Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The boy king was too young for war, but war did not wait for his voice to deepen. It came anyway — like smoke under a closed door, silent and suffocating, and it crowned him before he could learn how to pray properly.

He sat on the palace steps, barefoot, the sharp corners of his discarded crown biting into the stone beside him. In his lap rested the sword — long, gleaming, too heavy for his slender hands. It had been forged by gods and gifted by emperors. But today, it would pass to someone else.

Footsteps approached, echoing against marble. The boy looked up.

His general knelt before him, head bowed. He was tall and broad-shouldered, his armor dark with ash. Blood dried along the edge of his jaw, but he didn’t flinch. The boy hated the way he looked at him — like he was sacred. Like he was holy. Like he wasn’t just a frightened child drowning under the weight of duty.

“You saved the capital again,” the boy said softly. It was not gratitude. It was grief wearing a polite face.

The general did not answer. Praise was no comfort when comrades lay dead in snowbanks.

“You should have let them execute you,” the king whispered, almost like a secret. “They called you a traitor for sparing the rebels. Had I not intervened…”

“Your Majesty did what was just,” the general replied, his voice low and steady. “They had already surrendered.”

“Justice doesn’t quiet the ministers.” The boy looked down at the sword. “You’ll need this when they try again.”

He held it out. The general didn’t move.

“Please, Seokjin,” the king said, his voice beginning to shake. “Take it. I need you to live.”

For a moment, the general looked up. Their eyes met. Something flickered — something far too old for either of them. Then it vanished. The general dipped his head again and accepted the sword.

It gleamed between them like a promise. Like fate. Like the end of something that had never been allowed to begin.

The snow fell gently that morning, as if the heavens hadn’t yet heard the boy king had ordered a god’s death.

General Kim Seokjin stood at the palace gates, bound in chains, his armor stripped, his name dishonored. His back was straight. His eyes were calm. He did not beg.

The ministers flinched when he passed. The executioners avoided his gaze. A few wept.

The sword — the king’s sword — was driven into his chest in front of them all.

He collapsed where he stood. The sky split with thunder. Blood turned the snow black. The crowd scattered.

No one dared to move his body. Not the first day. Not the second. Nor the third.

It lay undisturbed for nearly a hundred nights. Until, at last, it breathed.

On the hundredth night, under a crimson moon, Seokjin’s eyes opened.

He did not scream. He only gasped, slow and shuddering, as if his lungs were remembering how to live. The sword still jutted from his chest. It pulsed faintly — not bleeding, not healing, just... waiting.

The guards who had been sent to bury him fled in terror. His legend spread faster than fire: the god of war had returned. Death had refused him. The earth had spit him back out.

Seokjin stood in the snow and looked toward the capital.

He felt nothing but cold.

His first nephew was just a boy when Seokjin found him again, hidden behind the ruins of a burnt farmhouse, clutching the charred remains of a prayer scroll.

The boy had the family’s eyes — bright and stubborn. He didn’t cry when Seokjin approached. He only stared, silent and defiant, as if to say: *What took you so long?*

They boarded a ship together, two fugitives in silence. The crew welcomed them with quiet suspicion.

But rumors traveled faster than wind. The crew recognized him. They whispered behind barrels and blades. A god walked among them, they said. A man who did not eat, did not sleep, did not bleed.

They threw the boy overboard during the night.

Seokjin dove after him without hesitation. Salt water filled his lungs. The sword in his chest dragged him down like an anchor. But he reached the boy — held him, kicked upward, cursed the stars — and dragged them both onto the rocks.

The boy shook from cold and hunger. Seokjin, too. But he didn’t show it. He built a fire with bare hands. He stole bread from nearby stables. He told stories of constellations until the boy fell asleep beside him.

He did not speak of the sword.

He never did.

Paris, 1912.

The Goblin wore a tailored suit and a long wool coat. He moved through alleys and art salons like a myth disguised in velvet.

He saw a man fall on cobblestone and shatter his leg. Seokjin set the bone without asking for thanks. He paid the doctor and left a red tulip on the windowsill.

Another day, he passed a boy coughing blood in a gutter. Seokjin carried him to a convent. The nuns said they’d seen an angel. He left before they asked for his name.

People remembered him. They called him many things. Protector. Saint. Curse.

But the stories were all the same in the end:

The Goblin waits for his bride.

Only she can draw the sword from his chest.

Only then will he be free to die.

Seokjin stopped correcting them after a century.

Seoul. Present day.

The city was all light and noise and movement, but the Goblin remained still.

He knelt before a temple fire, smoke curling around his shoulders. He placed incense in the bowl and whispered the names of the dead: soldiers, villagers, orphans, kids. He remembered them all. He carried them all.

He did not speak the name of the one who killed him. He hadn’t spoken that name in hundreds of years.

Wind pressed against the doors. A faint creak echoed behind him. The fire flickered. A presence shifted on the other side of the gate — familiar, old, cold as winter rain.

Seokjin did not turn.

He only said, “Don’t send me another fake. No more dead ends.”

Behind him, the gate clicked open.

A man entered. He wore a black hat. A coat brushed his ankles. He moved like shadow — no rush, no sound, no purpose but presence itself.

His eyes were sharp and blank, untouched by time. His face was too beautiful for memory.

He was Death.

He did not remember his name.

He did not know what waited for him inside this temple.

But somewhere, buried deep, something inside him stirred. Like grief. Like longing. Like recognition without understanding.

He stepped forward.

He did not know yet that the man kneeling by the fire had once loved him. And hated him. And died for him.

But soon, he would remember.

And then — the real story would begin.

Chapter Text

Rain hadn’t let up for three days. The clouds clung to the rooftops like cobwebs, gray and breathless, and the alleyways shimmered with reflections of a city too busy to mourn its own ghosts.

Jung Hoseok adjusted the brim of his black fedora as he stepped onto the curb, the wind curling around his long coat like fingers. He didn’t feel the cold. He hadn’t in centuries.

Today’s soul had died clutching a lottery ticket. Hoseok didn’t flinch as the man’s spirit blinked into the empty bus seat beside him. It was always this way—the sudden shift from breath to stillness, from body to soul. Hoseok offered the man a polite smile, the way one might offer a stranger a lighter, and said nothing as the man faded away.

Death was predictable. Death was kind. He understood it better than he understood himself.

The Reaper did not fear ghosts. They also didn’t seem to fear him. That was the irony.

He saw them everywhere—trailing in subway cars, hovering over crosswalks, lining up outside hospitals, waiting to be noticed. But they never spoke to him. Not because they didn’t want to, but because he never gave them a reason to try. His presence unnerved them. The black hat, the coat, the silence. It marked him as something final. And none of them wanted to be next.

Until now.

As Jung Hoseok walked through the old city, his suitcase in one hand, the ghosts came whispering. One reached out, fingers trembling. “You’re going to the Goblin’s house,” she rasped.

“The what?” Hoseok didn’t stop walking.

Another ghost floated alongside him, the hem of her old-fashioned hanbok torn and flickering. “You shouldn’t stay there. Not with him. He devours souls.”

“He doesn’t,” corrected a third. “He saves them. But he’s angry now. He’s been angry for centuries.”

Hoseok adjusted his hat and kept walking. He had no time for stories.

##

The mansion was… extravagant.

Three stories of pale stone, glowing warmly under the setting sun. Wide balconies and carved wood doors. The kind of place that should be haunted in the gothic sense, but instead felt alive. Like the air itself had been scented with longing and lavender.

Taehyung waited by the front gate, oversized coat, scarf flapping in the wind, eyes wide with anticipation.

“Hyung!” he called brightly, handing over the keys. “You made it!”

“This is it?” Hoseok looked up. “Bit grand for a sublet.”

Taehyung shrugged, sheepish. “My uncle travels. You’ll have the whole place to yourself. Peace and quiet.”

Hoseok turned the key over in his palm. “Six months?”

“Paid in full.”

“And he’s okay with this?”

“Couldn’t be more okay!” Taehyung said quickly.

The door creaked open as Hoseok stepped inside.

The next moment, a tall man in a black turtleneck materialized out of nowhere, eyes sharp as flint.

“Who are you,” Kim Seokjin demanded, “and why are you in my house?”

Hoseok didn’t flinch. “Jung Hoseok. I live here now.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I paid rent.”

“To whom?”

“To Kim Tae-“

They both turned—

Taehyung was gone.

The silence was deep. Painful. Eternal.

Seokjin blinked slowly, betrayed in every dimension. “That little—”

“Signed lease,” Hoseok said, producing it from his folder like a weapon. “You’ll have to take it up with your family. I’m not moving.”

Seokjin stared at him. And for a moment, Hoseok thought he might combust.

But then the Goblin exhaled. “Fine. Six months.”

He turned and walked into the house without another word.

“Great talk,” Hoseok muttered, stepping inside.

Seokjin sat in front of the mirror, rubbing his temples. Of all the souls in Seoul, it had to be a Reaper. In his house. Breathing his air. Drinking his coffee, probably. Reapers were generally harmless, but this one... this one made something in his chest ache in a way he hadn’t felt in centuries.

He’d looked into the man’s eyes and seen a storm.

Worse, he’d felt something stir—an old thread tightening in his ribcage. It couldn’t be. He’d buried that feeling with the sword. With the King. With the man whose name he no longer spoke aloud.

He stood and closed the window. The wind was picking up again. Autumn, it seemed, had teeth this year.

They clashed immediately.

Seokjin liked symphonies in the morning. Hoseok liked silence.

Hoseok made instant coffee. Seokjin brewed his by hand with ceramic filters and imported beans.

“You breathe too loud,” Jin told him one morning.

“You meditate in the living room,” Hoseok replied.

But something shifted over time. Not with grand confessions, but with ordinary things—

A second pair of chopsticks set out at dinner.

Hoseok learning to appreciate the violin that played in the parlor when Seokjin was angry.

Seokjin tolerating Hoseok’s tea bags next to his hand-blended leaves.

They stopped speaking through gritted teeth and started speaking without thinking.

Breakfast became a ritual.

Dinner became comfort.

One night, over grilled mackerel, Hoseok asked a question.

“Who are you?”

Seokjin paused, eyes fixed on the fish bones. “A man who died.”

“That makes two of us.”

Outside, wind curled against the windows. The fire flickered lower in the hearth.

The ghosts began whispering again.

And Hoseok started listening.

“He’s the Goblin,” said a grandmother ghost, hunched and spectral. “The Lonely God. Immortal. Cursed.”

“He saves people,” another ghost chimed in. “But he never stays.”

“They say he’s waiting for someone. A bride who can end it.”

“The Goblin’s Bride,” they whispered. “The one who can see the sword.”

That night, Hoseok passed Seokjin in the hall.

The Goblin wasn’t doing anything remarkable—just wearing another obscenely soft sweater, hair damp from a shower, carrying a book under one arm—but something about the moment snagged in Hoseok’s brain.

He paused halfway to his room, looking back.

Seokjin didn’t notice. Or maybe he did and pretended not to.

Hoseok turned away, frowning to himself.

“He’s… beautiful,” he muttered, almost annoyed by the realization.

It wasn’t something he’d thought about a man before—not in this way. Not with a quiet, heartstopping sort of awareness. Not with the kind of gaze that lingered and questioned and wanted.

He shut his door and leaned against it.

“Why did I notice that?” he whispered.

No answer came.

But he didn’t take it back.

The Goblin was gorgeous.

Chapter Text

The prophecy came first.

Snow fell softly over Gyeongju’s frozen palace gardens while courtiers whispered darkly in the candlelit hall. A shaman, face pale as moonlight, stared at the young king:

“The traitor you executed will rise again. He will breathe with a sword in his chest—

…and only his bride can draw it forth. She will knock three times.”

The king paled, haunted. The Goblin was born.

…the battlefield still smoked.

The world had gone quiet. Blood soaked into the earth like ink into parchment. Bodies, limbs, helmets — all strewn like discarded stories no one wanted to finish.

He’d died. That much was certain.

The king’s sword, gilded with betrayal, had slid between his ribs and rooted there, a cold and unmovable truth. It didn’t hurt anymore — not physically. Just a deep, numb grief blooming out from his chest like frostbite.

But then—

A sharp wind howled over the ridge, scattering ash like snowflakes. The sky opened with the sound of thunder but no storm.

And Seokjin opened his eyes.

He gasped. Not with the ragged clutch of a dying man, but with the awful stillness of something reborn.

His hands clawed the bloody earth. He sat up, armor clinking, hair sticky with blood, and looked down.

It was still there.

A long, blackened sword embedded in his chest — cruel and ancient — pulsing with something not of this world. It didn’t bleed. It didn’t ache. It simply… existed. As if it had always been there.

He reached for it — fingers trembling — but couldn’t touch it. His hand passed through the hilt like mist.

Around him, the dead stirred not at all. A bird landed on a fallen spear and chirped, unaware that a god had just been born.

Seokjin staggered to his feet. When he looked into the distance, the air shimmered gold for a heartbeat — like a door that had almost opened but changed its mind.

“Am I…” he whispered, voice like smoke. “Alive?”

No one answered.

Soldiers from the village ran past him — and through him. Their eyes slid away. He screamed at them. No one heard.

But behind him, an old woman paused. A beggar. A shaman’s daughter. Her cloudy eyes locked with his, and she gasped.

“You,” she breathed, falling to her knees. “You rose.”

He blinked. “You… can see me?”

The woman nodded, weeping. “The prophecy is real. You are the Goblin.”

He staggered again, breathing fast. “I’m no goblin.”

“The sword is still in your chest,” she whispered.

He turned — and saw it again. Long and cursed and untouched by time.

“No one else will ever see it,” she said. “Except one.”

He looked at her, wild. “Who?”

“The one who can end your immortality.”

She stood, backing away into the smoke. Her voice lingered.

“She will knock three times.”

And then she was gone.

Seokjin fell to his knees — the battlefield suddenly empty again — and the sword gleamed once more, quiet as fate.

Hundreds of Years Later.

The snowstorm had arrived without warning, a swirling white curtain that swallowed the world whole. Wind clawed at the windows of the empty roadside bus shelter, the only place she had found to collapse. Her contractions had come fast, and now she was curled up on the frozen concrete bench, teeth chattering, arms around her belly, whispering over and over, “Please, not yet… Please…”

She had no one to call. No home left. No money. No warmth. Just the baby, and the hope that maybe—just maybe—the world wouldn’t be cruel enough to take them both.

Pain tore through her again. She cried out, doubling over, slipping from the bench onto the icy ground. Her breath steamed in the air. Her fingers trembled as she unzipped her coat, trying to cradle her belly, trying to hold on.

Tears streamed down her face, mixing with the snow that fell in clumps onto her cheeks. “Please,” she begged no one, “Let her live. I’ll give anything, just let her live.”

The snow paused. Not stopped—paused. Midair. Frozen in time.

And then, from between the trees on the far side of the road, he came.

A tall man in a black wool coat, long and regal like a noble from an era long gone. Snow did not touch him. His boots left no mark in the white.

She blinked in confusion, fear fighting awe. He knelt beside her slowly, gently, his dark eyes studying her—not coldly, but solemnly. As if he had seen this a hundred times. A thousand.

She whimpered, flinching as another contraction came. “Please… my baby… help my baby…”

The man said nothing at first. But his presence, strange and ancient, steadied the air around them. His voice, when he spoke, was low and powerful.

“She is fated to be born,” he said.

A warm wind swirled through the shelter, despite the freezing night. The frost on her cheeks melted. Her shivering slowed.

He raised one hand and a golden glow pulsed from his palm—gentle but fierce. The pain eased. The storm hushed. Somewhere in the trees, time seemed to hold its breath.

She cried again, but this time from relief. She laid back, and under the Goblin’s watch, her baby came into the world, tiny and red and furious at being cold.

The Goblin wrapped the newborn in her mother’s scarf, then, impossibly, reached into the air and pulled a woolen baby blanket from nowhere. It smelled faintly of cedar.

The baby stopped crying the moment she touched her mother’s skin. The woman, exhausted and overwhelmed, held her child close and mouthed a silent thank you.

The Goblin stood.

“I am not a god,” he said softly. “But I heard you.”

Snow began to fall again, as time resumed its steady march. The Goblin disappeared into the white, vanishing like mist between flakes. She never saw him leave.

But in her arms, her daughter took her first breath, warm and alive.

“What’s her name?” Asks the Goblin.

“Eun-Tuk,” says the new mother naming her new born little girl.

And far above, the stars blinked quietly in approval.

Eun-Tuk’s 8th birthday.

The kitchen smelled of vanilla cake and candle smoke. Little Eun‑Tuk beamed, hands clutched before her.

“Make a wish!” whispered her mother, voice gentle.

Eun‑Tuk blew out the candles—and in the smoky whisper she saw it:

Her mother’s hollow eyes, a porcelain face that never moved. That she’d been dead all along.

The silence screamed.

“Mom..?” She asked. “Are you dead?”

Her mother’s face dropped, uneven, but her sadness clear. Yes, her mother’s face was dead.

Her wail shattered the moment. Her heartbreak all that she would remember for the rest of her young life. Even though the next 8 years moved without any spark of happiness.

That night, Hoseok arrived too late. The soul he’d come to reap—omitted and unrecorded—was gone. He found instead a lifeless woman in her chair, birthday banner drooping across her back. He reaped her into silence and continues to search for her missing infant, now 8 years old, it seemed.

Present day — 8 years later.

The sea wind tugged at her hair.

It was a grey day — overcast sky, pale foamy waves, and the kind of cold that nipped your fingers but didn’t quite chase you home. Eun-Tuk clutched a small cake in a plastic container and walked slowly toward the shoreline. Sand filled her shoes, but she didn’t mind. The air smelled like salt and something older.

She didn’t look back.

She’d walked here alone. No one had asked where she was going, and no one would miss her. Her aunt had barked at her to clean the bathroom, and her cousins had laughed when they realized she’d bought herself a cake again.

She set the cake down on a flat rock.

A cheap strawberry shortcake, too sweet and too small. But she smiled at it anyway. Sixteen candles stood like thin little soldiers, trembling in the wind.

She lit them one by one, shielding each fragile flame with cupped hands.

Then she closed her eyes.

“I wish…”

A pause.

“…for someone to love me.”

She opened her eyes and blew.

The flames vanished. Smoke curled upward.

And then—

The wind stilled.

The sky darkened, just slightly. The waves seemed to hush, as if holding their breath.

And behind her, standing suddenly in the sand like he had always been there, was a man in a long black coat.

Tall. Striking. Almost wrong in how perfect he looked. His dark eyes were unreadable, and his presence felt… heavy, like stone polished by centuries.

Eun-Tuk turned, startled.

The man stared at her.

She took a step back. “Who—?”

But he just frowned. His brow furrowed as if he were surprised too.

“You can see me?” he asked.

She blinked. “Of course I can see you.”

He took a step closer, the hem of his coat catching the wind like wings. “That shouldn’t be possible.”

She stared, heart pounding. “Wait… are you…”

His eyes narrowed.

“You’re the Goblin, aren’t you?”

Silence fell between them.

A single gull cried overhead.

Then, almost too softly to hear, Seokjin said, “No one is supposed to see me. Unless…”

Eun-Tuk took a breath. “I… I’ve seen ghosts my whole life. But you’re not like them. You’re real. You’re here.”

He stared at her like he’d been struck.

And then she smiled — wide and bittersweet — and pointed to the cake. “Want a slice?”

He looked at the cake, at the rock, then back at her.

“You summoned me.”

“I just made a wish.”

“That’s how it works.”

He moved to sit beside her — not close, but not far — as the waves rolled in and out like an ancient lullaby. The candles smoked between them.

And for a while, they didn’t speak. Just a girl and a god on a lonely beach, both stunned by the impossibility of this moment while pretending they weren’t both made of sadness.

Only Days Later

Eun‑Tuk danced through Jin’s garden, bare feet on stone. Lanterns glowed like witnesses. She’d lit them for the Goblin.

“Ajusshi!” she called, her voice soft and faint.

He stepped from the shadows—the same kindness in his eyes she felt on birth’s first breath.

She grinned. “I made this for you.” Eggshell petals pressed into clay.

He accepted it. Worn hands tracing petals. On her cake, later, he watched while she blew out candles, exactly as before.

In the kitchen, Hoseok dropped his tea.

”She’s different,” Jin murmured as he paced, torn between exaltation and fear. “She summoned me. I’ve helped many people, but I’ve never been summoned.”

Hoseok folded his arms. “She’s not on the list, I looked! She shouldn’t exist!” he pressed. She doesn’t exist. She’s a ghost phantom.”

“She can see me! Always, no matter what! Even when I am invisible to other people,” Jin’s voice cracks. He glances at the door. As if running through it would somehow change the truth. “I think she’s my bride.”

Hoseok’s eyebrows lifted—and did not fall.

“Try it.” Jin nodded toward the front door. He opened it. A gold-glow whoosh—Jin was gone.

Hoseok watched…and waited. Seconds ticked.

And then he opened the door. He followed through and was on the house’s front steps. No one there.

He went back inside, confused. Where was Jin?

He reappeared moments later, walking through the front door.

“It didn’t work,” he told the waiting Reaper.

Hoseok clenched his jaw like scissors.
He lost his calm.

Jin didn’t notice and that was the problem.

Later That Night

The door clicked locked.

Boxes of kimchi and rice sat stacked in the hall.

Jin and Hoseok stood side by side, finishing supper.

Knock.

Jin stiffened.
Hoseok said nothing.

Jin’s heart stopped, but he found the strength to look out the window.

“It’s the girl!” Jin tells Hoseok.

Knock.

His coat whipped behind him as he vanished from the room — blinked — and appeared outside on the porch, between the door and its knocker. Like lightning, he landed between Eun-Tuk’s hand and the wood, stopping her from completing the third knock.

She froze.

Her eyes met his.

He didn’t say anything at first — just stared, jaw clenched. His breath fogged in the cold. Her hand was still raised.

“You don’t knock three times,” he said, low and sharp.

“I—I didn’t know,” she stammered. “I just… I had a dream I was supposed to come here.”

His eyes flicked to the side, as if trying to see time itself unraveling.

“I thought you might be in trouble,” she added, voice shrinking under his gaze.

He stepped back. The tension in his shoulders didn’t ease.

“You should come in,” he said finally.

She followed him inside, the old door creaking open behind them.

Inside the house, Hoseok stood barefoot on the heated floors, holding a cup of tea. He’d made it for the Goblin — out of something like habit. The sound of voices out front caught his ear, and he stepped toward the foyer just in time to see the door close.

He paused, listening.

Silence.

Then footsteps upstairs.

Muffled voices.

He turned to look at the two empty teacups he’d brought out — now both untouched.

A breath caught in his throat. Something was shifting.

He set the cups down a little too hard, his jaw tightening. “Seriously?” he muttered, eyes flicking toward the ceiling.

No one answered.

Not even the house.

Moments later, Hoseok walked through the back kitchen, coat over one arm, muttering to himself as he pulled on his boots.

“I pay for six months of rent, and she gets whisked in through the front door after knocking twice?” he scoffed. “Guess I’m just the roommate now.”

He glanced toward the soundless front hallway, then reached for the back door handle.

“Not even a word.”

The wind greeted him as he stepped out into the dark, the door clicking shut behind him.

The house had been many things over its long, ageless life — a sanctuary, a prison, a palace without subjects. Tonight, it was something new.

It was full. Almost like a home.

Seokjin walked a step behind Eun-Tuk as she padded softly down the velvet-lined hallway. She cradled the small, glowing cake box he had refused to comment on. The flickering sconces lit her outline — still half-shadow, still strange.

At the guest room door, he gestured.
“This one’s yours. No knocking.”

Eun-Tuk blinked. “What?”

He fixed her with a meaningful look. “You live here now. That means you don’t knock.”

There was a pause — not confusion, but recognition. The girl knew more than she should. Jin saw it in her eyes. She nodded slowly and disappeared inside with a quiet click of the door.

The Goblin turned.

Waiting in the hallway, leaning against the wall like a well-dressed statue, was Taehyung. His brow was arched. “You just let her move in?”

Seokjin didn’t slow. “She’s safer here.”

Taehyung fell into step beside him. “You never do anything without a reason. You think she’s the one?”

“She summoned me with birthday candles,” Jin muttered. “And she’s been following me through doors.”

“That’s your idea of compatibility now?”

“She hasn’t knocked three times.”

Taehyung stopped walking. “But you’re worried she might.”

Seokjin shrugged like it meant nothing. “That’s why she lives here now. Can’t knock if she’s already inside.”

Taehyung let out a snort — almost a laugh. “That’s your big plan? Hide the bride inside your own house?”

“It’s working so far.”

They both chuckled.

A moment passed.

Then:

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The sound echoed like thunder. Muffled but distinct, from the direction of the front door.

The laughter stopped instantly.

Taehyung’s face drained of color. “But…She’s… upstairs.”

Jin was already halfway down the hall.

From another room, Namjoon appeared, having heard it too. His face mirrored Taehyung’s confusion — and fear. “What the hell was that?”

Before anyone could speak again—

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Again. Louder. Faster.

This time Jin didn’t walk.

He disappeared, reappearing on the front porch with a crackle of cold air, the ancient wood groaning under his sudden weight.

The night was clear.

The stars above glistened as though waiting for something.

And standing on the top step, in a black coat and carrying two full grocery bags with a loaf of bread and a can of tuna poking out, was Jung Hoseok.

He blinked at Jin.

“…Why are you outside?”

Seokjin didn’t answer.

He was too busy staring — not at Hoseok, but through him, past him. Past the absurdity of plastic grocery bags and convenience store snacks. He was staring at fate itself.

“You knocked.”

Hoseok looked at the door behind Jin, then at his own knuckles. “Yeah? It was locked. I left without my key”

“You knocked three times.”

“Right. Not like I rang a bell. What’s with the dramatics?”

Jin opened his mouth — then closed it again. His hand instinctively drifted to his chest, to a place only he could feel. Beneath bone and curse and centuries, the sword thrummed.

Hoseok furrowed his brows. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“You shouldn’t have knocked three times.”

“I didn’t plan it,” Hoseok said. “It just happened.”

He stepped forward, up onto the porch beside Jin. “Why do you care? Unless…”

His eyes narrowed.

“…Unless it means something.”

Jin didn’t reply. He couldn’t.

From behind them, the door creaked open, letting the light of the house spill onto them both. Shadows danced across their faces, as Jin turned slowly to look Hoseok in the eyes.

Fate had a wicked sense of humor.

And it had just knocked.

Seokjin stepped aside to let Hoseok in, but he didn’t move. Hoseok stood in the doorway, grocery bags still in hand, looking at Jin like he was trying to see through him.

The moment was too heavy. Jin couldn’t breathe.

“She’s upstairs,” Jin said flatly.

“Who?”

“The girl. Eun-Tuk.”

That got Hoseok’s attention. His jaw tightened. “You brought her here?”

“She had nowhere else to go.”

“And I had to sign a lease, submit ID, pay six months up front—” He tossed a bag onto the nearby bench, the can of tuna rolling out and clinking against the wood. “But she just walks in with a cake and gets a room?”

Jin folds his arms. “She’s not just anyone.”

“Oh, right,” Hoseok snapped. “She’s the bride.”

Taehyung peeked out from the hallway, wide-eyed. Namjoon was still frozen behind him, halfway between panic and confusion.

“She summoned me with candles. She followed me through doors.”

“So what?” Hoseok bit out. “A birthday wish and a parlor trick?”

“She knocked.”

“So did I!”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?” Hoseok took a step forward. “What’s the actual criteria, huh? What makes her the bride and not someone else?”

Jin’s voice was quieter now. “She shouldn’t be able to follow me.”

“And yet…” Hoseok smiled bitterly. “She can. How terrifying.”

“She shouldn’t be able to see—”

Jin stopped himself.

Hoseok narrows his eyes. “See what?”

Jin looks away. His hand once again drifts to his chest, to the sword only he could feel. Only he was cursed to bear.

Hoseok took another step closer. “That’s the real test, isn’t it? Not candles or doors or knocks. That.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, come on.” Hoseok dropped the second bag to the floor. His voice was calm, but laced with something deeper—something bruised. “You keep saying she’s the bride. But you never asked the most important question.”

Jin said nothing.

So Hoseok asked it for him:

“Can she see the sword?”

The hallway was silent.

The question lingered like a spark in dry air.

And then—

Hoseok raised his hand slowly, deliberately, and pointed directly at Jin’s chest.

“Because I can.”

The words landed like thunder. Jin recoiled—visibly. The air grew thick. Somewhere, deep inside the Goblin’s soul, the sword trembled.

His eyes met Hoseok’s.

He wasn’t lying.

He could see it.

And suddenly, nothing made sense.

Not the knocks.

Not the girl.

Not the years of loneliness, of waiting, of believing the prophecy would look exactly as foretold.

Because now, standing in his hallway with tuna rolling toward the baseboard, was a man.

Not a bride.

Not the girl he thought.

But a Reaper.

And he could see the sword.

Chapter Text

The wind stilled.

Seokjin didn’t breathe.

The moment Hoseok’s eyes flicked down to his chest, everything shifted — as if the centuries turned on that single glance.

“Can I touch it?” Hoseok asked quietly, as if speaking of something as casual as a collarbone.

Seokjin stepped back like he’d been struck, his hand instinctively flying to the space where the hilt protruded from his chest — visible only to one person in the world. The bride.

Or so he’d always believed.

“No,” Seokjin rasped.

Hoseok tilted his head, eyes narrowing not in confusion, but curiosity. “It doesn’t hurt?”

“How are you seeing it?” the Goblin snapped, voice sharp as frost. “You’re not supposed to see it.”

“You’re the one who said I wasn’t supposed to knock either,” Hoseok said, stepping onto the porch, arms still full of bags.

Seokjin blinked. The door was still swinging behind him, and the faint sound of Taehyung shouting for them to come in echoed faintly from the hallway. But it was just the two of them now. The Goblin and the Reaper. A sword between them, ancient and heavy.

“I thought…” Seokjin began, then stopped. The sword pulsed beneath his ribs, aware, alert, waiting.

“You thought it was her,” Hoseok said. His voice was calm, but his jaw was tight. “The girl. The one upstairs.”

Seokjin stared.

“I saw the candles,” Hoseok continued. “I read the legends. I watched you vanish every time she breathed near a flame.”

He looked at the Goblin with something unreadable in his eyes — not jealousy exactly, but something colder. Something older.

“You never once considered it might be me?”

“You’re a grim reaper,” Seokjin snapped. “You were sent to reap the bride, not be the bride.”

A pause.

Hoseok’s eyes softened just slightly. “So what does it mean… that I see it?”

That was the question, wasn’t it?

Seokjin said nothing.

The hallway was quiet, save for the hum of old pipes and the muffled sound of the Goblin arguing with someone behind a door.

Eun-Tuk tiptoed past the thick wooden doors until she reached the sitting room, where Taehyung lay sprawled across the floor on his stomach, flipping through a comic book. He wore a faded hoodie and socks with little tangerines on them — nothing like the first time she’d seen him, dressed like a walking advertisement for effortless cool.

He looked up without surprise.

“You’re quiet for someone who insists she’s not sneaky,” he said.

Eun-Tuk smirked, stepping into the room. “I wasn’t sneaking.”

“You were floating like a ghost.”

She sat beside him, crossing her legs. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

Taehyung shrugged. “I believe in weird things. Does that count?”

“Like fate?” she asked.

He was quiet a moment. Then:
“No. I think fate is just what people say when they want to blame something invisible.”

Eun-Tuk tilted her head. “That’s bleak.”

Taehyung glanced over at her. “Is it?”

She pulled her knees up to her chest. “I think… I want to believe there’s something guiding me. Something that meant for me to find this place.”

He didn’t respond right away. Then he closed his comic and said, almost absently, “Strange things always happen around me. Even before I moved here.”

She turned toward him, curious.

“Like what?”

He looked at her — really looked — and there was something weighty in his gaze.

“Like I’m being… watched from the inside.”

The lights above them flickered.

Just once.

She blinked and looked up, but Taehyung didn’t react. Didn’t flinch.

It was almost like he was used to it.

Eun-Tuk reached out and brushed her hand against his sleeve without thinking.

He didn’t move, but the light above their heads flickered again.

This time — longer. Slower.

He smiled to himself, lips tight.

But when she leaned in to ask something else, he interrupted, voice lighter than it should have been.

“Hey. Want to see something cool?”

Eun-Tuk, sensing the change, didn’t press. “Sure.”

As he launched into a dramatic retelling of the time he got chased by a goose in Busan, Eun-Tuk listened, but her thoughts lingered on the lights.

And the moment her fingers brushed his arm… the faint hum in the air.

Something strange clung to Taehyung.
Not a ghost.
Not a trick.

Something watching from inside.

900 Years Ago

The scent of incense mingled with cherry blossoms. Petals drifted down from the laurel trees above, catching in Seokjin’s long black hair and gilded shoulder armor as he bowed before the king — his sword still sheathed at his side, fresh from victory.

The square below thundered with cheers. Commoners waved, nobles raised golden cups, and everywhere the sound echoed:
“General Kim Seokjin! The Sword of the Kingdom!”

But high above the crowd, seated beneath the embroidered canopy of the royal dais, the boy-king did not smile.

He sat stiffly on his throne, the royal crown too large for his young brow, his small hands clenching the lion-carved arms. Beside him, half-shadowed by a silk curtain, stood the king’s advisor — the man known only as Park Joong-heon.

A man whose eyes never left Seokjin. Not as he knelt. Not as the king handed him the ornate blade inlaid with gold. Not as the crowd roared again at the symbol of honor.

“You see it, don’t you, Your Majesty?” Joong-heon’s voice was a snake’s whisper, coiling around the king’s ears. “They cheer for him. They look at him and forget you’re the one who rules.”

The king flinched slightly. Joong-heon’s hand settled on his shoulder, slow, comforting — possessive.

“Didn’t you forge that sword in your name? Didn’t you grant him the title? And now they call him the Sword of the Kingdom?” His mouth curled faintly. “A servant.”

“He fights for me,” the young king muttered, unsure. “He is loyal.”

Joong-heon’s lips barely moved. “Loyalty is a blade that cuts both ways. Today, he bows. But tomorrow? The people may not wait for your word — they may listen to his.”

The king’s fingers clenched tighter.

“Look at them.” Joong-heon leaned closer. “They love his beauty. His victories. They say he cannot die — that even the gods favor him.”

A pause.

“Do you know what that makes you, Your Majesty?”

The king swallowed. “Mortal.”

“Replaceable,” Joong-heon corrected, coldly.

The king’s gaze flicked back to Seokjin, who stood now before the crowd, raising the sword the King personally told the blacksmiths to forge. The boy didn’t see the glint in Joong-heon’s eyes — didn’t hear the hatred buried deep beneath the king’s envy.

But Seokjin felt something in that moment. A chill beneath the sunlight. A wrongness in the air.

His eyes searched the dais — met Joong-heon’s gaze.

And the villain smiled.

He hated him.

Not because he was a threat to the king — but because he wasn’t.

Because Seokjin had everything Joong-heon had spent a lifetime clawing for: glory, loyalty, beauty, and love freely given.

And Park Joong-heon, the man behind the throne, would destroy him for it.

Jin woke with a start, breath shallow, heart pounding like war drums in his ears.

The room was still dark, save for the embers in the hearth glowing softly against the stone walls. He sat up slowly on the edge of the bed, sweat clinging to his temples despite the chill, the remnants of the dream clawing at the corners of his mind — that day in the square, the laurel trees, the whisper.

Joong-heon.

The name lingered in the silence like smoke.

He hadn’t dreamed of that man in centuries. Not since the nightmares quieted, not since time dulled the memory of betrayal. And yet tonight, the whisper had returned — not as a warning, but as a wound freshly opened.

Jin ran a hand through his hair, then pressed his palm flat over his chest.

The sword. It pulsed faintly beneath the skin, a subtle ache, as if remembering too.

Why him?Why Joong-heon tonight, of all nights?

He exhaled shakily.

“Because I met him,” he whispered aloud, the truth forming even as he resisted it. “The one who might be my bride.”

Three knocks. A familiar face. And eyes that had seen the sword.

Jin’s fingers curled tightly into his blanket.

He should have been afraid of the bride — of death. But instead, his mind returned to Joong-heon, the man who had sealed his fate the first time. The man who whispered the crown into fear and turned loyalty into execution.

Something deeper stirred under Jin’s ribs, older than the curse and more painful than the sword.

If Joong-heon haunted his dreams again, something was beginning.

And perhaps… something had never truly ended.

The Next Morning

The third knock still echoed like a thunderclap in Seokjin’s ears.

He stood frozen in the hallway, robe askew, eyes wide with something close to fear. The door was closed. Hoseok was gone. But the image lingered — the Reaper standing on the porch, head tilted, eyes fixed not on Jin’s face but his chest. And then the words:

“Can I touch it?”

The sword.

Seokjin spun on his heel and stormed into the living room like a whirlwind of unraveling silk.

“He saw the sword.”

Namjoon, seated cross-legged on the floor with a ledger, didn’t look up. “Who did?”

“Hoseok!”

Now Taehyung looked up from his phone. “Wait. Our roommate?”

“Not roommate — grim reaper!” Jin shouted. “He knocked. Three times. I opened the door— he saw it.”

Namjoon raised a brow. “Saw…?”

“The sword! The one only my bride can see!” Jin clutched his chest like it had just begun to burn. “He saw it, and asked if he could touch it! Who says that?!”

Taehyung blinked. “Maybe he’s curious?”

“He’s not supposed to be anything!” Jin shouted. “He’s a reaper! Dead. Dried up. Withered! He eats bitter melon for fun!”

Namjoon sighed. “So… what’s the actual problem here?”

Jin rounded on him. “If he’s the bride — the real bride — that means he can pull the sword.”

There it was.

Taehyung sat up straighter. Namjoon finally put the ledger down.

Jin’s voice trembled. “If he pulls the sword… I die.”

Silence. Even the wind seemed to pause outside.

For a moment, Jin stood still, a god who had lived too long. His breath came shallow, hands shaking.

“I’ve waited 900 years for this,” he whispered. “Begged for it. Prayed for it. But now…”

Now the sword wasn’t just a myth. It was a future rushing toward him in the shape of a man with soft eyes and quiet fury.

“I don’t want it to be him.”

“Because he’s a reaper?” Taehyung asked gently.

“Because…” Jin swallowed hard. “Because now I’m not sure I want to go.”

Namjoon nodded, voice soft. “That’s what happens when life finally gives you something to lose.”

Jin sat on the couch, burying his face in his hands.

Taehyung, after a pause, leaned forward and murmured, “So… if it’s him, are you going to let him pull it?”

The Goblin didn’t answer.

But the silence stretched long — and full of a terror older than death.

The tea water boiled. Then stilled. Then cooled.

Hoseok sat at the kitchen table, the cup untouched in front of him. His fingers curled around the porcelain just for something to hold, something to anchor him in the stillness.

The Goblin was gone.

Three days — not a sound, not a door opening, not a coat missing from the rack. Jin had vanished like mist after sunrise, and Hoseok — Reaper of hundreds, usher of souls — could do nothing but sit.

He could still feel it.

The sword.

It glowed dimly in his memory, embedded deep in Seokjin’s chest — the sword no one was supposed to see. And yet, he had seen it.

The first knock had been nothing. Just his usual rhythm against the old door. The second, a breath behind. The third… too loud, too final.

When Jin appeared on the porch, it wasn’t with a smile.

It was with panic.

“Not you,” Jin had whispered. “Not you.”

And then — he was gone.

Back in the kitchen, Hoseok whispered into the quiet:

“Why can I see it?” His voice cracked. “I’m not supposed to be able to see it.”

He looked down at the tea. Still warm. Still untouched.

“Don’t give me hope, Kim Seokjin,” he said softly.

The tea room was quiet when Hoseok arrived, silent save for the soft scraping of a chair and the faint clink of a spoon against porcelain.

An old woman sat waiting, hands folded in her lap, eyes fixed on the empty seat across from her.

“Ma’am,” Hoseok said gently. “It’s time.”

But she didn’t look at him. Not yet.

Because just then, he arrived.

An old man, wrinkled and tired, stepped in as if through a fog. At the sight of her, his face crumpled — in joy, in grief, in awe.

“I thought— I thought you were gone,” he whispered.

“I waited,” she said.

Their hands met across the table. They began to cry.

Separated at nineteen by the war — North and South — they had never found each other again in life. But in death, the Reaper reunited them.

Hoseok watched them go, hand in hand, faces brightening into youth as they ascended.

He didn’t speak. But something in him shifted.

There was no war between him and Jin. No ocean or border.

Just fear.

And Jin’s fear, Hoseok had decided, was no longer reason enough to keep running.

The hotel room smelled like wax and lemon cleaner. Hoseok stood in the center, surrounded by candles flickering on every flat surface.

“If she could do it, I can too,” he muttered, his pride bruised but stubborn.

The doorman greeted Hoseok with a bow as glass doors whispered open into a lobby awash in gold and marble. Crystal chandeliers scattered warm light across polished floors, and a string quartet played something elegant near the lounge. Hoseok moved through it all like a ghost in tailored black. He offered no smile, just a clipped nod as he passed reception, where a concierge recognized his reservation with murmured efficiency. “Presidential suite, as requested, Mr. Jung.” The keycard slipped into his palm like a secret. He didn’t stop to admire the sweeping view or the private elevator. He had a mission.

The suite was cathedral-like in silence, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Han River, velvet drapes heavy enough to blot out Seoul itself. Hoseok ignored the wine chilling on the sideboard and placed his leather duffel on the low marble table. Inside: twelve candles.

Not convenience store stubs, but tapered ivory sticks and thick black pillars from a high-end boutique, chosen in haste but not without care. He arranged them methodically along the window ledge, the mantle, the stone edge of the sunken tub that formed a quiet constellation. The soft scent of sandalwood and smoke began to rise as he lit them, one by one. When the room felt hushed and ancient, he stood in the center, heart an unsteady drum. With one measured breath, Hoseok closed his eyes and blew out every flame.

The flames died. The world folded.

And Jin appeared.

No mist, no ceremony. Just Seokjin, standing there, eyes wide and jaw tense — as if he hadn’t expected it to work.

He didn’t say hello.

Jin just asked, “Tell me again. What do you see?”

Hoseok took a breath.

“The sword. And you don’t want me to see it. Why?”

Jin looked away. “You weren’t supposed to.”

“Then maybe I wasn’t supposed to knock three times either.”

They stood in the flickering dark of the blown-out candles.

The sword beneath Jin’s ribs shimmered faintly — not in pain, but recognition.

And for once, neither of them moved.

Hoseok watched him. He really looked at Jin with the shock of summoning the Goblin began to quiet under something far more dangerous. Curiosity. Want. A longing that rooted in his chest like it had always been there. Jin was many things: beautiful, otherworldly, exasperating. But in this moment, he was just a man trying not to break. And Hoseok wanted to know him. Not as a legend or a prophecy, but as Seokjin. As the one who haunted him.

“I don’t get you,” Hoseok said softly, stepping forward. “But I want to. I want to know who you are when you’re not running. I want to know what makes you laugh, and what makes you afraid. I want to see if… this thing between us is real. If it could be love.”

Jin’s breath hitched. The sword pulsed faintly with light. His eyes — those desperate, ancient eyes — lifted to meet Hoseok’s, full of something cracked and raw.

“You don’t understand,” Jin whispered. “The Goblin doesn’t actually marry the Bride.”

Hoseok blinked. “Then what does the Bride do?”

Jin hesitated — just long enough for Hoseok to feel the ground tilt — before answering in a voice so quiet it was almost a plea:

“My Bride… kills me.”

And before Hoseok could say a word, Jin vanished, leaving nothing but the fading echo of sandalwood and the ghosts of twelve extinguished flames.

Chapter Text

900 Years Ago

The crown was too heavy.

He said it aloud once, in a whisper, as Seokjin buckled his armor with calloused hands and a familiar frown.

“You’re too young to carry that kind of weight,” Seokjin had told him, the only man in the palace who would speak to the King that way. The only man allowed.

So when the King disappeared that morning, slipping from the palace in peasant garb with his hair tied loosely and Seokjin flanking him like a shadow, no one noticed.

Not yet.

They passed through the city gates on foot. Just two men in rough linen, breathing the same air as the people for the first time in weeks. The King marveled at the scent of roasted chestnuts, the screech of merchants bartering in the street, the music of life unfiltered by politics or pageantry.

Seokjin bought him sweets with coin from his own pouch. “You’ve never had this, have you?”

The King shook his head, cheeks already flushed from the crisp wind.

“Then your kingdom has failed you,” Seokjin muttered, handing him the warm rice cake. “Eat.”

And he did.

They wandered for hours. The King tried on hats. Laughed at a juggler in the square. Spoke to a child who didn’t bow and felt something ease in his chest when she offered him a dandelion. All the while, Seokjin kept close — hand always ready, eyes scanning the crowd — and yet never more than a breath away from smiling himself.

In the shadow of a back alley temple, they sat side by side, listening to the hush of prayer bells. The King leaned his head on Seokjin’s shoulder.

“You’re too bold,” Seokjin whispered.

“You’re too beautiful,” the King replied.

Seokjin turned to look at him, startled. The words settled like petals between them — delicate, irreversible.

In the hills above the city, Joong-heon rode hard, dust in his teeth and fury in his chest.

“The King has left the palace,” a guard had told him. “Vanished before dawn. His sword is missing too.”

Joong-heon didn’t believe in coincidence.

He spotted them first — not the guards. Not the townspeople. Him. Seokjin.

And him. The King.

They were laughing.

Laughing like lovers.

Seokjin leaned close to adjust something at the King’s collar. The King let him. Trusted him. Looked at him as if heheld the crown.

Joong-heon’s lip curled.

When the guards arrived, he did not rush in. He waited. Watched. Memorized.

He would not strike today.

But he would never forget the way Seokjin touched the King without kneeling.

They just sat there, Seokjin and the King. They sat, Staring into each other’s eyes like under a witch’s spell.

“Your Majesty!” the guard captain called from the edge of the market.

The spell broke.

Seokjin’s hand went to his sword. The King grabbed his wrist.

“No,” he whispered. “We run.”

They ran.

Through stalls and startled crowds, through alleys and down sloping roads. Seokjin’s grip never left the King’s sleeve, pulling him left, then right, until they skidded to a halt — cornered.

Joong-heon approached last, calm and righteous.

“My King,” he said with a smile too thin. “You are safe.”

The King nodded, catching his breath. “Thanks to General Kim.”

Joong-heon’s eyes flicked to Seokjin, dark with something colder than envy.

“This man disobeyed your guards,” he said softly. “He should be punished.”

The King stood taller. “I gave him permission.”

Joong-heon bowed. “As Your Majesty commands.”

But inside, Joong-heon seethed.

That night, he penned the first lines of the lies that would lead to Seokjin’s death.

Because the King was his — not Seokjin’s.

And if he could not have his love, he would have his ruin.

900 Years Later

Seokjin woke with a gasp.

His hand flew to his chest, not because the sword hurt — it never did — but because the dream left him breathless.

He sat up in the dim light of dawn, tangled in silk sheets, surrounded by a room too large and too quiet. His hand hovered over the place where the blade shimmered just beneath his skin, faint and cold, like moonlight on snow.

“Joong-heon,” he whispered.

He hadn’t thought of that name in centuries.

Not since the day his soul tore from his body with betrayal still burning in his throat. Not since the gods, in their bitter humor, raised him from the battlefield — immortal and haunted.

But tonight, the memory came back in all its treacherous clarity.

Joong-heon’s voice in the King’s ear.
The look in his eyes when he saw them together.

The venom hidden behind a bow.

And the King.

The boy who had touched him with shy fingers and called him beautiful — the same boy who later watched him die, eyes dry and spine straight.

Seokjin pressed his palm to the center of his chest.

That sword had never hurt. But something else had. And maybe still did.

Why now? Why tonight?

He closed his eyes, but instead of Joong-heon or the King, another face came to him — sharp cheekbones, a quiet pout, eyes that burned with questions and something softer. Hoseok.

The man who had knocked three times.

The man who had pointed to the sword.

The man who shouldn’t have been able to do either.

Seokjin leaned back against the headboard, closing his eyes, knowing sleep wouldn’t return.

What did it mean?

Why was Joong-heon on his mind the same night he might have found his bride..? His Groom?

Why did the memories feel so close to the surface, like fate was stirring again?

And why — despite everything — did he hope the Reaper would summon him again?

The temple had no name.

It was tucked into the edge of a mountain in Gangwon-do, so old that even the trees whispered its memory like a ghost story. The locals said the temple moved — that the same path never led to it twice. Seokjin didn’t mind. It meant no one else would follow.

Except someone had.

He should’ve sensed the disturbance in the air the moment he passed the third archway, but he was too deep in his thoughts. Every chamber looked the same — like the interior of a train car made from wood and paper and time. One room led to another, and another, and another, like fate folding in on itself.

Seokjin didn’t notice the soft light until he entered the seventh room.

Candles.

Twelve of them, arranged in an arc around a low stone basin. They flickered like waiting stars, their flames dancing without breeze. The scent of something faintly sweet clung to the air — sandalwood and ginger.

Then he saw him.

Hoseok stood with his back to the door, hands in his pockets. The sword shimmered faintly in Seokjin’s chest, reacting like a compass to its keeper.

“You summoned me,” said Seokjin, flatly.

“I had questions.” Now he turned, and the expression on his face wasn’t angry or desperate. It was worse. It was open. “You disappeared for days, Jin.”

“You saw the sword,” Seokjin murmured. “You weren’t supposed to.”

Hoseok took a slow step forward. “I didn’t ask to.”

“And yet you do,” Jin snapped, bitterness laced in the words. “And now you think you’re the one. The bride.”

“I don’t think anything,” Hoseok said. “I just… I see it. Isn’t that what matters?”

Seokjin looked away, jaw tight. The candlelight drew soft shadows over his face. “You don’t understand.”

“Then tell me.”

Jin’s voice dropped, barely audible. “The bride pulls the sword.”

“So?”

“And the Goblin dies.”

The silence that followed was thick with unsaid things.

“I’m not afraid of dying,” Seokjin added, almost to himself. “I’m afraid of disappearing. Of being forgotten. Of… being alone again.”

Hoseok stepped closer, eyes searching.

“You don’t have to be alone.”

Seokjin’s eyes flashed to him. “You say that now. But how can you promise what you don’t understand?”

“I want to understand,” Hoseok said. “I want to know what this is. I want to know you.”

Seokjin looked as if he might say something — something raw, something devastating. But then his expression closed, like shutters pulled tight in a storm.

He turned away.

And walked. Hoseok followed.

One room became five. Five became ten.

He kept walking, Hoseok behind him, the rooms echoing with nothing but his footsteps and the ghost of candlelight.

It wasn’t until he found the back door — half-hidden behind a broken lattice — that he let his magic stir.

“Jin, don’t go,” begged Hoseok, but Seokjin didn’t turn back. “Let’s talk it out.”

Jin wouldn’t listen. He couldn’t listen. He had to go.

The sword in his chest pulsed once, like a heartbeat.

A breath.

A shimmer.

And then he was gone.

The door opened into the sharp air of winter. Snow curled in gusts down the narrow alley behind a row of maple-colored cafés in Québec City. The stones beneath Seokjin’s boots were slick, but he didn’t slip. He knew this place. He always landed on his feet when he fled here.

A world without swords, he used to call it. A place where no one asked who he was or why he still walked the earth.

Seokjin stepped through and let the door close behind him. The wind greeted him like a lover who had waited patiently.

Until a voice said, “Took you long enough.”

Hoseok was leaning against the brick wall near the trash bins, gloved hands stuffed in the pockets of a navy wool coat. Snow dusted his hair like salt.

Seokjin’s breath caught. “You—”

“Door travel isn’t that special,” Hoseok shrugged. “You use it to go where you’re comfortable. You’re predictable, Kim Seokjin. You can’t run from me. Not for long.”

Seokjin looked away. “I needed… air.”

“You needed to disappear.” Hoseok’s voice was quiet but certain. “From me.”

They stood in silence, winter pressing in between them.

“I don’t want to talk about brides,” Seokjin muttered. “Or prophecies. Or swords. Not today.”

“Okay,” Hoseok said. “What should we talk about instead?”

Seokjin glanced at him, wary.

“Let’s start small,” Hoseok said. “Ice cream?”

Seokjin didn’t mention that it’s winter or that it’s cold, he just went with it. They ended up on a cobbled street of Old Québec, sitting on a bench with paper cups of overpriced gelato. Mango for Seokjin. Cookies and cream for Hoseok.

“It’s freezing,” Seokjin said, teeth chattering between licks.

“Then why are you eating it?”

“You suggested it.”

“And you followed through?” Hoseok grinned, licking his spoon. “Romantic.”

Seokjin flushed faintly and turned away. “You’re mocking me.”

“A little,” Hoseok admitted, and bumped their shoulders.

Later, they wandered past twinkle-lit shop windows. Seokjin paused before a bookstore, and without saying a word, went inside. He returned with a slim volume of poetry and handed it over.

“You like poems?” Hoseok asked, accepting it carefully.

“I… used to.”

They didn’t speak after that, not until they found themselves watching a busker sing under golden streetlight, snow drifting lazily around her voice.

“You’re different here,” Hoseok said.

“Because there are no ghosts.”

Hoseok blinked, he hadn’t even noticed. He shook his head. “No. Because you laugh.”

Seokjin blinked. “I do not.”

“You almost did. At the gelato on my nose. Admit it.”

“I didn’t laugh, cause I didn’t notice.”

“Liar.”

The Goblin looked away again. But this time, his smile reached his eyes.

The Han River glittered like ribboned glass in the dusk as Eun-Tuk walked beside Taehyung, her hands buried in the oversized sleeves of a donated coat. Taehyung had insisted she borrow one from the Goblin’s closet — it looked ridiculous on her, swallowing her small frame, but she liked that it smelled faintly of cedar and cinnamon.

“You didn’t have to walk me all the way,” she said, smiling up at him.

“I don’t ,” he replied easily. “I just want to.”

Their footsteps matched for a while. Eun-Tuk peeked at him from under her lashes. Taehyung wasn’t like anyone else she knew. Kind, strange, unknowable. His eyes were too old for his face, like the past lived behind them in layers.

“Do you believe in destiny?” she asked softly.

Taehyung laughed, a short exhale. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it doesn’t believe in me.”

She tilted her head. “That sucks.”

Taehyung doesn’t answer, just laughs. He looked out at the water, long fingers tapping nervously against the cold railing.

“Strange things always happen around me,” he said, still staring forward. “Like I’m being watched… not from above, or around but from inside.”

A gust of wind kicked up. Eun-Tuk reached for his sleeve to keep from stumbling. Their skin brushed—just for a moment—and every streetlight within view blinked.

Eun-Tuk gasped. Taehyung didn’t flinch. He simply turned and offered a crooked smile.

“You’ve got static,” he teased.

Eun-Tuk chuckled, a little breathless, then stopped.

“Taehyung,” she said, a little too quietly. “You’re… really nice to me.”

He shrugged. “That’s because I like you.”

Eun-Tuk lit up. “You do? That’s perfect!”

He paused imagining what she would say next. Maybe she wanted to know if he had magic, or how he was related to a 900 year old Goblin. Maybe it was just about them! Taehyung’s breath caught in hope and waited…

“Then maybe you can help me find a boyfriend!”

Taehyung’s heart cracked. He blinked once. Twice. Covered it with a grin.

“Oh. Of course,” he said lightly. “I’ll… see who’s worthy.”

Behind his smile, the divine presence in him stirred - not exactly angry , but jealous. That something inside of Taehyung was interested in Eun-Tuk

The photo booth was crammed into the corner of a tourist trap gift shop — pastel hats and maple syrup tins stacked dangerously close to falling. Hoseok dragged Seokjin inside with the boldness of someone on a dare.

“I don’t take pictures,” Seokjin grumbled, glaring at the camera like it owed him money. “Don’t like documenting the whole immortal thing.”

“You’re gorgeous,” Hoseok said without thinking. “Seems like a waste not to document this once.”

The Goblin flushed from the neck up. Hoseok pretended not to notice as he fed coins into the slot.

“Three poses,” the screen announced.

Seokjin stared ahead, unmoving.

First click: Hoseok grinned. Jin scowled.

Second click: Hoseok leaned in, nudging Seokjin with his shoulder. Jin startled, eyes wide.

Third click: Jin laughed.

A full, unguarded, breathless laugh.

The flash caught it.

When the strip slid out, Hoseok took it wordlessly and tucked it into the poetry book Seokjin had bought him earlier. Neither said anything.

They didn’t have to.

They found themselves at a quiet overlook above the river, the cold biting just enough to keep the crowds away. Lights shimmered on the water, reflected stars dancing below. Hoseok sat on the low stone ledge, sipping the hot chocolate Seokjin had handed him without a word.

He drank with both hands wrapped around the paper cup, pinkies curled like a child’s. He looked… peaceful.

Seokjin stood a few feet behind him, watching.

At first, he told himself he was just making sure the Reaper didn’t disappear. That it was strategic. Cautious. Wise.

But his eyes lingered.

On the way Hoseok’s nose scrunched after every sip.

On how the wind moved through his hair.

On the curve of his back beneath the coat Seokjin had draped over him earlier.

On the steady rhythm of his breathing, like it anchored something in the Goblin’s own chest.

Seokjin didn’t realize he was smiling.

The moment it caught up to him, he blinked and looked away sharply — as if scolded by the gods.

“This isn’t what you want,” he muttered under his breath. “It can’t be.”

But he didn’t move. He stayed, standing just close enough to catch Hoseok’s laughter when it came — quiet, full, and real.

“You don’t know what I want, Goblin,” Hoseok spat, annoyed.

“Then tell me!” Jin demanded.

“You, Seokjin,” says Hoseok. “All I want is you.”

Seokjin’s heart ached in a way it hadn’t for centuries. The last time he felt like this he died. He refuses to go through that again. Seokjin didn’t know it yet. But he had already started to fall.

Chapter Text

The dream came like fog, dense and sudden. Hoseok knew it was a memory. He just didn’t know whose.

He was standing at the base of a stone staircase, marble slick with frost. A banner fluttered above, golden threads catching fire in the sunlight. The people were cheering—but not for him.

Ahead, at the top of the stairs, stood a soldier. No, a general. A man with a lion’s bearing and a poet’s face. His dark hair was swept back beneath a golden helmet, and slung across his back was a gleaming sword gifted by the King himself. A sword that glowed faintly, as though even the heavens approved of its new owner.

But something inside Hoseok—the him in the dream—twisted.

He looked to his right. A man in dark robes leaned close, whispering in his ear, voice slick as oil.

“They chant his name more than yours. A soldier is not a king. But he stands above you, basking in praise that belongs to the crown.”

The words curled around his ribs like smoke.

“He serves me,” Hoseok said in a voice not his own. “I gave him that sword.”

“And soon, the people will give him your throne.”

The crowd roared again. The general bowed low. He was smiling, but it was not pride—it was joy. It should’ve eased the king’s heart. But all Hoseok felt was the deep sting of jealousy.

He woke with a start.

The hotel ceiling stared blankly down at him. His mouth was dry, the memory burning like candle wax in his throat.

He sat up slowly, sheets pooling at his waist. The morning light slipped through the blackout curtains, casting gold lines across the carpet. It was quiet, expensive quiet.

Hoseok swung his legs off the bed.

“Why am I dreaming about him like that?” he muttered.

He had never seen Seokjin in armor. And yet he knew, with the kind of certainty that hurt, that the general in his dream had been him.

And that the boy-king Hoseok had once been… was the reason that sword now shimmered in Seokjin’s chest.

He pressed a hand to his chest, as if to still the pounding there.

“What did I do to him?” he whispered.

The morning light filtered gently through the windows of the manor’s drawing room, catching in the dust motes that floated like the ghosts Seokjin pretended not to see. The fire crackled low in the hearth even though it wasn’t cold, as if the house demanded the comfort of warmth.

Namjoon stood by the window, reading over a scroll—yes, a scroll—like some relic from the royal archives. Seokjin sat on the chaise behind him, sprawled like a statue halfway melted.

“I saw him,” Jin said, his voice barely above the crackle of fire.

Namjoon didn’t look up. “Hoseok?”

A pause. Then: “He knocked.”

Namjoon finally turned. “Three times?”

Jin nodded slowly. “And he saw the sword.”

Namjoon leaned against the windowsill, folding his arms. “So it’s him.”

“It can’t be him,” Seokjin snapped. “He’s a man.”

Namjoon raised a brow. “The prophecy doesn’t say anything about gender.”

“It says bride,” Jin hissed. “It says she. It was supposed to be… simple. A girl. Some candle-blowing orphan with a tragic past and a destiny to fulfill.”

“You just described Hoseok,” Namjoon said dryly.

Seokjin scowled and stood, pacing. “He saw the sword, Joon. That should be impossible. And I—” He stopped, fists clenched at his sides. “I want him to see it.”

That admission hung in the room like smoke. Namjoon didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

“I’ve lived too long,” Seokjin continued, quieter now. “I’ve buried every nephew. Watched time gut the people I love. And now he shows up, knocking like fate, looking at me like I’m something to keep, not something to kill.”

Namjoon approached, placing a hand on Jin’s shoulder.

“The bride doesn’t keep you, hyung,” he said gently. “She frees you.”

Seokjin’s jaw tightened. “She kills me.”

They stood in silence.

Finally, Namjoon whispered, “Do you want to die?”

Jin’s eyes flicked up—full of grief, centuries deep.

“I don’t know anymore.”

The first autumn rain had stopped an hour ago, but the air still shimmered with its memory—puddles catching golden reflections from streetlamps, the scent of damp earth rising between the city’s cobbled corners. Taehyung and Eun-Tuk wandered the quieter paths near the Goblin’s home, their steps occasionally overlapping like children skipping stones.

“I didn’t think you’d actually show up,” Eun-Tuk said, arms crossed but eyes bright.

Taehyung tilted his head, mock offended. “I’m a man of my word.”

“Are you?” she teased, sidestepping a puddle. “Because last week you said you’d find me a boyfriend.”

Taehyung stopped walking.

His lips parted, but nothing witty came. Instead, he blinked at her, stunned. “You want a boyfriend?”

She grinned, teasing. “Well, if you’re not offering…”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Didn’t you?” she turned to him, her gaze direct now. “Because it sounded a lot like a pass.”

Taehyung opened his mouth again, closed it, then let out a small laugh. “You’re dangerous, you know that?”

“And you’re—” she paused, stepping closer, close enough that her hand brushed his sleeve. “—watching me like I’m some kind of mystery.”

He didn’t answer.

Instead, something flickered in the light above them—just for a second, like a bulb glitching. A stutter in the power.

Eun-Tuk noticed. “What was that?”

Taehyung frowned and looked up. The light had stabilized. “Probably nothing,” he said too quickly.

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re not good at lying.”

“Neither are you,” he shot back, walking ahead now, hands in his pockets. “You pretend you want a boyfriend. But what you want is someone who makes the whole world feel… less quiet.”

Eun-Tuk blinked.

Taehyung smiled, soft and sideways. “Told you I was dangerous.”

They walked again in silence—hers thoughtful, his unsettled. Behind them, the light flickered once more.

And didn’t come back on.

They didn’t say where they were going—just walked.

Some cities were meant for walking. This one breathed with them, its lights low and amber, casting halos around storefronts and steamed-up café windows. Autumn clung to the air like an afterthought, crisp and full of woodsmoke and stories. Jin had chosen this place without meaning to. Or perhaps the place had chosen him.

Hoseok kept pace beside him, hands tucked into the sleeves of his coat. Neither of them had spoken much since the sword.

Since the summoning.

“Ice cream?” Hoseok asked suddenly, gesturing to a little shop with its lights still on. “You said you liked it.”

Jin blinked at him, startled. Then: “I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t deny it either.”

The goblin rolled his eyes but followed. Inside, they chose their flavors without fuss—chestnut for Jin, lavender-honey for Hoseok—and sat outside on a bench, the cold biting at their fingers, the sweetness lingering.

“You’re quiet,” Hoseok said, not unkindly.

“I’m old,” Jin replied. “Quiet is a luxury.”

They sat in the hush of traffic and wind. A pair of teens ran past, laughing, and Hoseok’s gaze followed them—wistful.

“You looked happy today,” Hoseok said softly. “When you were choosing flavors.”

“It reminded me of someone.”

“A lover?”

Jin turned his head. “No. A brother.”

Hoseok looked down. “The one who betrayed you?”

A pause. Jin’s voice was quiet. “No. The one who died because I did.”

The words settled between them like snow. Hoseok said nothing more. He simply leaned back, looked up at the stars only they had lived long enough to see disappear and return again.

And then, after a long moment: “I’m glad you chose lavender.”

Jin looked at him, puzzled.

“It suits you.”

Jin laughed then—short, startled, real. He looked beautiful when he laughed. Hoseok didn’t say so. He didn’t need to.

They finished their ice cream in companionable silence. When they stood to walk again, Jin didn’t move ahead. He stayed beside Hoseok.

Matching steps.

Not leading.

Just… walking.

Together.

The cake was in her hands.

Small, store-bought, with a single flickering candle. Eun-Tuk held it like it was fragile porcelain, like if she stumbled the spell of the night would break. It had been a quiet birthday. Quiet because she’d lied and said she didn’t want anything. Quiet because no one had cared enough to ask again.

She walked alone through the narrow streets behind the convenience store, heading toward the river. Her guardian hadn’t even come home. Taehyung had texted earlier to say he was with his uncle, but she didn’t reply.

Sixteen.

Wasn’t that supposed to mean something?

She reached the overlook — her secret place — and sat down cross-legged. The wind tugged at her coat. She cupped her hands around the little flame and closed her eyes.

“Please,” she whispered. “Let someone stay.”

She blew out the candle.

For a moment, the world held its breath.

But no one came.

Disappointment swelled in her chest, familiar and sour. She didn’t hear the footsteps behind her. Not at first. Not until the paper bag with her cake was kicked into the brush and a rough hand closed around her arm.

“Cute little thing to be out here all alone.”

She spun. Three men. Middle-aged, familiar in the worst way — guys who hung around the convenience store too long, stared too long.

“Let go,” she snapped, voice too thin, too high.

One of them grinned, the kind of grin that made her stomach twist. “We just want to talk.”

She tried to twist free, but they were already closing in, dragging her off the overlook path and toward the road. Her phone slipped from her pocket and skittered into the dark.

Where was Taehyung?
Where was anyone?

Her heart pounded. Her voice failed her. She thrashed, kicked — she even bit one of them, but they only laughed.

“You think someone’s coming to save you?” one sneered. “This is the real world, sweetheart.”

She screamed then. Not for them. Not for mercy.

She screamed for him.

For the man she’d seen in smoke and shadow, the one who said nothing when she followed him through doorways that shouldn’t have opened. The man with the sword and sad, sad eyes.

“Goblin!”

Silence.

And then—
far off, behind the trees—
the wind changed direction.

But the men didn’t notice.

The road was empty.
No headlights. No cameras. No help.

Eun-Tuk stood in the beam of a single streetlamp, pale and flickering like a dying star. Her lip was split. Her arms were scraped. The three men surrounding her laughed like they’d already won.

She didn’t scream. She didn’t cry. She just stared at the road.

She had lit no candles. She hadn’t even whispered his name.

But she had wanted him.

And that was enough.

The wind moved first — a low sweep through the trees, stirring leaves across the pavement. The streetlamp flared and then dimmed, its light bending strangely like the world had sucked in a breath.

And then:

A sword gleamed.
A man appeared.

Kim Seokjin, in all his wrath and beauty, stepped out of nothing.

His coat didn’t flutter — it billowed, like power hung off the fabric itself. His hand was already on the hilt of his sword, which glinted despite the darkness.

“Let her go,” Seokjin said quietly.

The thugs froze.

And then they laughed.

“Who the hell are—”

“The one you should have feared,” came a second voice, cold and echoing behind them.

They turned too late.

Jung Hoseok was already there.

Unlike Seokjin, Hoseok didn’t look angry. He looked disappointed. Dressed in all black, his face shadowed beneath the wide brim of his hat, he lifted one gloved hand — and pointed. One of the men collapsed instantly, no injury, no blood. Just… gone.

The others scrambled back.

Seokjin was already moving. His sword swung in a blur, slicing the air without touching flesh — but the shockwave was enough. One thug went flying, colliding with a parked car so hard the window shattered. The last turned to run—

Only to meet Hoseok’s gaze.

“Your name was on the list,” Hoseok said softly. “But I gave you a chance.”

The man dropped to his knees. “Please. Please, I didn’t know—”

“It’s not about what you knew,” Hoseok said, stepping closer. “It’s what you chose.”

Seokjin reached Eun-Tuk before the man’s body slumped sideways, breath gone.

“You alright?” Seokjin asked her.

She nodded, dazed. “You came.”

He looked like he wanted to say something more. But he turned to Hoseok instead.

“You were fast.”

“I had a head start,” Hoseok replied, brushing imaginary dust from his sleeve.

The two men stood on either side of her now. Not flanking. Guarding.

In that moment, it was unmistakable: gods walked beside her.

The wind rustled again, soft this time.

Hoseok looked at Jin, eyes catching like flint. “You didn’t hesitate.”

Seokjin met his gaze. “Neither did you.”

It wasn’t a thank you.

It wasn’t an apology.

It was something else. Older. Deeper.

Eun-Tuk blinked up at them. “What are you two?”

They looked at her — and answered in unison, without meaning to.

“Something you were never meant to see.”

The road was dark again, quiet in the way things are after fear has been carved out of the night.

Seokjin didn’t speak as they walked her home, flanked by the heavy silence of disbelief. Hoseok stayed a few steps behind, his gaze sweeping the shadows, still tense like a second attack might leap from the dark.

Eun-Tuk’s fingers trembled as they curled tighter around the sleeves of her jacket. She wouldn’t cry. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But the way the Goblin had appeared — sword first, eyes glowing like a wrathful god — still echoed in her bones.

“Are you hurt?” Seokjin asked finally, his voice lower than she’d ever heard it.

She shook her head. “Just bruises.”

He exhaled, but it wasn’t relief.

It was guilt.

When they reached the house, Namjoon was already waiting by the door, a blanket draped over one arm, a phone in the other. Taehyung wasn’t there.

Namjoon pulled Eun-Tuk into a wordless hug. Then he looked at Seokjin, who gave a small nod. No words passed between them — not in front of her — but something heavy did.

Inside, the house felt unfamiliar. Too bright, too warm. Like the danger should have left a scar in the air and hadn’t.

Seokjin poured tea in the kitchen while Hoseok helped Eun-Tuk sit on the sofa. Namjoon fetched her a change of clothes. Everyone moved like clockwork, filling space, doing something, anything, to keep from saying what they all knew.

When Eun-Tuk finally looked up, it was Hoseok who met her eyes.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

He didn’t answer, only offered her a faint nod — almost embarrassed. It was easier that way.

Seokjin emerged with a mug of tea. His eyes were glassy.

He crouched beside her and offered the cup.

“You’re safe now.”

“But why was I ever in danger?” she whispered.

He didn’t answer.

She looked between the Goblin and the Reaper, these two gods pretending to be men. She realized, then, that nothing about her life would be normal again. That maybe it never had been.

When the room had stilled, Namjoon gently touched Seokjin’s shoulder. “You should rest. Let her sleep.”

Eun-Tuk didn’t protest when Namjoon led her toward the guest room upstairs.

Behind her, Seokjin lingered at the base of the stairs. Hoseok stood beside him, silent as a shadow.

“She reminds you of someone,” Hoseok said finally.

Seokjin flinched. Just slightly.

“She reminds you of someone too,” Seokjin replied.

Hoseok looked up. “Yeah. But I don’t know who.”

They stood together, no longer enemies or even rivals. Just two immortals watching over a girl neither of them could protect completely.

Not from fate.

Not from the past.

The house is quiet, the hallway dim. Eun-Tuk walks barefoot down the hall, her wrist still wrapped from the rescue, her hair damp from a too-late shower. She stops at a familiar door.

She knocks. “Taehyung?”

The door flies open.

“Eun-Tuk?” Taehyung blurts, eyes wide. “You’re back?”

He pulls her into a hug before she can answer, arms strong around her. His breath shudders as he pulls away just enough to look at her, hands moving instinctively over her arms, checking for bruises. “Are you okay? Did they—?”

“I’m fine,” she says softly, watching his panic melt into relief.

He smiles then, boyish and bright, so utterly Taehyung it makes her chest hurt.

But she doesn’t let the moment settle.

“You didn’t come,” she says, voice barely above a whisper.

His brows knit. “What?”

“When I was taken. When those men grabbed me. Hoseok came. Seokjin came. But you didn’t.”

His hands fall away from her arms.

He takes a half-step back.

“I… I left it to the supernaturals,” he says slowly, like the words are unfamiliar in his own mouth.

She doesn’t let him off the hook. “Aren’t you supernatural?”

He flinches.

Not visibly. Not violently. Just… something in his face shifts. His posture stiffens, his eyes lose their softness.

Another step back.

“Taehyung?” she asks.

But the boy who answers isn’t Taehyung anymore.

“You’re one smart girl,” he says, and the smile he gives her is gentle, reverent — and completely wrong.

It holds no youth. No nervousness. No teasing.

Only something that feels older than time. Something watching.

Eun-Tuk’s breath catches.

She knows that Taehyung has left the building.

She knows.

Chapter Text

It began the way all his dreams did lately: the world painted in half-light, a flicker of wind through distant reeds, time heavy and suspended as though it dared not move forward. Hoseok stood somewhere familiar and unfamiliar all at once — the air smelled like ink and pine, and the trees were wrong, too old to belong anywhere but memory.

She stood beneath a blooming cherry blossom, petals falling around her like soft confetti. The woman in royal robes, barefoot in the grass, her long black hair braided down her back. Not regal. Not stiff. Alive. Her hands were folded at her waist, and she was crying — quietly, like someone who had forgotten how to sob, as though grief was muscle memory now.

Hoseok knew her.

Except he didn’t.

He had never seen her before. He knew this. He knew this. And yet…

“Wait,” he tried to say, his voice caught in his throat. “Who—”

She looked up. Her eyes met his. They were rimmed with red, but still held that impossible light — the way dusk holds on to summer a moment too long. She didn’t seem startled. She just smiled — small, bittersweet — like she knew him too.

Then she turned, walking toward a figure at the tree line. A man in armor. He couldn’t see the man’s face — only the shape of his back, tall and tense, as though the weight of the entire kingdom clung to his shoulders.

The woman called his name softly. The dream wind stole it before Hoseok could hear it.

She reached for the armored figure… and blood bloomed suddenly across her chest.

Hoseok gasped.

The woman fell, crumpling into white blossoms like ink spilled on snow.

He tried to run. To reach her.

But the world dissolved around him — color unraveling into smoke, the woman’s lifeless eyes the last thing he saw before he woke up.

The dream lingered longer than most.

Hoseok sat up in bed, sweat damp at the base of his neck, his pulse fluttering like it wanted to flee his own skin. The image clung to him: her face. The woman. Her hands reaching for him — not in fear, but in recognition. That feeling again. That aching familiarity.

But the moment he opened his eyes, it unraveled. Her voice was gone. Her name was a ghost on the edge of his tongue.

He reached for the glass of water beside the bed and took a slow sip, grounding himself. Across the dark hotel room, the Seoul skyline glittered through the windows. Real. Present.

The dream wasn’t. Not anymore.

Still, he whispered to the silence:

“Who were you?”

And from somewhere deeper:

“Why do I feel like I… loved you?”

But no answer came.

The silence in the room was as still as ever.

Until morning.

Seokjin stood in the courtyard garden behind the house, the afternoon light gilding the edges of his silhouette. His hands were clasped behind his back, and his gaze was set on the tall, swaying trees planted centuries ago—older than even him, now gnarled with memory. The breeze pulled at his coat and the quiet.

Namjoon approached with his usual heavy steps, the crunch of gravel underfoot announcing his arrival. In one hand, he held two steaming paper cups of coffee. He offered one without a word.

Seokjin took it with a nod. “You always find me out here.”

“You’re easy to find,” Namjoon said. “You only go two places. Inside your house… and deeper inside your head.”

Seokjin offered a wry smile. “Not wrong.”

They stood in silence for a while, sipping quietly, watching leaves spiral down from above.

Finally, Namjoon said, “You’ve changed since the Reaper moved in.”

Seokjin didn’t answer right away.

“He has a name,” he said softly, eventually. “Hoseok.”

Namjoon sighed. “You’re not denying it.”

Seokjin’s voice dipped, evasive. “I’m not confirming it, either.”

“You look for him,” Namjoon pressed, turning to face him now. “When he’s not here. You speak softer when he is. You haven’t brought someone into your world like this since—”

“Don’t,” Seokjin said sharply. His grip tightened around the cup.

Namjoon relented, but only a little. “You know what he is. You know what you are. This story never ends well.”

“I know,” Seokjin murmured.

“Then don’t make the mistake of hoping,” Namjoon said. “Don’t get attached. Because when you do—”

“I die,” Seokjin finished for him, voice flat.

Namjoon’s shoulders sagged. “Or worse. You love him. And he lets the sword go.”

The garden was quiet again.

Seokjin looked down at his coffee, untouched.

“I’ve died before,” he said finally. “But I’ve never… been known.”

Namjoon looked at him sadly. “That’s what scares me most.”

The house was unusually quiet for midday, save for the faint hum of a distant kettle and the occasional creak of ancient floorboards — not from age, but from memory. Jin sat alone in the reading room, a book long forgotten in his lap, eyes on the fire that burned though he hadn’t lit it.

He felt…uneasy. The dream had left a residue — not his own, but echoing. Something restless stirred in the world again. He could feel it in the way the shadows leaned, the way the air bent around time.

A door opened gently. Footsteps — light, familiar — padded into the room. Eun-Tuk.

She wasn’t supposed to be back yet.

Jin looked up, about to greet her with a faint smile, when he froze.

She was radiant in the afternoon light, laughing softly to herself, still unwrapping some street food in crinkled foil. But it wasn’t her smile or the scent of fried sugar that stopped Jin’s heart.

It was the glint of a simple, gilded hairpin nestled above her ear.

Delicate. Modest. Twisted with aged metal in the shape of a plum blossom.

He had seen that hairpin before. Not recently. Not in this life.

The room shifted. The warmth of the fire disappeared. His body went cold.

“Where did you get that?” Jin asked, voice quiet and dangerous, like stepping on a cracked sheet of ice.

Eun-Tuk blinked. “Oh—this?” She touched it lightly. “There was a vendor at the festival… this called to me. Weird, right? I never wear things like this. But I just… I don’t know. I had to have it.”

Seokjin stood slowly, his gaze never leaving the clip.

He was no longer looking at a teenage girl.

He was looking through time.

The hallway was quiet when Eun-Tuk padded barefoot toward Taehyung’s room, clutching the Tupperware container close to her chest. The food inside was still warm — a modest but heartfelt offering: spicy rice cakes, rolled omelet, and a small side of sweet marinated anchovies. She’d made enough for two but packed it for one. She told herself it wasn’t a big deal. Just a thank you. Just… food.

She hesitated at his door, then knocked twice.

It opened almost immediately, like he’d been waiting. His hair was damp, curling slightly at the ends from a shower, and he was wearing an oversized t-shirt with sleepy eyes that widened in surprise at the sight of her.

“You cook?” he asked, blinking.

“No,” she said, thrusting the Tupperware into his hands. “But I can follow a recipe. Barely. Don’t die.”

His lips twitched. “Should I have my uncle on standby?”

“Maybe. Just in case.”

He stepped aside to let her in, and she glanced around his room — minimalist, artsy, and chaotic in the corners where he hoarded sketchbooks and cameras. She perched on the edge of his desk chair as he opened the container and poked at the rice cakes with a chopstick.

“This is nice,” he said. “What’s the occasion?”

“You let me sleep here,” she said, watching him. “You didn’t have to. I know this house isn’t technically mine.”

“You’re my uncle’s guest,” he replied. “Which means you’re family.”

“That’s weird,” she said. “Because you’re the only person in this house who doesn’t treat me like a mysterious time-traveling ghost child.”

Taehyung grinned. “Maybe I like mysterious ghost girls.”

She tried not to blush, but she did — and he saw it.

“I just didn’t want to owe you,” she said quickly, standing up. “Anyway, eat it or don’t. But if you die, don’t haunt me.”

He stood too, stepping a little closer. “Thanks,” he said, more seriously now. “Really. No one’s ever made me food just because.”

She swallowed, suddenly nervous under his gaze. “You’re welcome, I guess.”

Their eyes lingered a moment too long. The hallway light flickered softly behind her — just once. She didn’t notice, but Taehyung did. His brow furrowed.

Then the moment passed.

“Goodnight,” she said.

“Sweet dreams,” he replied, already eating a rice cake as the door closed behind her.

Alone in the hallway, she let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. Inside, Taehyung watched the door for a beat longer than he needed to — something shifting just behind his eyes.

Taehyung sat on the edge of his bed long after Eun-Tuk had gone, the empty Tupperware beside him, the taste of sweet anchovy lingering oddly on his tongue. The room was dim, lit only by the flickering blue of the aquarium by his window. Fish drifted like ghosts through water. Outside, the wind shifted. The house creaked, not from age but from presence.

He rubbed his arms, suddenly cold.

“She likes you,” he muttered to no one, and then laughed at himself. “Of course she does. You’re charming. You’re—”

He cut himself off. The mirror across the room glinted. He hadn’t moved, but for a second — just a second — his reflection had.

He stood and crossed to it, staring into his own face. Eyes soft. Brow smooth. Nothing out of place. And yet…

“You’re getting stronger,” he whispered, eyes narrowing. “You always wake when she’s around.”

The silence didn’t answer. Not with words. But Taehyung felt it — the hum under his skin, the pulse that wasn’t entirely his own. Something stirred in the pit of his chest. Not evil. But not… human.

He pressed a hand to the mirror. “I know you’re not going to tell me what you want. But I want you to know something: if you hurt her…”

His reflection smiled.

He hadn’t.

Taehyung stumbled back a step, heart pounding.

Then, just as suddenly, the reflection mirrored him again, as if nothing had happened.

The lights flickered once more.

And he whispered into the stillness:
“Who are you?”

No answer.

Only silence.

But deep in his bones, Taehyung felt something smile.

The tea room was quiet.

Rain whispered against the windows, a hush that made the porcelain cups sound louder when Hoseok set them down. Across from him sat a woman in her late eighties, hands trembling as she took in her surroundings — the long table, the calm air, the scent of something floral and faintly nostalgic. Chrysanthemums.

“Is this… heaven?” she asked, her voice thin and soft.

“No,” Hoseok said gently. “Not quite. But the way forward is close.”

She looked down at the steaming cup before her, then up at him. “Are you a god?”

He hesitated. “No. I’m someone who walks you to the door.”

She nodded. There was a peace in her face, but something unsettled in her eyes.

“I was waiting for him,” she said. “I thought he’d go first. But he’s not here.”

Hoseok didn’t ask who she meant. Instead, he closed his eyes for a moment and touched the edge of his list — the one that was never written down, but always etched behind his eyes. The names came when it was time. Except when they didn’t.

Like Eun-Tuk.

Or like Seokjin, who still walked the world centuries past his name’s time.

“You’ll see him again,” Hoseok said finally. “When you’re ready.”

Just then, a door opened. Not one the tea room had before. Beyond it was light, but not blinding. A man stepped through — worn coat, calloused hands, the unmistakable curve of love in his eyes.

The woman gasped.

“Minho.”

She rose slowly, then faster, tears catching in the deep lines of her face. When she reached him, he opened his arms, and she folded into them like time had folded in half just to reunite them.

Neither looked back as they stepped into the light.

Hoseok stayed seated, fingers around his own untouched tea. For a moment, he was still.

Then his voice broke the silence.

“If they can find their way to each other across lifetimes,” he whispered, “maybe…”

He didn’t finish the thought.

He only reached for the small slip of paper that hadn’t existed until now. A name had finally appeared.

Kim Seokjin.

The ink shimmered — faint, pulsing like a warning.

Not today.

But soon.

The name burned.

Hoseok stared at it — the elegant black strokes fading in and out like breath on a mirror. Kim Seokjin.

He didn’t move for a long time.

He should have. He should have folded the slip, locked it in his ledger, and gone about the rest of his duties. That was what Reapers did. That was what he was. Wasn’t it?

But the name wasn’t just a task. It wasn’t just a soul to guide.

It was Seokjin.

The man who looked at him like he was a mystery he hadn’t asked for. The man who disappeared when emotions got too sharp. The man Hoseok had summoned with candles and silence, who stood with sorrow threaded into every line of his face and still made Hoseok feel… seen.

Hoseok folded the paper in half.

It disappeared the moment he did, ash curling into air — as if the universe itself was pretending it hadn’t just written that name.

But Hoseok knew better.

The next knock on his door wasn’t a soul.

It was Seokjin.

He stood in the hallway of the reaper’s borrowed apartment — wind-tossed and rain-damp, as if the world had tried to stop him from getting here.

“Why now?” Hoseok asked, before he could stop himself. “Why show up tonight?”

Seokjin didn’t answer immediately. His eyes searched Hoseok’s like he was trying to read a page written in a language long forgotten.

“I don’t know,” Jin finally said. “I felt something. Like someone had spoken my name.”

Hoseok flinched.

“You’re late,” Hoseok said, voice softer now.

“I didn’t know I was expected.”

“You always are.”

They stood in silence again, but it wasn’t empty. There was a hum in the air — something charged, something unspoken. Between them, the distance felt like a held breath.

“Do you want to come in?” Hoseok asked.

Seokjin hesitated, then nodded.

He stepped over the threshold.

And somewhere far away — in a space beyond time — the sword buried in his chest pulsed faintly, as if acknowledging the path that had just changed.

A Palace Hall, Centuries Ago

The scent of sandalwood was thicker here, heavy with incense. Seokjin stood at attention, armor polished, the new sword gleaming at his hip — the gift from the boy-king who now sat upon the throne, gaze unsteady but full of fire.

In the distance, drums thudded with the heartbeat of the court’s celebration.

The people were chanting his name.

Not the King’s.

His.

Seokjin’s.

A national hero. The Immortal Commander. A man made legend.

And in the shadows behind the throne, the Royal Advisor stood — robes dark as ink, face twisted in a smile too still to be kind.

Joong-Heon.

He leaned down, whispering poison behind the boy-king’s ear.

“See how they cheer? And not for their sovereign. They worship a soldier… not their god. Not their king.”

The king’s fingers curled on the armrest.

“He stands too proud,” Joong-Heon continued. “Do you not see how dangerous it is, Your Majesty, to raise a man so high he forgets to kneel?”

Seokjin didn’t hear it. He was still smiling, still basking in the echo of joy, his eyes searching the court — for the one person who mattered. The king. The boy who had given him the sword.

His love.

But the boy looked away.

And Joong-Heon smiled wider.

Present Day

Jin gasped and snapped upright like he’d been underwater.

Hoseok was kneeling now, crouched in front of him.

“Jin—?”

Jin’s hand came up, gripping Hoseok’s wrist with bruising force.

“They poisoned him,” he whispered. “Not his wine. His mind.”

Hoseok frowned, still holding onto his arm.

“Who?”

“Joong-Heon,” Seokjin breathed. “The man who destroyed us all.”

He looked into Hoseok’s eyes, haunted.

“You saw her,” Jin whispered, his voice going quiet as a snowfall. “Didn’t you? You’ve been dreaming of her.”

Hoseok’s silence was answer enough.

Jin let go, gently this time. But the tremble in his fingers said everything that words couldn’t.

“They’re coming back to us,” Jin said. “All of them.”

He meant the memories.
He meant the ghosts.
He meant love.

And revenge.

The attic of Jin’s home wasn’t dusty — it was ancient. The air was still, trapped in time like the belongings that lined the walls: scrolls sealed in cracked lacquer tubes, letters tied in faded ribbon, books whose pages curled like leaves in autumn.

Seokjin lit a lantern with a flick of his fingers. Its golden light softened the dark corners. He didn’t usually come up here. Too many echoes.

But tonight, the dream had unsettled him.

“I need to show you something,” he said.

Hoseok followed without asking.

They walked in silence until Jin stopped before a long wooden cabinet with iron hinges. A layer of grief seemed to hang over it. He hesitated, then slowly pulled the doors open.

Inside were a few relics from the old kingdom. A scroll bearing the royal crest. A soldier’s helm. And—

A covered frame.

He drew back the silk cloth.

It revealed a painting, faded by centuries but still vibrant in the quiet way that only oil and longing can preserve. The woman in the portrait was radiant — not in the way of queens, but in the way of sunlight. Eyes bright with mischief. Lips on the edge of a smile, like she was about to tease the viewer. Long dark hair tied with a simple ribbon.

“She was my sister,” Jin said softly. “Kim Sun.”

“She’s in royal garments,” Hoseok observes as if it would reverse the truth.

“She was married to the King,” Seokjin says. “Can you believe it? My sister married to the man I-“

Seokjin didn’t finish the sentence, but Hoseok had stopped breathing.

The air tightened around his ribs like a belt. His lungs refused to fill.

“I had a dream,” he whispered.

Jin turned.

“I didn’t know who she was. I thought…” He swallowed. “I thought it was just a dream.”

But there she was. The woman from his sleep. The ache in her laugh. The way she turned in his arms — the warmth of her.

Kim Sun.

Jin looked at him, eyes flickering with something unreadable.

“She was killed because of me.”

Neither of them spoke for a long time.

Then Hoseok reached out and gently traced the curve of her painted cheek. Not with fingers. With memory.

The Reaper’s headquarters were silent that night. No flickering souls. No wandering ghosts. Just the soft echo of Hoseok’s footsteps on cold tile.

He didn’t belong here — not tonight. Not like this.

But sleep had evaded him for days. Since the dream. Since the portrait. Since the name Kim Sun took root in his brain and refused to let go.

The reaper archives weren’t exactly organized — a mix of ethereal files, shifting paper, memory-bound tomes that bled ink when you touched them. But Hoseok wasn’t just anyone. The records yielded to him with minimal resistance, as if they, too, were tired of keeping secrets.

His hands moved fast, flipping past death dates and reincarnation codes, souls processed and souls missing. He ignored them all. He was looking for one.

And then he found it.

A thin black volume sealed in wax that peeled away with a whisper.

Inside:
Name: Kim Sun
Time of Death: 940 years ago
Cause: Execution
Related Persons:
• Kim Seokjin – Brother
• Wang Yeo – Husband - The King
• Joong-Heon – Royal Advisor

The names made his blood ice over.

Wang Yeo.

The name throbbed in his head like a long-forgotten melody. Hoseok stared at it, breath shallow, lips parted. It was the name from the scrolls. The name of the boy king. The one who betrayed Seokjin. The one from the Goblin’s story.

The one Hoseok had seen in flickers of dream, but never remembered being.

His hands began to shake.

A final line shimmered at the bottom of the record.

Current Reincarnation: Ji Eun-Tuk

He dropped the book.

“No,” he whispered. “It can’t be…”

But it was.

Eun-Tuk was Kim Sun.

And he… he had been dreaming of her original face. Kim Sun’s death. Kim Sun’ tears.

His mind spun. Everything was unraveling.

The soul he couldn’t remember. The guilt he couldn’t name.

And the man he couldn’t stop loving who lived a sword in his chest and sorrow in his smile.

Seokjin.

Hoseok pressed a trembling hand to the page again.

Wang Yeo.

The boy king.

He stared and stared until the ink swam before his eyes.

Chapter Text

The dreams had been getting worse.

At first they were flashes—soft hands, a gold pin, a voice calling a name that wasn’t his. Then they began to linger. Colors, smells, tears that burned without meaning. Hoseok didn’t know her name, but she haunted him now with the ferocity of a past life demanding to be remembered.

The dream began at dusk. Everything was bathed in honeyed light, the kind that makes even grief look soft. She stood in front of him—a girl no older than twenty, draped in silk and fire. Her hair was pinned with gold, her mouth a soft curve that always seemed on the verge of laughter or tears.

She called him something, a name that felt both alien and known. He wanted to respond but his throat refused. Instead, he watched as she reached for him, delicate fingers brushing his cheek.

“Brother,” she whispered. “Why didn’t you stop it?”

He tried to say her name. It stuck in his mouth like ash. When he reached for her hand, it passed through her like smoke.

Fire. Screaming. Chains. A crown falling from a bloodied brow. Her scream became the wind itself.

Hoseok woke with a gasp, his heart ricocheting inside his chest. Sweat slicked his skin and the scent of sandalwood lingered, as if the dream had clung to him like perfume.

He sat up slowly, raking a hand through his hair, trying to catch his breath. The dream—the memory?—had already begun to fade around the edges. But her voice was still there. That word: brother.

He had never had a sister.

He moved toward the desk, fumbling for his journal out of instinct, but stopped himself. He stared at the candle he'd left on the windowsill the night before. It had melted into nothing. In the reflection of the window, he saw his own face—and behind it, the whisper of a woman’s eyes. Watching.

“What are you trying to tell me?” he murmured into the dark.

There was no answer. Only silence. Only shadows.

From the upper corridor of the temple, Hoseok watched Seokjin move through the garden with a bundle in his hands—simple things: a small silk pouch, a carved wooden comb, a pressed flower sealed in glass.

They were not gifts given in courtship. Nor were they offerings of obligation. These were the kinds of things one gave to a loved one who had forgotten who they were. Tokens. Tethers. Reminders of a shared past.

He watched as Jin quietly placed them one by one beside Eun-Tuk’s seat on the porch where she liked to drink her barley tea. She wasn’t there now—still out, maybe—but Jin’s expression was tender, expectant, like he was offering them to a ghost he hoped might remember him.

Hoseok’s breath caught. Not because he was jealous—but because he understood.

This is what grief looked like in Seokjin. It didn’t cry. It didn’t rage. It left tokens in the corners of the world and waited.

And he had seen this before. In another life. A soldier with kind eyes offering his rations to a young noblewoman who always forgot to eat. A man laying peonies at an unmarked grave. A memory. A cycle.

Eun-Tuk wouldn’t understand. Not yet. But Hoseok did. And the ache in his chest had nothing to do with love lost—it was the sharp twist of realization:

She’s the sister.

He turned away before Jin looked up. The past was catching up too fast. And the sword on Seokjin’s chest wasn’t the only thing threatening to pierce through them both.

Seokjin wasn’t expecting visitors. He wasn’t expecting to feel anything today at all—until Eun-Tuk came bounding up the steps of the old temple house, her cheeks pink from the crisp autumn air and her hands behind her back like a child with a secret.

“Guess what I found?” she grinned, bouncing on her heels. Her energy had always been infectious, but today there was something else threaded beneath it—an eerie calm, like the stillness before a storm.

Seokjin raised a brow, amused. “A golden fortune? My long-lost dignity?”

She giggled, then held out her hand. Nestled in her palm was a hair clip—an old-fashioned piece, delicate and understated. A single flower carved from pale jade, its petals curling outward, the silver pin beneath it weathered but intact.

The world tilted slightly.

Jin reached out, but didn’t touch it. His fingers hovered, trembling. “Where… where did you get this?”

“Some street market near the university,” she said, confused by his tone. “It was buried under a pile of junk. But it felt… I don’t know. Like it was waiting for me.”

He stared at the pin, breath caught in his chest. He had seen this before. Not in this life, but in the one that refused to let go. In silk corridors drenched in moonlight, in the delicate braid of his little sister’s hair. It had once been his mother’s. Then his sister’s. And now—

He forced his voice not to shake. “You’re sure you’ve never seen this before?”

Eun-Tuk blinked. “Why would I lie about a hair clip?” She paused, then added gently, “Is it… yours?”

“No,” he said too quickly. Then corrected himself. “It was someone’s. Someone important.”

Suddenly he was back in the palace. His sister laughing, her voice a bell through the courtyard. “You’re staring again,” she’d tease. “What? Do I have leaves in my hair?” She’d tilt her head and the clip would glint in the sun.

“Just looking at something I want to protect,” he’d say.

She always smiled when he said that. He remembered it now. The weight of that smile. The heaviness of knowing he hadn’t protected her at all.

He stepped back. “I need to show you something,” he said. “Stay here.”

He disappeared into the back of the temple, rustling through old scrolls and cloth-wrapped paintings until he found it: a portrait faded by time, but unmistakable. The woman in it wore the jade pin in her hair. She had Eun-Tuk’s eyes.

He didn’t show her the painting. Not yet. But as he returned, the look in her face mirrored his own confusion. She held the clip as if it were alive.

“I think this belonged to your sister,” she said softly, though she didn’t know how she knew it. “I think she wants it back.”

Jin didn’t speak. Couldn’t. But he sat beside her on the porch as the sun began to fall, and when he looked at her now, he didn’t just see Eun-Tuk. He saw someone else entirely, reaching for him from the other side of death.

“She has your eyes.”

Namjoon’s voice echoed off the high ceilings of the Goblin’s manor. He was standing by the hearth, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a steaming mug of something dark and bitter. Seokjin didn’t look up from the scroll he was pretending to read.

“That’s not possible,” Jin said softly. “She was reborn. If anything, she’d have her own eyes.”

“You think souls change shape?” Namjoon asked, tilting his head slightly. “The gods might give them new names, but they always keep the same eyes. That’s how you find them.”

Jin’s hands tightened around the scroll. “I didn’t find her,” he muttered. “She just appeared.”

Namjoon’s smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Or maybe she was placed. Like a puzzle piece. Like Hoseok.”

That name turned the air cold.

Jin finally looked up. “You think I don’t know what you’re trying to do?”

Namjoon took a slow sip from his mug. “I think you’re forgetting what happened last time you let yourself believe in love.”

Silence. Even the fire seemed to retreat into itself.

“This is different,” Seokjin said at last, but his voice was unsure, brittle. “He’s different.”

“They always are. Until the sword is gone and you’re gone with it.”

Jin flinched.

“Don’t grow attached,” Namjoon said, setting his mug down. “Not to her. And especially not to him.”

“I didn’t ask for your permission.”

Namjoon’s eyes softened, but his voice remained steady. “You don’t need my permission, hyung. You need protection—from yourself.”

Seokjin stood, the scroll forgotten, and crossed the room to the covered painting leaning against the far wall. Without a word, he pulled the cloth aside, revealing the face he had painted with trembling hands and a grieving heart. Kim Sun. His sister. Frozen forever in oils and color, looking just as she had the day she was taken from him.

Namjoon looked away. He couldn’t bear to see that face again, not after all these years.

“She’s back,” Jin whispered. “The gods gave her back.”

“Then don’t make the same mistake,” Namjoon said, already halfway to the door. “Don’t try to keep what’s meant to pass on.”

As he left, the echo of his steps felt final, like the close of a tomb.

Jin stared at the painting for a long time. Not even blinking. His fingers brushed the edge of the canvas as if trying to reach through time. But behind him, in the shadows, the presence of another soul lingered—quiet, watching, listening. Hoseok didn’t mean to overhear, but he stayed rooted to the floor, his breath shallow, his thoughts racing.

Kim Sun. Eun-Tuk. The girl in his dreams.

And the name Namjoon didn’t say aloud but hung heavy in the room like smoke: the King.

The halls of the Reaper Headquarters were quiet, cloaked in that unnatural stillness that always made Hoseok feel like time was holding its breath. It was the hour between dusk and dark, when the living were still pretending to be alive and the dead were beginning to stir.

He moved quickly, his boots silent against the black-tiled floors, fingers trailing the walls like they could lead him to the answers faster. He wasn’t supposed to be here tonight. But something was clawing at the back of his mind—something urgent and ancient, as if a memory were trying to resurface from the depths of another life.

The archives loomed in front of him. A simple wooden door, marked only by a symbol the living would never see. He pressed his palm to it. It opened for him without resistance.

Inside, the scent of paper, ink, and something older—dust, maybe. Or time itself.

Hoseok moved past the shelves lined with old files, souls long passed and names long forgotten. He bypassed the index. He didn’t need it. He knew what he was looking for.

Kim Sun.

The name was a whisper in his bones.

When he found the file, he hesitated. Something about touching it felt dangerous. But he opened it anyway.

Inside was a black-and-white photo from a century ago. A young woman, hair swept back, eyes wide with laughter frozen mid-breath. Hoseok's own breath caught. It was her. The woman from his dreams. The one who had haunted his sleep for days now. The one Seokjin had painted with such delicate reverence.

He flipped to the next page. Listed beneath her soul markers were three names:

• Kim Seokjin
• Park Joong-Heon
• Yi Hyeon, 27th King of Goryeo

His heart stopped on the last one. Yi Hyeon. The name felt like a blade pressed to the back of his neck. He’d seen it before. In flashes. In moments when Seokjin touched his shoulder too gently, or when the weight of a stare lingered too long.

It was the name of the boy in the dream. The one who once wore a crown. The one who had looked at Kim Sun like she was the sun and moon and sword and shield all at once.

It can’t be.

He stumbled back, clutching the file to his chest. His head was swimming, the past crashing through the walls he had spent lifetimes building. If Eun-Tuk was Kim Sun… if Seokjin was her brother… if he had been the king—

Then who had he been?

Something stirred in the pit of his soul. A scream. A sob. A confession never made. A lifetime never finished.

Hoseok didn’t remember leaving the archive. He only remembered the wind on his face as he ran out into the night, the folder clutched in his hand, and the name Yi Hyeon pounding like thunder in his ears.

Tomorrow, he would have to face Seokjin.

Tonight, he would face the truth.

“You’re late,” Seokjin said without looking up. He was seated on the floor of the temple, papers and relics spread out around him like offerings. The air smelled of dust and pine, incense curling from a nearby burner, dancing in lazy swirls toward the open ceiling.

Hoseok stood in the doorway, shoulders tense beneath his coat, the file folder hidden in the folds of his jacket. His heart thudded like a war drum. “You’re early,” he replied, voice quieter than intended.

Seokjin finally looked up. His face was softer in this light, younger almost, as if the past few hundred years had slipped off his shoulders for just a moment. “I’ve been meaning to show you something.” He patted the empty floor space beside him. “Come sit.”

Hoseok hesitated, then crossed the room slowly. As he lowered himself, his eyes caught the corner of a canvas, partially unwrapped. His breath hitched.

“Is that…?”

“Kim Sun,” Seokjin confirmed. “My sister.” He unwrapped the painting fully, revealing her face in full color. Laughter lived in her painted eyes. Her hair was pinned back with an ornamental clip Hoseok had seen recently — in Eun-Tuk’s hand, gleaming beneath the streetlight. “I painted this long after she died. When the memory stopped hurting enough to ruin my brushwork.”

Hoseok couldn’t look away. It was her. The woman from his dreams. The woman whose death felt like a wound inside his soul.

“She was brave,” Jin continued, gazing at the painting like it breathed. “Smarter than me. Kinder. She always saw through people. That’s what got her killed.”

Hoseok’s voice cracked when he asked, “What happened?”

“She was accused of treason,” Seokjin said. “The king—” His jaw tensed. “—he ordered her death. My sister. His wife.”

Hoseok blinked. “She was married to the king?”

Seokjin nodded slowly. “It was a political match at first. But I think… I think they really loved each other. It’s why it destroyed them both.”

Hoseok swallowed thickly. “And the king?”

“Killed himself not long after,” Jin murmured. “They say regret consumed him. He died young. Alone. The stories don’t talk about him much.”

There was silence then. Not an empty one — it was heavy with ghosts.

Hoseok’s hand drifted to his coat pocket where the folder sat, burning a hole into his side. He should tell him. He should say it aloud. That Eun-Tuk was Kim Sun. That he had been dreaming her death. That he might be the king Seokjin still grieved.

But Seokjin’s eyes were too soft, his heart too open. Hoseok couldn’t shatter it just yet. Not until he was sure. Not until he knew what to do with the past that was stitching itself back together inside his mind.

So instead, he asked, “Do you still miss her?”

Jin smiled without humor. “Every day.”

And Hoseok, sitting there with the painting between them, realized with a hollow ache that it wasn’t only Kim Sun Seokjin was mourning. It was a time, a life, a love — and maybe, just maybe, a man who once wore a crown and broke his heart.

Later, when Seokjin stepped out into the courtyard to burn incense for his sister’s memory, Hoseok finally reached into his coat and opened the file one more time. He stared at the name: Yi Hyeon. The boy king. The betrayer. The mourner.

Me.

“What have I done?” Hoseok whispered into the darkness.

Scene 6: The Truth Etched in Paper

It was late, but Reaper Headquarters never slept.

Hoseok walked with measured urgency through the corridor, his footsteps echoing against the stone. The lights above buzzed quietly, casting long shadows across the archive shelves that stretched on endlessly like a library built by time itself.

The file folder burned in his hand. He had memorized the names on the page hours ago — but now, he needed more. A name wasn’t enough. He needed to know why he felt what he felt. Why Kim Sun’s face haunted him. Why the sight of Seokjin’s grief felt personal, familiar… like his own.

He passed other Reapers along the way, none of whom acknowledged him. They were used to his disappearances by now, used to the strange obsession that had gripped him in recent days. He told himself it was about doing his duty. Solving a cosmic knot. Balancing the scales. But that was a lie.

It was about Jin.

He stopped at a terminal embedded in the wall — an ethereal screen lit from within, ancient in technology and yet far beyond anything of the living world. He placed the file on the scanner pad and murmured, “Kim Sun.”

The screen blinked, then began to shift. Rows of text appeared: names, dates, timelines, previous lives. One entry was still active — marked “Pending Completion.” He tapped it.

A profile appeared: Kim Sun. Once a queen. Sister to the Goblin. Betrayed. Beheaded. Reincarnated.

“Current identity,” he whispered. “Show me.”

The screen shimmered.

Name: Eun-Tuk
Known Relationships: Kim Seokjin (Guardian), Kim Namjoon (Nephew), Yi Hyeon (Former Husband)

Hoseok’s breath left his body.

Yi Hyeon.

The name trembled on the screen, a tremor in time.

He whispered it to himself: “Yi Hyeon… that was… me?”

As if to confirm his suspicion, the screen flickered again, this time showing fragmented memories — ones not from the archives, but from inside him. A field of red silk. A trembling hand. Blood soaking his robes as he watched her fall. His voice, younger, rawer: “Please… forgive me.”

He stumbled back, gripping the edge of the console to keep himself upright. He had seen her die. He had killed her. No — not by his own hand, but with his silence, his weakness. He had let fear and manipulation guide him, and Seokjin… Seokjin had watched it happen. Then bled for it. Then lived for centuries carrying that wound.

“He doesn’t know,” Hoseok whispered. “He doesn’t know it was me.”

The screen buzzed again. One last note appeared at the bottom of the page:

Judgment suspended: unresolved emotional entanglements between Guardian and Reaper identities.

“No,” he said aloud. “No, no — don’t you dare.”

He slapped the screen, but it went dark.

Behind him, another Reaper walked by, staring but not stopping. Hoseok was alone again. Alone with the truth, and the horrifying realization that the love he was beginning to feel — real, gentle, overwhelming — had once ended in blood and betrayal.

He closed the file, his hands trembling. Then he whispered it, like a prayer:

“I was the king.”

Somewhere far above, in the world of the living, Jin laid out a blanket for Eun-Tuk’s gift. He placed oranges in a dish, a stick of incense in the holder. And he wept for his sister, not knowing that the man he had begun to love was the same one who had once ordered her death.

The past had come calling.

And it would not be quiet.

Chapter Text

Hoseok stood before the Reaper Registry, the vast library of lives past and present stretching out before him like a black sea. Files flitted and names whispered on windless air. He moved through the rows with single-minded focus, almost feverish in his determination.

He didn’t know what he was looking for exactly—only that he had to find it. Since the dreams had started, since he saw her face, he couldn’t shake the sense of familiarity… and failure.

Then a file hovered before him. Not by chance. Never by chance.

He reached out and caught it. The name: Kim Sun. The face: the woman from his dreams. Her eyes full of grief, her smile soft, her beauty undeniable.

Connected names listed below her entry:
• Kim Seokjin (brother)
• Yi Hyeon (betrothed)
• The Prime Minister’s Assassin (killer)

His heart thudded in his chest.

Yi Hyeon.

He’d heard that name before.

A boy king. A young monarch who fell in love with his general’s daughter, who failed to protect her, who disappeared from history as if swallowed whole by regret.

The wind inside the registry howled, though nothing moved. Hoseok stared at the entry as though it would bite him. His breath caught as something inside him clicked into place—not memory, not exactly, but truth.

And for a second, he wasn’t in the registry anymore.

He was standing in a throne room, gold robes clinging to his small frame, a crown too heavy for his head. She stood across from him, Kim Sun, in ceremonial dress. He reached for her, but the moment cracked like glass.

Back in the present, Hoseok staggered backward. The file vanished. The truth did not.

He was Yi Hyeon.

And Kim Sun had died because of him.

Jimin found Hoseok sitting on the edge of a low rooftop, legs swinging like a bored schoolboy, eyes too heavy for someone pretending to rest.

“You’re sulking,” Jimin said, hopping up beside him.

“I’m thinking,” Hoseok replied.

“Same thing with you.”

Hoseok turned to him, shadows curling under his eyes. “Jimin… do you ever remember who you were before this?”

Jimin blinked, thrown. “What kind of question is that?”

“Just answer.”

Jimin leaned back on his hands, staring at the skyline. “No. We’re not supposed to. That’s part of the deal, right? You cross over. You serve. The past becomes mist. Why?”

“I remember.”

Jimin sat up straighter. “You what?”

“I found my file. It was a mistake—I wasn’t looking for myself. But I found him. The boy king. Yi Hyeon.”

Jimin’s mouth parted. “Wait. That was you?”

Hoseok nodded once, as if the admission could shatter stone.

“You were… a king?” Jimin asked, incredulous. “Why would a king become a Reaper?”

“I think I asked for it,” Hoseok whispered. “After what I did—after what I failed to do. I couldn’t carry the weight. I think… I asked to forget.”

Jimin swallowed hard. “And now?”

“I remember her,” Hoseok said. “Kim Sun.”

Jimin froze.

“She’s here, Jimin. She came back. But that’s not what’s killing me.”

“What is?”

“I didn’t love her.”

Jimin looked confused.

“I didn’t love her,” Hoseok repeated. “I worshipped her. But love?” He looked down at his hands. “That was someone else.”

Jimin hesitated. “Who?”

Hoseok looked at him, eyes glossy with realization.

“Seokjin.”

Seokjin stood before the easel in the corner of the room, gently brushing dust from the aged painting of his sister. He hadn’t looked at it in years. Not really. But Eun-Tuk’s face… her eyes had pierced through time.

Behind him, Hoseok entered quietly, as if afraid to speak.

“She looks like her,” Jin said without turning.

“I know.”

“You’ve seen the file?”

“I didn’t need to,” Hoseok replied softly.

Jin finally turned, eyes glassy but dry. “I tried not to believe it. I didn’t want to project the past onto someone innocent.”

“She isn’t innocent,” Hoseok said. “She’s her. She doesn’t remember, but her soul knows.”

Jin nodded. “I started bringing her gifts. Silly things. Trinkets Sun would have loved. She doesn’t understand. But she smiles. And I think… some part of her remembers too.”

There was a silence.

“You love her,” Hoseok said.

“I did,” Jin replied. “But now… now it feels like protecting her is the only thing left of that love. And even that might not be mine to give.”

Hoseok stepped closer. “I don’t love her, Jin.”

Jin looked up, startled.

“I think I loved you.” Hoseok’s voice was quiet. “Back then. Before I knew what it was.”

Jin didn’t speak. His face didn’t move.

“I failed her. I failed you.”

Jin looked down, then back up.

“You remembered.”

“I did.”

Another silence passed.

“I don’t know what we’re supposed to do with this,” Jin finally said.

Hoseok offered a sad smile. “We keep moving forward. We don’t have a choice.”

They stood together before the painting, haunted not by the past—but by everything they could never say aloud.

The sky in Seoul had darkened into an indigo hush, stars scattered like whispers overhead. Taehyung stood alone in the courtyard behind the temple, the faint glow of lanterns casting soft shadows across his face. He wasn’t praying—not exactly. He didn’t know how anymore.

The bells overhead chimed softly in the breeze, and the air thickened.

He knew this feeling.

It wasn’t a storm. It wasn’t a presence exactly. It was something between—something vast and knowing pressing gently at the edges of the world.

He turned.

Behind him stood a woman robed in silver light, her form radiant but not blinding, her eyes glowing like galaxies. Her voice was music and gravity all at once.

“You feel it, don’t you?”

Taehyung didn’t move. “Feel what?”

“The tether,” she said. “It’s fraying.”

His brow creased. “Is that why I keep seeing her?”

“Seeing who?”

He hesitated, then said, “Eun-Tuk.”

The figure stepped closer. “You are touched by time. Not as a Reaper. Not as a god. But something else. A guardian of chance. A watcher of fates.”

“I don’t want a fate,” Taehyung muttered. “I want answers.”

“Answers come with a cost.”

He looked up, eyes steady. “Then I’ll pay.”

She studied him for a long moment.

“You were once a wish,” she said softly. “A thread pulled too tightly across lifetimes. A boy who asked not to be king, but to love freely.”

Taehyung’s breath caught in his throat.

“You’ve met them before, haven’t you?” she asked. “Seokjin. Hoseok.”

“I—” he stopped, suddenly unsure.

She tilted her head. “There are fractures in your memory. Places where you have bled through the veil. Dreams that were not yours. Emotions you could not name. That is the mark of the one who remembers too soon.”

He was trembling now. “Then what do I do?”

The divine smiled.

“You stay close,” she said. “To him.”

“Who?”

She reached out, fingertip grazing the center of his forehead. “The one your soul has always chosen. Whether in war or in waiting.”

And then she was gone.

The wind stilled. The lanterns stopped swaying.

Taehyung stood alone again—but the world felt different.

He clutched the collar of his coat, eyes lifting toward the temple roof where the stars blinked down in quiet agreement.

Somewhere out there, Jin and Hoseok were tangled in past lives and new truths.

And he?

He had always been a piece of the story, even if he didn’t understand his role.

Yet.

The corridors of Reaper Headquarters were quiet at this hour. Not empty—never empty—but still enough that Hoseok’s footsteps echoed as he moved down the eastern wing. His fingers twitched at his sides. He’d tried to distract himself with assignments, paperwork, even tea. None of it worked.

That face.

That name.

That dream.

He wasn’t panicking. He was possessed.

When he reached the doors to the Registry, he didn’t hesitate. His hand hovered over the obsidian panel, and it opened for him without resistance. The Registry was alive—breathing, shifting, responding to the thoughts and instincts of the Reapers who entered it. But tonight, it responded too easily, like it had been expecting him.

“Subject search,” he whispered. “Kim Sun.”

The room trembled faintly.

Screens lit up across the walls. Pages hovered in midair. A file, sealed in golden script, rose slowly from the pedestal at the center of the chamber.

He moved closer.

Kim Sun.

Born during the Joseon era. Died young. Sister to Kim Seokjin. Declared missing for months before her body was discovered. Officially ruled a tragedy—unofficially marked as a divine rupture. Her soul had not returned through the proper channels. She had not passed through the gates.

Because she had been sent back.

“Rebirth,” Hoseok whispered, his eyes skimming the text.

One name emerged under the section labeled Tethered Reincarnations.

Eun-Tuk.

He backed away like he’d been punched in the chest. His dream—the woman’s face—the familiarity.

It was her.

It was always her.

But that wasn’t the part that took his breath.

Below Eun-Tuk’s name were three connections: Sibling, Villain, Lover.

Hoseok swallowed hard, but his eyes kept reading.

Sibling: Kim Seokjin
Villain: Jo Hak-tae
Lover: Yi Hyeon

He stared at that last one.

Yi Hyeon.

The name rang in his ears like a bell underwater. It echoed in his bones.

“I know that name,” he whispered. “I know it…”

It was the boy king’s name. The one from the history books. The one who died young in a rebellion. The one the Reaper code called a “missing soul,” never fully processed into the cycle.

And Hoseok knew—without being told, without a shadow of doubt—that it was him.

It had always been him.

The painting.

The dream.

The feeling when he touched Jin.

He gripped the edge of the pedestal, suddenly dizzy. The room around him blurred. Names and dates swirled like smoke. Every memory he’d buried clawed its way to the surface.

“I loved him,” he said hoarsely. “I loved Seokjin.”

Not like a brother. Not like a friend.

As a king. As a man.

And he betrayed that love.

His knees buckled.

He had once vowed to protect Jin’s sister and failed. He had sworn to stand beside Jin and had turned away.

The sword. The curse. The pain between them.

He wasn’t just a Reaper.

He was a man who had died with regret so heavy it kept him from crossing over.

That’s why he was still here.

He looked down at his hands. They were trembling. Not from fear—but from clarity.

He had to fix this.

He had to tell Jin the truth.

Even if it broke both of them.

Seokjin stood alone in the temple courtyard behind Reaper Headquarters, watching the lanterns sway on their hooks. He had come here to think, but the silence only echoed back his doubts louder than before. The last few days had been a spiral—Eun-Tuk’s presence, the painting of Kim Sun, Hoseok’s distance, Jimin’s tension.

Everything felt too close.

Too alive.

“Jin.”

The voice was low. Controlled. Barely.

Seokjin turned. Hoseok stood there, his cloak billowing slightly from the wind behind him, his eyes unreadable. But something in his posture made Seokjin tense.

“You found something,” Jin said, already knowing.

Hoseok nodded, slowly walking forward until they were a breath apart. “I looked her up.”

“Kim Sun?”

Hoseok didn’t answer right away. He lifted a hand to the center of his chest, like something was physically lodged there. His voice cracked as he said, “Her name was Kim Sun. And she was reborn as Eun-Tuk.”

Jin sucked in a breath, but Hoseok didn’t stop.

“I don’t love her,” he added quickly, urgently. “I need you to understand that.”

“What—?”

“I don’t love her. I never did. Not the way I love—” He stopped himself. “Back then, I failed her. I was supposed to protect her. I was supposed to protect you.”

Jin’s throat bobbed. “What do you mean, Hoseok?”

“You asked me once why I became a Reaper.” Hoseok’s eyes were wet. “I didn’t know. Not until tonight.”

He looked up at the moon, then back at Jin.

“I was Yi Hyeon.”

Jin blinked, stunned.

“The boy king,” Hoseok said softly. “The one who died in a coup. The one whose soul went missing.”

“That… that’s not possible.”

“It is. I found the registry. It lists me by name. Yi Hyeon. And next to me…” He paused, then stepped closer. “You were there, Jin. You were my lover.”

Silence stretched between them.

Jin looked away, his hands clenched.

“I don’t remember,” he whispered.

“I do,” Hoseok said. “I remembered you first. I just didn’t know why it hurt so much to look at you. Why it felt like I’d wronged you before we ever met.”

Jin turned his face away completely, voice tight. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I’m not going to hide anymore.”

“You waited until I trusted you. You waited until I—” Jin broke off, voice cracking. “Why does it feel like you’ve stolen something from me?”

“Because I did,” Hoseok whispered. “In our past life, I let you die. I let her die. And I lived. I’ve been trying to pay for it ever since.”

Jin’s eyes met his, and Hoseok saw something raw inside him—recognition without memory, a grief that was deeper than the body could explain.

“I need time,” Jin said quietly.

“I’ll give it,” Hoseok replied. “I’ll give you everything I never gave you then.”

Jin didn’t respond. He turned and walked away, slow, measured, but Hoseok knew.

He remembered now too.

Even if he couldn’t say it yet.

Chapter Text

The city was quieter than usual, a rare pocket of stillness in Seoul. Snow had begun to fall in slow, heavy flakes, gathering on the streetlamps and rooftops. Seokjin walked ahead, hands folded behind his back, the collar of his coat pulled high against the cold. His pace was unhurried, almost contemplative.

Hoseok followed at his side, silent. His breath rose in pale clouds, disappearing into the night. He wasn’t sure why he had agreed to this—Jin had said they needed air, nothing more. But walking like this, together, side by side, it felt dangerously close to something else.

They stopped at a small stall near the riverbank. The ahjumma behind the counter handed over two roasted sweet potatoes wrapped in parchment. Jin accepted them with a small bow and immediately held one out toward Hoseok.

“Take it,” he said. “You look colder than me.”

“I’m not,” Hoseok muttered, but he accepted anyway, warmth seeping into his palms. He hadn’t realized how cold he was until then.

They sat on a low stone bench, shoulders brushing but not quite touching. Jin broke open his sweet potato, the steam curling upward. He smiled faintly. “I’ve always liked these. They remind me of winters when my family was still together.”

Hoseok looked down at his hands. The words landed heavier than they should have. He pictured the painting of Kim Sun. The way Eun-Tuk’s eyes mirrored hers. The grief Jin carried like a second shadow. Hoseok’s chest tightened.

“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly, the words escaping before he could stop them.

Jin turned his head, surprised. “For what?”

Hoseok shook his head. He couldn’t explain. He couldn’t confess that he was remembering pieces of another life, fragments of a boy king who had betrayed them all. He didn’t even understand it himself.

“Nothing,” he said instead. “Forget it.”

Jin studied him for a moment longer, then looked back toward the river. The lights from the city danced on the water’s surface, broken and shimmering. “You apologize too much,” he murmured. “Sometimes I wonder what guilt you’re carrying. It must be a big one.”

Hoseok froze.

Jin took another bite, as if he hadn’t noticed the way Hoseok had gone still, or the storm behind his eyes.

They sat in silence for a long while. Hoseok watched the snow gather in Jin’s dark hair, melting into droplets that traced down his cheek. His heart squeezed, unsteady, and he had to look away. He told himself it was guilt. Remnants of another life. The price of betrayal.

But deep down, he knew it wasn’t that simple.

It wasn’t guilt that made him want to brush the snow from Jin’s hair. It wasn’t grief that made his pulse quicken every time Jin looked at him. It wasn’t Kim Sun he saw when he closed his eyes at night.

It was Jin.

Always Jin.

And it terrified him.

The tea house was empty this late at night, save for the soft rattle of the old kettle on the counter. Jimin leaned against the back wall, arms folded loosely, his Reaper’s hat hanging from one hand. He had been waiting for Hoseok—he always knew when Hoseok was restless.

“You’ve got that look again,” Jimin said as Hoseok slipped inside, shrugging off his coat. “Like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Hoseok gave a humorless laugh. “I see ghosts every day. That’s the job.”

“Not like this.” Jimin tilted his head. “This one’s personal.”

Hoseok didn’t sit right away. He walked to the counter, poured himself a cup of tea, then held it in his hands without drinking. The steam curled upward, fragrant and warm, but he only stared into it as if answers might rise with the smoke.

“I can’t stop thinking about her,” Hoseok admitted finally.

“Eun-Tuk?” Jimin asked, brows lifting.

Hoseok shook his head. “No. Kim Sun. The woman from the painting. The woman from my dreams. The woman I…” His voice faltered. He clenched his jaw, searching for the word. “The woman I failed.”

Jimin pushed off the wall, coming closer. “Failed how?”

“I don’t remember all of it,” Hoseok said. “But I know it was me. I was the King. I should’ve protected her, but I didn’t. I loved her—” He stopped himself again, the word heavy, sour. “Or maybe I thought I did. But love isn’t supposed to feel like this.”

Jimin’s expression softened, but his voice was steady. “You’re not haunted because you loved her. You’re haunted because you betrayed her.”

Hoseok flinched.

“You don’t see it, do you?” Jimin pressed. “The past is bleeding into the present. You keep calling it guilt. You keep calling it grief. But the way you look at Seokjin…”

Hoseok snapped his gaze up.

Jimin held it. “That’s not grief.”

Silence stretched between them. Hoseok finally set the tea down, untouched. His hands trembled against the porcelain.

“I don’t know what it is,” he whispered. “But it terrifies me. Because if I could betray once, what’s stopping me from betraying again?”

Jimin’s mouth opened, but no words came. For the first time in his existence, he had nothing to say.

The kettle hissed. The tea went cold.

And Hoseok sat there in the quiet, drowning in ghosts that weren’t entirely his.

The wind rattled the windows of the guest room, though they were shut tight. Eun-Tuk sat cross-legged on her bed, textbooks spread in a messy halo around her. She was supposed to be preparing for an exam, but her pen had stilled ten minutes ago.

The candle she’d lit for light had gone out twice, despite there being no draft. And when she relit it, the flame bent sideways, as if bowing toward something invisible.

She swallowed, forcing a laugh. “Not funny.”

Her voice didn’t carry far. The house was too big, too full of corners where shadows liked to sit. She glanced at the door as though someone might step through. Jin had given her this room with very specific instructions—no knocking, no wandering after midnight. She had laughed at first. Now, it didn’t feel like a joke.

She reached for her pen again. It rolled away from her fingers on its own, across the desk, clattering to the floor. She froze.

“Stop it,” she whispered, but her voice trembled.

The overhead light flickered once. Twice.

Then the mirror across the room shifted—her reflection out of sync by half a second. She gasped, stumbling to her feet, clutching the little golden hair clip at her temple like it might protect her.

Her reflection smiled. She hadn’t.

“Go Away!” she yelled, not sure it would work.

The lights steadied. The reflection snapped back. She was alone again. She stared at herself shocked that had actually worked.

Heart racing, she sat back on the bed, pressing her face into her hands. “Get a grip, Eun-Tuk. You’re tired. That’s all.”

But when she pulled her hands away, she saw faint ash on her fingertips, as though she’d been holding burned paper.

She didn’t know why, but it made her chest ache.

She got up, paced the room once, then slipped quietly into the hall. She needed air. She needed someone to talk to.

Her steps led her toward Taehyung’s door. She hesitated only a second before knocking lightly.

Inside, she heard him stir. “Eun-Tuk?”

When he opened the door, he was still half-asleep, hair mussed, voice rough. “What’s wrong?”

She opened her mouth, but no words came. Instead, her eyes filled with tears she didn’t understand. “Do you believe in destiny?” she whispered.

Taehyung blinked at her, then stepped aside, letting her in.

Taehyung set a mug of water in front of her, then sat across the small table in his room. The air smelled faintly of cedar from the incense he sometimes burned, though the stick in the corner had long gone out.

Eun-Tuk rubbed her palms together, restless. “Sorry for waking you. I just—” She hesitated. “Strange things keep happening. Candles going out, mirrors moving. I think I’m going crazy.”

“You’re not crazy,” Taehyung said softly. “This house isn’t normal.”

“Neither are you,” she shot back, trying to sound teasing, but her voice cracked.

Taehyung looked startled for a moment. Then he laughed, low and embarrassed, running a hand through his messy hair. “You’re not wrong.”

Her chest tightened. He looked so human barefoot, rumpled, but there was always something about him that didn’t fit. An aura, maybe. A weight she couldn’t explain.

She leaned forward. “So… do you believe in destiny?”

Taehyung’s smile faltered. His fingers drummed once on the table, then stilled. “No,” he said quickly. “Destiny means no choices. And I want choices.”

Eun-Tuk searched his face. “But strange things happen around you. Around us. Like… like someone’s watching from inside.”

He froze.

The light above them flickered.

She didn’t move. Her eyes locked on his. “See? Even now.”

He tried to laugh it off, but the sound died in his throat. His gaze dropped to the table. “Sometimes,” he admitted, “I feel like I’m not alone in here. Like someone older and stronger is breathing beneath my skin.”

“Who?” she whispered.

At first, his face was confused, boyish. Then something shifted—so quickly she almost missed it. A tilt of the head. A glint in his eyes that wasn’t his. His lips curved into a smirk she had never seen before.

“You’re one smart girl,” he said.

Her blood ran cold. That voice wasn’t Taehyung’s—it was smoother, deeper, laced with power.

She blinked, and the change was gone. He was staring at her again with his usual wide-eyed concern, as if nothing had happened. “What?” he asked, confused. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Eun-Tuk pushed back from the table, heart pounding. She forced a smile. “Nothing. Forget it.”

But as she slipped back toward the door, her hand still clutching the hair clip in her hair, she knew she hadn’t been talking to Taehyung anymore.

Something else was inside him.

Something even Jin might not be ready to face.

The house was still, long after Namjoon and Taehyung had gone to sleep. Only the faint crackle of the fire in the hearth filled the silence. Seokjin sat near it, a book open in his lap, though he hadn’t turned a page in an hour.

Hoseok lingered in the doorway, watching him. The Goblin’s profile was etched in firelight—sharp, beautiful, impossibly human for someone who carried centuries in his gaze. Hoseok’s throat tightened.

He stepped in slowly. “You’re still awake.”

Jin didn’t look up. “So are you.”

The fire popped. Hoseok crossed the room, lowering himself onto the opposite chair. The weight of the day pressed between them, unspoken. Jin flipped a page without reading it. Hoseok clasped his hands too tightly in his lap.

Finally, Hoseok spoke. “You don’t have to carry it alone, you know.”

Jin’s head tilted slightly. “Carry what?”

“The sword,” Hoseok said softly. “The grief. The guilt. All of it.”

For a moment, Jin’s face betrayed something—pain, maybe, or longing. Then it vanished. He closed the book, setting it aside. “It isn’t yours to carry.”

Hoseok leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees. “What if I want to?”

That caught Jin off guard. His eyes flicked to Hoseok’s, searching. The firelight danced across them, reflecting something Hoseok couldn’t read. “Why would you?” Jin whispered.

Hoseok almost said it—because I love you. But the words tangled in his throat. Instead he said, “Because I can’t watch you suffer and do nothing.”

Silence stretched long and thin. Jin’s hands tightened against his knees. He wanted to tell Hoseok to leave. He wanted to demand why the Reaper’s presence made his chest feel lighter, why his eyes lingered longer than they should. He wanted to say everything, but centuries of restraint pressed the words back down.

Instead, he looked into Hoseok’s eyes and let the truth slip out in a different form. “Don’t give me hope.”

The fire dimmed, as if it too had heard the words.

Hoseok’s breath shuddered in his chest. He wanted to argue, to promise, to swear he’d never betray Jin again. But he didn’t know if he could keep that promise—not with the weight of half-remembered sins pressing harder each night.

So he nodded once, silently.

And they sat there, the firelight between them, two souls caught between love and ruin.

The dream came sudden, suffocating. Hoseok was no longer in the Goblin’s manor, no longer in his own skin. He was sitting on a throne too large for him, the crown heavy on his head, the weight of a kingdom pressing down on his shoulders.

Scrolls lay open before him, words he couldn’t read blurring into red. Advisors whispered in his ear, their voices oil-slick, pulling at his pride, at his fear.

“They love him more than they love you.”
“The general takes your glory.”
“Your throne is fragile. End it now.”

His hand trembled around the brush. Ink dripped onto parchment like blood.

“Yi Hyeon,” the voice pressed, smooth and unrelenting. “For your reign to survive, he must not.”

Hoseok tried to pull back. Tried to breathe. But his body moved without him, a puppet to a will he couldn’t fight. The brush scratched across the page. His signature—his name—bled into the order.

Soldiers bowed. The scroll was taken away.

And Hoseok’s heart broke in his chest.

He jolted awake, gasping. The sheets were damp with sweat, his pulse hammering like a war drum.

He pressed a shaking hand to his chest, whispering into the darkness: “What did I do?”

No answer came.

Only the echo of his own name—Yi Hyeon—ringing in his ears like a curse.

Chapter Text

The dream began with voices.

They swarmed like bees in Hoseok’s ears, advisors bowing low, whispering words laced with venom. He was seated on the throne again, the crown digging into his temples. His fingers clenched the armrests until his knuckles whitened.

“Your reign is fragile, my king,” one voice urged. “The people cheer the general louder than they cheer you.”

Hoseok wanted to argue. Wanted to say Seokjin was his shield, not his rival. But another voice pressed closer, softer, more insidious.

“His loyalty isn’t what it seems,” Park Joong-Heon murmured, leaning near his ear. “There are… letters. Meetings. Late nights unaccounted for.”

On the floor below, a scrap of parchment appeared in Joong-Heon’s hand, words scrawled in ink. Hoseok couldn’t read them; the dream blurred them into nothing. But the shape of the writing, the pressed seal—it looked official.

“Lies,” Hoseok tried to say, but his voice cracked.

Joong-Heon’s lips curled. “Is it? He’s beautiful, yes. Beloved. But men like him… they always want more.”

A rush of heat burned through Hoseok’s chest—anger, fear, and something darker. The thought of Seokjin’s smile turned toward another, of Seokjin’s loyalty bent elsewhere—it hollowed him out.

Joong-Heon’s whisper twisted like a knife: “While you sit here wearing the crown, perhaps he’s lying in another man’s bed.”

Hoseok’s hand trembled on the armrest. His heart thrashed.

“Enough,” he gasped, though the word barely left his lips.

The advisors’ voices swelled louder. Treason. Ambition. Betrayal.

He felt the weight of a brush pressed into his hand. His fingers curled around it despite himself. Ink dripped onto parchment.

“Sign it,” Joong-Heon breathed. “End the threat. Prove your throne belongs to you.”

The brush touched the scroll. Hoseok fought against it, but the dream dragged him deeper. His name carved itself across the order in strokes black as blood.

He woke with a violent start, heart hammering against his ribs. His skin was slick with sweat, his hands trembling as if the ink were still on them.

Fragments clung to him: Joong-Heon’s smile. Seokjin’s imagined betrayal. The scalding ache of jealousy he didn’t know he was capable of.

Hoseok buried his face in his hands.

“God,” he whispered. “What did I do to you, Seokjin?”

Namjoon found his uncle seated alone in the manor’s study, the fire snapping lazily in the hearth. Ancient scrolls and ledgers were spread across the low table, but Seokjin wasn’t reading them. His eyes were fixed on the flames, distant, almost haunted.

“You’re doing it again,” Namjoon said softly, leaning against the doorframe.

Jin blinked, startled. “Doing what?”

“Staring into the fire like it’s going to answer you.” Namjoon stepped inside, dropping into the chair across from him. “You’ve been unsettled since that night. Since the knocks.”

Seokjin’s lips pressed into a thin line. “He shouldn’t be able to see it.”

“Hoseok?”

Jin didn’t answer, but the silence was enough. Namjoon exhaled slowly. “You trust him.”

The words sounded almost accusatory. Jin bristled. “He’s my roommate. I don’t have a choice.”

Namjoon studied him carefully, the way one studies cracks in a vase that might shatter at the slightest touch. “I’ve seen the way you look at him. It isn’t just that.”

Jin looked away, the fire painting shadows across his face. “You think I’m a fool.”

“I think you’ve lived long enough to know better,” Namjoon said gently. “He can see the sword! If he pulls it… You loved once. Do you remember how that ended?”

The air thickened. The sword in Jin’s chest seemed to pulse with every heartbeat, a reminder he could never escape. “I remember,” he whispered.

“Then don’t repeat it.” Namjoon leaned forward, his voice low, deliberate. “If a Reaper remembers who he was in life, it’s not a gift. It’s punishment. And if Hoseok is remembering… then fate is circling back to finish what it started.”

Jin’s breath caught. “You think he’s dangerous?”

“I think destiny doesn’t make mistakes,” Namjoon said. “You were left with a sword in your chest last time you trusted love. Don’t give it the chance to happen again.”

For a moment, Seokjin wanted to argue. To tell Namjoon he was wrong, that Hoseok wasn’t the same as the boy king, that the warmth he felt in Hoseok’s presence couldn’t be a trick of fate. But his throat closed around the words.

All he managed was a whisper: “I’ve been alone for so long. I don’t know how not to hope. I’ve been alone too long.”

Namjoon’s eyes softened, but he didn’t hug him or assure Jin. He simply stood, brushing ash from his sleeve. “Then at least remember this, hyung. Hope can be the sharpest weapon of all.”

And he left Seokjin alone with the fire, its glow flickering against the outline of the invisible sword lodged in his chest.

The late afternoon sun spilled golden across the courtyard, warming the stone steps where Eun-Tuk sat swinging her legs. She had a small bag of roasted chestnuts in her lap, steam curling out of the paper. Taehyung came wandering out from the house, his jacket half on, his hair sticking up like he’d fallen asleep somewhere he shouldn’t.

“Want one?” she offered, holding out the bag.

He grinned, dropping down beside her. “Don’t mind if I do.” He cracked one open with exaggerated effort, making her laugh.

It was easy like this between them. Comfortable. Their banter had become routine—her teasing, his boyish sulks, the way he always ended up smiling anyway. For Eun-Tuk, it was the closest thing to normal she’d had in years.

She nudged him with her shoulder. “You’re nice to me, you know.”

“Of course I am.” He tossed the chestnut shell aside. “Someone has to be.”

She hesitated, watching him through her lashes. His eyes were warm, crinkled at the corners. Her chest tightened, unfamiliar. She cleared her throat, blurting before she could stop herself: “You should help me find a boyfriend.”

The smile slid right off his face.

“Boyfriend?” he repeated, like the word had come in a language he didn’t know.

Eun-Tuk tried to laugh it off. “Yeah. I mean… I’m nineteen, Taehyung. Everyone else is dating, falling in love. I don’t want to wait around forever.”

His hand stilled halfway to the bag of chestnuts. He didn’t answer right away. When he finally looked at her, his smile was back—but it was cracked, brittle around the edges. “Right. A boyfriend.”

The air shifted. The courtyard shadows stretched longer than they should have. Eun-Tuk frowned, suddenly uneasy.

“Taehyung?” she asked softly.

For a heartbeat, his eyes changed. Not the warm brown she knew, but something darker, older. His posture shifted, regal and distant, and when he spoke, his voice carried an echo beneath it.

“Is that what you want?” he asked. The words were the same, but the cadence wasn’t his.

Her breath caught. She almost dropped the bag of chestnuts.

And then—just as quickly—it was gone. Taehyung was blinking at her, back to himself, confusion knitting his brow. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Eun-Tuk forced a laugh, pressing the bag into his hands. “No reason. Just—don’t eat them all.”

But as she stood and walked away, her heart wouldn’t stop pounding.

Because for a moment, she knew she hadn’t been talking to Taehyung at all.

Perfect — let’s revise Scene 4 and 5 so Joong-Heon is explicitly a vengeful spirit in the modern world. His form appears human, but his aura and effect on ghosts/Reapers make it clear he is not mortal.

⸻

Chapter 11, Scene 4: The Shadow Returns (Revised)

Seoul glittered under the winter night, alive with neon and headlights. People moved through the city in a blur, but not a single one turned their head toward the figure leaning against the lamppost at the edge of the street.

Park Joong-Heon stood in the glow, his coat dark, his features sharp, his smile fixed like it had been carved from stone. To mortal eyes, he was nothing at all—an absence in their vision. They walked past without seeing him.

But the dead noticed.

A child’s ghost drifted too close, reaching for help. The moment her eyes lifted to Joong-Heon’s, her face twisted in terror. With a soundless scream, she shattered into dust, scattering across the pavement like ash. The other spirits nearby bolted, slipping into drains and alleyways, desperate to be anywhere but near him.

Joong-Heon didn’t move. He didn’t need to.

His gaze settled across the street where Eun-Tuk lingered with a friend outside a convenience store, her breath puffing white in the cold. She looked so small, so harmless—yet in her face, Joong-Heon saw echoes of another life. Kim Sun’s eyes. Kim Sun’s stubbornness.

He felt the old bitterness coil in his chest. She had been an obstacle once, binding Seokjin to his mortal family, giving the boy-king another reason to hesitate. Now she had returned, as if the gods themselves were mocking him.

“Back again,” Joong-Heon murmured, his voice curling in the air like smoke. “Still in my way.”

A bus roared by, blocking her from view. When it passed, she was gone into the store. Joong-Heon’s smile widened, though no warmth touched it. He let the shadows close around him, his form thinning until he was little more than a smear of darkness against the streetlight. Then he vanished.

>

Hoseok lingered near the Han River after finishing a reap. The woman’s soul had gone peacefully, slipping into the tea room without fear. For once, the night felt still.

Then the air shifted.

Every ghost in the area scattered at once. Not drifted. Not wandered. They fled, shrieking, their forms dissolving into nothing. Hoseok stiffened, his Reaper’s senses blazing. That only happened when something unnatural… something stronger than him was near.

He turned, and saw him.

A man in a dark coat, standing under the lamplight across the street. To any mortal, he was invisible. To Hoseok, he was a wound made flesh. His presence gnawed at the edges of reality, the way rot clings to wood.

Hoseok’s breath caught. He didn’t know his name, but recognition slammed into him like ice. His chest ached, his pulse racing in his ears. Something deep in his soul screamed that this was not a stranger.

The man smiled, slow and deliberate. His eyes burned with amusement, with memory. As if he knew Hoseok’s face from centuries ago. As if he remembered exactly where the blade had fallen.

Before Hoseok could move and before he could speak the figure thinned into shadow and dissolved into the night. Gone.

Hoseok staggered back, gripping his chest. His breath came ragged, his Reaper’s hat slipping in his hand. He had seen death countless times, but this… this was older, fouler.

He whispered to the empty street: “What are you?”

No answer came.

Only the echo of a smile he couldn’t forget.

The manor was hushed, heavy with winter air. Outside, the snow had started again, flakes tumbling slow against the tall windows.

Seokjin was in the main hall, setting a log into the hearth. Sparks flared, then dimmed, painting the room in amber light. He didn’t turn when he heard footsteps behind him.

Hoseok.

The Reaper lingered in the doorway, still pale from what he’d seen by the river. His hat was in his hands, fingers worrying the brim. For a moment, he just watched Seokjin move, elegant, steady, timeless.

Jin finally spoke without looking up. “You’re late.”

Hoseok swallowed. “You’re early.” His voice was quieter than he meant.

Jin straightened. Their eyes met across the firelit room. Neither spoke. The weight of unspoken things pressed down on them both. Hoseok couldn’t confess, memories Jin couldn’t bear to recall, a sword between them neither dared name.

For a heartbeat, it felt like the world stilled. The fire cracked, shadows stretching long across the floor.

Jin’s gaze softened, almost fragile. Hoseok’s chest tightened, torn between stepping closer and fleeing.

But neither moved.

And in the silence, it became clear: the fractures in their fates were widening, and soon there would be no way to hide them.

Chapter Text

Hoseok dreamed of fire.

The courtyard was drenched in sunlight, yet everything smelled of smoke and blood. He stood at the top of the stone stairs, robes heavy on his nineteen-year-old shoulders, the weight of the crown like a shackle.

Below him knelt General Kim Seokjin, his family lined up behind him. Soldiers held them down, their cries piercing.

Joong-Heon stood at the King’s side, his whispers soft as a serpent’s hiss. “He’s made you a fool. He keeps a woman on the side, laughing at you. He planned this from the start. He seduced you to take the throne.”

The words sank like poison. The young king’s jaw trembled as he looked at the man he loved, at the one person who had ever touched him without fear. Had it all been a lie?

“Prove you are not a child on the throne,” Joong-Heon murmured.

“Kill the traitor,” someone shouted from below. “Kill him!”

The chant rose, a frenzy.

Seokjin lifted his head, blood already dripping from a cut at his temple, eyes calm even in terror. “Your Majesty,” he said softly. “Please. You know me.”

The king’s hand shook around the hilt of his sword. The world tilted, a roar filling his ears. Joong-Heon’s voice curled around him like smoke. “Show them your strength. Take back your throne.”

The first swing was ordered, and Seokjin’s father fell. His mother. His sister. The loyal guards who had raised him, who had bled with him.

One by one, they were cut down before Seokjin’s eyes. His scream was swallowed by the chant of the court.

By the time it was over, Seokjin knelt alone in a pool of blood, the last of his family’s warmth fading into the stones beneath him.

“Finish it,” Joong-Heon said.

And the nineteen-year-old king obeyed even though he thought it was his own choice.

Namjoon found Seokjin sitting alone in the manor’s library, surrounded by scrolls and forgotten paintings.

“She has your eyes,” Namjoon said quietly.

Seokjin looked up, startled. “Who?”

“Eun-Tuk.” Namjoon leaned against the doorframe, arms folded. “It’s her. Kim Sun. You still have the same eyes.”

Seokjin froze, the words striking like an arrow to the chest.

Namjoon smiled faintly. “You’ve been mourning her for nine hundred years. Consider this your miracle. You should tell her everything you’ve been wanting to say.”

Seokjin exhaled slowly, then let a rare smile pull at his lips. “A miracle,” he echoed, voice soft. “She came back.”

Namjoon stepped forward and squeezed his shoulder. “She did.”

For the first time in centuries, Seokjin’s face lit with something unguarded: hope.

Hoseok’s room smelled of smoke from candles burned down to puddles of wax. A jacket lay draped over a chair, and a cup of tea had gone cold hours ago. He sat on the edge of his bed, hunched forward, elbows on his knees, his mind spiraling. Every memory that surfaced only made him want to disappear more.

A soft knock startled him, but before he could answer, the door creaked open.

Seokjin stepped inside, framed in the hallway’s light. “We’re going out,” he said casually. “To find Eun-Tuk.”

Hoseok straightened slowly, wary. “You… found… why?”

“My eyes are open,” says Jin.

Hoseok’s heart dropped to his stomach as he feared his time was up and Jin must know exactly who Hoseok was… who he is.

Jin’s gaze softened, but there was a weight to it that made Hoseok’s pulse race. “Namjoon figured it out,” he said. “She’s Kim Sun. My sister not my Bride.”

Hoseok froze. For a split second, he thought Jin was looking right through him that this was it. If Jin knew his sister, Hoseok was that his identity had also been revealed.

But Jin’s smile broke the tension, warm and reverent. “She came back. After all this time.”

The relief was sharp enough to hurt. Hoseok forced a smile, nodding. “That’s… good news.”

Jin didn’t notice the strain in his voice. “Come on,” he said, already turning to leave. “We’ll find her. I want to see her.”

Hoseok lingered for a moment after the door shut, a hand over his racing heart. He’d been ready for an accusation—for fury, for the sword—but Jin’s happiness was worse. The guilt clawed at him like a second heartbeat.

And because of it Hoseok didn’t ask why Jin came for him. He didn’t wonder why Jin needed ahim at such a monumental reunion.

Jin and Hoseok were looking for Eun-Tuk but found Taehyung sitting at the bar, his expression not quite… him.

They approached Taehyung but were stopped by an invisible force field around him. They looked at his face and the way he held himself and realized he wasn’t Taehyung. They didn’t know who this was.

All the other people in the busy room froze. Whoever this Being was, he wanted privacy.

The room was crowded, but they were alone with… him.

“Who are you? Let’s introduce ourselves,” said Jin.

We get our answers in a series of flashbacks:

900 years ago, General Seokjin lay dead, the sword in his chest. His remaining family cried to God.

“God of Stars. God of Heaven!” cried Namjoon the First at the sight of the dead General.

Back at the bar, Jin was forced to repeat words he had said long ago. “Don’t pray to anyone. Since God is not listening.”

Flashback to a dying General, laid out, and with his last breath he said, “god is still not listening.”

Back at the bar, God explained that “Many people cried for your life and begged for your death while you were complaining.”

Jin continued complaining, demanding to know “Why are you in my nephew? He is human! Are you burning him up to tell me that I am a complainer?!”

God’s voice was calm, carrying power that seemed to rattle the walls: “This child carries a powerful bloodline, yours. I needed a vessel who could endure my presence. I hid within him to watch over you — and over the one you feared most. To shield you both from what stirs in the dark. He has carried my burden without question. I would never let him burn. You have earned punishment. This child has not.”

Hoseok was suddenly forced to repeat: “God must have a reason to erase my memories.”

Suddenly, we flashbacked to years ago when new colleagues, Hoseok and Jimin, talked about their lack of memories of who they were.

“If you remember, you do. If you don’t, you don’t. If we don’t then we don’t. It should all be God’s intention.”

Hoseok chafed at being controlled while worrying that if this god knew all, he could reveal Hoseok’s identity to Jin.

“You were guessing my intentions,” said God, displeased. “I was always listening. Since you were pleading for death, I gave you a chance. But then why are you still alive?”

God paused and took another drink. The scotch was almost done and when it was God would also be gone.

He pointed a look at Hoseok, the Reaper who never ever learned. God would teach him himself. “I have never erased your memory. You chose to have it erased. Even then, does it seem God’s plan or a mistake? God just question. Fate is the question, I throw the answer, you can find it.”

The air in the bar thickened until it was hard to breathe. God didn’t move, but His presence filled every corner, pressing down like an invisible weight.

“You walk with questions,” He said, His voice calm but sharp enough to cut. “Questions older than this life. Older than death itself.”

Jin and Hoseok exchanged a glance but said nothing.

“There are debts yet unpaid,” God continued, “threads wound too tight, waiting for the hand that will pull them loose.” His eyes glimmered, not at them but through them, like He was looking at something behind their faces.

Hoseok swallowed. “Debts… whose debts?”

“Fate’s,” God said simply. “And yours.”

Neither of them could speak.

The lights flickered once. The room’s silence deepened, so thick that Hoseok could hear his own heartbeat.

“I will not hold the world still much longer,” God murmured. “What was bound will be unbound.”

Jin finally found his voice, low and tense. “You’re not making sense.”

“I’m not here to make sense.” A faint smile ghosted across God’s lips. “I’m here to watch.”

And just like that, He snapped His fingers. The weight lifted, the hum of conversation returned, and laughter and clinking glasses filled the bar again. Not a single person noticed that time had stopped.

“Go,” God said, His voice suddenly sharp. “Leave this place.”

Jin and Hoseok turned quickly, both unsettled, neither daring to speak as they left.

Hoseok’s eyes collided with a hiding Eun-Tuk. She gave him a look so heavy he knew that she remembered. That she knew who he was. Unsettled, Hoseok didn’t tell Jin that they had found Eun-Tuk.

The bar seemed ordinary again—music playing, laughter bubbling through the air—but Eun-Tuk stayed hidden in the narrow hallway just beyond the corner, her breath caught in her throat. She hadn’t meant to overhear everything, but she had, and now she couldn’t move.

“You can come out,” God said.

Her blood ran cold. She stepped out slowly, every instinct screaming at her to kneel.

“You heard,” He said, not a question. His eyes, still wearing Taehyung’s face, glimmered with the weight of eternity.

Eun-Tuk forced herself to lift her chin. “You’ve been tormenting him.” Her voice shook, but she didn’t back down. “He smiles at us, but I see it. He’s tired. He’s hurting. Sharing his body with you isn’t easy.”

A shadow of a smile curved His lips, an expression that was neither kind nor cruel. “You would scold me… for him?”

“I’d fight anyone for him,” she said, trembling but steady. “Even God.”

The laughter that left Him was soft and ancient, filling the air like bells. “I believe you.”

She stepped closer, glaring. “Then leave him. Please.”

“Such bravery,” God murmured. He reached out and touched her cheek, just for an instant—a brush of divine power that made her heart stop and start again. “Very well. I have seen enough.”

The butterflies came first, pale wings glowing like embers as they swirled around Taehyung’s body. The air shimmered as His presence unraveled, leaving warmth and silence behind.

Taehyung’s body sagged. Eun-Tuk darted forward, catching him before he hit the floor.

“Taehyung,” she whispered, clutching him tightly. He was heavy in her arms, but when she looked down at his face, she knew he was finally himself.

The butterflies disappeared one by one, their glow fading into the night.

For the first time in months, Taehyung slept without a shadow behind his eyes — now he was only Taehyung.

The night air was cold against Jin’s face, but his blood ran hotter with every step. He had walked far from the house, searching for Eun-Tuk, trying her phone device repeatedly, but she hadn’t answered.

Was she avoiding him? Why would she do that?

He regretted leaving without his car, but at the time, he’d wanted to walk with Hoseok. Now he was alone. Hoseok had left him behind, and Jin couldn’t shake the gnawing tension that had crept into his bones since the evening began.

He stopped at the edge of a narrow street, the quiet pressing in around him. Something wasn’t right.

He felt it before he heard it— Something was following him.

Without hesitation, Jin turned into the alley and vanished from sight. He reappeared in a blur of supernatural speed behind his pursuer, slamming them against the wall, hand gripping their throat.

Joong-Heon.

Jin’s grip tightened as realization dawned. Of course it was Joong-Heon. The spirit had lingered all this time, festering in his hatred.

“I was avoiding you for 900 years,” Joong-Heon rasped, his lips curling into a sneer even as Jin’s hand crushed his windpipe. “And meeting you like this. How futile.”

Jin’s glare hardened. “Avoiding me? Then why are you following me now?”

Joong-Heon’s laugh was low and bitter. “I couldn’t see the soldier because a deity was always nearby. But now… now he’s gone.”

“Don’t worry,” Jin growled. “I’ll get rid of you right away. But you avoided me for 900 years… why appear before me now?”

“Being a lowly warrior even after living 900 years,” Joong-Heon taunted, his eyes glinting with hatred, “you still have no insight. You are laughable for not being able to recognize your enemy right beside you. I am here to let you know personally.”

“Indeed,” Jin spat, his voice like steel. “Your tongue is still sharp even after 900 years. I will take your tongue out first. And then I will rip your body apart. I will do those now.”

With a flick of his hand, Jin materialized his sword—an exact mirror of the cursed blade embedded in his own chest. He slashed it across Joong-Heon’s torso, the blade singing through the air… but Joong-Heon didn’t flinch. The steel didn’t harm him.

“A spirit of 900 years?” Joong-Heon mocked, his form shimmering. “You can’t kill me with a mere sword.”

He vanished, reappearing several feet away with an easy smirk. “Working as a Guardian all these years, did you really think you became almighty?”

Jin’s voice was ice. “Don’t worry. I’ll kill you somehow.”

The alley erupted into a blur of motion. Joong-Heon darted through the darkness, his movements inhuman, slipping out of Jin’s reach again and again. The Goblin’s blade cut through air, sparks scattering with every strike that missed. The fight was too fast for human eyes, a flurry of flashes and shadows.

But Joong-Heon wasn’t trying to kill Jin. Not yet. He was taunting him. Playing with him. And Jin could feel it.

A ragged breath caught his ear… off to the side. Jin turned in time to see a homeless man stand abruptly. His eyes were blank, his face slack, but his tongue extended grotesquely, as if controlled by an unseen hand. Joong-Heon’s smirk deepened as the man dropped dead at Jin’s feet, killed without Joong-Heon ever lifting a finger.

Jin’s stomach dropped. He understood now.

Joong-Heon wasn’t just a ghost. He was a vengeful spirit! One older, darker, and far more powerful than any enemy Jin had faced.

Joong-Heon’s voice hissed from everywhere and nowhere. “Because you are so foolish. You lose life so trivially.”

Jin’s hand tightened around the hilt of his sword.

“For twenty years while you were rotting away, he grew so much you would not even recognize him,” Joong-Heon sneered. “King Yeo.”

“If you say his name once more—” Jin began, but Joong-Heon cut him off.

“Do you know who that Grim Reaper is?” Joong-Han asked, smugly.

Before Jin could process that the bastard knew about Hoseok, the spirit continued. “The one who gave you that sword, the one who stabbed you with it? He is precisely him. The Grim Reaper is precisely… King Yeo.”

“Insane words,” Jin snapped, though his voice trembled with unease.

“Foolish idiot,” Joong-Heon whispered from the shadows. “You fell for him in this lifetime, again. So pitifully. You can’t even seek revenge.”

Joong-Heon’s taunts ricocheted through Jin’s skull like poisoned arrows, and with them came memories he hadn’t wanted to examine too closely. Small moments, quiet words from Hoseok that had seemed harmless at the time—an odd turn of phrase, a distant look, the heaviness in his voice when he spoke of regret. Now each memory sharpened, edges glinting with a truth Jin had refused to see.

He remembered Hoseok’s hands trembling when he first held the sword. The way his eyes had lingered on it, not with fear, but with recognition. He remembered nights when Hoseok would go quiet mid-conversation, a shadow flickering across his expression like the echo of an old wound. Those pieces, scattered and meaningless on their own, began sliding into place. The weight of centuries pressed down on Jin’s chest as he replayed every interaction, realizing how much Hoseok had already known—and how much he himself had ignored.

The truth had been right beside him all along. Hoseok’s sadness, his sharp empathy, his unspoken anger—they weren’t just fragments of a mysterious past life, they were the heart of it. Yeo Hyeon. The boy king. The man Jin had once served and loved. His pulse roared in his ears, fury and grief tangling together. Joong-Heon’s mocking words no longer felt like taunts—they were confirmations.

Hoseok was King Yeo.

The young man Jin had sworn vengeance upon was the same man whose embrace he longed for.

Far away, Hoseok sat in the dim glow of the temple, the flickering light from dozens of candles painting his face in gold and shadow. The air smelled of incense and old wood, heavy with centuries of prayers whispered into its walls.

His fingers trembled slightly as he picked up the thin brush, dipping it into ink before carefully writing names on the white prayer cards: Kim Seokjin. Kim Sun. Yeo Hyeon. The name lingered there longer than the rest, the strokes hesitant, as if writing it made the weight of it more real.

He set the brush down, staring at the names as though they might rearrange themselves into a truth he could accept. The flicker of the candles blurred as moisture gathered in his eyes. “Is that right?” he whispered into the quiet. His voice cracked. “Was I… the king?”

The word felt foreign on his tongue, but his heart clenched in recognition, a pang so sharp it made him catch his breath. Hoseok closed his eyes, and the memories that weren’t memories rose like ghosts. Echoes of loyalty, betrayal, and love so deep it had followed him beyond death.

Hoseok stood slowly, the prayer cards trembling in his hand, and looked up at the altar with a heaviness that made him feel ancient.

“I couldn’t remember,” he admitted softly, “but the feelings… they’ve always been here. They never left.”

His throat tightened, the weight of centuries pressing on him like a punishment he couldn’t name.

“Was this… the punishment I gave myself?” he murmured.

The question hung in the temple’s stillness, unanswered, as if even the gods had turned away.

Jin found Eun-Tuk once he stopped searching for her. She wad tending to an unconscious Taehyung. Her posture stiffened the moment she saw him, as if she’d known he was coming. Jin crouched down, his expression unreadable.

“Do you see him in your memory?” Jin asked quietly. “Hoseok.”

Her eyes flicked up sharply. “Why are you here for him? Shouldn’t you be worried about Taehyung?”

Jin didn’t flinch. “Is the Grim Reaper in your memory of Kim Sun’s life?”

She didn’t answer. But her silence was enough. Jin straightened, his lips curling into a bitter smile. “Even in this lifetime, you’re protecting that dummy.”

He turned and walked away, disappointment carved into every line of his face. But his suspicion was confirmed. Hoseok was King Yeo.

Back at the temple, Hoseok stepped outside. The cool air hit his face as he walked toward the steps, lost in thought. A heaviness pressed into his chest as he whispered to himself:

Is that right? Was I… the king? He closed his eyes, grief and confusion twisting his features. I can’t remember. But the feelings remain… Was this the punishment I gave myself?

Jin’s footsteps echoed as he climbed the temple stairs. The present melted away, replaced by the past by blood, betrayal, and death.

Nine hundred years ago, these steps had been different. Then, they led him to King Yeo’s throne, to Joong-Heon’s whispers in the young king’s ear, to his own execution.

Now, the temple was empty. Only Hoseok stood at the top. But to Jin, the two moments bled together. The weight of centuries sat heavy on his shoulders.

“As expected, Jin thought grimly, I seem to be the worst memory. To you, Kim Seokjin.

He stopped mid-step and spoke aloud, voice low but steady.

You hear my voice, right?”

A voice carried back to Hoseok, no one else was there to hear it. “I hear your voice. Very clearly.”

The present crashed back in as Jin reached the top step. In his mind’s eye, he saw himself falling to his knees before King Yeo. But this time, he didn’t kneel.

This time, he acted.

Jin’s hand shot out, wrapping around Hoseok’s throat. The Reaper didn’t fight back. He just stared, eyes wide with something that wasn’t fear. It was something heavier. Recognition.

Jin’s voice was low, cold, dripping with centuries of anger and pain. “General Kim Seokjin is here to see Your Majesty.”

And Hoseok didn’t resist.

The temple was silent, the night frozen around them, as Goblin and Grim Reaper faced each other not as companions, but as enemies tied by fate.

To Be Continued…