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âËŕż summary: in a kingdom where starborns are feared for simply being who they are, you find yourself drawn into the hidden world of your seven celestial lovers and the remnants of a forgotten community. but the more you learn about their history, the harder it becomes to understand why love, belonging, and existence itself were ever treated as something shameful.
alternatively, perhaps the greatest tragedy wasn't that they were different, but that they were punished for it.
âËŕż genre: medieval-inspired au ¡ mythic fantasy ¡ hurt/comfort ¡ mild angst ¡ established/implied poly relationship ¡ lyrical prose
âËŕż warnings: moderate violence ¡ blood and injury ¡ near-drowning ¡ discussions of prejudice and discrimination ¡ heated kissing/make-out
âËŕż word count: 19.6k
a/n: again, this entire fic is completely based off a dream i had a few days ago. the emotions lingered long after i woke up. and naturally, the story gradually became one about belonging, identity, acceptance, and community.
it's not particularly plot-heavy despite its length; it's more of an emotional, character-driven piece. and posting this during pride month felt especially fitting.
main masterlist | ot7/multi masterlist
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âËŕż playlist: chemtrail over the country club - lana del rey ¡ everything is romantic - alina kay (reimagined)
The mountain path unwound beneath your feet like a ribbon of silver-gold earth, pale and luminous under the fractured light of a thousand distant stars, and you were running harder than you had ever run in your entire life.
To your left, Yoongi matched your pace with an ease that bordered on insulting, his feet finding purchase on stones that would have sent any ordinary human tumbling down the steep incline, and yet he made no move to speed ahead, choosing instead to remain locked in rhythm with your labored breathing and pounding heart.
Ahead of you, Jungkook had already crested the ridge and was now bounding back down toward you with the inexhaustible energy of a creature who had never known what it meant to tire, his laughter ringing out across the valley like bells forged from moonlight and mischief.
You're slowing down," he called, and though the words were teasing, his eyes held nothing but warmth as he reached out to brush his fingers against your elbow, a gesture so quick and so gentle that you might have imagined it if not for the lingering heat he left behind.
"You run like the wind itself has taken human form and decided to mock me," you gasped between breaths, and Seokjin appeared at your other side, materializing from the shadows of an ancient pine with the silent grace that still managed to startle you even after all these years of knowing him.
He did not speak, but his hand found the small of your back, steadying you as you stumbled over a root that had wormed its way across the path like a sleeping serpent, and the pressure of his palm told you everything his silence left unsaid.
I am here. I will catch you. I will always catch you.
Behind you, you could hear Jimin's soft footsteps and Hoseok's occasional humming, a wordless melody that seemed to weave itself into the fabric of the night itself, and somewhere further back, Namjoon's steady presence, the quiet anchor around which all of them orbited like planets around a sun that did not know its own gravity.
The mountains here were ancient, older than the kingdoms that had risen and fallen in the valleys below, older than the stories that mothers told their children about the dangers that lurked beyond the safety of village walls, and they held themselves with a kind of quiet dignity that demanded reverence from all who walked upon their slopes.
Silver grass rippled in waves across the meadows that dotted the mountainside, catching the starlight and throwing it back in fragments that made the whole world seem to shimmer like the surface of a moonlit lake.
The pines stood tall and patient, their branches heavy with needles that whispered secrets to one another when the wind passed through them, and the earth beneath your feet smelled of decay and renewal, of things that had died and things that were waiting to be born.
This was not a place that belonged to humans, and you felt that truth in your bones with every step you took, a constant reminder that you were a visitor here, a guest in a world that had never been meant for someone like you.
But they had made it yours.
They had opened their world to you, had shown you paths that no map would ever record, had taught you the names of stars that no human tongue had spoken in centuries, and they had done all of this knowing that discovery would mean death for all of you. The thought settled in your chest like a stone sinking through dark water, heavy and cold and impossible to ignore, and you felt your pace falter for just a moment before a hand caught yours and squeezed, pulling you back to the present.
Taehyung had fallen into step beside you without you noticing, his fingers intertwining with yours as naturally as ivy winding around an ancient wall, and when you looked at him, he was already watching you with those eyes that seemed to hold entire galaxies within their depths.
"You're thinking too much," he said, and his voice was low and rough like the bark of the pines that surrounded you, but there was a softness beneath it, a tenderness that he reserved only for moments like this when the rest of the world had fallen away and left just the two of you suspended in the space between heartbeats.
"I'm always thinking too much," you replied, and the smile that touched your lips was tired but genuine, the kind of smile that only ever emerged when you were surrounded by people who knew every shadowed corner of your soul and loved you anyway. "It's one of my many talents, or so I've been told on more than one occasion."
"It is one of the things I love most about you," Taehyung said, and the words were simple, almost casual, but they landed in your chest with the weight of a vow spoken beneath a blood-red moon. "But I also love watching you let go, watching you forget about everything except the feeling of the wind and the stars and the sound of your own laughter. Do you know how beautiful you are when you forget to be afraid?"
You did not know how to answer that question, so you said nothing, but you tightened your grip on his hand and let him pull you forward, let him guide you around the jagged rocks and through the narrow gaps between boulders that would have seemed impassable if you had been alone. He knew this mountain the way most people knew the faces of their loved ones, knew every curve and crevice and hidden hollow, and he moved through it with a confidence that bordered on arrogance if arrogance could ever be so gentle.
The others had spread out around you, forming a loose circle that kept you at its center, and you could feel their awareness pressing against you from all sides like a physical presence, a constant vigilance that never truly faded even in moments of joy.
Namjoon had explained it to you once, early in your relationship, when the fear of discovery had threatened to swallow you whole and you had asked him why they kept taking such risks, why they kept meeting you night after night when every encounter could be their last.
He had looked at you with those eyes that saw too much and understood too deeply, and he had said, "Because we would rather have one night with you than a thousand years of safety without you."
"Because you are worth every danger, every risk, every moment of fear. Because loving you is the only thing that has ever made sense in a world that has never wanted us to exist."
You had cried then, cried until your chest ached and your throat burned, and he had held you through all of it without saying another word.
That had been three years ago.
Three years of stolen nights and hidden kisses, of learning to read the subtle shifts in their moods and movements, of discovering the unique language of touch that existed between all eight of you, a language that had no words but spoke volumes in the press of a palm against a cheek, the brush of fingers through hair, the weight of a body leaning into another in silent trust.
You knew them now in ways that went beyond simple familiarity, knew the particular pitch of Jimin's laugh when he was truly happy versus when he was masking pain, knew the way Hoseok's shoulders tensed when he sensed danger before his mind had even registered the threat, knew the exact shade of violet that crept into Jungkook's eyes when he was about to do something reckless.
They had let you into the deepest chambers of their hearts, and you had let them into yours, and the resulting mosaic was something so fragile and so precious that you carried it with you always, a talisman against the darkness that lurked at the edges of your world.
"You're doing it again," Taehyung said, and his thumb traced a slow circle against the back of your hand, grounding you in the present moment with the effortless grace of someone who had long since learned how to read the weather patterns of your soul.
"Doing what?" you asked, though you knew exactly what he meant.
"Thinking about the end before the beginning has even had a chance to unfold," he said, and there was no judgment in his voice, only a gentle sadness that made your heart clench in your chest. "You are always waiting for the moment when this will be taken from you, always bracing yourself for the fall before you have even allowed yourself to fly."
"Because the fall is inevitable," you said, and the words came out harsher than you had intended, sharp and bitter like the taste of winter berries that promised sweetness but delivered only astringent pain.
Your eyes drift and watched Jungkook leap effortlessly across a rocky gap several yards wide. The movement looked almost impossible beneath ordinary circumstances. He landed smoothly without breaking stride.
Nobody commented.
Nobody needed to.
The seven men you loved were Starborn.
They moved differently, healed differently, endured differently.
Every aspect of their existence carried traces of something extraordinary.
Long ago, legends claimed fragments of fallen stars had become living beings. Stories changed with every generation, but one detail always remained consistent.
Starborns were different.
That difference had become a reason for hatred.
Humans claimed Starborns manipulated minds.
Humans claimed Starborns lacked genuine emotions.
Humans claimed Starborns posed dangers to children and families.
Humans claimed countless things.
Most accusations contradicted one another completely. Truth rarely mattered when fear became tradition.
Your chest tightened slightly, you hated remembering it.
You hated remembering the careful way Taehyung concealed certain abilities around strangers. You hated remembering Namjoon lowering his gaze whenever merchants questioned his unusual memory. You hated remembering Jungkook pretending exhaustion after physical labor because displaying his actual endurance attracted unwanted attention.
Years passed, and still nothing changed.
People still expected Starborns to shrink themselves.
People still expected them to apologize for existing.
If anyone discovered where you spent these nights, consequences would arrive swiftly. Not rumors. Not disapproval.
Consequencesâreal ones.
The kingdom's laws remained painfully clear. Humans aiding and sheltering a Starborn faced severe punishment.
And a human and Starborn loving each other faced worse.
Examples existed.
Public examples.
Designed to inspire fear.
Designed to enforce obedience.
From somewhere behind you, Jimin's voice cut through the tension like a blade through silk, light and teasing and deliberately carefree. "If you two are done being devastatingly romantic, there is a ridge about half a mile ahead that offers the most incredible view of the valley, and I would like to reach it before the stars decide to stop shining just to spite me."
The laughter that followed shattered the heaviness like glass against stone, and you felt the tension in your shoulders ease as Taehyung's hand found yours once more, pulling you forward into the night. The others fell back into their loose formation around you, and you let yourself be carried along by the current of their presence, let yourself forget, for just a little while longer, the danger that lurked at the edges of your happiness.
The run continued for what felt like hours and no time at all, the mountain unfolding around you in a series of breathtaking vistas and hidden corners that felt like they belonged to another world entirely.
You passed through a grove of trees whose bark glowed faintly in the darkness, their branches hung with lichen that shimmered like spun silver, and Hoseok showed you how to press your palm against their trunks to feel the slow pulse of magic that beat beneath the surface like a second heartbeat.
You crossed a stream whose waters ran cold and clear and tasted of mint and moonlight, and Jungkook splashed you so thoroughly that your clothes were soaked through by the time you reached the other side, his laughter echoing across the valley as you chased him with promises of revenge that only made him laugh harder.
You climbed a slope so steep that your legs burned and your lungs screamed for mercy, and Yoongi stayed by your side through every painful step, his hand steady on your back, his presence a quiet reassurance that you were not alone.
And all the while, the stars watched from above, silent and distant and impossibly beautiful, and you wondered if they remembered a time when the seven people beside you had walked among them, had called them brothers and sisters and kin.
The ancient myths said that Starborns had once been celestial beings, that they had descended from the heavens to walk among mortals for reasons that had long since been forgotten, but you had never asked them about it, had never wanted to push them into memories that might bring them pain. Some doors, you had learned, were better left unopened.
The Northern Lights appeared without warning, as they so often did in these mountains, where the veil between worlds was thin and the sky seemed closer to the earth than it had any right to be. One moment the heavens were dark and still, studded with the cold fire of distant suns, and the next they were alive with color, ribbons of green and purple and blue dancing across the firmament like the brushstrokes of a divine painter who had grown tired of mundane beauty and decided to create something impossible.
The light washed over the mountain in waves, painting the silver grass in shades of emerald and amethyst, casting long shadows that seemed to move with a life of their own, and you felt your breath catch in your throat as you stopped in your tracks, your hand flying up to point at the spectacle above.
"Tae, look," you said, and your voice was hushed, reverent, the voice of someone who had witnessed something sacred and was not certain they deserved to see it. "Look at the lights."
But when you turned to him, he was not looking at the sky.
He was looking at you.
His eyes were fixed on your face with an intensity that made your heart stutter in your chest, and there was something in his expression that you could not quite name, something that hovered at the edges of recognition like a word trapped on the tip of your tongue, familiar and elusive all at once.
The aurora painted his features in shifting colors, turning his skin to marble and his eyes to pools of liquid starlight, and he was so beautiful in that moment that it hurt to look at him, a sharp and aching pain that settled somewhere behind your ribs and refused to leave.
Nearby, Namjoon studied the shifting lights thoughtfully. "My grandmother believed auroras carried messages."
"What sort of messages?" Hoseok asked.
"She changed the answer constantly."
Hoseok had let out a snort. "That sounds suspicious."
"She enjoyed confusing children."
Jimin laughed. "A respectable hobby."
"She once convinced me mountains migrated during winter," Namjoon mirthfully shook his head.
Jungkook shot him a teasing smile. "Did you believe her?"
"For several years."
The group erupted immediately. Namjoon accepted their amusement with dignity.
Mostly.
"Children believe many strange things," he attempted to defend himself.
Yoongi sent him a dry look with underlying banter glint in his eyes. "Children generally stop believing mountains wander eventually."
"They remain difficult creatures. Perhaps they simply move carefully."
"You continue defending this absurdity remarkably well."
The night deepened gradually around all of you. At some point Seokjin produced pastries acquired from a traveling baker.
Nobody knew where he had hidden them.
Nobody questioned the miracle.
You shared pieces while sitting together beneath celestial lights.
Simple moments.
Ordinary moments.
The sort easily overlooked by outsiders.
Yet those moments mattered profoundly.
Because they existed despite everything.
Despite laws.
Despite threats.
Despite a world that would punish every person present for loving incorrectly.
Jungkook leaned against your shoulder and quietly pointed toward constellations overhead. "That one resembles Seokjin when somebody insults his cooking."
The younger simply shrugs. "We appreciate accuracy."
"You appreciate causing problems."
"Also true," Jungkook's grin widens.
The aurora continued dancing overhead. Hours seemed to slip away unnoticed and eventually the wind cooled further. The season's first hints of approaching autumn lingered within every breeze.
Suddenly, without meaning to, you turn your head and see Taehyung smiling, but there was a sadness beneath it, a wistfulness that spoke of things he had seen and could not unsee, of knowledge he carried that he could not share, and you felt a chill run down your spine that had nothing to do with the cold mountain air.
"There's something I want to show you," he said, and his voice was soft, softer than you had ever heard it, and there was a weight to his words that made you feel as though the ground beneath your feet had shifted, as though you were standing on the edge of something vast and unknowable.
Before you could ask what he meant, before you could form the questions that were already gathering on your tongue, he moved. His hands found your waist, and he lifted you onto his back with a fluid grace that spoke of countless repetitions, and you let out a startled yelp that dissolved into laughter as he began to run.
"Taehyung, what are you doing?" you demanded, your arms wrapping around his neck as he bounded down the slope with the effortless speed of a creature who had never known the limitations of human flesh. "You cannot just pick me up and run off into the night without at least some explanation!"
"I can," he said, and his voice was bright with laughter, lighter than you had heard it in weeks, and the sound of it made your heart soar despite the confusion and the fear and the thousand questions that still clamored for answers. "And I am. Hold on tight."
Behind you, you could hear the others reacting. "There he goes," Yoongi called.
"Do not kill her," Jin shouted. "I am serious."
"I would never," Taehyung teases.
"You literally just carried her away."
"That is different."
Jungkook laughed so hard he nearly doubled over.
Hoseok cupped his hands around his mouth. "Bring her back eventually!"
Taehyung casted a coquettish smile. "No promises."
"Kim Taehyung!" Jimin's indignant yell, carried across the hillside.
Namjoon's chuckle followed them all. "Do not get lost."
"We won't."
And soon their voices grew fainter as Taehyung put distance between you and them, his feet finding paths that you could not see, his body weaving through the trees with a grace that bordered on supernatural.
The wind roared in your ears, and your hair streamed behind you like a banner, and you pressed your face against his shoulder and laughed, laughed until your stomach ached and your eyes watered, laughed because you were alive and free and loved and because the stars above were dancing just for you.
At some point the trail narrowed suddenly and then widened. It occasionally curved sharply around enormous boulders weathered by centuries of storms.
After a short while, you've pretty much lost all sense of direction.
He ran for what felt like forever, down into the heart of the mountain where the air grew heavy with mist and the sound of water began to fill the silence, a low rumble that grew louder with every step until it became a roar that shook the very ground beneath you.
You lifted your head and saw it, a waterfall so vast that it seemed to stretch from the heavens themselves, its waters plunging into a pool so deep that you could not see the bottom, the mist rising in clouds that caught the starlight and turned it into rainbows that shimmered and faded and shimmered again. It was beautiful, impossibly beautiful, and it was also absolutely terrifying.
He plops you down on your feet, allowing you to bask in awe. The waterfall seemed impossibly oldâsacred somehowâas though forgotten gods once gathered here.
Your eyes widened. âTaehyung.â
His grin looked almost boyish. âBeautiful, right?â
âHow did you find this place?â
âThat is a secret.â
âTaehyung.â
âA very important secret," he wiggles his eyebrows.
You folded your arms, while the man before you remained entirely unapologetic. The roar of falling water filled every available space. Mist settled across your skin. The air felt colder here, carrying traces of hidden depths and ancient stone.
He stopped at the edge of the cliff, his feet planted firmly on the slick rock, and he turned his head just enough to look at you over his shoulder. His eyes were bright, wild, filled with a joy that seemed to border on madness, and he smiled at you with all the warmth of a thousand suns. "Trust me," he said.
Those two words accomplished absolutely nothing helpful.
You narrow your eyes at him. "That statement usually arrives before terrible decisions occur."
"Trust me anyway," he adjusted his grip slightly.
Your stomach dropped, understanding arrived all at once. "Oh no."
His laugh rang across the gorge. "Oh yes."
"Taehyung."
"Trust me."
"Taehyung."
"We are already committed now."
You stare at him an incredulously. "We absolutely are not committed."
"We definitely are."
You opened your mouth, prepared several extremely reasonable arguments. But you never managed to voice any of them. Because Taehyung jumped.
A scream tore from your throat instantly, and as you both descended off the cliff, you heard Taehyung laughing.
Actually laughing.
Completely delighted.
The realization was absurd enough that your panic briefly collided with disbelief.
The fall was a lifetime and an instant, a plunge into darkness that stole your breath and your vision and your sense of self, the water rushing up to meet you with a force that felt like the hand of God reaching down to claim you.
The impact was brutal, cold and violent, the shock of it driving every molecule of air from your lungs as you were swallowed by the depths, the world dissolving into a chaos of bubbles and darkness and the terrible, crushing pressure of water pressing against you from all sides.
You did not know which way was up, did not know where the surface was, did not know if you would ever find it again, and panic clawed at your throat as your limbs began to thrash, your heavy dress dragging you down like chains wrapped around your ankles.
You were drowning.
Above, Taehyung broke through first, water streamed from dark hair as he inhaled sharply. Relief appeared immediately, then disappeared.
The quick realization that you were not beside him caused his smile vanished. âY/N?â
The river answered with rushing water.
Taehyung turned quickly, searching. Expecting you to emerge, but you did not. And almost immediately, fear slammed into him.
âY/N!â The second shout sounded different.
Sharper.
Desperate.
Still nothing.
Without hesitation, he dove again, dark water closed overhead. His enhanced vision cut through murky depths far better than any human's could. Still, terror clawed relentlessly through his chest.
His eyes scanned every direction simultaneously. Then he saw you. Your dress floated around you like heavy shadows. Your movements appeared slower nowâweaker.
Taehyung surged forward, without hesitation.
A hand closed around your wrist. You felt the movement dimly, barely registering the contact before he propelled both of you upward.
Soon, you felt the pressure in your chest begin to ease as the darkness above you began to lighten, and then you broke through the surface with a gasp that was half cough, half sob, the cold air rushing into your lungs like a blessing.
The riverbank appeared moments later, Taehyung practically carried you from the water. Knees struck damp earth, as the cold air hit soaked clothing.
Your breathing remained uneven.
Everything hurt.
Everything spun.
But you were safe.
Taehyung's face was the first thing you saw. He was terrified.
His eyes were wide, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his hands cupping your face with a desperation that spoke of a fear so deep and so primal that it had stripped away all pretense, all composure, all the careful masks that he wore to hide the softness of his heart. It stopped every complaint in your head before it formed.
"Are you alright?" he demanded, and his voice cracked on the words, splintering like glass. "Can you breathe? Can you hear me? Please, please, say something, pleaseâ"
You opened your mouth with a small smile stretched on your lips. "I think my pride suffered permanent injuries."
The joke fell completely flat, not because it lacked quality. But because he looked genuinely shaken.
"I'm fine," you managed, and the words came out as a croak, but they were enough to make his shoulders sag with relief, enough to make him press his forehead against yours and close his eyes and breathe. "I'm fine, Tae. I'm okay."
"I am so sorry," he said, and his voice was barely a whisper, raw and broken and full of a guilt that cut deeper than any wound. "I should have warned you. I should have prepared you. I should never haveâI saw the lights, and I wanted to show you, and I did not think, I did not consider, I am so sorry, I am so sorryâ"
"Stop," you said, and you reached up to touch his face, your fingers tracing the lines of his jaw, the curve of his lips, the damp skin of his cheek. "Stop apologizing. I trusted you, and I still trust you, and I am fine. I am right here. I am not going anywhere."
He pulled you closer, his arms wrapping around you so tightly that you could barely breathe, but you did not mind, did not mind the cold or the fear or the lingering echoes of your panic, because he was holding you, and he was warm, and he was here.
He then withdrew back just enough to look at you, his eyes tracing your face as though he were memorizing every detail. Then, very slowly, with a tenderness that made your heart ache, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to your forehead.
Soft, lingering. Not passionate, not playful.
Reliefâpure relief.
A grateful kiss.
A thankful kiss.
When he finally pulled back, his smile was the most beautiful thing you had ever seen. His forehead rested gently against yours, and both of your breathing gradually slowed.
"We're here," he said softly, and he tilted his head toward the waterfall, toward the curtain of water that plunged from the cliff above into the pool where you floated. "Behind the falls. There is a passage. A hidden place that no one knows about except for us."
You followed his gaze, and for the first time, you noticed the darkness behind the rushing water, the shadow that did not quite match the shadows of the rocks, the subtle shift in the air that spoke of a space where space should not exist. Your heart began to beat faster, not with fear this time, but with something that felt like anticipation, like hope, like the first stirrings of a story that had not yet been written.
"What is it?" you asked, and your voice was barely audible above the roar of the water.
Taehyung smiled, and there was a secret in that smile, a mystery that glimmered in his eyes like the first star of evening. "Come find out," he said, and he took your hand, and together, you began to walk towards the waterfall, toward the darkness, toward whatever lay waiting on the other side.
Taehyung's grip remained steady and sure despite the trembling that you could feel running through his fingers, and he pulled you forward into the darkness behind the falls with a determination that spoke of a destination he had visited a thousand times before, a path his feet knew better than the beating of his own heart.
The stone beneath your feet was slick with moss and moisture, worn smooth by centuries of water and wind and the passage of countless travelers whose names had long since been forgotten, and you stumbled once, twice, before Taehyung's arm wrapped around your waist and steadied you against his side, his breath warm against your ear as he whispered words of encouragement that you could barely hear over the roar of the water.
The tunnel stretched before you like the throat of some great beast, narrow and dark and filled with the sound of dripping water that echoed off the walls in patterns that seemed almost musical, almost deliberate, as though the cave itself was singing a song that had been written in the language of stone and time.
You could see nothing, your eyes straining against a darkness so complete that it felt like a physical weight pressing against your eyelids, but Taehyung moved with the confidence of a man who had no need of sight, his footsteps sure and steady against the uneven ground, his hand never once releasing its hold on yours.
The air grew warmer as you walked, the chill of the waterfall receding into something that felt almost like summer, and with the warmth came a smell, rich and earthy and sweet, the smell of flowers and grass and something that reminded you of bread baking in an oven, a memory so vivid and so unexpected that you felt your heart skip a beat in your chest.
"You can feel it, can you not?" Taehyung asked, and his voice was soft, almost reverent, as though he were speaking in the presence of something sacred. "The town. It has its own weather, its own seasons, its own heartbeat. The mountain protects it, keeps it warm even in the deepest winter, and the waterfall masks the sound and the light so that no one can find it from the outside. It has been hidden for as long as anyone can remember, and it will remain hidden for as long as there are Starborns left to guard its secrets."
"How long has it been here?" you asked, and your voice came out as a whisper, but Taehyung heard you anyway, his head turning slightly in the darkness so that you could just make out the silhouette of his profile against the faint, impossible glow that was beginning to appear ahead.
"Longer than the kingdoms that have risen and fallen in the valleys below," he said, and there was a weight to his words that made you feel as though you were standing on the edge of something vast and ancient, something that had existed long before you were born and would continue to exist long after you were gone.
"Longer than the stories that people tell about us, longer than the hatred that has driven us into hiding, longer than the memory of any living human. My great-grandmother was born here, and her great-grandmother before her, and her great-grandmother before her, stretching back to a time when the stars were closer to the earth and the veil between worlds was thin enough to walk through. This town is older than anything you have ever known, and it will outlast everything you have ever loved."
The words settled in your chest like stones dropped into still water, sending ripples of emotion through your body that you could not quite name. The walls of the tunnel fell away, and suddenly you were standing at the entrance to a valley that seemed to exist outside of time itself, a hidden pocket of the world that had been preserved in amber while the rest of humanity had marched forward into progress and destruction and forgetting.
The town spread out before you like a painting that had been left unfinished, its streets winding through clusters of stone buildings whose roofs were covered in moss and wildflowers, their windows dark and empty but somehow still warm, still welcoming, still holding the memory of the light that had once shone through them.
Cobblestones lined the main road, worn smooth by generations of footsteps, and between them, grass and weeds had pushed their way through the cracks, reclaiming the spaces that humans had carved out of the earth with a patience that only nature could possess.
Climbing ivy covered the walls of the buildings, their leaves shifting in a breeze that you could not feel, and wildflowers bloomed in riotous colors from every planter and windowsill, their petals swaying gently as though they were dancing to music that only they could hear.
Lantern hooks hung from the eaves of the roofs, rusted and empty, and from some of them, old wind chimes still dangled, their metal pipes clinking together in soft, melodic patterns that seemed to follow you as you walked, as though the town itself was welcoming you home.
You stepped forward, your feet carrying you onto the cobblestones without conscious thought, and Taehyung released your hand only to place his palm against the small of your back, guiding you gently forward as you took in the sight before you.
The buildings were beautiful in their decay, their stone walls weathered by centuries of wind and rain, their wooden doors warped and faded, their windows covered in a layer of dust that caught the golden light and turned it into something almost magical.
You passed a bakery, its sign still hanging above the door, the painted letters faded but still legible, and you could almost smell the bread that had once been baked inside, could almost hear the laughter of the customers who had gathered there each morning to share stories and gossip and the simple joy of breaking bread together.
Then, you passed a gathering hall, its doors thrown open to reveal a cavernous space filled with overturned tables and chairs, and you could imagine the celebrations that had once taken place there, the music and the dancing and the warmth of a community that had known nothing but each other.
"It was called Hwajeong," Taehyung said, and his voice was quiet, almost distant, as though he were speaking from a place far removed from the present moment.
"It means 'flower garden' in the old tongue, and it was named for the fields of wildflowers that bloomed in the valley every spring, fields that stretched from the edge of the town all the way to the base of the mountains in every direction. My grandmother used to tell me that the flowers were a gift from the stars, that they bloomed here because the soil was blessed, because the people who lived here were blessed, because this was a place where magic still remembered how to breathe."
"It is beautiful," you said, and the words felt inadequate, too small to contain the enormity of what you were feeling, but they were the only words you had, and you offered them to him like a gift, hoping that he would understand the depth of meaning that lay beneath them. "It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, Taehyung. It is like stepping into a dream that I did not know I had been dreaming."
He smiled, but there was a sadness in his eyes that made your heart ache, a melancholy that seemed to have settled into his bones like a sickness that could never be cured.
"It was not always like this," he said, and he gestured toward one of the buildings, a small house with a blue door that had faded to a pale grey, its windows dark and empty.
"That was where Jungkook lived when he was a child, before his parents moved to the eastern edge of the town to be closer to the school. He used to climb onto the roof every evening to watch the stars, and his mother would scold him for it, would tell him that he would fall and break his neck, but he never did. He never fell. He was always too graceful for that, even when he was young."
As he spoke, you could see it, could see a young Jungkook with wild hair and scraped knees, his eyes bright with the impossible wonder of childhood, his small hands gripping the edge of the roof as he pulled himself up to watch the stars wheel overhead.
You could hear his laughter, high and clear and full of joy, and you could feel the love that had once filled this town, the warmth of a community that had understood each other in ways that humans could never understand, a family that had been bound together by blood and history and the shared weight of a world that had rejected them.
You walked further into the town, your footsteps echoing off the stone walls, and Taehyung pointed out each building with a tenderness that made your chest ache, sharing fragments of memories that had clearly been preserved with the care of someone who knew that they could never be replaced.
"That was the school," he said, gesturing toward a large building with a bell tower that still stood tall despite the ivy that had claimed its walls.
"I learned to read there, learned to write, learned to count the stars and name the constellations and understand the language of the winds. The teacher was an old woman named Hana, and she was the strictest person I have ever known, but she also had the kindest heart, and she would stay after class to help anyone who was struggling, would bring food to families who could not afford it, would sit with the sick and comfort the dying. She was the heart of this town, and when she passed, we buried her on the hill overlooking the valley, and we planted a tree at her grave so that she would always have shade."
You stopped in front of the school, your hand reaching out to touch the stone wall, the surface rough and cold beneath your fingers, and you closed your eyes, trying to feel the echoes of the children who had once filled these halls.
You could almost hear them, the sound of their laughter and their arguments and their songs, the shuffle of their feet against the wooden floors, the murmur of their voices as they recited lessons that had been passed down through generations.
This had been a place of learning, a place of growth, a place where young Starborns had been shaped into the people they would become, and now it was empty, silent, waiting for a future that might never come.
"That was the market square," Taehyung continued, leading you toward a wide open space surrounded by stalls that had once been filled with fruits and vegetables and fabrics and tools, their wooden frames now weathered and cracked, their canvas awnings torn and faded.
"Every morning, the vendors would set up their wares, and the town would come alive with the sound of haggling and laughter and the smell of fresh bread and roasted meat and spiced wine. Hoseok used to help his father at the vegetable stall, and he would always save the best apples for me, would slip them into my hands when no one was looking and pretend that he had not done anything."
"Yoongi's mother sold herbs and remedies, and she would give us pennyroyal tea when we were sick, would make us drink it even though it tasted like dirt and regret. Namjoon's father was the blacksmith, and he would let us watch him work, would show us how to shape metal with fire and hammer, would tell us stories about the weapons he had forged for warriors who had long since turned to dust," he explained, while his gaze was fixed ahead.
You could see them, all of them, the seven boys who had grown up in this town, the seven boys who had become the center of your world, and you could see the lives they had lived before the world had turned against them, before the hunters had come, before the fires had burned, before the town had been forced into hiding.
They had been children here, had run through these streets with scraped knees and wild laughter, had fallen in love for the first time in this square, had dreamed of futures that had been stolen from them by a world that had never wanted them to exist.
"That was the festival square," Taehyung said, leading you to a smaller square at the center of the town, where a fountain still stood, its water long since dried, its basin filled with fallen leaves and faded petals. "Every year, on the night of the winter solstice, we would gather here to celebrate the turning of the seasons, to light lanterns and release them into the sky, to dance and sing and feast until the sun rose over the mountains. It was the most beautiful night of the year, the night when the stars seemed closest to the earth, the night when even the oldest and grumpiest of us would smile and remember what it meant to be alive."
"Jungkook once climbed the fountain to try to catch a falling star," he added, the words came out before he could stop them, a fragment of a story that one of them had told you on a night much like this one.
You turned to look at him with an expression of surprise that was met with his smile, warm and bright and full of love. "He was convinced that if he caught one, it would grant him a wish, and he stood on the edge of the fountain with his arms outstretched for hours until his mother came to drag him home for dinner."
"That was a good night," Taehyung exhaled, his voice wistful. "Jimin cried because he thought the moon had disappeared, and Jin had to explain to him that it was only a crescent, that the moon was still there, that it was just hiding its face for a little while. He did not believe him, not until we took him to the top of the watchtower and showed him the sliver of silver hanging in the sky, and even then, he made us promise that the moon would come back, that it would never leave us forever."
You giggled at the memory as you both walked through the town for what felt like hours. Taehyung pointed out the house where Namjoon had grown up, a two-story building with a red door and a chimney that still stood tall, and he told you about the time that Namjoon had accidentally set the kitchen on fire while trying to cook dinner for his family, about the laughter that had followed, about the way that the town had come together to rebuild, about the warmth that had filled the streets that night.
He showed you the bridge where he and Yoongi had spent long afternoons skipping stones and sharing secrets, the watchtower where Hoseok had stood guard during the long nights of his youth, the small garden where Jin had grown vegetables that he had shared with the entire town, the hill where he and Jungkook had raced each other to the top every morning before school.
Each memory was a thread in a tapestry that was vast and beautiful and heartbreaking, a portrait of a community that had been built on love and trust and the shared understanding of what it meant to be different in a world that demanded conformity.
You could feel the weight of it pressing against your chest, could feel the grief that had settled into the stones of this town like water seeping through cracks, and you understood, finally, what Taehyung had been trying to show you.
This was not simply a hidden town, a refuge, a place of safety and concealment. This was home. This was where he had been shaped into the person that he was, where he had learned to love and to laugh and to dream, where he had built the foundations of a life that had been shattered by the cruelty of a world that had never understood him.
You stopped in front of a small house at the end of a winding street, its walls covered in climbing roses that had long since gone wild, their thorns thick and sharp, their petals scattered across the worn stone steps like offerings left for a forgotten god. The door was painted a deep blue, the same shade as the sky just before the stars begin to appear, and above it, a small wind chime hung from a rusted hook, its pipes still and silent in the stagnant air.
Taehyung did not speak, did not move, did not do anything except stand and stare at the house with an expression that you could not quite read, his eyes distant and his jaw tight, his hands clenched at his sides.
"This was where I grew up," he said finally, and his voice was barely a whisper, rough and raw and full of a pain that cut deeper than any wound you had ever seen. "This was where my mother and father lived, where my grandmother lived before them, where my great-grandmother lived before her. This was where I learned to walk, where I learned to speak, where I learned to dream. This was where I was loved, truly loved, in ways that I have never been able to describe, in ways that I have never been able to find again."
You stepped closer to him, your hand reaching out to touch his arm, and he flinched slightly before turning to look at you, his eyes shimmering with tears that he was fighting to hold back.
"Taehyung," you said, and your voice was soft, gentle, the kind of voice you used when you were trying to hold something precious and fragile. "What happened? What happened to this place?"
He opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again, his gaze dropping to the ground, his shoulders sagging under the weight of a memory that he had been carrying for longer than you could imagine.
"Come with me," he said, and his voice was rough, raw, the voice of someone who had been holding back tears for far too long and was finally beginning to lose the battle.
He led you through the winding streets of Hwajeong, past the abandoned market stalls and the overgrown gardens and the silent fountains that had once been the heart of a thriving community, and you followed him without question, your feet finding their way across the cobblestones as though they had walked this path a thousand times before.
You climbed a narrow staircase that wound around the side of the crumbling watchtower, your hands gripping the cold stone railings as you ascended into the golden light that seemed to emanate from nowhere and everywhere at once, and when you reached the top, you understood why Taehyung had brought you here.
The view was breathtaking, a sprawling panorama of the hidden valley that stretched out beneath you like a tapestry woven from moonlight and memory, the rooftops of Hwajeong clustered together like children huddling for warmth.
The waterfall that concealed the entrance to the valley glittered on the far side of the town, its waters catching the light of the aurora and scattering it into a thousand shimmering fragments, and beyond it, the mountains rose like sentinels against the sky, their peaks crowned with snow that glowed with an ethereal blue light. It was beautiful, achingly beautiful, the kind of beauty that made you want to cry because it felt too precious to exist in a world that had proven itself so cruel.
Taehyung sat down on the edge of the tower, his legs dangling over the side, and he patted the space beside him, his eyes never leaving the horizon. You settled next to him, close enough that your shoulders touched, close enough that you could feel the warmth of his body seeping through the damp fabric of your clothes, and you waited, your heart beating a steady rhythm against your ribs, your breath slow and even, your presence a quiet offering of support that required no words to be understood.
"The reason this town exists," he began, and his voice was soft, almost inaudible, as though he were speaking more to himself than to you, "is because nowhere else would have us. Not as we were. Not as we are. The humans who lived in the kingdoms below, they built their walls and their laws and their gods around the idea that people like us should not exist, that we were mistakes, aberrations, corruptions of a natural order that had never accounted for our kind."
He paused, and you watched his hands as they gripped the edge of the stone, his knuckles white with tension, his fingers digging into the cracks as though he were trying to anchor himself to something solid. "We looked like them, you know. We still do. That was always the thing that frightened them the most, the fact that we could walk among them without being noticed, that we could live beside them and love beside them and build families beside them, and they would never know the difference unless we chose to show them."
He paused, as if trying to gather himself, then continued. "And when we did show them, when we trusted them enough to reveal who we truly were, they would turn on us. They would call us monsters. They would claim that we had deceived them, that we had tricked them into loving something that was not worthy of love, that we had corrupted their children and their traditions and their sacred way of life."
"They were wrong," you said, and the words came out with a force that surprised even you, sharp and clear and absolute, cutting through the golden air like a blade. "They were wrong about everything, Taehyung. Every single thing they believed about you, about your people, about the danger you supposedly represented, it was all built on fear and ignorance and a refusal to understand anything that did not fit into their narrow vision of the world."
He turned to look at you then, his eyes meeting yours for the first time since you had sat down, and there was something in his gaze that made your heart clench, a mixture of gratitude and sorrow and a hope so fragile that it seemed on the verge of shattering.
"I know that," he said, and his voice cracked slightly on the words. "I have always known that, in the deepest part of myself, the part that remembers what it felt like to be loved without condition, to be held without fear, to exist without having to apologize for the simple fact of my existence. But knowing something and feeling something are very different things, and there are days when the weight of what they have done to us presses down on my chest so heavily that I cannot breathe, cannot move, cannot remember what it felt like to be free."
You reached out and took his hand, your fingers intertwining with his, and you felt the tension in his body begin to ease, just slightly, just enough to let him continue. "Tell me," you said softly. "Tell me everything."
And so he did.
He told you about the persecution that had driven his ancestors into these mountains, about the burnings and the hangings and the drownings that had marked the history of his people like scars on a body that had never been allowed to heal.
He told you about the families that had been torn apart, the children who had been taken from their parents and raised in human households where they were forced to hide their true nature, the lovers who had been executed for the crime of loving someone who shared their blood and their starlight.
He told you about the laws that had been written specifically to punish Starborns for existing, about the taxes and the restrictions and the constant surveillance that had made life in the human kingdoms unbearable, about the way that even the kindest humans would eventually turn away, would cross the street to avoid them, would whisper behind their hands and pray for their souls as though they were already dead.
"There was a boy," he said, and his voice dropped to a whisper, barely audible above the distant sound of the waterfall. "His name was Minho, and he was my first friend, my first real friend, the first person who made me feel like I was not alone in the world. We grew up together, played together, dreamed together, and when we were old enough to understand what we were feeling, we fell in love. It was soft and sweet and innocent, the kind of love that only exists when you are young enough to believe that the world will make space for your happiness."
He stopped, and you could see the grief written across his face, could see the memory of that loss still fresh in his eyes even after all these years. "His family was discovered by the hunters when we were seventeen years old. They had been living in a small village on the edge of the kingdom, hiding in plain sight, pretending to be human, and someone had recognized them, had seen the way their eyes glowed on a night when the stars were particularly bright, had reported them to the authorities."
His lips began to tremble slightly. "They were taken in the middle of the night, his mother and father, his younger sister, his grandmother, all of them, dragged from their beds and thrown into a cart that would carry them to the capital for trial. Minho managed to escape, managed to run, managed to find his way back to Hwajeong, but he was never the same after that. The light in his eyes had been extinguished, and no matter how hard we tried, we could not bring it back."
"Where is he now?" you asked, though you were not certain you wanted to know the answer.
"He left," Taehyung answered, and his voice was heavy with a resignation that made your heart ache. "He could not bear to stay in a place that reminded him of everything he had lost, so he went north, beyond the mountains, to a land where the stars shine differently and the humans have never heard of the Starborn. I have not heard from him in over a decade, and I do not know if he is alive or dead, happy or broken, surrounded by love or drowning in solitude. I only know that he was the first person I ever loved, and that I lost him to a world that was never willing to let us exist in peace."
He fell silent, and you did not push him to continue, did not fill the space between you with empty words or platitudes that would mean nothing in the face of such profound loss. Instead, you shifted closer to him, your body pressing against his side, your head coming to rest on his shoulder, and you let the silence speak for you, let your presence say everything that words could not adequately express.
The aurora continued its slow dance above you, painting the sky in shades of green and purple and blue, and the town below you slept its eternal sleep, its streets empty, its windows dark, its stories waiting for someone to remember them.
"There is something I have never told you," Taehyung said after a long moment, and his voice was so quiet that you almost missed it, almost let it slip away into the golden air like a secret that was never meant to be spoken. "Something I have been carrying with me since the night we first met, something that has weighed on my heart every single day that I have known you."
You lifted your head to look at him, your eyes searching his face for clues, for hints of what he was about to say, but his expression was unreadable, his gaze fixed on some distant point beyond the mountains, beyond the valley, beyond the world itself.
"What is it?" you asked, and your voice was barely a whisper, as though speaking too loudly might shatter the fragile moment that had settled around you like a blanket of starlight.
"I never wanted you to see this place," he said, and the words came out in a rush, as though he had been holding them back for so long that they had finally broken through the dam of his restraint.
"I was afraid, so afraid, that bringing you here would change the way you looked at me, would make you see me as something broken, something damaged, something that needed to be fixed or pitied or saved. I was afraid that you would walk through these streets and see only the tragedy, only the loss, only the emptiness, and that you would forget that there was joy here too, that there was love and laughter and life, that this was not just a graveyard of forgotten dreams but a home, a real home, a place where I was happy once."
His voice cracked, and you could see the tears gathering in his eyes, could see the way his jaw clenched as he fought to keep them from falling, the way his hands trembled as he gripped the edge of the stone tower. "I was afraid that you would look at me and see all the ways that the world had hurt me, and that you would decide that I was too much, too heavy, too complicated, too broken to love. I was afraid that you would leave."
The words hit you like a physical blow, sharp and unexpected, and you felt your own eyes sting with tears as you reached up to cup his face in your hands, turning his head so that he was forced to meet your gaze.
"Taehyung," you said, and your voice was fierce, fierce and tender and full of a love that burned so brightly that it seemed to light up the darkness around you.
"I am not going anywhere. I have never been going anywhere. I chose you, and I chose all of you, and I made that choice knowing exactly what it meant, knowing the risks and the dangers and the very real possibility that loving you could cost me everything I have ever known. And I made that choice because you are worth it. All seven of you are worth it. Every single moment of fear, every sleepless night, every stolen second of happiness, it has all been worth it because I love you, and I will keep loving you for as long as this world continues to turn."
He stared at you, his eyes wide and shimmering, and you could see the walls that he had built around his heart beginning to crumble, could see the vulnerability that he had kept hidden for so long rising to the surface like water breaking through a dam.
"You do not understand," he whispered, and his voice was raw, broken, desperate. "If anyone finds out about us, if anyone discovers that a human woman is meeting with seven Starborn in the mountains, they will kill you. They will hang you in the village square, or they will burn you at the stake, or they will simply make you disappear, and no one will ever speak your name again. And it will be my fault. It will be our fault. We will have destroyed you simply by loving you."
"Then let them try," you said, and the words came out with a calm certainty that surprised even you, a steel that you had not known you possessed. "Let them come for me with their ropes and their flames and their righteous fury, and I will stand before them and tell them that I loved you, that I love you still, that I will love you until the very last breath leaves my body and beyond. They can take my life, but they will never take my love, because my love belongs to you, and you belong to me, and nothing that they do will ever change that."
He broke then, the tears that he had been holding back finally spilling over and tracing silver paths down his cheeks, and he pulled you into his arms with a desperation that spoke of a loneliness so deep and so vast that it had become a part of his very soul.
You held him as he cried, your hands running through his hair, your voice murmuring soft reassurances against his ear, and you felt the weight of his grief and his fear and his love pressing against you, heavy and warm and real, and you held it all, held it without flinching, held it because that was what love meant, holding the things that were too heavy for one person to carry alone.
When his tears finally began to subside, he pulled back just enough to look at you, his eyes red and swollen, his cheeks still damp, and he let out a shaky breath that seemed to carry away some of the pain that had been festering inside him for so long.
"I love you," he said, and the words were simple, but they carried the weight of everything he had just shared, everything he had trusted you with, everything he had given you by allowing you to see him at his most vulnerable. "I love you more than I have ever loved anyone, more than I thought it was possible to love another person, and I am so grateful that you exist, that you chose us, that you stayed."
"Of course I stayed," you said, and you smiled at him, a soft, tremulous smile that held all the tenderness and devotion that you felt in your heart. "I could never leave you. You are my home, Taehyung. All of you are my home. And I will never stop choosing you, not for as long as I draw breath."
He then leaned forward and kissed you. The initial contact is soft and gentle, a mere ghost of a touch that tastes of hesitation and a profound, aching affection. Taehyungâs breath catches quietly against your lips, and for a few timeless moments, he kisses you back with a careful tenderness that treats you like something precious and fragile.
However, the sweetness of the moment quickly begins to shift, the air between you thickening with a sudden, electric charge that neither of you can ignore. The gentle presses of your lips evolve into something deeper, more urgent, as the kiss transforms from a quiet promise into a desperate demand.
You find yourself tilting your head, seeking more of him, your fingers curling into the heavy fabric of his tunic to pull him closer. Taehyung lets out a low, guttural groan deep in his chest, a sound of pure surrender that vibrates through your own body and sends a shiver of heat down your spine.
He begins to move, his weight shifting as he slowly presses you back further away from the edge and against the stone below, his body hovering over yours with a heavy, commanding presence. As he settles between your legs, the friction of his thighs against yours sparks a fire that makes you gasp into his mouth, your breath mingling with his in a frantic rhythm.
He isn't rushing, but there is a new, predatory hunger in the way he claims your lips, his tongue sweeping against yours in a slow, rhythmic dance that leaves you lightheaded.
âYouâre testing every ounce of my control, my love,â he murmurs against your skin, his voice a rough, velvet rasp that makes your toes curl. You let out a soft, needy moan, arching your back to bring your chest closer to his, feeling the frantic thrum of his heart echoing your own.
His hands, previously so hesitant, begin to wander with a bold curiosity, tracing the curves of your waist and the swell of your hips. He navigates the complex layers of your gown, his palms sliding over the heavy linen and silk that separate your skin from the cool night air.
With a low growl of longing, he slips his hands beneath the voluminous folds of your skirts, his fingers brushing against the sensitive skin of your thighs. He doesn't push further, instead choosing to caress the soft flesh of your inner thighs with a slow, agonizing pressure that makes you whimper.
Taehyung is trembling now, his muscles taut and strained as he fights the instinct to lose himself entirely in the heat of the moment. He shifts his hips, grinding slowly and deliberately against you, letting you feel the hard, insistent length of his cock pressing through the fabric of his trousers. The sensation is overwhelming, a delicious torture that has both of you breathing in ragged, uneven gasps.
"I want you so badly it hurts, but I want to savor every single second of this," he groans, his voice thick with a desperate, aching need. He continues to grind against you in small, circular motions, a silent testament to the desire he is struggling to hold back for the sake of the tenderness between you.
You wrap your legs around his waist, pulling him tighter against you, your moans becoming more frequent as the tension reaches a breaking point. The kiss becomes a battle of wills, a heated exchange of tongues and teeth that speaks of a love that is as violent as it is soft.
Suddenly, he then pulls back, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his eyes dark with desire and something softer, something that looked almost like wonder.
"But I also want to hold you," he said, and his voice softened, the urgency fading into a tenderness that made your heart swell. "I want to lie here with you in my arms and watch the stars and feel your heartbeat against mine and know that you are real, that this is real, that we have this moment and no one can take it away from us."
You nodded, not trusting your voice, and he shifted his weight, lying down beside you and pulling you against his chest, his arm wrapping around your waist, his chin resting on top of your head.
You lay together on the roof of the watchtower, the stones warm beneath you, letting yourself sink into the safety of his embrace, let yourself believe, just for a moment, that nothing could ever hurt you as long as you were here, as long as you were held, as long as you were loved.
His hand found yours, his fingers intertwining with yours, and he pressed a kiss to the top of your head, soft and tender and full of a gratitude that words could never adequately express.
"Thank you," he whispered against your hair, and his voice was quiet, peaceful, the voice of someone who had finally found a place where they could rest. "Thank you for loving meâus. Thank you for seeing me. Thank you for staying."
You smiled against his chest, your eyes closing, your body relaxing into the warmth of his embrace, and you let the sound of his heartbeat lull you into a state of peaceful contentment that you had not felt in what seemed like an eternity.
"Always," you whispered back, and the word was a promise, a vow, a declaration of devotion that you would spend the rest of your life proving. "Always, Taehyung. Always."
The aurora continued its slow dance above you, the town slept its eternal sleep below you, and for one brief, fragile, beautiful moment, you allowed yourself to believe that everything would be alright, that the world would let you have this, that the happiness you had found in the arms of seven people who loved you more than you had ever thought possible would be allowed to last.
You both laid there limbs tangled together for a while. The night was yours, the stars were yours, and the love that burned between you was a flame that no amount of hatred or fear or cruelty could ever extinguish.
But then, suddenly, the voices broke the quiet night.
They were distant at first, so faint that you might have mistaken them for the echo of your own heartbeat or the whisper of the wind through the empty streets, but Taehyung's body went rigid beneath you, his arms tightening around your waist with a sudden, instinctive tension that made your eyes snap open and your breath catch in your throat.
He was listening, his head tilted slightly, his eyes fixed on some unseen point in the darkness beyond the edge of the watchtower, and you could feel the change in him, the way his muscles had coiled like springs, the way his breathing had become shallow and controlled, the way his entire being had shifted from a state of restful contentment to one of sharp, focused alertness.
The voices grew louder, carrying on the night air with a clarity that made your stomach drop, and you could hear laughter now, rough and raucous and utterly foreign, the laughter of men who had no business being in a place that was never meant to be found.
"What is it?" you whispered, but even as the words left your lips, you knew the answer, knew it with a certainty that settled into your bones like ice water seeping through cracks in a dam.
The voices were human, unmistakably human, and they were coming from somewhere below, somewhere within the boundaries of the hidden town, somewhere that should have been impossible for any outsider to reach without knowing the exact path through the waterfall and the tunnel and the winding passages that had been designed to keep this place secret for centuries.
Taehyung did not answer you immediately; instead, he shifted his body, moving with a silent, fluid grace that reminded you of a predator preparing to strike, and he peered over the edge of the watchtower, his eyes scanning the streets below with a focus so intense that it seemed to burn through the darkness itself.
"There are five of them," he said finally, and his voice was low, barely more than a breath, but it carried a weight of dread that made your heart clench in your chest. "They are carrying torches and tools, iron bars and hammers and spikes, and they are walking through the main square as though they own this place, as though they have every right to be here."
"Who are they?" you asked, and you hated the way your voice trembled, hated the way your hands had begun to shake, hated the way that fear had crept into the spaces where peace had lived only moments before. "How did they find this place? How did they know it existed?"
Taehyung's jaw tightened, and you could see the muscles in his neck straining as he fought to control the emotions that were clearly surging through him, a storm of fear and fury and a protectiveness so fierce that it seemed to radiate from his skin like heat from a forge.
"I do not know how they found it," he said, and his voice was rough, strained, the voice of a man who was holding himself back from doing something that he would not be able to undo. "Only Starborn know about Hwajeong, only those who were born here or who were brought here by someone they trusted with their lives. This place has been hidden for centuries, protected by the mountain and the waterfall and the silence of those who understood what would happen if it was discovered. But someone must have spoken. Someone must have betrayed us."
The men continued wandering. They looked less like visitors and more like scavengers surveying a battlefield.
One struck a stone wall with his hammer experimentally, the impact echoed through the square. "You think the captain will pay extra if we bring proof?"
"He said anything connected to Starborn filth earns compensation."
"Good."
Another man grinned broadly. "The fewer of them left breathing, the safer honest people become."
The word hung in the air between you like a blade suspended by a single thread, heavy with implications that neither of you wanted to examine too closely, and you felt the weight of it pressing down on your chest as Taehyung began to move, his body shifting into a crouch, his eyes fixed on the distant glow of the torches that were now moving through the streets below.
"I have to stop them," he said, and his voice was flat, final, the voice of someone who had already made a decision that no argument could change. "I have to drive them out of here before they can do any damage, before they can find anything that would confirm their suspicions, before they can report back to whoever sent them."
He began to stand, his muscles coiling with the intention of movement, but your hand shot out and grabbed his arm before he could rise, your fingers digging into his skin with a desperation that surprised even you.
"Wait," you said, and the word came out sharp, urgent, cutting through the air like a command that demanded to be heard. "Wait, Taehyung, you cannot just go down there and confront them, you cannot just reveal yourself to five armed men who clearly came here with the intention of causing harm, you cannotâ"
"I can," he said, and he turned to look at you, his eyes blazing with a fire that seemed to consume the darkness around them. "I can, and I will. This is my home, my history, my people's legacy, and I will not stand by while these humans defile it with their torches and their hatred and their ignorance. If they want to destroy Hwajeong, they will have to go through me first."
"Which is exactly what they want!" you said, and your voice cracked with the force of your fear, your hands reaching up to cup his face, forcing him to meet your gaze, forcing him to see the terror that was written across your features.
"Taehyung, listen to me. They came here looking for Starborn. They came here with weapons and torches and the clear intention of causing destruction. If you go down there and reveal yourself, they will attack you, and even if you manage to defeat them, even if you manage to survive, they will go back to their villages and their towns and their kingdoms, and they will tell everyone that they found a Starborn in the hidden town. They will return with more men, more weapons, more hatred, and they will burn this place to the ground with you inside it."
"Then what would you have me do?" he demanded, and his voice was raw, agonized, the voice of a man who was being torn apart by the impossible choice between protecting his heritage and protecting himself. "Stand here and watch them destroy everything that my ancestors built? Watch them tear down the homes where my friends grew up, where my family lived, where I learned what it meant to be loved? I cannot do that. I cannot."
"No," you said, and you felt your own tears beginning to gather, felt the burn of them behind your eyes. "No, you cannot stand here and watch them destroy everything. But you also cannot go down there and get yourself killed. Let me go."
The words hung in the air between you, fragile and terrifying and utterly impossible, and Taehyung's reaction was immediate and visceral, his eyes widening with a horror that seemed to drain all the color from his face.
"Absolutely not," he said, and his voice was sharp, final, brooking no argument. "There is no world in which I allow you to walk into a group of armed, hostile humans who have come here specifically to find and harm people like me. There is no world in which I let you risk your life for this."
"If they see me, they will see a girl," you said, and you kept your voice steady, kept your gaze locked with his, as your heart raced with a fear that threatened to consume you whole. "Just a girl, a human girl, someone who wandered into this valley by accident, someone who got lost in the mountains and found shelter behind the waterfall. They will not suspect anything. They might even listen to me, might believe me when I tell them that this place is empty, that there is nothing here worth destroying, that they should turn around and leave before they waste any more of their time."
"And if they do not listen?" Taehyung asked, and his voice cracked on the words, splintering like glass under pressure. "If they decide that a young woman wandering alone in an abandoned Starborn town is suspicious, if they decide to question you further, if they decide to hurt you, if they decide toâ"
He stopped, unable to finish the sentence, as he stepped closer, forehead nearly touching yours. "Please."
The word nearly shattered your resolve.
"Please do not do this, darling," his voice sounded fragile, terrified. "We will find another way."
You wished there was another way. You truly did. But the town mattered. The memories mattered.
And if there was even the smallest chance of avoiding violenceâyou had to try. You touched his cheek gently, the familiar gesture steadied neither of you. "I am choosing this."
"I do not want you choosing this."
A weak smile touched your lips. "I noticed."
"This is not funny."
"I know."
Silence stretched, heavy and painful.
You looked toward the valley, then back toward Taehyung. "This place deserves someone trying." The words emerged softly, his eyes closed briefly, like the statement physically hurt.
You brushed your thumb across his cheek, smiling wistfully. "Worst case, they refuse listening."
"Worst case is not remotely that simple."
"You know what I mean."
"I do."
"Then trust me."
"I do trust you," he said, and his voice was thick with emotion, his hands clutching at your back as though he were afraid that you would slip through his fingers like water. "I trust you with my life, with my heart, with everything that I am and everything that I have ever been. But I also know what humans are capable of, I know the cruelty that lives in their hearts, I know the things they have done to my people simply for existing, and the thought of them turning that cruelty on you, of them hurting you because of their hatred for me, is a thought that I cannot bear to hold in my mind for even a single moment."
"Then let me give you something else to hold," you said, and you took his face in your hands, forcing him to meet your eyes, forcing him to see the certainty that burned within you, the absolute, unwavering conviction that this was the right choice, the only choice, the choice that would keep all of you alive. "Let me go down there and talk to them, let me buy us time, let me try to reason with them before we resort to violence. Please, please let me try this first."
He stared at you for a long moment, his eyes searching yours with an intensity that seemed to pierce through every layer of pretense and doubt, and you could see the war that was raging within him, the battle between his fear and his trust, his protectiveness and his love.
Finally, his shoulders sagged, and he let out a breath that seemed to carry the weight of the world with it, and he pressed his forehead against yours and closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, the expression crossing his face looked painful. Like surrender. Like compromise forced unwillingly. "If anything goes wrong, I intervene immediately."
You nodded.
"If anyone threatens you, I intervene immediately."
You nodded again.
"If anyone touches you, I intervene immediately."
"Taeâ"
"No." His voice sharpened, unexpectedly fierce. "No negotiation regarding that condition."
You studied him quietly, the terror beneath his determination remained obvious. He hated this plan. Every part of it.
Yet he understood your reasoning.
Eventually you nodded. "Fine."
He kissed you then, a kiss that was desperate and tender and full of promise, the kiss of someone who was memorizing the feel of your lips against his in case it turned out to be the last time.
"Be careful," he said, and the words were simple, but they carried the weight of a thousand prayers, a thousand wishes, a thousand hopes that you would return to him unharmed.
"I will," you said, and you pressed one last kiss to his lips before you stood, your legs shaky but your resolve firm, and you made your way down the winding staircase of the watchtower, your heart pounding so loudly that you were certain the men below would hear it before they ever saw you.
The golden light of the hidden valley seemed to dim as you descended, the warmth of the air giving way to a chill that settled into your bones, and you stepped out onto the cobblestone streets of Hwajeong with a courage that you did not quite feel, a bravery that was borrowed from the love that burned within you, a determination that came from knowing that you were protecting something precious, something sacred, something worth fighting for.
The men saw you the moment you rounded the corner of the old bakery, their torches flaring in the darkness as they turned to face you, their expressions shifting from surprise to suspicion to something that looked almost like amusement.
There were five of them, as Taehyung had said, and they were exactly the kind of men that you would have expected to find in a place like this, rough and weathered, their clothes stained with dirt and sweat, their hands calloused from labor and violence, their eyes bright with the cruel gleam of those who had come here expecting to find something to hate.
The leader of the group, a tall man with a scar running down the side of his face and a beard that was streaked with grey, stepped forward, his torch held high, his gaze sweeping over you with a scrutiny that made your skin crawl.
"Well, well, well," he said, and his voice was rough, rasping, the voice of a man who had spent too many years shouting over the noise of crowded taverns and crowded battlefields. "What do we have here? A little bird, lost in the dark, all alone in a place that no good Christian soul has any business being."
"I could ask you the same question," you said, and you were proud of how steady your voice sounded, how calm, how entirely in control. "This valley is not marked on any map, and the path here is hidden behind a waterfall that no one would ever think to cross unless they knew exactly what they were looking for. So I have to wonder, gentlemen, what brings five armed men to a place that was clearly never meant to be found?"
The man with the scar laughed, a low, ugly sound that echoed off the stone walls of the surrounding buildings, and he exchanged a glance with one of his companions, a younger man with a thin face and eyes that were too close together. "What brings us here is the knowledge that this place was once a nest of starborn filth, a den of those sky-touched abominations that should have been wiped from the face of the earth centuries ago."
He continued. "We heard rumors, whispers, stories about a hidden town where the star-biters used to gather, where they used to practice their unnatural ways and spread their corruption like a disease. We came to see if the rumors were true, and if they were, we came to make sure that nothing remains of this place but ashes and memory."
Your blood ran cold at his words, at the casual cruelty with which he spoke of an entire people, at the hatred that dripped from every syllable like poison from a fang, but you kept your face neutral, kept your voice calm, kept your hands steady at your sides even as your heart raced with a fury that threatened to consume you.
"I do not know what you are talking about," you said, and you injected a note of confusion into your voice, the bewilderment of someone who had stumbled into a situation that they did not understand. "I found this place by accident, while I was gathering herbs in the mountains. I have not seen any sign of anyone living here, not for a very long time. The buildings are empty, the streets are overgrown, and the only creatures I have encountered are the birds and the deer and the wildflowers that have reclaimed the gardens. There is nothing here worth destroying."
"Nothing worth destroying?" the thin-faced man repeated, and his voice was high and mocking, dripping with derision. "You stand in the heart of a starborn sanctuary, a place where those void-spawned monsters gathered to plot and scheme and spread their perversion, and you have the audacity to tell us that there is nothing worth destroying?"
"Every stone in this town is a monument to their defiance, every wall a testament to their refusal to accept their rightful place in the natural order. They thought they could hide from us, thought they could build a little paradise where they could live in peace, away from the judgment of decent, god-fearing people. But we found them then, and we will find them again, and we will burn every last one of them until the stars themselves weep blood," he spits blatantly.
Your hands clenched into fists at your sides, and you felt a rage building within you, a white-hot fury that threatened to spill over into words that you would not be able to take back, but you forced yourself to breathe, forced yourself to remember why you were here, forced yourself to focus on the goal of getting these men to leave without violence.
"I do not know anything about Starborn," you said, and you kept your voice level, kept your gaze steady, kept every muscle in your body perfectly still. "I am just a girl who got lost in the mountains and found shelter in an abandoned town. If you are looking for something to destroy, you should look somewhere else, because there is nothing here except empty buildings and old memories."
"You are either very brave or very foolish," the scarred man said, and he took a step closer to you, his torch casting flickering shadows across his face that made him look like something out of a nightmare. "Or perhaps you are lying. Perhaps you know exactly what this place is, and perhaps you are trying to protect the starborn scum who used to live here. Perhaps you are one of those sympathizers, those corrupted souls who have been seduced by their unnatural ways, who have chosen to stand with the monsters instead of with your own kind."
"I am not a sympathizer," you said, and the words tasted like ash in your mouth, a lie that burned on your tongue even as you spoke it. "I am just a girl who wants to go home. And I think that you and your men should do the same, before you waste any more of your time searching for something that does not exist."
The thin-faced man laughed again, and his voice was cruel, sharp, cutting through the night air like a blade. "You think we are fools, girl? You think we do not know what we are looking for? We have been tracking these sky-whore settlements for years, following the trails that they leave behind, the scraps of their existence that they think they have hidden so well."
The smile that stretched on his lips made you feel sick. "We know this place was a breeding ground for their corruption, a nursery where they raised their young to hate us, to fear us, to believe that they were superior to us simply because they were born with starlight in their blood. And we know that there are still Starborn out there, hiding in the shadows, waiting for the moment when they think it is safe to emerge and continue their campaign of corruption."
Your heart was pounding so hard that you could feel it in your throat, could feel the pulse of it throbbing behind your eyes as you stood before these men, listening to them spew hatred that was older than any of them, hatred that had been passed down through generations like a sacred heirloom, hatred that would never be reasoned with, never be persuaded, never be turned aside by the words of a single girl who had stumbled into a place that she was never meant to find.
You thought of Taehyung, hidden in the shadows of the watchtower, his body coiled and ready, his eyes burning with a fury that matched your own, and you felt a surge of love so powerful that it nearly brought you to your knees.
"You know what I think?" you said, and your voice was quiet, but it carried a weight that made the men fall silent, made them turn to look at you with a new kind of attention, a new kind of wariness. "I think you are cowards. I think you travel in groups and carry torches and weapons because you are too afraid to face the world alone, too afraid to confront the possibility that the people you have been taught to hate are no different from you, too afraid to admit that the only thing that separates you from them is the accident of your birth."
"You call them monsters, but you are the ones who came here with hammers and spikes, ready to tear down buildings that never did you any harm, ready to destroy the memory of a people who only wanted to live in peace."
The scarred man's face darkened, his eyes narrowing into slits as he took another step toward you, his grip tightening on the torch in his hand. "You have a sharp tongue for someone who is standing alone in a town full of enemies," he said, and his voice was low, dangerous, the voice of a man who was used to being feared and did not appreciate being challenged. "I would advise you to choose your next words very carefully."
But you were done choosing your words carefully, done playing the role of the lost and helpless girl, done pretending that you did not know the truth of what these men were and what they intended to do. You had tried reason, had tried persuasion, had tried every approach that you could think of, and they had refused every single one because they had never come here to listen, had never come here to be convinced, had never come here for anything other than destruction.
"No," you said, and your voice was clear and steady and filled with a contempt that you no longer had any reason to hide. "I think I have said exactly what I wanted to say. I think you are a group of small-minded, hateful men who have nothing better to do with your lives than terrorize the memory of a people who have already suffered more than you could ever imagine."
You scoffed, shooting them a mocking smirk. "I think you are pathetic, and I think that if you had ever actually encountered a Starborn, you would have run away with your tails between your legs, because despite all your talk of purity and order and the natural way of things, you are nothing but bullies who prey on the weak and the defenseless."
The thin-faced man's face twisted with rage, and he took a step forward, his hand reaching for the hammer that was tucked into his belt, but the scarred man held up a hand, stopping him with a gesture that was almost casual. "You are either the bravest woman I have ever met or the most foolish," he said, and there was something in his voice that made your blood run cold, a quiet, calculating malice that was far more dangerous than the open anger of his companion. "But either way, you have made a very serious mistake. You have chosen to stand with the monsters, and that makes you a monster too."
He took another step toward you, and you saw his hand move to the hilt of the knife at his belt, saw the gleam of metal in the torchlight, saw the smile that curled across his lips like a scar spreading across flesh. And in that moment, you knew that there was nothing more you could say, nothing more you could do, nothing that would stop these men from doing exactly what they had come here to do.
Behind you, hidden in the shadows of the watchtower, you heard a sound that was barely audible, the creak of stone shifting under the weight of a body that was preparing to move, and you knew that Taehyung had seen everything, had heard everything, had reached the limit of his restraint. The scarred man's hand closed around the handle of his knife, and he began to draw it from its sheath, his eyes never leaving your face, his smile growing wider with every inch of exposed steel.
And then everything happened at once.
The impact of your body against the stone wall sent a shockwave of pain through your entire skeletal structure, a violent explosion of agony that radiated from your shoulder blades to the tips of your fingers and the base of your skull, and you felt the air leave your lungs in a rush that left you gasping, choking, struggling to draw breath into a chest that had been emptied by the force of the collision.
The world spun around you in a blur of torchlight and shadow, the cobblestones rising up to meet your palms as you caught yourself before you could collapse completely, and you tasted blood in your mouth, copper and salt and the sharp, metallic tang of fear that coated your tongue like a poison.
The scarred man stood over you, his knife drawn, his eyes gleaming with a cruelty that seemed to have no bottom, no limit, no end, and he was laughing, a low, rumbling sound that echoed off the stone walls of the abandoned buildings that surrounded you.
"You should have kept your mouth shut, girl," he said, and his voice was oily, satisfied, the voice of someone who enjoyed the suffering of others in ways that spoke of a deep and fundamental brokenness within his soul. "You should have remembered your place. But do not worry; we will make sure that you learn it, one way or another."
He reached down to grab you again, his fingers closing around the collar of your dress, and you braced yourself for another impact, another explosion of pain, another moment of helplessness in the face of his casual brutality.
But before he could lift you, before he could throw you again, a sound cut through the night like a blade through silk, a sound that was low and dangerous and filled with a fury so immense that it seemed to shake the very foundations of the hidden town.
"Get your hands off her."
The voice was Taehyung's, but it was not the Taehyung you knew, not the soft, tender man who had held you on the watchtower and whispered promises against your hair, not the playful, laughing spirit who had carried you through the mountains and jumped with you into the unknown depths of the waterfall.
This was a voice that had been forged in the fires of a thousand sorrows, a voice that carried the weight of centuries of persecution and pain and the desperate, unyielding determination to protect the people he loved, no matter the cost.
The scarred man froze, his head snapping up, his eyes widening as he took in the figure that had emerged from the shadows of the watchtower, a figure that seemed to be made of darkness and starlight and barely contained violence.
Taehyung stepped into the circle of torchlight, his hands clenched into fists at his sides, his jaw tight, his eyes blazing with a fire that seemed to burn through the very air around him. He was not running, not charging, not attacking; he was walking, each step deliberate and measured and filled with a menace that made the men instinctively take a step back, their hands moving to their weapons, their faces shifting from amusement to something that looked very much like fear.
"Well, well, well," the scarred man said, and there was a tremor in his voice that he was clearly trying to hide, a quaver that betrayed the unease that had settled into his bones. "It seems that the rumors were true after all. There is still Starborn filth hiding in these mountains, still star-biters crawling out of the shadows to protect their little nest of corruption."
Taehyung did not respond to the taunt, did not acknowledge the slur that had been thrown at him like a stone aimed at a wound that had never fully healed. His eyes were fixed on you, on the blood that was trickling from a cut on your lip, on the way you were holding your arm against your chest as though it had been injured in the fall, on the fear that you were trying so desperately to hide behind a mask of calm determination.
He took a step toward you, his hand reaching out, his mouth opening to speak, but the scarred man stepped between you, blocking his path, and the thin-faced man moved to flank him, their torches held high, their weapons drawn.
"Where do you think you are going, star-spawn?" the thin-faced man said, and his voice was high and mocking, filled with a contempt that seemed to have no source other than the simple, unshakeable belief that he was better than the man standing before him.
"You do not get to walk up to her, do not get to touch her, do not get to pretend that you have any right to be near a decent human woman. She is coming with us, and you are going to watch, and then you are going to die."
Taehyung's gaze finally shifted from you to the men who stood between you, and something in his expression changed, a coldness settling over his features like a mask carved from ice, his eyes becoming flat and distant and utterly, terrifyingly empty.
He did not speak, did not warn, did not offer them any chance to reconsider; he simply moved, and the world seemed to blur around him as he closed the distance between himself and the thin-faced man faster than any human should have been able to move, his fist connecting with the man's jaw with a sound like a hammer striking stone, the force of the impact lifting the man off his feet and sending him crashing into the wall of the old bakery with a sickening crunch of bone against stone.
The other men reacted instantly, their training or their instinct or their cowardice driving them to action, and they surged forward as one, their clubs and hammers swinging, their torches cutting arcs of fire through the darkness. But Taehyung was already moving, his body flowing through their attacks like water through the cracks in a dam, his movements too fast to follow, too precise to anticipate, too powerful to withstand.
He caught the arm of a man who had been about to bring a hammer down on his skull, twisted it with a force that made the bones audibly snap, and drove his elbow into the man's throat with a precision that spoke of years of practice and a level of skill that no human could hope to match.
The man collapsed, gagging, clutching at his neck, and Taehyung turned to face the next attacker without pausing, without hesitating, without showing any sign that he had even registered the man's existence beyond the necessity of neutralizing the threat he represented.
You pushed yourself to your feet, your body screaming in protest, your arm throbbing with a pain that made you want to curl into a ball and weep, but you forced yourself to move, forced yourself to think, forced yourself to find some way to help.
A torch had fallen from one of the men's hands and had rolled against the wooden frame of an old market stall, the dry, weathered timber beginning to catch, a thin curl of smoke rising into the golden air of the hidden valley.
You ran toward it, stamping on the flames with your boots, beating at them with your hands, ignoring the pain as the heat seared your palms, and you managed to extinguish the fire before it could spread, before it could claim another piece of the town that Taehyung had entrusted to you to protect.
Behind you, the sounds of the fight continued, grunts and cries and the wet, terrible thuds of fists meeting flesh, and you turned to see Taehyung facing the last two men, the scarred leader and another man who had been hanging back, watching, waiting for an opportunity to strike.
The scarred man was bleeding from a cut above his eye, his lip split, his movements becoming slower, more desperate, as he realized that he was outmatched, that the creature he had come here to hunt was far more dangerous than he had ever anticipated. He lunged forward, his knife slashing wildly, but Taehyung caught his wrist, twisted it, and the knife clattered to the cobblestones as the man cried out in pain.
"You should have stayed away," Taehyung said, and his voice was flat, emotionless, the voice of someone who had disconnected himself from the violence he was committing in order to survive. "You should have left this place alone. But you did not, and now you will suffer the consequences of your choice."
He raised his fist to deliver the final blow, his muscles coiling with the force of his intent, but before he could strike, the other man, the one who had been hanging back, moved with a sudden, desperate speed that caught Taehyung off guard.
He grabbed you from behind, his arm wrapping around your throat, his other hand pressing a dagger against the vulnerable skin of your neck, and you felt the cold bite of the blade, felt the way it dimpled your flesh with every ragged breath you took.
"Stop!" the man shouted, and his voice was high and panicked, the voice of someone who had realized that he was about to die and had grasped at the only leverage he could find. "Stop, or I swear by all the gods that I will open her throat from ear to ear!"
Taehyung froze.
The fight drained out of him like water from a broken vessel, his body going still, his hands falling to his sides, his eyes locking onto the blade that was pressed against your throat with a terror that transformed him in an instant from a warrior into a man who was about to lose everything he had ever loved.
"Let her go," he said, and his voice cracked, splintered, the flatness giving way to a desperation that was raw and naked and utterly human. "Please. Let her go. You can do whatever you want to me, you can kill me, you can burn this entire town to the ground, just please, please do not hurt her."
"Shut up!" the man shouted, and he pressed the dagger harder against your throat, making you gasp, making you feel the sharp sting of the blade breaking through the first layer of your skin. "Shut your mouth, star-spawn, or I will silence you both permanently! You do not get to give orders here! You do not get to make demands! You are nothing, do you understand me? Nothing but a disease that should have been eradicated centuries ago!"
"I understand," Taehyung said, and his voice was shaking, his hands trembling, his entire body vibrating with the effort of holding himself back, of not charging forward, of not doing something that would get you killed. "I understand. I will do whatever you want. Just tell me what you want me to do, and I will do it. I will kneel, I will beg, I will crawl, I will do anything, just please, please take that blade away from her neck."
The scarred man, who had been rubbing his wrist where Taehyung had twisted it, laughed, a low, ugly sound that was filled with the cruel triumph of someone who had been defeated and had suddenly been handed victory. "What do you want us to do, star-scum? I want you to kneel. I want you to put your hands on your head and kneel in the dirt like the animal that you are. And then I want you to watch while we teach this little traitor what happens to humans who choose to spread their legs for monsters."
Taehyung's face contorted with a rage so pure and so powerful that it seemed to warp the air around him, but he did not argue, did not resist, did not do anything except slowly, painfully, lower himself to his knees on the cobblestones, his hands coming up to rest on the back of his head, his eyes never leaving yours.
You could see the tears glazing in his eyes, could see the way his lips were moving, forming words that you could not hear, prayers or apologies or promises that he was making to himself and to you and to whatever gods might be listening.
"Please do not do this," he said, and his voice was barely a whisper, broken and desperate and filled with a love so vast that it seemed to encompass the entire world. "Please. She has done nothing to you. She is innocent. She is good. She is the most beautiful and kind and precious person I have ever known, and she does not deserve to suffer because of me. If you need to punish someone, punish me. I will take anything you give me. I will endure any pain, any humiliation, any death, just please, let her go."
"Ignore him," the scarred man said, and he walked over to where Taehyung was kneeling, his hand reaching down to grab a fistful of his hair, yanking his head back so that he was forced to look up at him. "You do not have the authority to bargain, star-spawn. You have the authority to watch, and to suffer, and to remember that no matter how fast you are, no matter how strong you are, no matter how many of us you manage to hurt, there will always be more of us, and we will always find the people you love, and we will always make them pay for the crime of loving you."
He released Taehyung's hair and turned to the man who was holding you, a cruel smile spreading across his face. "Bring her here. Let him watch. Let him see exactly what happens to traitors who choose to defile themselves with filth like him."
The man holding you began to drag you forward, his arm still wrapped around your throat, the dagger still pressed against your skin, and you struggled, fought, tried to pull away, but he was stronger than you, and every movement only made the blade bite deeper into your flesh. You could feel the blood beginning to trickle down your neck, warm and wet and terrifying, and you could hear your own heartbeat thundering in your ears, could feel the panic rising in your chest like a tide that threatened to drown you.
"Taehyung," you said, and your voice was ragged, desperate, barely more than a whisper, but you knew he could hear you, knew that he was listening to every word with the kind of focused attention that only someone who loved you could give. "Taehyung, do not stop fighting. Do not let them do this. Protect your home. Protect Hwajeong. Protect the memories of your people. Do not let them take this from you."
"I cannot," he said, and his voice was broken, shattered, the voice of a man who had been forced to watch the thing he loved most in the world being destroyed and could do nothing to stop it. "I cannot lose you. I cannot. If they take you from me, there is nothing left. There is no home, no memory, no legacy that is worth more than your life. You are the most important thing in the world to me, and I will not sacrifice you for anything."
"I am not asking you to sacrifice me," you said, and you could feel the tears streaming down your face, could feel the blood soaking into the collar of your dress, could feel the cold metal of the dagger pressing against the delicate skin of your throat. "I am asking you to live. I am asking you to remember that I love you, that I chose you, that I would choose you again and again and again, no matter how many times the world tried to tear us apart. I am asking you to be brave, even if it means letting me go."
"Enough," the scarred man said, and he stepped forward, his hand closing around your chin, forcing your head back, exposing your throat to the night air. "Enough talking. It is time for you to learn your lesson, little traitor. It is time for you to understand what happens to those who align themselves with monsters."
He nodded to the man holding you, and the man's grip tightened, and you felt the dagger begin to move, felt the slow, agonizing drag of the blade across your skin, felt the pain explode through your body like a fire that had been waiting for years to be ignited. You screamed, a sound that was raw and primal and filled with a terror that you had never known existed.
"Stop!" Taehyung shouted, his voice cracking, breaking, dissolving into sobs as he struggled against the men who were holding him down, his body heaving with the force of his desperation. "Please, stop! I will do anything! I will give you anything! Just stop hurting her! Please!"
But the man did not stop. The dagger continued its slow, deliberate path across your throat, drawing a line of fire and blood that seemed to stretch on forever, and you could feel your strength draining away, could feel the world beginning to blur at the edges, could feel the darkness creeping in from the corners of your vision.
You heard Taehyung's voice growing fainter, more desperate, more broken, and you tried to call out to him, tried to tell him that you loved him, tried to tell him that everything was going to be alright, but the words would not come, would not form, would not escape the prison of your failing body.
And then, just as the darkness was about to claim you completely, just as you were about to surrender to the weight of the pain and the loss and the fear, a new sound cut through the night, a sound that was sharp and clear and filled with a fury that made the ground itself seem to tremble.
"Get away from her."
The voice was Jimin's.
The man holding you was ripped away with a force that seemed impossible, his dagger clattering to the cobblestones as his body was thrown across the square like a rag doll, and you felt yourself falling, your legs giving way beneath you, your body collapsing toward the ground that had already hurt you so much.
But before you could hit the stones, a pair of arms caught you, strong and warm and familiar, and you looked up through a haze of pain and blood and tears to see Yoongi's face hovering above you, his eyes wide with a terror that mirrored Taehyung's, his hands gentle as he lowered you carefully to the ground.
"Stay with me," he said, and his voice was urgent, desperate, the voice of someone who was fighting to hold back a panic that threatened to consume him. "Do not close your eyes, pleaseâ" But you could not focus on his words, could not focus on anything except the sound of Taehyung's voice, which had changed from screams of anguish to something else, something that sounded like relief, like hope, like the first breath of air after nearly drowning.
The other members had arrived, had thrown themselves into the fight with a fury that was terrifying to behold, and you watched through half-closed eyes as Jungkook drove his fist into the face of the man who had been holding you, as Namjoon grabbed the scarred leader by the collar and slammed him against the wall of the old bakery, as Hoseok and Jin and Jimin cornered the remaining men, their movements precise and efficient and utterly devoid of mercy.
In moments, it was over.
The men who were still conscious fled, scrambling through the streets of Hwajeong, their torches abandoned, their weapons forgotten, their hatred no match for the combined fury of seven people who had been pushed past the limits of their endurance.
"Run." Jungkook's voice sounded frighteningly calm, as he took a warning step to the leader. "Run before I reconsider that generosity."
The scarred man was the last to leave, dragging himself to his feet and limping after his companions, his eyes filled with a hatred that had only been deepened by his defeat, but he did not look back, did not speak, did not do anything except disappear into the darkness of the tunnel that led back to the waterfall.
And then there was silence.
And then there was Taehyung.
He was at your side in an instant, his hands reaching for you, his eyes sweeping over your body with a frantic, desperate attention, he let out a sound that was half sob, half prayer, as he struggled to breathe, struggled to think, struggled to accept that you were still alive, still here, still with him. "Sweetheart."
You caught his hands gently, the movement finally stopped him.
For half a second, then he resumed.
Checking your arms, checking bruises and every visible injuryâas though looking away might somehow make you disappear. Around both of you, the others gathered quickly. And the moment they saw your neck, their expressions changed.
Jimin looked devastated, while Hoseok immediately crouched beside you and Seokjin's face lost all color.
Nearby, Namjoon looked furious as Yoongi looked even worse.
Jungkook stared openly. "No," the word escaped him quietly.
The cut was not severe, however, that fact failed to comfort anyone. Especially not Taehyung.
"You are bleeding." Taehyung sounded horrified.
"A little."
"A little is still bleeding."
Hoseok carefully brushed hair away from your face, his hands shook too.
Everyone looked shaken.
Everyone looked scared.
The realization warmed and hurt simultaneously.
You loved them, every single one. And they loved you just as fiercely.
Taehyung still had not calmed down, not remotely. His gaze kept returning to your neck.
Then your wrists.
Then your bruises.
Then back again.
As though searching for injuries he missed, as though preparing for another disaster.
"You scared me." The confession emerged quietly.
His eyes filled immediately. "You scared me so much."
Your own eyes burned. "I am here."
"You almost were not." The answer arrived instantlyâraw, honest. Terrified.
Silence settled afterward.
Not uncomfortable silence.
Protective silence.
The kind created when people gather around somebody precious.
He leaned forward, pressed his forehead gently against your shoulder, closing his eyes, inhaling your scent, as if trying to memorize you all over again. As though losing contact even briefly might break something inside him.
You soon felt the other members gathering around you closer, their hands finding yours, their bodies pressing in, forming a circle of warmth and love and protection that no amount of hatred or fear or cruelty could ever break. Jimin's hand was on your ankle, Jungkook's fingers intertwined with yours, Namjoon's palm resting gently on your shoulder, Hoseok's arm wrapped around Taehyung's back, Jin's voice murmuring soft reassurances, Yoongi's breath warm against your forehead as he pressed a kiss to your hair.
You were surrounded by love.
Surrounded by seven frightened, relieved, fiercely loving men, you sat together beneath the ancient stars while the aftermath settled heavily around all of you.
Come, drink from me oâ poor, docile lamb.
You, forsaken by your shepherd, condemned
And willingâstolen and brought
To this ruined bed.
Thou must graze upon the poppies,
Damp with the dew of oblivion,
To be lulled into a soft slumber
Until there is naught left to covet.
When you wake, you will delight,
For this is no longer your prison;
Thy desire has withered, and
No love shall anchor you here.
⣠pairing. qifrey x gn!reader (olruggio's relationship is integral to both)
⣠14.5k words. manga spoilers; coming of age; readerâs master is a terrible person; implied/referenced child abuse (retribution is achieved, do not worry), and ableism as per canon; hurt/no comfort; first love; bullying; reader has a panic attack; descriptions of viscera and violence; dialogue light; pre-canon; open ending.
⣠note. A fic examining the perspective of someone who grows up alongside Qifrey and Olruggio while exploring the mangaâs more serious themes within their childhood. Please take care in reading.
There is something strange about the new apprentice.
He moves through the winding corridors of the Great Hall like a shadow adorned in white, a hallmark of that maverick whose every arrival is announced by the supposedly unpleasant clop of his sealchairâs strides. You donât mind it at all in comparison to your master who delights in the rumours regarding the boy missing an eye. Fitting, she says, for someone as broken as Beldaruit.
Yet, that is not what bewilders you so. Master Beldaruit is a kind man, eccentric, yesâas everyone says where you agree with your master only in thisâbut kind nonetheless. You had wondered, too, why he taught no child despite the gaggle that trailed after him, revelling in stories and smoke. Until Qifrey, that is, but the boy does not smile. Although it must be difficult with the rumours that surround Qifrey, Master Beldaruit has pulled even laughter from within your chest so it is peculiar that he has not, to your awareness, succeeded with his new apprentice.
Now, one mustn't always be graced with a smile but your master tells you that is unseemly. That a child such as yourself mustâyou must show others how wonderful she is to you; of how marvellous her tutelage is that no grimace ever crosses your face. For what reason would beget a terrible thing when every hand laid upon you is purely guidance in becoming a proper witch? She is not wrong, you surmise, as this unrelenting countenance has made you many a friend. How lonely it must be, then, to never approach another and remain in a state of reticence, especially in the presence of Master Beldaruitâs joy.
Qifrey does not smile when his master entertains the lot of you with ancient poems and tales of old, bringing them to life with illusions that dance around you, much to the scorn of other adults. He does not smile when the mess hall serves custard pudding or glowrose tartsâtreats you gobble up in secrecy, away from her eyes on evenings where you deserve little reward while Qifrey is always encouraged to have just one more. And when your friends try to speak to him, his scowl does not soften and his frown remains just as deep.
You do not understand him; cannot begin to when the thought of remaining trapped at your masterâs side as often as he does or treading the cobblestone paths of this waterlogged strongholdâimpossible to escape from and eternally feasible in being foundâleave an aching weight that presses heavy against your heart. It must be your pity for him as, even now, Qifrey does not smile, which is, naturally, a distraction that upsets your master.
âCome,â she tells you, fingers latched onto your wrist, tight enough to dimple skin as she drags you towards the entrance of yourâherâatelier. âYou spend too much time in a daze rather than in practice.â
âYes, Master,â you swiftly agree. âForgive me, Master.â
Then, unable to help yourself, you turn your head to endure one brief and final look, seeing witches jolt alongside Master Beldaruitâs satisfied expression. His mouth moves yet his chargeâs does not. Had it been for your sake, you would have expressed your thanks but, for you, there is only this perfect room, her faultless comportment, and your clumsy, poorly drawn spells.
Noiselessly, the door shuts behind you.
It matters not how you arrive here, merely that you do; drawn into the orbit of the Star of Ghodrey first, well-loved by that northern town and brought to be buried underneath the waves of the Great Hall instead of the cushion of snow.
She makes this day troublesome for you no matter how you prepare to meet him under the guise of her audience with his own master. The cloak you throw on every morning is suddenly too wrinkled and too dull from washing, replaced by one also too long and in need of tailoring, saved in preparation for your growth spurt when you should not be seen in ill-fitted garments that may indicate thoughtlessness. Any attempt to press the crinkles flat fail with your shaky spell, displeasing your master further, the fabric scorched in the shape of a contraption that matches the one marring the inside of your wrist.
âWhatâs that?â Olruggio asks, gaze cast towards reddened skin. Itâs the most interest heâs shown in you, choosing to stay quiet after exchanging pleasantries as your masterâs intent is no doubt clear. âWere you burned?â He must be familiar with the sight, too, having come from a place where any blunder in casting everyday fire magic may cost a life.
âI was.â You nod. âI acted foolishly.â To hide the wound from view, you tug the sleeve of your robes over your palm but he instinctively reaches out before you can shy away.
You flinch.
He speaks, instead. âHow?â Olruggioâs voice is incredulous, and you allowâin unease, this timeâhis small hand to hold yours and turn your forearm to peel back the fabric sticking to you like a second skin, pain lancinating so viciously that you suppress a whimper. However, this close, Olruggio is privy to the small, muffled sound. His brow furrows, attention flitting from your face to your wrist, and then back again with his composure worse than yours as more of the rough expanse is revealed, adorned with an angry mountain of a welt wherein the edges of the surrounding depression drool as your body does its best to heal itself. âIt looks really bad,â he says, expression veering into a sickening smile with a stare so unfocused and shaky as if heâs glad to have exposed your secret. âDoesnât it hurt?â
Her eyes are upon you.
"I held on to a contraption too tightly and burned a hole through a new cloak,â you answer, âthis is what happens when you make a mistake.â Then, you lower your head and prevent his reply with a simple addition of: âwhich is why my master believes you may be able to help me.â
âYouâre right,â Olruggio says, suddenly determined beyond his slight delirium, âso we should visit the medical spire!â And he twirls you to usher you towards that very place as you spare a glance at your master.
âYou may go,â she permits you. âYou should have gone when you were first injured but you insisted on not being late.â No falsehood disgraces her tongue; to be tardy is to be disrespectful, and to be disrespectful is to mirror her in shame, of which is against how she has raised you.
And so, with Olruggio, you leave.
He is talkative, now, as he leads you away, without that air of annoyance he carried as you shuffled from one foot to the other, the two of you standing close to your mastersâ sides as they spoke about banal topics to see if friendship would blossom. He answers your questions about Ghodrey and life above the sea, every surface touched by sunlight youâve never seen unless refracted by water, rays reaching the depths in ripples that fizzle out the deeper it travels. He tells you about the scalewolves that run through the downlands, frightening but incredibly gentle with their young; alongside the glow of a blushing bride as it floats through the air when youâve only seen its scales milled for conjuring ink. And he shares what it was like to travel from place to place, encountering all sorts of people without a master to guide him on field work until now.
You miss it, somehow, simply by the way he recounts it all, particularly in respect to how his life is already so large for a child, distinctly different from what you know you will experience yourself. When you are ready to accompany your master, you are confident she will not accept a task as plain as warming an Unknowing nearly frozen to death, remarkable only in meeting someone you would have never met otherwise; worthwhile only because, as Olruggio has expressed, you have saved a life. Are you strong enough to mimic him, you wonder? Perhaps overseeing your care by the hand of these doctors is another ordinary manner of aidâcompanionship never granted to you.
By the time you return, you believe you would not make a mistake in calling Olruggio your friend. He smiled, wide and fatuous as you tried to speak through tears, expressing everything and anything so long as it is does not concern the relief bestowed from him to you. And it ceases upon their approach, much to Olruggioâs surprise, at the ease in which you are able to calm. He does not comment, thankfully, as he releases your hand to clutch onto his masterâs cloak.
Astonishingly, your masterâs palm rests upon your shoulder and, with her, you watch as your new friend chronicles your short adventure with him. Within his excitement, she must approve, satisfied over your success in what she wanted of you and seemingly proved by the steady brush of her thumb. The touch of Olruggioâs own master gentles atop his head, mussing his hair into an untidy mop you cannot imagine yourself journeying through the Great Hall with. And when you tilt your chin upwards, expectant and childish, she tightens her hold in a facsimile of her usual objection, turning from you without a word.
Unable to observe Olruggio for any longer lest something ugly grows, you wave goodbye with uncertainty filling your heart. There is something you wish to articulate and share with them. If Olruggio is as kind as he appears, his masterâhis caregiverâmust be a character even greater than that: gracious to be capable of catching the Star of Ghodrey, clever in teaching someone so bright, and influential enough to protect that light.
But she is calling for you, giving voice to your name in a tone always so austere, so you make the easy choiceâto never say a word, letting your chest cave in as your arm continues to ache, a searing pain that haunts you despite it all.
The days continue to blend together, indistinguishable for the most part where you comprehend its passing by the flicker of floatglow lamps if not for the darkening waves around you, no sunlight flowing through. You wake around this time, anywayâearly when your master is still snoring softlyâensuring you are presentable once she rouses from slumber and already studying diligently, scribbling wonky circles you later burn while she is too busy to realize your faults. And when it is noon, you seek out Olruggioâs company for it is your only reprieve before your return to her atelier to stain your fingertips black. But when itâs suppertime, youâve discovered, in more recent weeks, that Olruggio has taken to Qifrey.
From your observance, you believe they bicker on most occasions; about vegetables and silly little competitions and how often they encounter the other. It is only when Olruggio is presented with a map, requested during a short meeting wherein he assisted you in drawing seals your master could no longer tolerate repeating her guidance for, that their relationship seems to mend. Even more, your friend is absent one afternoon, leaving you alone in the mess hall with the companionship youâve built, as instructed of you, through a lie.
Again and again, Olruggio disappears from your life, only making his appearance when organized by your masters, and especially during the aggravation of yours. The melancholy grown from that distance leaves you, however, as you see Qifrey smile for the first time. For a reason you cannot grasp at the time, you are envious that Olruggio must be the first recipient of that sight. Yet you remain in proximity to him when he gravitates around Olruggio as you do, any conversation shared consisting of clipped words and polite greetings where youâve only heard the fullness of his voice when speaking to your mutual friend.
It is not enough.
âI heard from Olruggio that you wish to leave the Great Hall,â you say upon approaching Qifrey alone, your robes clutched tightly in your fist with your decision to breach the wall that he has built between youâcomfortable to converse over, but not quite short enough to connect with you properly. âHe told me about how you stole his map and escaped.â
Qifrey clicks his tongue, ready to depart with no intention to entertain you for a second more. âThat was so long agoâwhat does it matter now?â
âI want to leave, too.â The remark is sufficient in garnering his interest, finally focused on you. âI want to see the sky you saw that day.â
âAsk Olruggio.â
âI canât,â you answer. âMy master is enthralled with the Star of Ghodrey; if she found outââ
âSo Iâm your second choice?â His voice raises, facing you with scorn that you cannot prevent yourself from cowering against. âIt doesnât matter what happens to me, is that it?!â
Passersby begin to stare, an oppressive pressure that forces your subsequent words to leave as a whimper, instantly softening the boyâs expression in remorse. âI want to be your friend.â
âYouâre lying,â Qifrey firmly objects. âI know what your master says about people like Master Beldaruitâabout people like me.â
âIâm not like her.â You stomp your foot, nails carving crescents into your palms as you hiss, âjust because sheâs my master doesnât mean I carry the same opinions as her!â
âBut you donât say anything to stop her, do you?â He bristles, and you almost believe your relationship ruined with the disclosure, perhaps justifying his general temperament towards you, sporadically atrocious yet dampened by a particular vacillation, skeptical of your character.
âI canât,â you mutter, âthere is nothing I can do against my masterâŚâ
Qifrey quiets at that, deciding if your honesty is falsified to win his favour. Itâs not. You are able to speak as you do simply because you tried some years ago when you were her freshly appointed apprentice, gifted to her due to your adept memory and family name where everyone believed in your potential under her guidance specifically. She took you to the finest magic stationerâs shop within the Great Hall to obtain your first woodcruor wand, and upon perusing dyes, she praised your ability to differentiate the subtle differences in colour only to say that those with Silverwash Syndrome could never be witches and, even more, that she could not comprehend why Master Beldaruit was so adored when âhe no doubt wants for magic to fix his frailty, breaking the rules of the Pact.â
Hearing it pained you. Master Beldaruit was one of the foremost witches you met at the Great Hall shortly after being introduced to your master. She left you, for a time, and you wandered too far astray that the pathways were unrecognizable, unable to tell from whence you came. But Qifreyâs master, when he was still without an apprentice, found you. He was just an illusion back thenâquicker for him to search for the source of the wails that echoed off stoneâbut the smoke was not frightening while the sound of his sealchair meant you werenât alone, an announcement that prevented you from being startled. And when he had led you to his bedchambers, Lady Vinanna was by his side, leaving to her duties as he was adequate company in waiting for your master to fetch you.
He struggled, too, to comfort you, maneuvering closer by pushing himself upright using the handles of his transfer board. You wished it had been easierâthat the world was kinder to him who was so kind to you, his hand warm in your own and the other gentle as it wiped your damp cheeks before petting the top of your head. His simple and modest reassurance is one you can still feel when you try your best to recall it and return to that moment whenever you are too afraid; the fear refusing to leave when that rapacious ache remained.
So, when she expressed the dreadful sentiment and alluded to forbidden magic, you spoke against her, becoming the first and last time you had and ever will. There is naughtânot even Qifreyâs chagrinâthat could convince you that any possible action you could have taken would be anything but futile against your master.
âFine,â Qifrey finally decides. âIâll believe you since youâre Olruggioâs friend.â Then, he leans into your space, and you almost want to jump away from the sudden proximity and how the blue of his eye seems to sparkle. âIâll decide whether or not Iâll help you after I hear your plan.â
âI know how to draw the sylph shoes seal,â you say, and your knowledge of it appears to be enough.
Qifrey has apparently memorized the path to the exit, amusing you when, just the other day, you assisted in returning him to Argentgard to see Master Beldaruit. He is more receptive to you now, too, likely doing away with any assumption after your brief conversation concerning him and his master. Although this occurs primarily through cupped hands and whispers, afraid of making too much noise and guiding a curious passerby to the both of you and foiling your plans. For the same reason, youâve suggested to draw the seal after your escape, forgoing the momentary regret that befalls you as you climb the lofty staircase connecting the drowned castle to the surface.
Itâs bright, much more than you had expected.
The stretch of cerulean above you seems endless, painted with drifting puffs of white. There is no constant sound of flowing water, either, simply waves that collide with the tall island you stand upon. Even as your eyes follow the flight paths of quadryphons youâve only seen in books, the sight offered to you comes with much to discover, so unlike the monotonous expanse of sea, interesting through grandiose creatures seen through formerly innocent eyes until youâre as you are nowâstill a child but a little older and a little more versed in the life arranged for you that they no longer spark amazement, yet wishing you could join them the same.
Leastwise, Qifrey is smiling, tiny and barely there, but a smile nevertheless.
He observes your surroundings as you had, likely ensuring no one is around or unwittingly missing a pastâsomewhere out thereâhe can no longer remember. âIs it better than youâve imagined?â he asks, the tenor of his voice delicate and unrecognizable to you.
Your own lightens, glee staining your words.âIt is! Iâd never tire of this sight.â
âThatâs why we should hurry, then,â Qifrey suggests, âbefore anyone uses the windowway or leaves from where we came.â
Heâs right. The plan had been an impulsive one, which is why you left mid-day while everyone was busy with their studies and tasks, too distracted to pay attention to Qifrey who is given reprieve on days like this, master busy like your own and leaving you to yourself when Olruggio would normally have an audience with you if not for his sudden commitments. Still, one never knows who may visit the Great Hall and when.
Pulling off a boot, you balance yourself on one foot with Qifrey holding your ink pot to assist you.
âWill this work despite not being a contraption?â Qifreyâs face scrunches up, the purpose of his doubt lying in the worry that overtakes him.
âWe just have to avoid getting our shoes wet so the ink doesnât wash away,â you answer, drawing an alternating pattern of convergence and levitation signs after ornamenting the centre with the wind underfoot sigil.
âMy master says this is a difficult seal because it is easy to draw it unevenly,â Qifrey says, âbut you arenât struggling.â
âI like knowing an assortment of spells, butâŚâ You hesitate to share, yet choose to do so, regardless, solely through your desire to get closer to the frost-headed boy, your interest in him growing after becoming more acquainted and hoping your offered trust will prompt him to trust you too. ââŚMy master taught me early,â you continue, âthat way it appears as if I can do anything quickly. Itâs easy for me to remember, but difficult for me to drawâmy hand shakes, sometimes, and it upsets her.â
This is something you have shared with not even Olruggio, but when you look at Qifrey, his countenance is completely replaced with distaste, lips set in a firm line and cheeks puffed up like a sparrel with a mouth full of lentils. Youâve said too much.
âAnd please keep this a secret,â you jest despite the sincerity in your tone, âor I wonât eat your vegetables when Olruggio isnât looking anymore!â
âFine⌠fine,â Qifrey agrees only to tut up his chin. âI donât like your master anyway, so I donât want to speak of her anymore.â Then, he adds quickly, if only to tease you with a narrowed eye. âYour lines look steady to meâyou worked hardâbut that one is too long!â
You shake your head, wishing you could bump your shoulder with his without losing your balance. âItâs so they canât catch us; weâll fly faster than any normal pair of sylph shoes,â you say, switching to your other boot and quickly drawing the other half of the bisected seal so you can guide Qifrey in inscribing his own.
Despite being Master Beldaruitâs apprentice for a time too short for his age, Qifrey has little difficulty in mimicking the spell, as if his body already knows the motion of each stroke. Once finished himself, the two of you simply face each other awkwardly, knowing not which direction to venture aside from forward in whatever path of your choosing.
âWhat if we hold hands?â
âWhat?â Qifreyâs head snaps to you, whirling around from the far-off horizon he was electing to explore.
âHave you flown before?â you ask, and Qifreyâs silence is answer itself so you continue. âIf we hold hands, we wonât be separated.â You offer a hand thereafter, palm open and outstretched, as your sleeve falls down your wrist at the motion, exposing skin still slightly raw, fractal patterns drawn tight like chords of incarnadine lightning.
He takes it, the inaugural contact causing him to jolt before wrenching away. It almost offends youâis it because of the ebony smeared on your hand, an aftermath in drawing that youâve transferred onto his skin? Itâs a habit you have, as do the other apprentices, but you suppose Qifrey is quite clean in all things, especially with the light colours of his cloak.
âWe donât have to,â you quickly say, âyou donât have to do this just because I want to hold hands.â Itâs true that you desired it, whereby some part of you wants for his attention, but the guilt in cultivating, within him, an obligation to satisfy your odd whims, is stronger than any longing for something much gentler than youâve known. âIâm just afraid of what would happen if one of us gets lost or, worse, falls into the sea. I donât know what I would do, either, if something happened to you because I asked you to assist me.â The words leave you without pause, unable to prevent yourself from babbling in the hopes of mitigating any uncomfortable impressions; but, then, your voice turns almost inaudible, touch grazing over the wrist of your dominant hand. âI donât like getting hurt⌠Iâm afraid to die.â
Qifreyâs breath catches within his chest, and the subsequent exhale is a tight one, yet his stare does not withdraw from you, even as you grow more meek with the trepidation you assume youâve propagated within him. Perhaps there is something that haunts him, just like you. And so, Qifrey reaches out, taking your hand in a trembling hold you steady through a squeeze of reassurance, mimicking what Master Beldaruit had done for you years ago.
You stand on the edge of the tower formed through a rocky outcrop, a lonely island you leave, hand in hand, with Qifrey as you bring your feet together and propel upwards into the air. The view is so unimaginable that your fear falls away as the possibility of tomorrow is all that remains. You have never been this far from the Great Hall; from your family when you were still their charge and thenceforth from your master. Even Qifrey, who cannot remember the life he lived outside the sodden stones of the castle, grins, brilliant and unbridled as you float through the ceaseless expanse of sky; and his delight, paired with your own, is more beautiful than the petals that retract at beginnings of your tears, your delirium sprouting hallucinations.
âI never thoughtââ you try to say, sniffling and hiccupping as Qifreyâs hold shifts. His fingers slide into the crevices of your own like roots finding the entry point of soft soil, a tether sown from recognition, linking you to him, in this moment, to be as you are so long as you are with him. âI never thought I could be this happy!â
He laughs, loud and blameless and innocent, as if what either of you have endured was a scattered dream, his much more nebulous whereas any recollection of your own memories is something you avoid, leaving a cavity you never wish to fill. For once, you are child, and you wonder what your former days would have resembled if you and Qifrey had met under kinder circumstances.
It would be preferable to meet in a village on an isolated corner of the Zozah Peninsula, untouched by the strictness in larger towns and cities and especially the Great Hall. You and Qifrey would run through hills of greenery only to fall down in tumbling ribbons as the sun sets on the horizon, eventually encountering Olruggio for a reason that matters little in comparison to the very fact that you must converge at one point, regardless, orbits aligning. Magic will come, as it always does, but it appears through smoke and illusions, a gentle touch and a forgiving hand, and the water of Qifreyâs flowers coruscating Olruggioâs light.
Togetherâthat is where you will find yourself, despite leaving without Olruggio. He will find you, you know it; and if he does not, you will return for him because no path you followâstraight and narrow or winding and obstructiveâwill end in a place absent of him. From the beginning of it all, there was an inevitability, you realize, now, in being changed by both him and Qifrey.
âYour cloak is dancing in the breeze!â Qifrey exclaims, hair whipping around and revealing his scarred eye to you, sullied with a verdant splotch, of which you cannot wipe away when it likely collided with his face as the two of you struggle to control your flight path. He does not seem to mind, regardless, as he laughs, again, and yells through the rushing wind, âyou look like a dragon!â
âI told you theyâd never be able to catch us, Qifrey!â
And how naĂŻve you are to express such a sentiment, believing that innocence could no longer be taken from you. The world seems to still before the wind begins to flow in the opposite direction as though a gale had arisen, suddenly and naturally, until a woman with a cloak soaked in the colour of blood catches you within her embrace. You are reminded of how small you are and how nothing may bend to the will of two youths who cannot live without the aid of another.
Lady Vinanna does not let your feet touch the ground despite landing next to the pointed and pillared structure of the Great Hallâs entrance. She repositions her hold through a deluge of reprimands, grabbing you both by the hood of your cloaks. Qifrey makes some remark under his breath about being capable of walking as he was last time this happened, no doubt concerning Olruggio. But Lady Vinanna does not relent, afraid you will run and ignorant of what is more important to fear as she descends the coiled staircase, a replica of a bridewell and your noose.
âI wonât disobey you again,â you cry. âPlease, Lady Vinanna, do not stretch my clothes. I beg of you!â
Your disposition shocks her enough to set you down, shoes meeting the cold stone of the Great Hall, smooth unlike the dirt of true land. You did not thrash nor did you reach up to tug at her hands, merely hung like a limp doll possessed by a wraith that can only express its anguish for its undoing in wails and watery eyes. Tantrums are unbecoming of a witch and no one should ever bear witness to an ugly sight, but you care little for both Lady Vinanna and Qifreyâs reactions. The latter surprises you, no less, expecting a distasteful wince but receiving concern, instead. That too is something you dread.
Clacks echo through the corridor, the stacked leather of her heel declaring her imminent arrival. Qifrey watches you tremble once the member of the Knights Moralis meets your master in the middle, prepared for her audience and leaving you and him behind her, convinced you will both stay put.
âLady Vinanna,â your master calls first, refusing to look at you yet you obstruct your face nonetheless, without a handkerchief to wipe snot and tears. âImagine my surprise in being summoned because my well-behaved apprentice is running amok after being involved in the mischief of a common whelp.â
âThey were flying,â Lady Vinanna answers, choosing to ignore your masterâs revulsion for your friendâit is not the first time she has dealt with the uncouth mannerisms of arrogant witches and it will not be the last. âDo you have any idea why they were able to draw the sylph shoe spell?â
Her stare is heavy upon you.
âI stole a pair of my masterâs shoes and memorized the spell,â you explain, practically yelling at Lady Vinanna as you crane your head upwards. âPlease donât be upset with my masterâitâs all my fault for defying her, and I forced Qifrey join me!â Qifrey tries to interrupt but you overtake him, stepping closer into her space as Master Beldaruit arrives, the sound of hooves silenced by your climbing panic. âHe didnât do anything wrong,â you say, next, to Master Beldaruit whose worry has dissolved after taking note of his apprenticeâs reaction to you, replaced by a reticent amusement now that he discovers that you are both unscathed.
Though, it does not last long. âMy!â Master Beldaruit chuckles, hand bent at the wrist and raised towards his mouth, a flamboyant motion that irks your master but soothes Qifrey through its unshaken nature. âIf everyone is unharmed,â he begins, shifting his attention to be directed towards you, âthen who am I to be anything but glad that Qifrey is finally getting along with you? Hmm?â
Unsurprisingly, the comment shatters your masterâs composure and you nearly believe her capable of raising her hand against both Master Beldaruit and Qifrey, but Lady Vinanna interrupts before it can escalate.
âThey should be properly punished so they donât do it again,â she says, ânow would be a good time to start.â
âI will be sure to do so.â
When you spare Qifrey a lasting glance, your leave prompts a small lecture from Master Beldaruit that quickly falls away from focusâQifreyâs eye waters as he meets your gaze, shoulders tight and shaking as he attempts to hold them at bay. You want to stop; to return to his side and comfort him but, distracted, you bump into your masterâs back.
She stares down at you, again, face clouded in something you are incapable of naming as a child but perceptive enough to realize you never wish to see it again. So, you wave Qifrey goodbye, and allow her to catch your wrist and lead you back to her atelier, consoled solely by the boyâs acceptance of you, at last, no matter how prominent the ache becomes that evening.
In the following year, your master grows stricter, hovering over your shoulder to oversee whatever you partake in if she can manage it. And if not, it is as if there is someone else in the Great Hall who follows you, reporting your day-to-day activities without her supervision.
Before, she had allowed you to study the occasional subject and spell as you liked, but now believes part of your punishment should be an awareness in only what she assumes you will need under circumstances she would permit you to find yourself in, as if she could control such a thing. Gone are your picture books detailing old stories and encyclopedias depicting the creatures of the Zozah Peninsula, exchanged with bound pages of curriculum catered to you and without any room for simple magic that brings nothing but joy.
It feels as if you are running out of time, unable to catch up to her expectations as other apprentices, like Olruggio and Qifrey, excel in almost everything they do. She inspects your palm quire more closely, too, giving you no opportunity to burn failed spells and inspiring more reprimand for struggling to inscribe what you already know by heart. It does not help, either, that your tremors worsen following your attempt in escaping the Great Hall. From your master, you expected another corrective measure, but she lets it be upon realizing that drawing while concealed steadies your hand, not realizing how you grasp your dominant wrist to stabilize each mark. Good, she had said, because a successful witch is one who can draw anything in secret.
Though praise is a rarity, it was disgusting coming from her who delights in lies.
No matter, you suppose, as to be a witch is to lie. To cast magic is to live in a falsehood, just as you pretend that nothing is wrong, completing one task after another within your studies while you tell your friends that pain is a consequence of growth. You dress in the robes of her atelier, a sign of your belonging to her as she instructs you what to do, who to entertain, and how to act, wherein you are guest to your own body. She tells you that this new contraption will help you in your studies. She commands you to go fetch it when it finally arrives in the Great Hall after letters concerning its delivery remained unanswered until recently. She is also worn thin by waiting that you, again, feel pressed for time.
Your steps quicken, rushing through the colonnades before hesitating when you nearly pass the pavilion, distracted by a cacophony of noise. You sway from one side to another, standing on the tips of your toes to endeavor a peek over the shoulders of those taller and older than you. From here, you catch sight of a tuft of white, belonging solely to a single apprentice within the Great Hall.
âOnly one eye and missing his memory? How will he go on a field mission with Master Beldaruit?â
An apprentice guarded by your masterâs comrade sneers. âMaster Beldaruit will be the eyes and Qifrey will be his legsâtogether, theyâll finally be normal!â
The commotion rises, wicked laughter ringing out through the space, absent of anything but children and the subject of their ridicule.
âWhat? Like a weird chimera? Do you reallyââ
âWhat did you say?â you interrupt with a screech, plowing through the crowd surrounding Qifrey, your friend stuffed into the corner against a pillar with nowhere to go.
The second apprentice scoffs, shoving your shoulder as you had her. âAre deaf as he is blind?â Her face is contorted into an ugly thing, looking at you with distaste for defending someone like him, your master and hers would say, someone belonging to a cripple like Beldaruit.
âAre you so stupid you canât say it again?â you retort, and feel fabric pull as Qifrey clutches your robes. âOr are you too much of a coward now that someone isnât brainless enough to laugh?â
Your face stings.
She hit you. As the awareness of it settles, your body stiffens, limbs locking in place and only capable of listening to Qifrey who begins to yell from behind you. But even as the other apprentices advance, you do not move from where you stand, blocking him from their ire. Turning your head to face him, Qifreyâs eye widens, flickering to where her nail had caught on your skin, leaving an angry line drawn from your cheek to your nose.
âWhat? Are you going to cry now?â she challenges you. Then, she mentions your master, and it is as if your ears are ringing, knowing your master will not be pleased with your further involvement with Qifrey, and especially resulting from a brawl, no less. âAre you brave enough to tell her or are you a coward, too?â
For once, you arenât, and perhaps that is because you know there are few who will protect him.
âAm I supposed to cry because you hit me?â you ask, voice colder than you realize. âRun to her and complain about some idiot?â She tries to interrupt you, but you clench your fists and will yourself to behave. âYou act like Qifrey and his master canât do anything on their own, but have you stared a liongoat in the eye? Seen their sharp fangs, three pairs of pointed horns that could pierce right through you, and return without being trampled?â Foolishly, you motion to Qifrey, bringing all attention upon him. âQifrey has,â you say, âwhy do you think the Great Hall was in an commotion a few months ago?â
âSo what?â
âCan you do that?â you ask, and the weight in your stare must be grave enough that they struggle to form a reply at the mimicry you endeavour, imitating your master. âHuh? Can you?â
âWell, Iââ
âYou canât!â you interrupt despite prompting from them a response, angry at the mere belief that they are as brave as Qifrey when they would do something so lowly. âYou would die, I know it,â you say and watch their faces fall at the grim prospect youâve presented to them. âActually, you wouldnât even be brave enough to face a liongoat, let alone die by oneâall you can do is outnumber people who do nothing to you just because you think itâs funny.â Stepping forward, you shove them backwards and Qifrey grabs your arm to stop you from escalating a fight against the amount of apprentices that surround you. A fight you cannot win.
âAre you done?â she asks, feigning nonchalance mixed with mild annoyance, hoping you appear mad with your uproar.
âNo, Iâm not,â you hiss, anyway. âYou think itâs so easy because you donât struggle to live, but youâll never be live up to Master Beldaruitâyouâll never be a witch greater than him, and the only person who will be is Qifrey!â
âWhat?â Another apprentice laughs, nudging their friendâs side with an elbow, the amusement brought about by their subsequent suggestion clear. âAre you infatuated with Qifrey? Is that why youâre so upset about this? It was just a joke.â
âAnd what if I am?â Your bristle. âWhy would I like anyone else when my options are someone as terrible as you!â
Silence follows your bellow and you think youâve deterred them, but when you calm yourself enough to see what theyâre staring at, theyâve already begun to scatter.
âI wonât tell your master,â Lady Vinanna says, slipping a handkerchief from her pocket as she approaches you to dab at the sweat of your brow before gently taking your chin between her thumb and forefinger. âBut there are better ways to protect your friend than picking a fight,â she adds, examining the cut on your face.
âThey wouldnât listen,â you mutter, looking down at your feet in shame once she lets go. âTheyâre always saying horrible things about Qifrey and Master Beldaruit.â
At that, your friend huffs, and Lady Vinanna sighs with his subsequent words. âYou donât have to do that,â Qifrey says, âlet them talkâthey always do. If they donât say it to my face, theyâll make sure I can hear their gossip.â
âThat doesn't mean itâs right,â you argue.
Seeing that youâre both fine, Lady Vinanna ruffles his hair and yours, standing from the position she took to speak to you, crouched to face the both of you properly. Her touch is so light you cannot help the smile that breaks across your face, looking up at her with sparkling eyes. She snorts. âTry not to get into more trouble, yeah? I canât save you from everything,â she says, and leaves without another comment, searching for the apprentices who fled.
The moment she disappears around the corner and leaves you alone together, Qifrey grabs you. âYouâre shaking,â he says, face scrunching up in remorse. You hadnât realized it, but you do know that expression all too well on him, and it inspires, within you, your own. âYou shouldnât do that againâwhat if they hurt you?â
âYouâve been hurt enough,â you retort, âwe can at least face it together.â
Qifreyâs head tilts, curiosity genuine. âBut I thought you donât like getting hurt?â
Heâs right. It had somehow passed your mind amongst the adrenaline in atoning for all you could not do for him or his master, regardless of how they will never be aware of your failures to defend them lest youâor anyone else who was witness to itâshare it with them. Only pain lies at the end of the path you have chosen to tread.
âDo youââ You try to speak, but your breath leaves in stuttered gasps, panic consuming you. âDo you think theyâll tell their masters? And then theyâll tell mine andââ
âThey wonât,â Qifrey answers, âtheyâd be too ashamed to, and if they do, theyâd be punished for hurting you.â
âOkay.â
âYeah.â He nods, looks off to the side, and then focuses on you again to say, âyouâre still shaking.â
âIâm sorry.â
Qifrey takes your hand at the apology, believing it will soothe you the same way it had that day you soared through the sky together. It does but, because you are irrevocably greedy in affection like this and especially from him, you step forward and collapse into his chest in exhaustion, thereby searching for reprieve as you timidly wrap your arms around him. Qifrey sinks into the warmth of you, chin propped up on your shoulder as he listens to your breathing calm. Then, he tenses, and you would have asked if something was wrong if not for his sudden detachmentâgently, but quickly, pushing you away with his hands anchored upon your shoulders, a bridge of distance from him to you.
âI have to leave if youâre fine now,â he says, remembering some duty you are ignorant to.
âYou were the one being ridiculed,â you point out. âI should stay by your side.â
âNo,â he says, watching your face fall as guilt takes root. âNo,â he repeats, firmly this time, âyou should hurry back. You were completing an errand for your master, were you not? She doesnât like it when youâre tardy.â
You exhale slowly, trying to will yourself to stop trembling where he can see you as you murmur, âthatâs impossible to avoid now.â He hums, and you know he only hopes for the best for you. âGoodbye, Qifrey.â
âTake care,â he says. âIâll see you around.â
Yet, it comes quicker than either of you expect. The ache is severe, this night, much worse than you had anticipated, so much so it was near unbearableâyou are unaware if you are capable to enduring it any further. So, the decision you make is a rash one.
Qifreyâs bedchambers are located at the end of one corner of the Great Hall, tucked and housed alone, just as you are when your masters have only one apprentice in comparison to Olruggio an d the others. To get there, you would have to travel past the mess hall and up and across the chemin de ronde, wherein you would be exposed completely if one were to look outside their window as you walk along the raised wall connecting one building to another.
As long as you are quick, you tell yourself, you will not be caught, unless you have the courage to draw that spell on the inside of your cloak. There is a chance it would fade while washing it from the fabric would be easier than burning the paper of your palm quire. The borrowshade cloak is is a simple spell, consisting of one concealment sign, an asteriskos pointed with an eye in each cardinal direction; and four envelop signs at each corner, diagonal from the little star at its centre. How ironic it is, to be hidden in shadow with a seal drawn using eyes that will very well be obstructed from sight of you if you are to be glanced at.
You draw it. Your fingers clutch onto the wrist of your dominant hand, an anchor you use while following a rounded motion of the ring. Then, you fluff up your pillow until the air causes it to puff, and cover it with your linens to mimic your sleeping form before pushing open the door to your bedchambers. It creaks within the the quiet of her atelier, and you pause before continuing forward, listening for movement from where you hope she is still lost in a deep sleep.
Once you step through the threshold and into the hall, you release a tight breath, a smile breaking onto your face. You do not look back as you run through the path youâve memorized to reach him, your cloak fluttering behind you. You look like a dragon! Qifrey had told you that day, and you feel it, too, when you fiercely defended him, and now, again, as you do as you wishâthe fabric a dark tail that swishes as your feet strike cold stone, the patter of your footsteps the only indication of your presence.
The room of the mess hall is darkened at this time, no one hungry enough to venture from their room and steal a snack or a meal, but there are wandering witches that traverse the paths, and you have to press yourself close to the wall as you squeeze through, careful to avoid bumping into another as you tip-toe towards an alcove. They take their time in leaving, discussing nonsense you have no interest in when you have places to be, and the wait is so agonizing that you choose to sneak past, inhaling deeply as you find yourself atop the chemin de ronde. The animals swim overhead, blocking out the reflections of the moon as you become a mosaic of shadow, the spell imitating the vestiges of light despite being disturbed by your frantic movements.
By the time you reach the door to his bedchambers, your voice is more breath than sound with how quickly your chest rises and falls. âQifrey,â you quietly call. âQifrey, itâs me.â
Heâs awake, surprisingly; the potential in him sleeping at this time being something you hadnât considered until you were met with silence for a minute or two. And his brow furrows as you strip yourself from the cloak, distracted in tidying your garments for the outdoors whereby you do not notice his gaze skimming over the length of your formâthe bruise blooming on your ankle, confirming his worry in your gait; the flush to your nape, concealed by your collar and revealed only as you turn your back to him; the scratch marks decorating the skin of your wrist, a habit of yours he detests; and the redness in your eyes.
Without question, Qifrey lets you stay.
The two of you stifle giggles as you build a makeshift tent while Qifrey fetches books from his shelfâgifts from Master Beldaruit. He reads the narration, and you, the characters, playing pretend as you act out voices. This occurrence repeats every so often. One night, you are the King of Dadah, strong and mighty with no fear licking at your spine, even as you transform into the witch who takes his life after he raises the mountains high in the sky with forbidden magic, creating the ruin youâbefore you met your masterâand Qifreyâafter he met hisâventured upon to pass The Consent of the Crown.
Another evening, Olruggio joins you after you emerge from Serpentback Cave, together, guiding myrphons to their breeding and wintering grounds. Qifrey, this time, participates in your recount of the Song of the Princess, becoming a dragon he loves so much, while you elect Olruggio as its riderâthe princess who guides its path alongside her tribe, the identity you adopt. You do not remember much of this epic, however, as when you look back on this time together, you believe the The Sincerity of the Shield was when you began to recognize Qifrey more. Through his magic, in particular, where the tenderness he was capable ofâand still isâbeyond adversity while interacting with the flock had tugged at your heart so.
But when you pass The Query of Qui Vive, the plays fall away, replaced by nights venturing outside the Great Hall where you draw the borrowshade cloak for your friends while Olruggio lights the floatglow lamps you carry on large branches once youâre free to follow Qifreyâs whims. It is only on days where you cannot bear to be alone within her atelier that you find yourself in Qifreyâs bed, tucked under the covers as he reads to you, slowly, over the course of a few months, a nine-part epic about a witch and a decaying kingâthe story of how witches and nobility were once a united front in the days of oldâa relationship now unlawful.
There is much that is disallowed in the world of witches, hidden all through lies. It is common knowledge amongst them that magic was taken from all through a memory-erasure spell, and from thenceforth, any individual touched by that secret must never utter a word of its truth. In a book you read without your masterâs awarenessâanother action prohibitedâit is said that a lie is equal to theft; to steal the truth from someone else. And it is so strange to you that, upon granting honesty to the Unknowing or within the punishments of the Knights Moralis concerning forbidden magic, the result is a robbery of the highest calibre. To steal oneâs memory completely, of all relation to magic, even the witches one meets, only to be sent to Adanlee, the Isle of Oblivion, prior to being integrated into a new lifeâstolen from your original identity.
Perhaps that is why Qifrey is chasing after his past and cannot wait to reach it lest it escapes him before he can possess it. You cannot fault him for it; you do not know how you would move on if you were left without memory of him and Olruggioâof their arrival to the Great Hall; your meeting of both; the silly sentiments that unravelled; and how Olruggioâs magic held a numinous quality resembling the star that he is, an honesty in his happiness you would do anything to acquire. For a time, you believed you had when you carved your names into the wood of a willow tree at some neglected town youâll never see again as it did not hold the answers Qifrey was seeking; the joy dwarfing the ache in the mornings, afternoons, and evenings that followed.
But you forget yourself. You always do. None of this is part of the path she has arranged for you, one inscribed across every surface of skin you posses when the dawn arrives. And to reach it, you leave Qifrey every night, with reluctance, to his restless sleep, returning to your own foolish falsehood with a smile gracing your face.
There is something strange about Olruggio.
Not many moons have passed since he and Qifrey completed the Librarianâs Trial, having done so together when your master was even more in a rush in comparison to your frost-haired friend. She had hoped, and was pleased, at your prompt success, magic coming to you much easier now that you have found affection within it through studies alongside your friends. They are aware of what you master is like and how grand her hopes for you are, but now you have your misgivings in completing it without them.
Olruggio cannot answer your questions about what transpired at the Tower of Tomes and whether they found what their heart was searching for. Neither can he tell you why his ribbon was exchanged for Qifreyâs tassel. Admittedly, you are jealous, but that is a lesser issue than what you are told. All Olruggio shares is that he completed it first, had fallen asleep while waiting for Qifrey, and eventually woke to him watching the quiet movement of the lake, lacking any knowledge of his past and completely satisfied in the search, choosing to never attempt it again.
Qifrey is lying to you.
There is no person on this earth who may relinquish their desires so easily without any fanfare. Perhaps whatever he found at the Tower did end the incessant excursions, allowing you to recuperate all those nights you went without sleep, but to say a single day was enough to act as if it was all an absurd dream is an insult to your intellect and, most of all, how well you know him. When you pressed, Qifrey said that there was nothing in the Tower to aid him, and from henceforth, he would only look forward to tomorrow. The words are inspiring, truly, but you doubted them nonetheless, even more when Olruggio shrugged and notified you that Qifrey shared the same sentiment right after the Librarianâs Trial.
It should have ended there, but there is no past you can run from nor is there any action taken that would not bring about a consequence. The years you have spent with her have taught you as much, familiar with the concept of reward, punishment, and retribution. You continue to pushâto ask after a few days, a few weeks, and then months that dissolve into years. The field work continues and so do the studies and the tiny moments in-between. Of meteor showers, festivals, seaweed and vegetables, arguing and reconciliation, acting against your master in secrecy, and gritting your teeth as you endure it all. Still, there are exceptions to this, and it always occurs when you are missing from Olruggioâs side.
There are gaps in his memory, so small that others deem it inconsequentialâas simple as forgetting what you ate the other day for supper, the name of the person you briefly met, and where you misplaced a trinket or two. But you know it is not normal, and no matter who you endeavour for aid, no doctor will see a young man who does not wish to be healed from an ailment that seemingly does not exist. Olruggio even entertains you one year, committing himself to a full check-up that returns results concerning nutrition, anemia, and sleep deprivationâpotential contributions to a brain fog. From then on, there is nothing you can do to prove it untrue, especially when Qifrey appears to be anguished by your worry.
However, there are times where you feel strange too.
âDo you, now?â Qifrey asks, amused as you slide under the covers, next to him. âHave you tried sleeping in your own bed for once? Perhaps you will rest properly if you choose not to slip into my bedchambers at such a late hour.â
Said adventures in the night do not end from when you were littleâthey only grow more commonplace as it becomes easier to draw the borrowshade cloak spell. There are many seals you can draw now, despite the tremor in your hand, but this spell to see Qifrey is one you can inscribe no matter the circumstance. It is as easy, now, as slipping out of her atelier to creep through the Great Hallâpass the tables empty of food and into the cloister, the spell adjusting to the light streaming through the open gallery you run through as every second away is a second wasted. Then, you traverse the chemin de ronde without delay, your footfalls as fluid as the fish that wander over the bubble of sea-mist. And upon reaching the door to his bedchambers, you always find it open, night after night, already prepared for your arrival.
Fitted into his side, you listen to his heartbeat under you ear, his arm curling around your shoulder with the other holding a book in his hand, no doubt interrupted with your demand for attention. When you had entered, he was splayed over linen sheets, turning the pages of the story as he feigned indifference. No offense found youâis this not merely an indication of your place in his life? That you are meant to be here, by his side, with his willingness in your encroachment an equal wish you evidently share.
âYou took longer than usual,â he says quietly, plopping the hardcover on the nightstand to empty his hand and fidget with the fingers of your own.
You answer the question that goes unsaid. âMy master woke up.â
âYou came anyway?â You nod. âWhat if she finds you missing?â he asks, trying to sit up in worry but you tighten your embrace and he sinks back into your arms.
âThat is a problem for tomorrow.â
âAre you certain? What ifââ
âQifrey,â you interrupt, voice stern regardless of the affection lying behind his name. âI can leave if you wish.â
âI donâtââ he struggles to admit. âI do not want you to leave, but I dislike how crass she is with you.â
âI have already left my bed,â you point out, and he sighs.
Whether you leave now or later will not change the outcome. Every time you make the decision to leave, it is one made with the awareness of what may happen if caughtâbefore, when you were still a child that feared everything; and now, where you are more afraid of his absence.
He huffs, fingertips tracing the shape of your knuckles. âWe wonât agree on this, will we?â
âWe wonât,â you confirm, watching him circle the splotch of ink staining your skin, a habit that has followed you into adolescence. âAnd you said yourself that you do not want for me to leave,â you add, gaze turning upwards to look upon his face.
Thereâs a small flush staining his cheeks; your heart patters against your ribs.
âI do not feel good about it.â
Turning, you grab Qifreyâs book to hand it back to him, request clear. He takes it with a small, exasperated shake of his head, dragging you across soft sheets to rest your back against his chest so you can see the words. You tell yourself that you cannot fit on his bed otherwise. That your hips must align, pelvis pressed together with his thighs tucked underneath yours and his chin hooked over your shoulder. You can feel every rumble of his voice as he narrates the story, whereas you take your usual role in every character, still employing childish voices that he jests is a doppelgänger, sounding exactly the same as a different person from another story.
Youâve read this one together before, too, so your attention is waning even as you finger guides Qifrey across the words while he holds the book open.
ââŚHave you thought about your future?â
Qifrey takes a moment to answer, but you know him awakeâhis breathing has not calmed in the way you are familiar with. âWhat brought this on?â
âWe are to take The Goodwill of Her Grace in a few years,â you say, âand the words keep repeating in my head.â You clear your throat, adopting another voice, a different, more whimsical tenor that matches his master. ââOne stands unaided when hope is realizedââit sounds like one of Master Beldaruitâs riddles.â
âYou do know that explained nothing to me, correct?â
âNo need to be snarky.â You shift, twisting in his arms to pinch his nose. âWeâll be proper witches after we pass, and to think that we tried to escape the Great Hall when we were little, dreaming of tomorrowâof âhope.ââ
âHow inspirational you sound.â Qifrey squirms out of your hold, but leans into the subsequent touch you press to his cheek, closing his eye. ââŚI have considered leaving to see more of the world.â
You had feeling that was the case, but Qifrey utters that desire so quietly you believe him afraid to share it with you.
When you donât answer, he reveals the depths of blue to you, as bright as the sky you saw that day and as clear as ice. âWhat do you aspire to do?â he asks.
This time, your response is swift. âA Watchful Eye,â you answer, and then say it again, more resolute. âIâm going to be a Watchful Eye.â He hums, as though he already knew, tenderness crossing his countenance. You remind him, âdonât forget to say goodbye.â
âI wonât.â
âPromise me,â you demand, sitting up from his embrace to look down upon him. Something about his gaze that tells you that there is a finality in this, wherein you will not be able to turn back. You utter his name, âQifrey,â and the weight behind it is undeniable.
âI promise,â he says and pulls you back down to rest upon his chest only for you to request for more of his voice, the sound blending with the beat of his heart.
Not wanting to leave, you beg Qifrey to read one more chapter; that you must know how the story will end even when there arenât enough hours in the nightâhours before you would return to her sideâto turn the last page. When the story concludes, the dawn is creeping above the horizon, brightening the sea outside his window as Qifrey allows his fingers to arrange within the spaces of yours, squeezing softly as he watches you fall asleep. He does not release you from his arms, and he does not let go. And, upon waking, he tells you: come again tomorrow night.
You do. You always do.
Olruggio smiles less as you grow older, while Qifrey smiles more, incidentally. You stay the same, you believe. Yet with your coming of age, you begin to see them less, stolen by your master to complete increasingly difficult field work in hopes of turning you as renowned as the Star of Ghodrey.
There are many you serve, countless Unknowing unfortunate to cross path with one disaster and another while both Qifrey and Olruggio regale you with stories of repairing Pegasus carriages, drying those caught in unending downpours and at risk of falling ill, and saving pets stuck high up in treesâordinary issues they encounter while completing those similar to your own vocations. And you explore the Land of the Pact as you wished and you never share your intent to be far from the grand aspirations she holds for you.
Still, your years are filled with aid that fulfills you, achieving what Olruggio described to you as the purpose of a witch. This purpose is one of the three defining aspects of magic aside from technique and ideas: what are you searching for, what do you wish to provide, and what is needed of you? It guides you in every glyph drawn and the intent expressed without words, and, through it, you complete The Goodwill of Her Grace alongside your companions.
You forget how peculiar Olruggio acts every so often, too, suppressing the jealousy from what lies between him and Qifrey.
Youâre busy, instead, preparing a meal to sustain yourself before you become a proper Watchful Eye, your masterâs hold slackening with her own attention shifting towards taking a new apprentice. Itâs understandable; she excels at teaching, aware of exactly what you struggled in, how too push you to improve, and who to involve you with to inspire that drive, providing within you the technique required for success in all things. She shares this news with you over her visit, unprompted and unannounced in her arrival to the new atelier you will guard, currently empty of both master and apprentice, while you were expecting someone else entirely.
She stands, looming over you as she did when you were a child, sharing ideas of a new curriculumâspells recently approvedâand twisting the delicate neck of a bottle, close to bursting from agitation from her attempts to assist you in cooking a mid-day meal and failing. All she is capable of is her way; she may know of what others want, as you must with magic, but she twists it to fit her own beliefs.
And therein lies the problem, as always, one you believed you had escaped from until now. How simple it is to be reminded of it all. How easy it is to return.
She continues to twist and twist and twist until you are a debasement of your former self, imitating what she desires of you alike each identical pod of the basjooroom you were meant to prepare. You pull it from its body, one after the other, digging your nails into flesh as the fruitâs sweet nectar pebbles at your fingertips. Then, you drag them down and peel the skin, layer by layerâclawing until it releases.
And the beast you had wished to butcher still writhes, somehow, thrashing and stumbling from the kitchen to the pantry, making a mess you are clueless in cleaning, aware only of how to hide rather than posture benevolence. Glass shatters, the sound so startling that you flinch at the reminder of a night where the same sharp clatter hit the wall, ink splattering like blood.
Forgiveness fills your heart. A beast of this calibre does not understand niceties lest it involves its survival, wherein any equal altruism is one lacking compassion. You believed to live this way was torture; to act out of instinct the same way you do nowâout of necessity. Out of fear.
Merciful, is what you are, and that clemency guides your hand to free it from its misery.
It struggles, showing you hard enough to tumble over and collide with the edge of a cupboard, crimson dripping down your temple and bringing about even more memories from when you were much smaller and weaker, ignorant to anything but an atelier. It cannot escape. You wonât let it leave. Regardless of any disorientation, you grasp it by the ankle and hold tight, forcing it to the floorboards with you. The body lands face first with a deafening crack, and you orient it proper, filled with a fierce tenacity to carry out the fate presented to youâan inevitability in watching its face turn motionless and its limbs grow rigid.
Emptiness seems to consume you; the hollow hunger of it vast and unfathomably endless, appearing only with her and at her reminders, carved and ensconced, and almost impossible to forget when its made a home within you. But what does it matter when the meal is already spoilt, the dining knife clutched in your fist now useless when a corpse lays splayed open, a cavity drawn from its sternum to its midriff with ivory peeking through, right here, underneath you.
Relief follows the creak of a door opening, the soft afternoon light streaming in and gracing the length of your back. Itâs warm, causing your already slick robes to stick to your skin, and it reminds you of when you were a child trying to escape the Great Hallâhow freeing it had all been. Itâs a pity, then, that you will be brought back. You are in no position to run, anyway, so exhausted you cannot even react to the call of your name, Qifreyâs planned visitation escaping your mind. Still, he does not hesitate to approach you nor does he look towards the blood spattering the various surfaces of the atelier. He only focuses on you, dropping to his knees despite the the pool of crimson swallowing the expanse of hardwood.
âWhat happened?â Qifrey asks, one hand grabbing you by the waist with the other wrapping around your shoulder to drag you into his embrace and off the rotting pile of flesh. âWhat did she do?â
Strangely, you cannot recall how it began; it just had, and that itself is disorienting. You remember technique, the potential wrought out of you and a future apprentice; ideas, the suggestion of what may happen to them as it did you; and purposeâmay it never happen again to anyone else if you are capable of preventing it.
Your hands cannot stop trembling.
âLook away,â Qifrey instructs you. âPlease,â he pleads when you cannot tear your attention from the ghastly scene.
The woman is wide-eyed, expression frozen in terror and head turned away, the curve of her neck decorated with splotchy lines and the beginnings of a bruise mirroring the one Qifrey observes on your neck, his touch intimate as it traces the imprint of two hands. When your gaze descends, you see fabric soaked a dark red, scraps of it torn from her cloak and mixed with fragments of tissue. Of muscle torn apart so viscously. The violence in it is lost on you, a fog overtaking your mind even as her corpse beckons you forward.
How is it possible to slice so deeply and reach the valley of oneâs ribs? Beneath it, you can see themâa deflated lung, not to yell but to breathe unending vitriol; and snuggled between it and its matching counterpart is her heart, offset slightly to the left of her breastbone, of which youâve only rested your head against once before, a memory you hadnât realized you carried fading from you. It houses nothing for you; never has, even as you begged for it.
But his gentle hand, already smelling of woodcruor and wet with something just as thin, obstructs your sight.
âQifrey,â you begin, clutching onto him and staining his white cloak, only able to continue speaking when his arms wrap around you, burying your face into his chest where the heat of him so distinct that, within your delirium, it might as well be alike a burn, especially when his hold is so tight that you think him capable of fusing his body to your own, skin melting together just as it had on the inside of your wrist. âI donât know whatââ
âItâs alright,â he whispers, mouth grazing the edge of your ear with every word and dampening it with the same saliva covering his mouth, tongue wetting his lips as he decides what to say, let alone do. He calls your name. âIâm right here,â he reminds you, as if you have forgotten where you are, and repeats it, again and again, shushing you through the same stuttered words he interrupted you in expressing.
Youâre wailing, arenât you? You hadnât realized that you areâin deafening shrieks as tears blur your vision and soak the front of his cloak, diluting your fingerprints stained upon the fabric, causing crimson to spread into blurry, yet pretty, impressions. Youâre confused; why are you crying? Why does everything hurt? Your throatâthe previous graze of Qifreyâs fingertips had tickled to some degree, and if you werenât so used to the pain of that kind of bruise, you would have tried to squirm away. You hope he hadnât disliked the feeling of your skin when itâs sticky from the burst bottle, shattered in shards that reflect the restrictive space of this atelier, once perfect to you but too alike a nightmare from long ago now. The blood of it a tribute. The inside of your wrist, the same. Your backâwhen it pinned you down to take it; to receive its gratitude despite your supposed lack-thereof because you always make an issue out of everything, donât you? You canât even prepare a meal together without making it into a problem. Thereâs always something wrong with you, it had said, and it punished you for it. For being born. For being here. You have to sacrifice something. The inside of your wrist. Your headâit told you to never look unsightly, regardless of how you coveted that gentle touch upon you, but is it still your fault when it grasped your hair between its fingers? Wrenched your head backwards to disengage you from it, though it taught you that reciprocation is the kindest manner by which to garner anotherâs favour. This is a requital, too. Your head hurts. Your head aches the same as that mangled patch of skin on your forearm whenever this happens. It aches, Qifrey. Qifrey, it aches and it aches and it aches. Qifrey, please make it stop.
âI will not let anything happen to you,â he answers. Had you said it aloud? âNo longer will any harm befall you.â
âQifrey,â you try to say, and his name is the last word that leaves your mouth before his lips meet yours, delicate like a petal as another sob wrests from your chest. My head hurts, you want to tell him, it hurts and Iâm scared.
He knows. Qifrey knowsâhe hasnât forgottenâand it is for that reason that one hand rises to cup your cheek as his arm shifts from where itâs curled around your waist, your legs sliding across the blood seeping into the hardwood to allow yourself to be pulled deeper into his lap. His tongue traces the Cupid's bow of your mouth, distracting you in your next sharp intake of breath before he steals it from you with the clumsy press of tongue against yours. Oh. Your mind appears to blank; you wanted this for some time now. Qifrey must know that, too, as he breaks apart only to kiss you again, muffling a soft apology accompanied by your name, tempting your eyelids to flutter shut from his affections.
And with it, a dream comes to you.
There are glimpses of light, coruscating amongst your darkening vision as though the empty space around you is alive, pulling you into deep waters. You float alongâthere is nothing you can do to fight against that current when you know, yourself, from the days within that drowned castle, that no thrashing nor wailing would save you. In this moment, your only grace is that it finds you through some sort of delicate serenity, but perhaps that is because Qifrey is here. He is here and that is enough for you to not want for anything more, not even the bitter rancor you finally leave behind.
Itâs all very strange, isnât it? To be pulled from your slumber by gentle hands, ones so elegant and lithe as they shake the sleep from your eyes. When they open, you see it again. The boundless expanse of sky, bleeding reds and oranges into fading cerulean as the sun lowers into the horizon. Youâre laying on a blanket with the scent of fresh wildflowers surrounding you, whereby the the sound of ordinary laughterâcommon and familiar and lacking the sorrow even you cannot find anymoreârises through the air. The breeze carries it through the downlands that seemed so far out of reach when Olruggio first described them to you, but now the grass is soft beneath your feet as you stand and search for a gaggle of little witches.
Children are playing not far from your station, excited with his and Qifreyâs presence. Tonight will begin the season approaching the Silver Eve festival, and the most important people of your life are visiting to watch the wandering stars break free from their prison, climbing high to paint the heavens in bright streaks you want to run after, stretch upwards, and grasp within your embrace.
The fairytale matches quite adeptly to what fills you, understanding how easy it is to fall into that dizzying folly as the the star and the Silverwood had. There is a certain surrender in it. In feeling so deeply you may give just as you receive, and to take because you cannot fathom these little hearts that entrust themselves to you, to suffer within leaden waters or the surface of the earth. And when you look at himâwhen you see Qifrey and are reminded of that small, frost-headed child who arrived at the Great Hall with his right eye bandaged and his conduct skittish, whatever haunting him manifesting through every sound and movement before being buried deep inside recesses for no one to encounterâyou feel it, too.
Qifrey hates water; has he ever told you? You cannot recall if he had, but you understand it simply by lookingâthrough attention. He hated the sound of the waves against the walls of the Great Hall and the bubble of sea-mist that encased it, preferring even the sound of anotherâs ridicule. And when you escaped in the dead of night with him and Olruggio, hunting for Qifreyâs past, he hated the rain so adamantly you resigned yourselves to being stuck in any makeshift shelter you could discover or build. And, years after, you can still envision the exact expression on his face when he trusted with you the knowledge of how Master Beldaruit found him.
You wonder: had it been a mirror of your own whenever you crawled into his bed, close to tears and unable to endure it any longer? Had he known that his voice, his touch, his beating heart, and his fingers laced between yours were your tether to this world. To feel as you do is merely the return of something else, eclipsed by a willing ignorance and climbing the summit to do as you had wishedâto reach for that star, hand in hand with Qifrey, only to tumble down and start from the beginning, all over again. The sincerity in that joy really is all very strange; you have always known that there will come a day where you will have to, inevitably, let go.
And so, you let go.
You wake to the smell of the medical spire.
From your head down to the tips of your toes, your entire body is sore as if you were wrung dry and trampled on. Looking around, Olruggio and Qifrey are slouched against each other, fast asleep; and from the blue hue casting over each surface from the empty window, this can only be the Great Hall.
The door opens not long after, and you whip your head to see who else would visit you when your friends are already here, pain lancinating with the abrupt movement. Captain Vinanna, now head of the Knights Moralis, is as surprised as you are to see her, and one of her subordinates leaves her side to yell down the hall, calling for a doctor now that youâre conscious. It wakes Qifery first, Olruggio following when he stands and the latter is without a headrest, suddenly jolting awake.
They do not have an opportunity to speak to you when Captain Vinanna says, âI know youâre still recovering, but weâre short on time: do you remember what happened?â
You do not. All you are aware of is the vicious pain enveloping the entirety of your body, unaware of why, exactly, your head is so heavy with bandages wrapped around your skin.
At your silence, she calls your name once. Twice. And a third time that is interrupted by reproach from a voice you cannot pinpoint, too preoccupied with the inability to recall anything from the moment you arrived in your empty, newly appointed atelier.
Captain Vinanna gives voice to another name and calls her your master.
And, finally, you say, âI donât know who that is.â
You are told you were found by Qifrey, laying in a pool of blood with the assumption you hit your head upon falling during a struggle. There were marks carved into the doorframe, indicating forceful entry, whereas every piece of furniture was upturned, as though the culprits were searching for something.
Bandits, is who they suspect struck, the contraptions of newly-built ateliers easy to steal from when the witches and apprentices are still absent with no one to claim them after fetching a high price. However, upon further investigation, they surmise your amnesia goes far beyond the fatal crime.
It must be why you cannot recall a single thing, the trauma suppressing the memory, especially with what is unearthed throughout her atelier: old contraptions made for the purpose of discipline, long since abandoned by decree of a former Wise of Teachings due to its archaic brutality; and old, almost black, burgundy stains soiling various fabrics, hidden away to be worn in secrecy so that anything adorned during company would remain as pristine as possibleâa concern from a child you only remember through nausea, the only remnant of that tiny wraith who commanded you.
And, one day, during your long recovery when you reckon it had been put behind you, the comfort Qifrey and Olruggio extend is shattered amidst the concern for what the Knights Moralis carry to the medical spire, hoping to prod your memory. Of these is a cloak youâve never worn, tucked into the back of your rickety armoire for the sameânow mysteriousâreason that you had kept the rest, whereby the sleeve that would encase your dominant hand had been charred a deep umber. Your friends had refused to leave with the Knights Moralisâ arrival but, at its sight, Olruggio pales, the rise and fall of his chest quickening as he stands and excuses himself from the room.
A member of the Knights Moralis follows him, and you become privy to a stifled sob; something about failure and aid, and being ignorant to what was right in front of him. You surmise whatever she put you through had been drawn-out through the years of your upbringing, early enough that Olruggio can recognize a garment so small that the head of a child wearing it would barely align with the bottom of his ribs.
The weeks continue in a similar fashion. Qifrey and Olruggio visit and entertain you, sometimes together and sometimes apart. Captain Vinanna appears with a curt inquiry if your memory has improved and Qifrey angers easily when you become distressed, turning into that hot-headed boy of your childhood, one you remember with an obstructed face that follows you through the years. Olruggio can no longer look you in the eyes as he once did; there is only pity left, you believe, accompanied by an ocean of regret you cannot even begin to hope to alleviate.
The funeral for the woman who is said to be your master is held. You attend, much to Qifreyâs upset. These days, he always appears to be, but you want to see her corpse laying in that casket, at least. Memorize the resulting consequence of what she had done to you. She had said that, hadnât she? That every action would lead to a consequenceâreward, punishment, and retribution. The lesson beaten into you persists, although you cannot remember how, exactly, she had done so. Your head tilts, eyes trailing across every stitch that attempts to mend that unsightly face.
During the entirety of the reception, Qifrey does not let go of your hand. You want to laughâyou are certain he wouldnât even if you chose to desecrate her grave.
But he does let go, eventually.
Qifrey is set to leave at sunrise a few months after you are accepted into another atelier as a Watchful Eye, a year after he found you dying and without purpose. You spend the nights leading up to it in his room, wide awake and speaking of your days as children, passing memories the other had forgotten, of which involve the other. There are no books to read, either, having finished them all with no reason to purchase a new one when youâll be without any opportunity to beg for just one more page accompanied by his laughter.
Some evenings, Olruggio visits and you hold a little celebrationâthough it stings to refer to it as thatâwith him drinking himself to asleep. Qifrey, on the other hand, holds his liquor well, while youâre afraid of what may happen if you become as inebriated as them. So he watches you, throughout the night, quietly through Olruggioâs hushed snores.
Every time, you tell him something. Every time, you forget.
The same will not happen, however, as you stand at the foundation of the windowway with Olruggio, Qifrey a few steps ahead of you. The sky is still a deep blue, as dark as the waters he detests so fiercely, but it will lighten, soon, as the expanse is split by rays of yellow and orange light, the sun waking up from a deep sleep. The world out thereâthe meadows of wildflowers that resemble Qifreyâs early floral spells from your childhood; the rolling hills of grass, as fresh as the meals you shared at daybreak, in the afternoon, and the setting sun; and the golden glow of that star, the same colour of the willow treeâs flesh carved into the shapes of your names, joined togetherâitâs the same. Itâs the same sight as your first encounter with the space outside the Great Hall, and every night you escaped with Olruggio, guided by Qifreyâs hand. Itâs exactly the same as your dreams.
Truly, you have never left this place, where the inevitability remains. In hoping and looking towards tomorrow where you do not notice how what surrounds you changes shape even as your heart does not move. And perhaps the despair brought about your inability to notice that difference, too, in choosing which road was the correct one, seeking substantiation that will tell you that you chose well. That is all you had wanted when you were a child, and from the moment you met the man that stands beside you and the other, in front of you, you had knownâeven unwittinglyâthat you would always find yourself standing right here, at this single moment.
This is simply how it is.
You watch as he disappears upon that horizon. Alone. And at the sight of his lonely back, head faced forward wherein he does not turnânot even onceâone thought flows through your mind as you and Olruggio are left behind:
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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⨰ summary: While standing at the crossroads of your forgotten past and your tumultuous present, you strive to surviveâto winâa gruesome war. Amongst pools of blood and unmoving bodies, you traverse foreign territory in search of your lost identity. But unexpected twists and disastrous turns hinder your path to glory. What lengths will you go to be loyal to your nation?
⨰pairing/rating: yoongi x reader & jungkook x reader | PG-15
⨰ warnings: profanity, many deaths, torture, blood & gore, graphic depictions of battle scenes, slow burn
⨰ wordcount: 350k+ (predicted)
⨰ join the taglist! (pm/send in an ask/reply/reblog)
⨰ đđđ đ
[đ°đđĽđđ¨đŚđ đđ¨ đđ¨đĽđđŤđ˘đ]
letâs find out where we areâŚ
⨰ đđđ đđ
[đ°đđĽđđ¨đŚđ đđ¨ đđđŤđĽđđ]
letâs find out who we areâŚ
⨰ đđđ đđđ
[đ°đđĽđđ¨đŚđ đđ¨ đđĄđ đđĽđđđ¤đ°đ¨đ¨đđŹ]
letâs find out why we areâŚ
⨰ đđđ đđ
[đ°đđĽđđ¨đŚđ đđ¨ đđđŤđĽđđŤđ˘đ]
weâve found ourselves.
đđđđđđ
⨰ meet the main characters | character list
⨰ which kingdom are you from?
⨰ interested in beta reading?
⨰ the uniform
⨰ music playlist
⨰ official ost (instrumental)
⨰ the creation of lod
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Qualityâ Free Actions
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Qualityâ Free Actions
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
*this is a re-upload since I deleted my old account đŤŁ
Spending the summer by the sea might bring with it more than just the sweet summer breeze of the salty ocean.
â AUs: mermaid!au (they are mermen!), fantasy, magical
â Genres: slice of life, humor/crack, drama, smut and fluff
â Rating: mature/explicit/R18
(this is mature/explicit content, so minors, please do not interact.)
â Authorâs note: hi!!!! I love mermaid stories, and I donât think thereâs enough out there, so hereâs me creating my own đ§ This is a collection of mermaid stories for each member of bangtan! They are one-shots and stand-alone, but operate in the same universe â¨
â Read on AO3? [link]
đNamjoon
Youâve been searching for gemstones deep on the seabedâ having found a broken piece of blue aquamarine. Searching for the missing piece and your new rival, you find it and much more with the blue tailed merman Namjoon while on a quest for crystals.
â Dive Deep [19.7k]
đSeokjin
Life as a mermaid is wonderful, especially when your merman boyfriend, Seokjin, treats you just right. But youâre beginning to recall memories that you donât think are yours from life on landâ from a past life maybe? When you do realize that the memories are in fact your own, the world comes tumbling down around you, questioning your very existence. Are you even a real mermaid?
â When it Sinks In [13.1k]
đYoongi
Yoongi has always been the embodiment of salt and shadowâa creature of the deep, shaped by the weight of tides and secrets, masking his wounds behind icy detachment and a stoic facade. But then thereâs you, a flicker of warmth in his endless gray. You stay when others drift away, your words like whispers of sunlight breaking through his storm. Slowly, you unravel the delicate threads of his pain, exposing the fragile heart beneath his hardened exterior. Yet, the question lingers like a distant tide: can he rise above the currents of his past, or is he destined to drown in the cycle of his own making?
â Of Salt and Shadow [9.7k]
đHoseok
You werenât supposed to fall in love with him. And Hoseokâwell, he wasnât supposed to fall for a human. But he did. And he lied. About everything. Prince Jung Hoseok of Naraeum was bored of duties and responsibility which made him turn to some ancient magic that might just be dangerous. In a story of betrayal, obsession, and a love powerful enough to tear through curses and thrones, youâll have to decide: whatâs real, and what was never yours to begin with?
â Forelsket [13.9k]
đJimin
You donât really enjoy your work on a trawler, but it pays the rent. When you hear some ruckus out of the deck, you go out to investigate, only to be met by an unreal sight: a blonde merman with a sparkly golden tail caught in the net, struggling to get free.
â To Catch a Merman [17.8k]
đTaehyung
Youâve always been captivated by the seaâa love as deep and endless as the tides. But when tragedy strikes, that love turns bittersweet, and you find yourself drawn to the very thing that stole a part of your soul. Night after night, you pour your sorrows into the embrace of moonlight and whisper your pain to the stars. Then, one fateful evening, a merman surfaces from the depthsâa being of myth and wonder. Will you dare to believe in fairytales and the magic of second chances? In hope, love, and the possibility of forever? Perhaps, heâs here to show you that even in the darkest corners, beauty and light can still thrive.
â Moonglade [15.4k]
đJungkook
When your childhood friend that you had a crush on, moved away out of the blueâ you never thought youâd see him again. A night swim in the ocean will have you feeling delusional, but the voice that fills your earsâ sweet like cotton candy, youâd recognize that voice anywhere, itâs Jungkook.
â Till We Meet Again [11.4k]
â Taglist: do you want to be added to the taglist? Just drop a comment or send an ask (remember to tell me if you want to be tagged in all, one or more members).
Š @/kingofbodyrolls 2024 // Please donât copy or repost! You are more than welcome to reblog it, leave a comment or ask me anything about the story đĽ°
# Synopsis - youâre a curious one, never taught to stay away â stay out of things that didnât concern you. After months of well taught self-discipline, you canât help the impulsive choice of following the sound of the dancing piano keys, up the twisted stairs, behind the locked door.
# pairing - pianist!yoongi x female!reader
# warnings / tags - mentions of sa to female reader, boarding school, strict schooling staff, mentions of weird behaviour from teacher to student, mentions of disappearance of a friend, explicit smut, profanity.
origamiaround
gamechangershow
titsay
stormborns
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
romaincrisis
