of sins

He had driven himself past the point of reason.

Every scrape of paper, every photograph pinned beneath his hand carried the weight of Baekhyun's loss, and he treated them as if they were his own. He traced timelines until they blurred, sifted through reports until the ink itself seemed to bleed, his focus narrowing into obsession. Each unanswered question was another stone pressing into his chest, and he bore it willingly because this was for Baekhyun, for his hyung. The other anchor he had, the one person whose approval mean more than sleep or breath.

He told himself he'd rest once he found the next thread, once he closed the next gap. But exhaustion crept in like smoke, seeping into his bones, and when his head finally sagged against the crook of his arm, he was far too gone to resist. The pen slipped from his fingers, a faint mark trailing across the page, and the silence folded over him. Even in sleep, his brow stayed faintly furrowed, as though the hunt still pursed him behind closed eyes.

Meanwhile, Baekhyun stood in the doorway longer than they intended, watching. A quiet ache stirred in them at the sight: this boy who was not bound to them by blood, yet carried their grief as though it were his own. Junho had poured himself into the search without complaint, wearing his strength thin in the name of loyalty no one had demanded of him. It touched the elder in a way words could not reach, warming and wounding him in equal measure.

They moved forward with care, as though afraid to disturb the fragile peace sleep had finally granted. The blanket they draped over Junho’s shoulders was soft, and they’d done so with the gentlest of gestures. For a moment, their hand lingered there, an older brother’s touch that was protective, grateful, and silent.

The laugh grated.

It wasn't the sound itself that bothered him, but what it stood for in this situation: mockery sharpened into something Gyumin knew would dig under his skin. Zero's teeth clenched, jaw aching in an effort to suppress the irritation threatening to tear him apart. But he said nothing. Not yet, at least. Shadows stirred at his heels like a restless tide, his patience fraying with each pulse of light that threatened to flicker against the wizard's smirk.

His body moved on its own, without so much of a thought having been entertained. The dark carried him forward, each step swallowed by the silence until the air itself thinned around them. One hand shot out in a swift motion, seizing the elder's wrist. Cold flooded through his palm, shadows pouring over the flesh, binding it tight. He felt the twitch of a pulse falter beneath his grip and for a fleeting second he wanted to snap it, to hear bone split and watch that damn grin drain from Gyumin's face.

The thought burned hotter than he meant it to. His breath dragged ragged between his teeth, chest tight as if rage itself were choking him from within. The room began to dim around the edges, the weight of his fury pressing outward. Glass trembling, wood splitting under the coil of darkness that seeped from his body. He caught himself in it, felt how close he was to losing the last thread of control.

Zero's gaze never faltered, crimson hues boring into Gyumin's. he wanted them to feel it, the hunger of the dark, the promise of what would happen if he let it spill free. The thought of silencing them permanently clawed at his restraint, and for a moment, he imagined it.

His grip tightened once before he forced himself to release. The recoil of restraint lashed though him, sharp and bitter. Shadows snapped back into his skin, the room heavy; stripped of warmth, silence broken only by the unsteady rise and fall of his chest.

His fingers wouldn’t stop shaking.

He told them to still, mentally barked the command like a solider snapping orders, but they wouldn’t listen. His hands trembled in his lap, twitching like frayed wires sparking to life, and he curled them into a fists so tight the cuts on his knuckles split again. Pain helped him sometimes, but not tonight.

He couldn’t breathe right.

Too much air, then not enough. Like his lungs had forgotten their rhythm, like something invisible had wrapped around his chest and was squeezing. His pulse beat erratically behind his eyes, his ribs rising fast, too fast, and not fast enough.

Inhale, exhale.

Inhale, exhale—fuck.

He counted the seconds between each inhale, the pressure behind his sternum mounting as if he were about to break open. It wasn’t the pain that scared him, it was the nothingness that came with it. The hollow. Like the inside of him had been scraped clean.

His back hit the wall with a quiet thud as he slid down to the floor. The room spun at the edges. Distant. Cold. And too damn loud. His fingers fumbled toward the bottle of blood tablets spilt beside him but he stopped halfway. His hands wouldn’t work. Shadows coiled weakly at his fingertips like they sensed it too—whatever storm was pulling him under, but they did nothing. Just lingered, just watched.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

Breathe.

Calm down. You’ve handled worse. Get up.

But the voice in his head was barely louder than a whisper, and he didn’t believe it. He was not okay. And he thought he was alone until the door slowly creaked opened. Zero didn’t look up right away. Couldn’t. He knew that voice, though. He couldn’t mistake it, even he if tried.

“Junho.” Pause. “What happened to your face?”

He blinked, vision blurring around the edges. Baekhyun stood in the doorway. Not a hallucination. Not a dream. Real; in the flesh. Which made this feel so much worse.

Zero let his head fall back against the wall, eyes unfocused, jaw clenched tight. He wasn’t ready to be seen like this—splayed out, breathing wrong, his pride bleeding out between shallow inhales. “Don’t,” he croaked, voice thin, tearing at the seams. “Don’t start.”

Baekhyun stepped forward.

His fists flexed instinctively, nails biting into torn palms, but he couldn’t summon his usual bite. No snark, no venom. Just the distressed echo of panic clawing up his throat like a scream he didn’t want to let loose. “Just… give me a second,” he managed, one arm curling around his ribs like in an effort to keep himself together. “I—“ He couldn’t finish. The words dissolved like ash in his mouth.

Baekhyun crouched beside him. They didn’t speak, didn’t touch him. Just waited. And something about that quiet, unflinching presence made it worse. Or maybe better. He didn’t know anymore.

His breath hitched again, unsteady. “I—I can’t stop it,” he finally admitted, the words cracked on their way out. “My body won’t listen.”

Baekhyun said nothing, but he didn’t leave. And Zero hated how much that helped. He swallowed hard, tried again, slower this time; shallower.

Inhale, exhale.

x / nonverbal prompts. accepting.

The silence was vast, an expanse that pressed against his skull until every thought rang louder than it should. Zero stood still, eyes cast over the pale sweep of the mountains that cut against the sky, but his mind was nowhere near the scenery. It was back where the blood still stained him, where shadows curled into names he couldn’t bury. Taeyeon, Kris, the face of his sister when she was a child, the weight of his own choices piling one over another until they built a pyre too tall to climb down from.

He thought of what he had become: a halfling, tethered to vengeance like a dog to its chain, convinced that if he pulled hard enough the collar would snap and he’d finally be free. But it never did. Every time he thought he was close, his failures carved the links deeper into his neck. He hated how familiar it had become, the taste of rage that dulled only to return sharper; hungrier.

The wind shifted, carrying the scent of the rain, and he almost welcomed it, wanted it to strip the skin from his bones so he’d feel clean again. He had lost track of how long he’d been staring, how long he’d been drowning in his own head.

It wasn’t until the warmth of a palm grazed his cheek that he flinched, an almost imperceptible startle. Aki. Her touch was featherlight, but it struck like a crack through glass, shattering the spiral he had been feeding. His eyes returned back to the present and eventually found hers.

For a moment he despised how easily she could do that, drag him out of the abyss with nothing but skin and warmth. But beneath that disdain was something worse: the faint relief that someone had bothered at all. He didn’t realize how far gone he was until her touch snapped him back down to reality.

x /sparring and training. accepting.

The night had split open with the rain, sheets of it hammering the alleys of Seoul until the city bled silver. Zero's footsteps splashed through the puddles, the sound lost to the raging storm. His breath burned against his teeth. The scent was still there, faint but undeniable. Taeyeon. Kris. He could taste them in the downpour like copper, so close it made his vision sharper, made every vein in his body coil with immeasurable fury.

Close. Too fucking close.

He turned a sharp corner and there, through the veil of rain, shadows darted across the rooftops. His chest tightened with triumph, the pulse of vengeance hammering so loud he mistook it for clarity. He should've waited. He should've thought. But thought was ash when bloodlust and memory tangled, when the ghost of his parents' screams pressed like a knife to his heart.

So, he lunged.

The darkness at his feet surged, answering his will. It spilled like smoke and coiled into his palm, lengthening into the shape of a blade; black, serrated, and hungry. He drove it forward, recklessly, desperately, the weapon cleaving through the storm with a snarl. For a fleeting moment, he swore he had them - the silhouettes froze, startled, but his momentum betrayed him. The slick tile slid out beneath him, his footing gone.

Kris turned, faster than they had any right to be, his own shadowing flaring in response, their blade meeting his mid-swing. Sparks of black fire hissed where the weapons met. Zero staggered, his control slipping, his blade fraying at the edges like smoke about to dissipate.

It was too late to recover.

Kris' counterstrike came for his chest, and then a hand clamped his wrist, dragging him back from the edge with a force that jolted bone. He hit the rooftop hard, the impact knocking breath from lungs. Kris and Taeyeon dissolved into the rain like smoke, gone with the wind, while rage clawed at this chest; the feeling raw and uncomfortable.

"You're out of your fucking mind." Leo's voice cut through the storm, sharp and controlled, burning with anger. Their grip was like iron on Zero's arm as though daring him to struggle. "That was really stupid of you, and you know it."

His jaw clenched. Rain plastered his hair to his forehead, blood slick on his lip where he'd bitten down too damn hard. He wrenched his arm free, the shadow still writhing his palm before dissipating into the mist. The urge to bare his fangs at Leo nearly overwhelmed him.

"I don't give a fuck," he ground out, voice low and ragged. The words trembled with something volatile, barely contained. His fists ached to tear the night apart, to smash, to kill, anything to release the frenzy rattling his ribcage. But instead, his brows narrow as his gaze meets the others, his fist slamming into the air. "I almost had them."

They'd been right there, right within arms reach and he fucking lost them.

x / nonverbal prompts. accepting.

He couldn't remember the last time it had come down to this, where the denial of blood had dragged him so far into the abyss of hunger that sanity itself began to fray. His reflection in the mirror was already unrecognizable: skin stretched too thin, veins spidering beneath the surface like ink bleeding through fragile parchment. His eyes burned a shade to bright, the crimson glow of hunger pulsing against the pallor of his face. He looked less a man than a shadow wearing his skin, a creature caged too long.

Then suddenly, a soft sound broke through the silence - a breath, a step at the doorway - and the thin thread of composure wound tight around him slowly began to splinter. He gripped the porcelain sink until his knuckles paled, jaw locking against the rising tide of instinct that roared in his veins. But the sound of them was there and it was unbearable; so close, so living.

His fist lashed out before thought could catch it. Glass shattered, a violent chorus ringing sharp, scattering broken fragments across the tiled floor. The mirror broke into a web of fractured faces, each shard catching a different silver of his monstrous self. Blood welled quickly from his knuckles, sliding in rivulets down his wrist, painting the porcelain with thin streaks of red. The scent hit him like a blow. He dropped his head forward, lungs dragging ragged breaths as the hunger screamed louder.

x / nonverbal prompts. accepting.

The bourbon burned sweeter than it should have. He knew it the moment the second glass slipped too easily down his throat, knew it when the warmth spread faster than usual, threading through his veins like sunlight poured too strong. He didn’t question it, not at first. Alcohol had never touched him, never bent his body the way it bent mortals. But this heat curled lazy and insistent, loosening ahead rigid lines of his posture until his forehead sank onto the crook of his arms.

The glass hung between his fingers, tilting dangerously with its amber catching the light. His bangs fell over his eyes, hiding the flush warming of his cheeks. Strange, he thought, half-lidded, half-smiling. So this is what it feels like…

Then the door eased open. A weight of silence, then the soft scrape of footsteps dragging across the room. Zero didn’t look up right away, but when he did, just barely lifting his head with heavy lashes, he caught Baekhyun standing there. Arms crossed, mouth curved. Amusement written so blatantly across their features it made his ears flush red with heat.

“Junho,” they said, voice carrying a laughter even before it broke loose. “Chanyeol spiked your drink.”

Zero blinked, sluggish, the words slow to sink past the haze humming in his skull. His lips parted as if to argue, then closed again. He let his cheek sink back against his sleeve, hiding in the shadow of his arm. “Not drunk,” he muttered, muffled and stubborn.

Baekhyun’s chuckle filled the room, both warm and merciless. “Oh, you’re drunk. He laced it with magic—you never stood a chance. And I’ll admit, I like you better this way.”

The hand came next, settling in the back of his chair, tugging gently at his shoulder. “Come on. Get up. You can spend the night in my guest room.”

Zero grumbled low, tightening his arms around himself, burrowing deeper like a boy refusing to leave his pillow. “Don’t want to.” His voice was husky, softened, and almost petulant. So unlike him it made Baekhyun laugh outright.

x / accepting.

The training room still hummed with the heat of their sparring, air split by the memory of steel and the hard rhythm of breath. Zero didn’t hold back, she’d ask him not to; demanded it, and he obliged. Yet even as he drove her hard, testing the limits of her speed, she’d met him strike for strike. And now, against all expectation, she had him pinned to the ground.

Stone pressed cold against his back, her weight steady and sure above him, eyes burning with a determination he’d never seen in her as a child. For a moment, his breath caught in his throat and he just stared. Not at the stance, nor the victory, but the little girl he’d left behind was gone, a fragment of his memory, and in her place now stood someone strong, fierce, and unyielding.