#e-h

Crimson Beneath the Snow

Mingi was thirteen the first time he failed a hunt on purpose.

The deer stood trapped near the frozen bend of the Song River, its slender frame quivering with exhaustion. An arrow had grazed its flank, dangerously close to the heart, and blood welled and froze along the wound. Snow blanketed its back like a ghostly second skin, each flake stubbornly clinging to the rough fur, while its breath burst out in frantic clouds that vanished in the cold. The hawk crest on Mingi’s cloak caught the pale light as he moved through the brittle underbrush, bow poised, boots sinking into untouched snow. Only the crunch beneath his feet and the frantic rhythm of the deer’s fear disturbed the hush.

He had tracked it for hours. His instructors would have called it proof of discipline. His father would have called it instinct.

The deer turned its head.

Its eyes were not wild.

They were tired.

Mingi lowered the bow.

“Go,” he muttered under his breath, glancing back toward the ridge where the other hunters’ shouts echoed faintly.

The deer staggered instead.

Mingi cursed softly, slinging his bow over his shoulder as he crept forward, each step swallowed by the heavy snow. The arrow in the deer’s side was shallow but merciless, the flesh around it angry and inflamed. With a swift, practised motion, he broke the shaft and eased the arrowhead free, his hands steady despite the tremor in his chest, knuckles burning red from cold and strain. Hot blood pooled beneath his fingers, soaking his gloves and sizzling as it met the snow.

“Don’t make a sound,” he whispered, as if the creature could understand clan politics and filial disappointment. “If they hear you, they’ll finish it.”

He pressed cold snow against the injury, the sharp chill stinging his hands and numbing his fingertips as blood stained the whiteness pink. The deer quivered but did not flee, its flanks rising and falling with nervous, shallow breaths. When Mingi drew back at last, the creature remained, its deep eyes still fixed on him in silent consideration.

Then it slipped into the trees.

Mingi told the others he had lost the trail.

He did not tell them he had found something else.

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆

Yunho found out two weeks later.

They met at the cedar as they always did—under the pretence of scouting, blades at their hips, lies already prepared. Yunho’s fur-lined mantle was too large for him still, though he wore it as if it had grown there. Snow caught in his dark hair, melting slowly against his temples.

“You’re bleeding,” Yunho said immediately, eyes narrowing.

Mingi glanced down. The scratch along his wrist—earned when the deer had startled at the snap of the arrow—had reopened.

“It’s nothing.”

Yunho stepped closer anyway. He always did that—closed distances like they offended him.

“Nothing gets you scolded for sloppy form?” Yunho asked dryly. “Or nothing, as in you tripped over your own ego again?”

Mingi rolled his eyes. “I tripped over a tree root.”

“Mm.”

There was a pause. The kind that had grown comfortable between them.

“I need to show you something,” Mingi said suddenly.

Yunho blinked. “That sounds ominous.”

“It’s not.”

“You said that last time, and we nearly got caught by your uncle.”

“That was your fault.”

“It was not.”

“It was,” Mingi insisted, already turning toward the deeper part of the forest. “You laugh too loudly.”

Yunho followed anyway.

The forest grew denser as they left the border behind. This was true Song territory, a place dangerous for the heir of House Jeong. Yunho never faltered. He had always walked beside Mingi as if the ancient feud was nothing more than a distant story.

They reached a small clearing near the river bend. The ice had thinned there, water whispering beneath it. Mingi lifted a hand, signalling for quiet.

Yunho arched a brow but complied.

A shape stepped from between the trees.

The deer.

Its coat was darker where the wound had mended, fur rough and patchy along a pale scar. The deer moved with careful steps, hooves whispering in the snow, but there was no fear in its posture. When it spotted Mingi, it halted—ears twitching, nostrils wide—then, to their surprise, it edged forward, neck outstretched, muscles drawn tight with wary hope.

Yunho’s hand went instinctively to his sword.

“Mingi.”

“Don’t,” Mingi said quickly. “Please.”

The word hung there.

Yunho stilled.

The deer lowered its head slightly, as if in acknowledgement. It did not flee.

“You were supposed to hunt it,” Yunho said quietly, eyes flicking between the animal and Mingi.

“I know.”

“And?”

“And I didn’t.”

The wind shifted, carrying the scent of river and pine.

Mingi swallowed. “It looked at me,” he said, the admission rough. “Not like prey. Just… like something that wanted to live.”

Yunho studied him in that infuriatingly perceptive way he had.

“You’ll be punished if they find out.”

“They won’t.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Mingi exhaled sharply. “I’m supposed to be the next blade of House Song. I know that. I know what my father expects.” His jaw tightened. “But I don’t want to kill something just because I can.”

The deer stepped closer still, close enough now that Mingi could reach out if he dared.

Yunho watched the creature for a long moment.

Then, slowly, he removed his hand from his sword.

“You’re terrible at being ruthless,” Yunho said.

Mingi shot him a glare. “You’re one to talk.”

Yunho stepped to his side, shoulder brushing Mingi’s. “If it makes you feel better,” he murmured, “I don’t think I’ve ever known you without this softness.”

Mingi huffed. “That’s an insult.”

“It’s not.”

The deer stretched its neck forward and nudged Mingi’s sleeve.

Mingi froze.

Yunho’s breath caught in a quiet, incredulous laugh. “It likes you.”

“Don’t make it strange.”

“I’m not.”

With reverence, Mingi slowly raised his hand and laid it on the deer’s neck. The fur was thick and coarse, radiating warmth that seeped into his frozen fingers. Beneath his palm, the animal’s pulse fluttered quickly and steadily, a fragile promise of life against the cold.

For a moment, none of them moved.

“You realise,” Yunho said softly, “that one day they’ll ask you to hunt something far more difficult than a deer.”

Mingi’s hand tightened reflexively in the animal’s coat.

“I know.”

“And what will you do then?”

The question was not about the forest.

Mingi did not look at him. “I don’t know.”

The deer shifted, pressing closer, as if shielding him from an answer he wasn’t ready to give.

Yunho watched as the hawk-crest heir of House Song stood in the snow, holding close a life he had spared. Something in Yunho’s gaze softened.

“Does it have a name?” Yunho asked after a while.

Mingi hesitated, then nodded once. “I call it Winter.”

Yunho smiled faintly. “You’re sentimental.”

“Shut up.”

Winter flicked an ear, unimpressed by clan politics and adolescent pride alike.

Yunho stepped forward then, slow enough not to startle it. He extended his bare hand.

The deer sniffed his fingers.

For a single, suspended heartbeat, the heir of House Jeong stood deep in Song territory, unarmed before the creature his lover had saved. No banners. No witnesses. Only breath misting in the cold.

Winter did not bolt.

It leaned into Yunho’s touch.

Mingi stared.

“Well,” Yunho said lightly, stroking the deer’s neck. “It seems we’re both terrible at this.”

“At what?”

“At being what they made us.”

The river whispered beneath the ice. Snow began to fall again—soft this time, almost gentle.

They stood there until their fingers went numb, until Winter finally stepped back into the trees, vanishing between trunks like a ghost forgiven.

As they walked back toward the border, shoulders brushing, Yunho said quietly, “If you ever have to choose again… choose like you did today.”

Mingi glanced at him. “Even if it costs me everything?”

Yunho’s answer was immediate.

“Yes.”

The wind tore through the mountain pass, ravenous and wild, its hunger echoing off the stone.

The wind scraped over the broken stones of the ruined fortress and threaded through the burned remains of its gates. The snow didn’t fall gently; it attacked in harsh, cutting waves, stinging every bit of uncovered skin and erasing footprints as soon as they appeared. The elders used to say this pass was ancient—older than House Jeong or House Song, older even than their feud.

Tonight, it felt as old as time itself.

Their clansmen’s bodies were strewn across the snow.

Blood pooled in the snow, forming wide, spreading stains. The crimson silks of House Jeong tangled with the indigo sashes of House Song, their colors meaningless in death. Both sides had come here—united not by peace, but by fear. The creature that emerged from the pass, an embodiment of cold and hunger, cared nothing for banners or family ties.

It sought only warmth.

Even now, Yunho saw it behind his eyelids: a towering spectre of frost and bone, crowned with antlers like a twisted forest god, its breath a storm that stripped flesh from bone. Their fathers had named it a curse from the rival clan. They had been mistaken.

It had been older than their hatred.

They had not killed each other.

They had fought back-to-back instead.

Now, as silence reclaimed the pass and the last of the unnatural wind died into a low, exhausted moan, Yunho swayed on his feet.

Mingi caught him before he fell.

“Easy,” Mingi murmured, his voice stripped of command, of pride, of everything but fear.

Yunho’s fur-lined mantle—white wolf pelts clasped at his throat with the heavy sigil of House Jeong—was stiff with frozen blood. It dragged at his shoulders like a yoke. The embroidery of his rank, painstakingly stitched by hands that had expected him to survive long enough to be deemed a legend, was torn through by a blackened gash across his ribs.

Mingi’s hand, clenched around his sword’s hilt, shook. Blood from a jagged wound along his side soaked through the leather beneath the Song family crest—a twin-headed hawk etched in silver, dulled by ice. He’d carried that blade since he was twelve, since the day his father pressed it into his palms and promised, one day, you will drive this through Jeong Yunho’s heart.

Instead, he had driven it into the spine of a monster.

Yunho coughed, red blooming against his lips. It steamed faintly in the cold.

“The sword was always too heavy, Mingi,” he whispered, voice catching on the frost.

Mingi tightened his grip around him. “Don’t talk.”

“Not because of the steel.” Yunho’s fingers curled weakly into the front of Mingi’s armour, crumpling the indigo surcoat marked with Song’s hawk. “But because of the name etched into the crossguard.”

His knees buckled.

Mingi went down with him into the snow.

The cold hit at once, worming through torn cloth, through flesh, down to the marrow. Mingi shifted, hauling Yunho upright against his chest, holding him as if he could share what little strength he had left. The mantle’s fur grazed Mingi’s jaw, carrying the scent of iron and smoke.

Underneath it all, Yunho was shaking.

Not from fear.

From release.

They had been children when they first met at the border.

Twelve and twelve. Sent to “scout” the disputed ridge where Jeong pines met Song riverlands. Each had known exactly who the other was. Each had carried a blade too large for their hands.

They had circled each other like wary wolves.

“You’re taller than I thought,” Mingi had said finally, frowning as if personally offended.

“You’re louder than I hoped,” Yunho had replied.

They had not fought that day.

Nor the next.

The pretence of reconnaissance became ritual. They would meet beneath the twisted cedar that marked the invisible line between territories. They would report back to their clans with half-truths: No sign of movement. Borders secure.

Borders were never secure.

They would sit shoulder to shoulder, backs against bark, swords laid within reach. Mingi would talk about the pressure in his father’s gaze, about the way the elders whispered “heir” like it meant “sacrifice.” Yunho would listen, then confess quietly how tired he was of being measured by how cleanly he could cut.

The first time Mingi kissed him, it was snowing, too.

Softly, then.

Not like this.

Now the snow fell hard enough to bury them.

“Mingi.” Yunho’s voice dragged him back to the present. It was thin. Fragile.

“I’m here.”

Mingi’s gauntlet had long since been torn away. His bare hand, slick with blood from his own side and Yunho’s wound, pressed against Yunho’s ribs, trying to slow the bleeding. Their blood had mixed hours ago in the chaos of battle—indistinguishable on steel, on skin.

“You’re freezing,” Mingi said hoarsely.

“So are you.”

A faint smile flickered across Yunho’s lips, vanishing almost as soon as it appeared.

Without the mantle, without the banners and the watching eyes of their clans, Yunho looked younger. Not the undefeated blade of House Jeong. Not the prodigy who had split practice dummies before he could grow a beard.

Just Yunho.

Snow gathered in his dark lashes.

Yunho looked up at the sky, snowflakes gathering on his face. "It’s so clean," he murmured. "The snow."

Mingi followed his gaze. The storm clouds were breaking. A thin, colourless dawn pressed faintly against the horizon.

"It’s covering everything," Yunho said, his tone softer now. "The blood, the banners... It doesn’t care who we were or what we did."

His hand shifted weakly, searching.

Mingi took it immediately.

Their fingers laced together, slick and sticky with mingled blood. Crimson filled the creases of their palms, wedged beneath their nails. House Jeong. House Song. In the end, it was all the same red.

"It’s like it’s washing everything away," Yunho whispered. "Can you feel that too?"

Mingi swallowed against the ache in his throat. He adjusted his grip, pulling Yunho closer, tucking his face into the curve of his neck as if to shield him from the cold he could no longer fight.

“I feel you,” Mingi said.

Yunho’s breath shuddered out in something like a laugh.

“For the first time,” he said, words slowing, “I’m not an heir.”

Snow gathered on the silver clasp at his throat, muting the detailed wolf’s head. It collected along the hawk engraved on Mingi’s sword, blurring its fierce lines. The emblems that had shaped their lives faded, then vanished beneath the white.

“You’re Yunho,” Mingi told him.

Yunho’s fingers tightened faintly in response.

“And you?” he whispered.

Mingi bent his head until their foreheads touched, breath mingling in faint, fading clouds.

“Just Mingi.”

No titles.

No fathers’ expectations.

No century of dead men demanding vengeance.

Only the forest, silent now. Only the mountain pass, ancient and indifferent. Only the two of them, kneeling in the snow as dawn crept closer.

Yunho’s breathing slowed.

Then stilled.

Mingi felt the exact moment the tension left his body—the blade finally laid down.

He held him anyway.

The snow rose, gentle and unyielding. It blanketed the torn mantle, the shattered sword, the earth stained with their blood. It followed the contours of their joined hands before hiding them from sight.

By morning, the pass was untouched and white.

Beneath it, the two greatest warriors of their time rested, fingers entwined, faces turned to each other. House Jeong and House Song would send search parties. They would find only a battlefield wiped clean.

Their heirs were gone.

Their feud remained.