to grow nearer. They didn’t sound enraged or coarse. More stoic and calm, but loud to get the message across through the whipping wind to whoever they were talking to. He couldn’t make out a single word, much to his dismay.
He waited, completely frozen in silence.
After 20 seconds that seemed like an hour another strike of blinding light tore through the room. In the momentary silence that followed it Seonghwa heard himself let out a small shriek in shock from the suddenness of the light, his ears rang and chest pounded hard from the unexpected surprise. To his own horror he rapidly slammed his hand over his mouth as if to dull the sound that had already escaped him. Tears stung the backs of his eyes as the thunder rumbled in the distance. It sounded much further away now.
“Seonghwa!?”
A tear escaped. It traced a glimmering track down his cheek, and he felt as his whole body trembled. Like glass shattering.
The voice knew his name.
“Seonghwa?” It called out again.
A weep tore through his chest as the door handle jiggled and was torn open.
༄༄༄_𓊝_༄༄༄
Crash.
A large thud hit him all at once. His whole body shuddered awake from the suddenness of the added weight.
“Augh!” Seonghwa gasped, followed by a quick and uncomfortable groan. Not his own. His eyes tore open to take in his surroundings.
The flickering, extremely annoying, light of the single bulb in his cell room buzzed loudly overhead. He tried to blink through the confusion of all the quickly incoming stimuli being thrust upon his understimulated senses.
Information overload in his usually uneventful surroundings.
The latched metal bar doors were thrown open. Being held there by the usual suspects. A tall duo of men with bandanas tied closely around their faces with smears of black eye paint around their eyes as if to complete the look. They were same two traffickers he was used to dealing with.
The heavy weight and dull pain now encasing his lower half was much more of a concern to him at the moment.
It was a man.
Medium, maybe even small build, but he couldn’t tell from the way he was half unconscious and lying tossed upside down on top of him. A man with striking auburn, bordering on orange, hair and a trail of blood streaming from a slash through a gash in his eyebrow. Adorned with a fresh and rapidly swelling eye socket.
Seonghwa tensed and panicked. Quickly, he kicked the man off of himself with his boot. He shoved and shoved pushing himself back against the far wall and into the opposite corner of his cell. The traffickers huffed and gave a monotonous laugh of agreement to each other.
One slammed the gate back shut as other tied a chain back around the bars, looping it twice, before the other reattached the heavy padlock.
“Have fun with your new roommate, princess.” The taller one of them said before leaving the room and plunging him back into darkness.
Seonghwa’s chest huffed. His eyes darted in the darkness, unable to take anything in. He knew he’d be held captive for a little over two months now. And that in that whole time he’d always been kept alone and, frankly, in decent enough condition. He knew he was valuable cargo. That the prisoners around him had it much worse.
Now though, there was a strange, bloodied man tossed into the cell next to him. Locked in. In the darkness. It was the first time in weeks he felt himself reaching at the smooth metal band bound across his wrist and squeezing and tugging at it roughly. Nails scraping into his skin. He knew it was no use. He knew he would never be able to get it off of himself. But his mind defied logic in that small claustrophobic space. Something about the fear of the unknown in his chest threw logic aside and he struggled against the metal in the darkness.
When a faint groan of pain escaped the stranger's lips, followed by a heavy and labored shuffle, Seonghwa knew he’d managed to flip himself over in the darkness. Seonghwa heard a faint, scared whine escape him as he continued to claw his nails into his own wrist.
He had been strong once. In a not too far away, but still distant past. A life that sometimes now felt a little like recalling someone else's memory. Stories told to him second hand. Still there in his mind, but just barely out of reach.
But yet, still close enough that when he thought of his family, the last time he’d seen them, the memory stung deep like an open wound. Made him feel burned open and sore. A soul exposed to the cutting elements, an iron rod removed from hot coals and plunged directly into his chest.
The silver band around his wrist was inscribed on the insides with ancient runic text he’d never been privileged enough to have learned. It burned like open fire into his skin as he tugged on it.
To an untrained eye it looked like nothing more than a fancy loose silver bracelet. But to him, it kept him in check. Bound.
Utterly human.
He thought back to when he was thirteen and first presented. Unawakened witches blood. Blood that had somehow skipped multiple generations of his lineage. How badly he just wanted to be human then. The same as his parents and his hyung.
How he’d grown slowly to love some of his strengths and quirks, but never all of them. The rush and pull of magic flowing through his veins. How being so rare, so unique, had made him feel so special, and yet so far away. Othered. Until it was all taken from him. He was stripped of what little universe he had.
For he was now certain that the manifesting of magick in his veins was a catastrophic mistake made on behalf of the universe.
The mystery man shuffled again. Seonghwa could tell he was sitting upright now. He mumbled to himself under his breath, but he couldn’t tell if they were real words or just the sounds of an injured man. What could’ve made them throw this man in a cell with him? This ship had told him he was special. To be preserved for “some day”, untouched to be sold to the highest bidder. A trophy amongst their collection.
Maybe they told that to everyone.
After an agonizingly long bout of silence Seonghwa heard the sound of something softly running over the floorboards. He tried to keep himself gathered into the corner on top of his thin mattress. After a moment he panicked as he felt finger tips delicately run across the side of his thigh his throat constricting. The touch tingled there leaving behind a trace of heat and just as it quickly, it retracted away.
“H-Hello?” The voice croaked out.
Seonghwa kept still and unmoving. He felt himself blinking rapid despite the lack of any light in the room to make out any shapes.
The man hummed to himself. A sad and despairing sound. He thought he could make out the sounds of him drawing up into a sitting position. They sat like that for a long time. The seconds dragged into minutes and even more agonizingly into hours.
What had started as excruciating and scary slowly morphed into something more akin to bone-deep awkwardness and discomfort with the stranger sitting feet away. The only sound in the room was his uneasy, labored breathing that wheezed slightly at the end of every breath.
He tried to think long and hard about what he had been able to see of the man in to 2 minutes he had with the lights cast down upon them. But the memory was already hazy from his lack of sleep and the rapidity of the entire situation. Let alone the fact he’d been thrown on top of him and bloodied.
Lost in his own thoughts, he vaguely remembered that he’d been torn awake from a dream. A dream he also could no longer recall outside of a bizarre understanding of familiarity that settled deep in his chest.
The breathing across from him finally eased and settled. Seonghwa allowed himself to untense, just slightly. It sounded like the man had finally been lulled into sleep. Or probably more likely, unconsciousness.
At some point, he was submersed back into his own unrestful sleep.
It was a black void.
Not much different from the normal ten hours a day he'd normally spend in the complete darkness of his cell. When no sun shone into the lower deck of the ship.
But there was one stark difference. He was standing, and when he looked down he could still see himself.
Plain as day. It was as if he was standing in full sun, but surrounded in a never ending space.
A faint tug in his chest, sudden and unexpected, stumbled him forward a few steps. He exhaled a startled breath. It tugged again and he grasped around his neck in old habit. Surprisingly, his jewelled amulet hung there.
He felt a little crazy. His dreams having not been this vivid and well defined in literal years. Now they danced back around him like they did ever so often in his youth. Making him question the legitimacy of his surroundings.
He squared in footing in pleasant surprise as he admired his amulet. It had been quite a while since he’d last laid eyes on it. He looked up blinking to clear away his eyes before looking down once again, but sure enough there it was. His witches seal, his focus, his sigil, an item that went by many names. It hung loosely around his neck– as if it had never been taken from him.
An 8-pointed ruby star wire-wrapped in beautiful silver and black coils. He clasped his fingers around it and breathed deeply. The tug in his chest grew stronger. It was both familiar and strange. It resonated now with some clarity, magic reawakening in his veins. But something about it felt different from before.
Then again it had been a long time.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖°‧ 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 ·｡.𖥔 ݁ ˖
His eyes blinked open, softly this time. He yawned and stretched himself awake. The warm tinge of the sun graced his skin and he felt like a cat stretching out in the sun. He’d kept his mattress in this exact placement, despite it being half pressed against the cell door, for this very reason. The morning sun would hit exactly across him and the inside portion of his cell for only a few hours a day, and he always intended to soak up as much of it as possible.
A reality check washed over him as his gaze landed on the unwelcomed guest in his cell.
The man was small. Smaller than himself anyways. He had a torn and dirty denim jacket on and splattered dried blood across his face. He wore loose-fitting and dark pants and what seemed to be a white tank top underneath. Shockingly, he looked peaceful, if not cold, curled up into himself in a near fetal position in the opposite corner of the cell as far away as possible from Seonghwa. His body was still fully shadowed by the awkwardly cut angles of the room.
Boots hit the stairwell outside his room like the did every morning at precisely this time. Despite the chaotic night, with such limited stimuli, Seonghwa's body was on a rigid clock and always awoke just a few moments before food was brought into his cell every morning. He heard the two cells in front of him open and close in rhythm first before his own rooms main door was tossed open.
The man hesitated only briefly. Eyeing the situation of the room, as if unsure what he might find this morning. Seonghwa detected an air of disappointment in his glare as he huffed and slid the food roughly across the floor.
The metal tray skidded loudly, and he slammed the door behind him. That was enough to rapidly shake his new companion awake. A horror-stricken look in his eyes and fear written across his face.
Unexpectedly. Seonghwa felt a tug in his chest.
It caught him so off guard that he gasped in surprise before turning into a full coughing attack. Finally catching his breath he looked up from the crook in his arm and made immediate eye contact with the orange-haired man, he felt a tingle spread throughout his skin like a chill that took him back to his dream. He squinted his eyes in hesitation at the man. They seemed to be about the same age. That thought made something in him loosen just slightly.
He nodded at him minutely before slowly unraveling himself and reaching forward through the bars. He hooked a finger on the metal tray after struggling for a moment and slid it into completely inside the cell. He glanced over the rations for the day. To his dismay was barely anymore than usual. There was a small pitcher of water, instead of the usual one glass, two boiled eggs instead of one, a singular slop of what he could only rationalize calling oatmeal in the center on a plate, and a single half of an orange. No silverware to be seen.
He quickly stole the half of the orange and brought it into his chest. It was the only semblance of joy in his day. The only sweet thing to bring him some solace. Every day he’d slog through his meal before sitting up, back pressed against the back of the cell and closing his eyes, slowly eating it one piece at a time. Sometimes they’d even give him a full orange, usually in the few days just after landing in a new port city. He’d eat it and feel a twisted sense of joy.
Only having a half slice today with another body in the cell made a protective instinct he didn’t know he still had rise in his throat.
Shaking his head as if subconsciously acknowledging his inhospitality, and the fact the man in the corner still hadn’t moved a muscle, he reached for one of the eggs with his hand. He tapped it, watching as the shell softly cracked, and rolled it against the hard floor. He hesitated and swallowed hard before slowly offering it to the man.
His eyes flickered from the food in his hand to Seonghwa's eyes and back to his hand. His fingers reached out, unsure, before snatching it from him. Seonghwa tossed himself back on the mattress and ate his fruit in protective peace. Silently reveling in the fact that this was out of order from his usual routine, and despite everything, that almost made him a little giddy.
He kept a flat and uninterested face outwardly. He wasn’t here to make friends after all.
The orange haired man picked off pieces of the shell and slowly tore off pieces of the white flesh savoring it. The swelling around his eye had notably went down, and a spreading purple and yellow bruise accented the side of his face. When he got to the yolk he ate it in one bite, before centering himself and relaxing slightly. He sat cross legged and ran his fingers over his eye, wincing as he made contact.
Seonghwa watched him silently and inquisitively.
The man reached for the pitcher. There were no glasses. His hands hesitated at the rim before pouring some out into his hands. Seonghwa's eyes widened in horror and he reached out a frantic hand to try to stop him before pulling it back, already too late. Typically, that was all the water he’d get for the whole day.
The man gave a surprised flinch at the movement, but continued on. He watched as his chest heaved in and out still uneven from whatever he went through the day prior. At some point Seonghwa had realized it was probably more of a diaphragm injury than rugged fear. Eyes startled but seeing Seonghwa not react any further he brought his now damp hands up to his face. He cleaned his face the best he could from the dried blood before running his fingers through his hair. He breathed out a relieved huff.
Seonghwa moved forward again and snatched the pitcher away and took a long sip before placing it back.
“Sorry. About that. I- this-” he motioned to his face, most likely the gash through his upper eyelid and eyebrow, “It stings. And it was- was uh- really bothering me.” He had a clear voice. More melodic than he’d expected in the scenarios he’d been running in his head.
Seonghwa felt himself slightly hum in reply. He eyed him up and down.
The silence that followed was loud.
The man twisted uncomfortably at the cuffs of his jacket. He hissed under his breath his eyes wincing in pain. He brought his hand up rubbed his wrist through his jacket. He rolled down the sleeve when Seonghwa saw it for the first time.
The silver cuff. His eyes widened in wonder as he reached and touched his own.
The man's eyes stayed down, stayed glued to the cuff. Unexpectedly, tears fell from his eye. Within seconds he was practically weeping. Wiping tears rapidly away from his face, but just as quick they were replaced with new ones. He twisted trying to turn away to avoid Seonghwa’s wide eyed staring.
Seonghwa kept silent. He held his wrist in his own hand and leaned back into the wooden planks of the back of the cell. So the man was also a witch. Seonghwa had only ever met one other true witch. An older village elder on his home island. He worked as a healer there and had never taken a student before, but per witch customs was thrust into helping him get the ropes on controlling his earliest magical callings. Even if he wanted no part in mentoring or getting to know Seonghwa.
They didn’t bond much, the elder never tried. He’d moved to the island decades prior to get away from the extraordinariness. He didn’t appreciate being stuck with a hormonal confused kid. Most rural communities, in most kingdoms, had at least one person with some magic touch to help watch out for and aid the wider community. Even if the area as a whole was more of a deadzone for magicks.
Seonghwa grew up on an island a few hours from the mainland of Korea and had never actually been on the mainland. Magic was pretty unheard of on the island itself. He grew up with tales of it flourishing in the big cities of Korea and always wondered what it would be like. As far as he knew his island only had the one other true witchblood, and only a handful of non-blood practitioners.
Their island was however, a known as a spot rich for shifters. He’d met two or three land walkers in his time growing up, and had even more plentiful accounts of mermaids and merman, a subspecies of shifter. Fuzzy memories from early childhood highlighted long warm days he’d spent watching his grandmother dive for abalones off the coast with the other haenyeo women of his community. He often went to the shore to watch them as a child, feeling the salty air stick to his skin and the waves riding too high on his short stature. The merfolk slowly became a less and less common occurrence on the island, and coupled with his parents' avid objections to his interactions with both the merfolk and the sea he didn’t have much connection to magick there either.
Everything extraordinary kept just out of reach from him, keeping him safely secluded in his little shell of isolation.
Most all of what he had been taught of his gifts were the best ways to conceal them. He once could do small tricks like moving a light object a few feet with his mind or creating a small disturbance in the air around him. Once he’d even located his brother in the forest by pure instinct and a knowing pull in the right direction after he’d gotten lost playing in the woods. But even before he was captured, nearly three years ago now at age eighteen, he’d never even been properly sorted into a specialty. He wasn’t even quite sure he knew all the options.
All he knew for certain was that shortly after his thirteenth birthday, his hair began to lose its color at an alarming rate. In less than a month, most of its pigment had faded, leaving him with stark white locks. By the age of fifteen, his pupils had lightened significantly in color, and his facial features had become simultaneously smoother and more defined, as if sculpted by some unseen force. As he lost the round and soft face of youth, he resembled his hyung less and less. Increasingly set apart from the other boys in his class. His appearance finally settled into a picture of nearly androgynous, sculpture-like beauty that drew the eye of everyone around him. By eighteen, he stood far enough apart from the conservative human population of his hometown to be considered an outsider in his own home.
The man across from him was still crying.
Awkwardly, Seonghwa tried to ignore him and eat some of the rest of the rations. He had his portion of the eggs, and removed a small plastic piece he kept hidden under the mattress and used it has a spoon to shovel some of the porridgey oatmeal-like food into his mouth. As he nearly finished he paused over the plate, a knot in his stomach. He wiped clean the plastic “spoon” with the bottom of his shirt before sliding the remains of the food across the cell. He took another long drink from the pitcher and let his gaze rest away from the man. At this point, he was beginning to believe more and more that this figure was not a threat.
Maybe.
The sobbing stopped almost immediately. Stifled and cut short by a rough clearing of his throat. Seonghwa still didn’t turn.
“Hongjoong.” The voice said.
Hongjoong. He repeated the name over in his head. He liked the way it sounded. He hadn’t seen a pen or piece of paper in months, but he tried to imagine the spelling. The way the strokes and lines would write out the name. It sounded scholarly. Vast and complex. Not a common name. Fitting for a man met in an uncommon circumstance, perhaps. A fitting name for a witch. He turned his head back towards him with an acknowledging glance, but didn’t offer his name in return.
Hongjoong’s mouth turned into a thin, downturned line at that. Seonghwa smirked and huffed through his nose. Shrugging, he leaned back against the wall and just turned away.
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧