the tradition.

by romulus_adhara

Summary:

It is tradition.

It is how it’s done; how it has been done from the dawn of time, since the first people wrangled the black curse that the entities were and discovered a way to keep them contained. Never gone, for it is impossible, but jailed and locked; restrained enough that they do not finish the damage they have already done, the damage seen still, all around them, in harsh colds and excruciating heat, barren land and polluted water, poisonous air and thin wood.

Notes:

for all intents and purposes this is a fairytale. it was also written in folklore font but idk how to do work skins so just pretend it's *fancy*.

for minkaa on twt, posted with permission

 

fic playlist on spotify

~*~

It was awfully nice of Mark to die just a day shy of the Equinox. Convenient. Polite, even, just as he always was. Lying there on the stone pedestal, he looks beautiful—hauntingly, he looks alive.

Taeyong steals this from time, as he steals many things; he watches hungrily over the boy’s—man’s, really, for what else could give him a title if not the torture he has endured during his two and twenty years of existence—features, memorizing it the best he can lest they melt away and he is unable to recall them and learn from their scars. The eyes under the hooded blue eyelids were brown; that, he recalls from a memory fresh and not yet rotten as it will undoubtedly turn with time. He was beautiful, in a way anything that is a vessel for something inexplicable and eternal is always beautiful; but he was also beautiful as a thing made of light penetrating the dark mist of Taeyong’s childhood. They said his mouth turned sinister by the end, but Taeyong wouldn’t know. All that he remembers is the gentleness of a smile presented to him over the dinner table, the softness of fingers on his forehead, the horror of the foreboding tears marring the rosy cheeks.

Mark was beautiful when he was Taeyong’s older brother; and then Mark was no more. He was taken away from Taeyong just as he was taken away from his life in the name of peace and prosperity of their kingdom, their land, their world. Taeyong saw his brother perhaps twice in almost a dozen years since he stood where Taeyong stands now and was readying to accept his fate.

He wonders if Mark would be proud of him; of how unyieldingly he is holding himself, of how stony are his own features as he watches his brother’s funeral procession, of how prepared and even darkly excited he is to accept what has killed his brother into his own heart and soul.

Taeyong thinks he remembers, vaguely, being seven—right before Mark left them to live in his own castle, stay away from the common people lest they contract the darkness seeping from his skin like poison—and standing at this same place, at the old cemetery littered with shining quartz and granite tombs, saying goodbye to his Grandma. That, at least, was what he was told he should have been doing, but he wasn’t. Mark held his hand tight, his own barely bigger than Taeyong’s, and as the elders droned on, he couldn’t help but note how small Grandma looked. Illness took her and wilted her and smoothed her; of what origins the illness was, nobody knew, not for sure—but the blame was for certain placed on the Ylo. It was their distant cousin at the time, and it was believed that a shortcoming on his part, a faux pas of a scale impossible to understand, was the reason behind the Queen’s illness. Mark had already known he was to be the next Ylo, and Taeyong vaguely recalls sensing that he was to take the title after Mark; yet it was a distant fear then, a barely visible pollen of golden crop dust on sturdy cotton clothes. That day, Mark was preparing to become the Ylo, and Taeyong was wondering at how small Grandma looked.

Mark doesn’t look any more different than he did four moons ago, when Taeyong saw him last. Even his cheeks are just as rosy—then, they were such from the wind and the bursting pool of his youth; today, they are such from the ministrations Taeyong himself performed this morning with a bit of rose powder and a gentle touch.

He should feel sadder than he does, he reckons. Maybe he would, if he knew his brother beyond foggy memories of childhood wasted and chance meeting grief-soaked. When Mark came to see him, it wasn’t a rendezvous of nostalgia. It was a countdown, each step of his falling with a whisper of a grain of sand descending from the hourglass.

When the funeral procession ends, Taeyong finds himself frozen in his place among the wilted grass of the coming fall. Mark lays undisturbed on his garland bed of fresh carnations, a flower he chose himself to welcome him into eternal slumber. It is a grotesque but usual tradition—Taeyong’s will be roses. White and wild ones, found behind the castle, right under his window, vining up toward his chambers like long claws of a monster that is his birthright.

Mark lays undisturbed, and Taeyong’s breath comes out in bouts of fog. The Ritual is set for tomorrow, at dawn, when the Sun rises due east, and Taeyong says farewell to life as he knows it. His bags are already packed and on their way to the Residence. He will step forward into the Unknown, and it shall be his abode for as long as he is able to carry the Ylo in his heart. Mark set the bar high, such giving Taeyong a chance for youth unsullied by burden—a sacrifice that was given, as it turned out, in vain—and Taeyong only hopes he can live up to his brother’s star, let alone outshine it.

But what keeps him sealed in his step by his brother’s grave is not the pressure of expectation; it is the part of the procession stood apart on the hill nearby, above the mountains of skeletons buried underground and rows of tulip beds, black and hushed in wait for the spring.

They should be here by all means and rules, yet Taeyong’s parents—and himself by extension—did not expect them to honor their duty. It is a stark contrast of them standing proud and straight against the steel gray of the stormy sky that fascinates him the most; not the black-and-blue leather garments hugging their bodies in ways that would be considered lewd at court, and not the wind-chafed, sun-kissed faces painted with stubbornness and barbarity, and not the weapons of spear and dagger on their bodies glistening in the light. They stand strong and united, and it looks unnatural against Taeyong’s own people, bent and kneeling and broken with grief.

He sees the Jar without really looking for him; he sees him first, and the realization comes later, a delay of a man reluctant to rise from sleep in the morning. He’s at the front and center, almost way too apart from his people, and despite the height that has him towering over the others, he looks to Taeyong just as small as he had expected Mark to look. The Jar’s hair is wild and unbridled, and it whips around his unusually pale face; it is too far to see for sure—and too early for Taeyong to be able to—but he thinks he sees redness of blood unspilled around the Jar’s dark eyes. For all intents and purposes, the Jar—Johnathan, Taeyong recalls, a hushed whisper he overheard from his brother a long time ago—looks just as grief-stricken as the rest of them. Perhaps, even more.

It makes sense, Taeyong reckons darkly. Tomorrow, the Ylo is burned; and the Jar shall rest along with him. It is tradition. It is how it’s done; how it has been done from the dawn of time, since the first people wrangled the black curse that the entities were and discovered a way to keep them contained. Never gone, for it is impossible, but jailed and locked; restrained enough that they do not finish the damage they have already done, the damage seen still, all around them, in harsh colds and excruciating heat, barren land and polluted water, poisonous air and thin wood. It is what has to be done, and suddenly, the Jar’s grief tastes perverse to Taeyong.

How dare he show such hatred for his destiny when not only is it pertinent that the entities remain contained, but the Jar has chosen this fate? If anybody has any right to be angry, it’s Taeyong. The Jar’s tribe, those savage Ember people, have set it into their culture that pure chance chooses the tribute; Taeyong’s own people, the mighty Hill clan, have spared their subjects from such a cruel choice. It was written long ago that any and all available heirs of the King would take upon themselves hosting the entity until their body and spirit give out. Taeyong spent his entire childhood in classes, along with his siblings, trained and broken and rebuilt time after time just on the off chance he would have to become his kingdom’s tribute one day. The Embers, as far as it is known, ask for volunteers—and isn’t that such a tragedy? They are in no way prepared for their burden, which always, unwaveringly, leads to the Jar fading away earlier than the Ylo, and both of them having to burn to free the way for the next pair.

Mark dying before Jonathan was a surprise for most, but not, for some reason, for Taeyong. Outwardly, he expressed the same disdain—for how could it be that a Hill couldn’t outlast a dirty Ember?—yet deep in his soul, somehow, Taeyong knew all those days ago, when he saw his brother alive, that it would be their last meeting. There was something in Mark’s eyes that didn’t betray an illness of body or weakness of spirit; but there was a smile curled on his lips that reeked of farewell.

Taeyong casts his eyes over the procession gathered on the hill, so strong and so foolish in their pride, and he wonders which one of those savages will be the person tied to him in ways most perverted and despised for as long as they both draw breath. He wonders, dazingly, which one of them will be standing over the other one’s body. He wonders which one of them he will hate just a little more than the others come morning. He wonders which one is looking at him now from up above, wondering and feeling the same thing; it fills him, darkly, with such a thick, suffocating sensation of unity that it almost makes him sick. He averts his eyes and looks at his brother again, and he wonders why Mark hasn’t prepared him for this. All those teachers and tutors, and yet the only one of them who could know the full truth never uttered a word; almost never. Just once did Mark betray the seal of silence, before he left Taeyong forever. As he mounted his horse all those days ago, the wind whipping his hair into his kind face, Mark looked down on him, unshed tears shining in his eyes, and he smiled—and he unleashed on him the prophecy that still haunts Taeyong’s dreams.

“They’re all wrong, you know? You will have to forget everything you ever thought you knew.” He had said, and Taeyong thought it cost him everything to utter those words. “It’s impossible to hate him. It’s impossible not to—” He broke off then, and a shudder went through his body as he looked upon the horizon. “You won’t have a choice.”

The words ring now in Taeyong’s head, dull yet bright in their nonsensical mystery, and he wonders yet again what Mark had meant. Taeyong knows he doesn’t have a choice, he’s known that since he was a wee boy running through the field that never gave enough crops. And still, a shiver of premonition nesting in his stomach tells him that was not the wisdom Mark was trying to impart on him.

With one last glance over the Embers, now slowly turning away to retreat, only hesitant because the Jar still hasn’t moved from his place, Taeyong turns away and follows his parents back into the stone garden leading to the castle grounds. He feels someone’s gaze burning on the back of his head yet keeps his eyes firmly focused on the eastern tower, home to his chambers, its gray walls adorned with white garlands that will once become his eternal bed. He doesn’t turn around; he doesn’t let curiosity get the better of him.

He will meet those eyes tomorrow anyway; and he is in no rush to get to his grave.

~*~

It’s well past twilight by the time Ten manages to lead Johnny away from the cemetery. The Ylo yet lies there, his face almost glowing in the moonlight, when they make their way back toward their land, into the forest where their horses await to take them to the tribe’s capital. Johnny hasn’t said a word since he came home and told them he would be departing for ever, and he still doesn’t utter a single sound as they ride back. His eyes, so bright and alive in the days of the past, are dim, dead, almost gray now. He left something behind, Ten suspects, in the Ylo’s cold hands, and he will not be collecting it until the bonfire consumes them both at dawn.

Ten gives Johnny his time when they’re back home. The Jar departs into the dark, yet Ten knows that this is not like all those other times—Johnny will be back soon, to prepare him. While Ten waits, he makes his rounds around the village, stalking its streets until hour before dawn and committing to memory the echoes of his people’s laughter now dim in anticipation of the Equinox, the slopes of wooden and stone houses spiraling through the land in a mismatched picture of a home, the grim but hopeful—grateful—faces of the Embers as their eyes skim over his face and roll off of it akin to water sliding off stone. He suppresses a sigh as he smiles to as many people as he can on his way back from his lonely hut—and he’s glad, in some way, that his parents have passed years ago and didn’t have to witness their sun volunteering for The Fate—to the main square, a construction of a small marble fountain and a pole they use for announcements. There is enough space here for a large carnival—Ten knows for sure, having participated in and even led many of them—but tonight, it is empty. No people grace its sands with their dance, and no voices soil the stillness of the night.

It’s only Johnny, on the edge of the fountain, his feet submerged into the water, the supplies next to him in the old leather pouch. For a moment, Ten stops at the edge of the square, inhaling the crisp quietude of the last morning of his old life and watching the bent curve of Johnny’s spine. Johnny looks—broken. He knows Johnny knows he’s here, but neither of them do the other the disservice of pointing out their observations.

There is a lonely sound of a lute somewhere in the distance as Ten’s feet step over the gravel, the leather boots crunching in a deafening noise, and he listens to it as he gently lowers himself on the edge of the fountain. From up close, Johnny looks even worse. His face is pale, hollow, the unknown grief of him overpowering his usual tanned color; but when he looks up, finally, for the first time in days, meeting Ten’s eyes, he thinks he sees velvet hope in there.

“Let us get to it, then,” Johnny exhales, his voice gruff from misuse—or an overt use of it, perhaps. “You ready?”

“As much as I can be,” Ten whispers.

He throws a leg over the edge to face Johnny fully, and in a single momentum of a second, he sees the series of events that has led them here, to this spot—the haunting revelation of Johnny’s that they would need a new tribute soon, the glowering absence of any reluctance on Ten’s part, the weak protests falling from lesser men who yet wished to pretend they would want to accept the Fate. Ten paid no mind to any of the elders, threw away their empty warnings, and got his affairs in order.

There was never doubt in his mind that he would accept the Jar into himself if he got a chance; but doubt is all that he sees now in Johnny’s eyes as he retrieves a piece of kohl from the pouch and raises it to Ten’s face. A moment of silent apprehension stretches between them, but Ten doesn’t move away nor flinch—Johnny exhales and presses the kohl to his face, beginning the process of drawing the line of black over Ten’s eyes and decorating his face with their tribe’s symbols.

Ten flexes his exposed arms where they rest on his knees, and his tattoos seem to glow in the moonlight. It’s all here—the story of his life, his people, his land; the swirls and lines of a tale that could only be read by the chosen ones. He thinks about watching the Embers today, watching him, so gentle and delicate and soft—so weak and clean of any signs, so evidently spoiled and unprepared. The prince’s skin was fair and unmarred, and in its stark paleness it looked to Ten like a disgrace. How was the boy who would take the Ylo into himself supposed to fulfill his duty if he scarcely seemed to understand the significance of it? Ten was told about the lessons the royal children took, yet what is the dustiness of a book on a desk against the ink etched into your very being? A facsimile of devotion not truly given.

“You must cast away all that you know,” Johnny says suddenly in a gust of warm breath against Ten’s forehead.

Ten’s eyes fly open, and Johnny flinches as he barely gets the kohl away in time not to poke Ten’s eye with it. “What?”

“All the stories…” A line creases Johnny’s brow. “There is more to this than you can imagine.”

“I anticipated that,” Ten agrees with a small deal of hesitation. “Yet… It is clear, is it not? I must be strong to survive the entity.”

He thinks he sees Johnny’s lips jerk upward, but in the next second Johnny’s fingers flutter over Ten’s eyelids, beckoning them to close. The kohl is cold on his skin.

“It is not the entity that you will need strength for.” Johnny’s voice is deep and soft. “That part is— the easiest. You must find harmony with it, and then it will not bother you. For the most part.”

“For the most part?”

The silence stretches between them with a tension of an arrow taut on the bow. Ten baits his breath as he waits for the sonorous pinch of the weapon being sent to its aim. He has known Johnny since they were children, and there were not two people who knew each other better—until they came for him; until they took him to the caves and turned him into a vessel for the darkness that not all men could survive. In this moment, Ten feels just a little as if they’re just boys again, and he yearns for the candor of those days; but Johnny’s voice is alien when it rings again.

“You will learn things during your journey,” Johnny murmurs. “Things that will challenge your understanding of our world. Of yourself. Of— things you feel.”

Ten isn’t sure what to reply to that, so he doesn’t. He frowns a little and feels the dusty scratch of the kohl powder falling from his forehead to his cheeks. Johnny’s movements are slow and measured, yet Ten feels the tremble of his fingers as they trace black lines on his face and neck.

“I will miss you,” Ten says when nothing interrupts the nocturnal sounds for too long. “I think the main reason I did this—well, apart from the whole saving us all from eternal damnation thing—is to still have a connection to you.”

Johnny’s hands stop abruptly and disappear from Ten’s face, prompting him to open his eyes and witness the near-horrified look on Johnny’s face. The last time he saw him like that was all those years ago when the words fell from Johnny’s lips that would chain him to darkness until his last breath.

“What do you mean?” Johnny asks, almost soundless.

“I mean— your legacy,” Ten draws, unsure. “I want them to tell stories about us. Two friends who gave their all for the tribe’s prosperity.”

He attempts a smile, but Johnny doesn’t return it. He relaxes a little as he looks down on the pouch, searching for the edelweiss dust to spread across Ten’s cheekbones. In a sudden flash of an image, Ten imagines the Prince getting ready just like he is now—only he is probably getting pampered by his entire castle, or whatever it is they do in kingdoms when they prepare their soft boys for adventures.

“Fame is the last joy you will take from this, believe me.” Johnny looks up at him again, and for a second, there is a spark of life again in his eyes—yet it dies quickly. “You will experience many, many things from the moment you look into his eyes and until you burn next to him.”

A hush of reverence settles over Johnny’s voice at the end of it, and Ten’s heart speeds up with an uncomfortable, churning premonition in his gut. He swallows thickly and tilts his head—Johnny used to call him a cat for this, when Johnny still called him anything.

“If I didn’t know any better,” he starts, “I’d think you’re looking forward to it.” A beat of silence and a distant crescendo of a lute. “To the burning part.”

“That’s right.” Johnny’s eyes are dark when he raises them. “You don’t know any better.”

“Because you refuse to tell me,” Ten counters.

“You have to learn it by yourself,” Johnny spits out almost angrily, agonized. “It’s the only way.”

A faraway rumble of a horn joins the pitch of the lute, signaling the end of the night hunt. At the edge of the village, next to the forest, his brothers and sisters are returning from their own small adventure, and the absence of himself in their midst aches in Ten’s heart like a gaping wound. The scars littering his body from his own hunting exploits throb with phantom pain. Things will never be the same again.

“I’ll miss this,” Ten whispers, a small smile of retroactive nostalgia stretching his lips. “Hunting with the others.”

“You’ll still be able to come home,” Johnny reminds him with a ghost of amusement on his cheeks. “Hunting is even more fun when you— have the power. I used to come, didn’t I?”

“Yes. And then you stopped,” Ten reminds darkly.

Johnny’s face falls back to his work—the painting on Ten’s neck—and Ten feels him shutting down. It tastes bitter, that collective, reluctant, unpleasant memory of a change.

It wasn’t graduate, and that is why it was so easy to notice—it was sudden and merciless. Johnny used to visit almost every seven days, since he was thirteen and sent away to be the Jar, and up until almost four years ago, when he just— stopped coming. His visits became a precious rarity, made even more frustrating by him refusing to explain what he does when he goes away for so long. Johnny never confided in anyone, not even Ten, and it hurt much more even than knowing that he would lose Johnny someday to the embers of his own making—because this loss was repetitive, constant, unrelenting. He lost Johnny time after time, and he never even knew why.

“If all the stories are lies,” Ten whispers, catching Johnny’s fingers between his, “what is the truth?”

Johnny looks at him long and hard, and the infinity of unspoken longing stretches between them. Then, Johnny smiles—for the first time in years, it feels like the old times.

“I know you said I had to learn it by myself,” Ten says, agitated, “but you must have something to tell me, don’t you? Anything? Advice? Warning? Wisdom?”

“I never said the stories were lies,” Johnny says in a hush, calm and proud. “They are simply… misinterpretations. We grow up hating the Hills and all that they stand for. We say they stole our lands, stole our food, ruined our earth and water, poisoned it with their recklessness. We watch them disrespect our mother and destroy her with foolishness, sow her bosom with poison, reap her blood, and we think—they are the real curse.” He exhales, and his voice engulfs Ten like a warm embrace. “They, in turn, watch us follow the ways of our ancestors and thinks us savages, uncultured swines that only ever take and never give back. They see our culture and believe it to be paganism, and they hear our songs and believe them insults to the gods. But the thing is, my dear, is that we are just one and the same.” Johnny’s eyes light up yet again with a distant memory Ten would never be privy to. “We are children of the past, and we are the parents of the future. The Jar and the Ylo are but a remnant of a lesson we’ve long forgotten.”

Ten watches his eyes and hands fall away, and he feels him, completely and finally, slip away.

“That was nice,” he murmurs. “Completely useless to me, though.”

Johnny barks out a laugh, so familiar and so already-missed, and stands up to dust off his thighs. “It is time, brother. Let us go and meet our destiny.”

“Meet your demise,” Ten corrects as he follows Johnny out of the square and toward the stables, where the delegation is already waiting for them.

“No.” Johnny throws a look over his shoulder that carries more life than Ten has seen from him in days. “I shall walk forward with joy; and I wish you to do the same.”

To this, Ten doesn’t give an answer. He stops at the edge of the square for a moment, casting his gaze over the horizon alight with the coming sun, and he listens to the lute—and he utters farewell.

Then, he walks on toward his fate.

~*~

Taeyong doesn’t say goodbye to anyone; mostly to spare them the embarrassment of pretending they feel sorry for him. He knows they don’t, because they shouldn’t, because this is what was written and must happen. All of them have known since he was born, and there is no need for tears to be falsely spilled.

The procession only follows him from the graveyard, where the guards pick up the pedestal with Mark’s body still on it—yet unmarked and so beautiful, preserved by the sinister power coursing through his veins—and to the caves a few miles east of the castle. They are equal distance between the Embers and the Hills, and when Taeyong’s procession rounds the last hill, another one is visible on the horizon. Taeyong’s eyes, against his own commands or wishes, rack through the crowd, trying to see, to know, to find the one—yet all of them look the same. They are grotesque in their savage unity, as if they do not think it is due to give their tribute the respect that Taeyong is being given. He is walking by his brother’s body, adorned in the best royal whites found in the castle, and his face is painted golden in preparations for the ceremony—he stands out, and in the contrast against the solid body of the Embers, it almost makes him ashamed; yet the feeling has no ground to take roots in, and another one, uglier one, steps forward.

Loneliness. Surrounded by his family and servants, Taeyong feels lonely.

He doesn’t really have any friends except for his siblings, and he has already promised no goodbyes, so he doesn’t look back as he separates from the procession and steps forward, to where the dark figure of the Priest looms against the gray stone of the cave entrance. Their apprentice is next to them, adorned in the same black cloaks lined with white, neither of their faces visible. Only the Priest’s eyes are in sight, dark coals on a white face. Taeyong doesn’t meet them as he comes to stand next to the Priest and the guards carry Mark inside.

The wind is soft on this chilly morning, and it carries a smell toward Taeyong—unfamiliar and starkly new, and unrecognizable to the point he looks up in surprise, searching for its source; that is when he sees him.

He already knows who the current Jar is, so he doesn’t focus on his features—and to think he yearned to know them just last night, not knowing yet that it would be another face that takes his attention—but instead traces his eyes toward the boy walking next to Johnathan. Shorter than the Jar and more slender, he, at first, is unremarkable, and Taeyong feels learned disgust rolling in his stomach as he traces the black marks on the boy’s face. It is a gut-wrenching first reaction, and he tries to contain it at first—but it is as if a great wave knocks all the air out of him; he meets the tribute’s eyes and forgets how to breathe.

There is hatred in them not unlike the one he feels himself, yet there is also something else in there, something almost warm, the heat of the sun on a hot summer day, the harshness of the wind in the dead winter night, the force of a hurricane that comes to devour the crops and leave the people famished. Time stops, and yet again, Taeyong steals something from it as he studies the features of the boy who will be tied to him in ways inexplicable and unavoidable for as long as they live. He is striking in his nonchalance of confidence, and Taeyong can’t stop looking at him, at the outrageous leather outfit hugging his lean frame, at all the buckles and knives strewn on his person. He doesn’t look any different from another Ember on another day, save for the kohl on his face, and Taeyong hates him in that moment in a way he never hated anyone before; because they are the same in their fate and yet they could not be more different in their presence. He feels painfully, starchingly alone.

The priest steps between them and motions for them to enter the caves. Taeyong stays in his place, waiting for the other boy to enter first—a gesture of politeness beaten into him since young—but all that happens is the boy raising his chin proudly, tilting his head slightly toward the entrance like a feline, beckoning for Taeyong to walk first. Annoyance rises in his stomach, burning a hole through it and seeping through in the disdained curve of his lips; the other boy smiles almost mockingly and gives a tiny shrug as they move together to the entrance—and that is when Taeyong places the smell. Leather and morning dew, the fresh-and-salty taste of the ocean, the pinpricks of straw and camomiles; they all mix into a concoction that makes him almost dizzy.

“You reek of horse,” he finds himself saying under his breath as they go side by side through the short tunnel.

Taeyong keeps his eyes forward but still sees the boy smirking out of the corner of his eye. “Name’s Ten. Nice to meet you too.”

He grits his teeth and shrugs indifferently, as if the strange name didn’t spark an interest within him; as if the high voice didn’t shatter an expectation he has built in his head. “Taeyong.”

Inside the cave, the only light comes from the torches perched atop the ceiling. It is a big space but barren, with just a bed of grass and leaves prepared by the Priest—and Mark’s body on it. The Jar exhales roughly in the silence and turns to give Ten a pat on the shoulder and a kiss to his temple; a brotherly touch that strikes Taeyong as strange. He never expected the barbarians to know the look of gentleness.

With a farewell glance to his successor, Jonathan walks forward and—to Taeyong’s immense horror and surprise—kneels next to Mark, his eyes cast downward over the Ylo’s motionless body. Silence rings in the cave as he settles down, carding a hand through Mark’s hair so gentle and slow as if he was touching a precious petal of a flower terrified of mangling it. Then, he scoops his hands under Mark’s shoulders and head to raise him up and place him onto his knees. Taeyong almost darts forward to chastise him, demand he takes his hands off of his brother, but the Priest utters no words of protest; and Taeyong remembers his brother’s words. He has to forget everything; he has no knowledge here. He exhales roughly and keeps his hands firmly at his sides. From the corner of his eye, he sees Ten regarding him sullenly and huff under his breath.

Jonathan, meanwhile, presses a tender kiss to Mark’s forehead and rests his cheek on it; and as his immobility begins, everything else starts. The Priest moves forward, a torch that Taeyong didn’t notice him taking in his arm, and gestures for them to kneel too. Taeyong flows down in a fluid and graceful motion while Ten, for the lack of a better word, falls to his knees, looking almost bored as he places his hands on his knees, palms upward. Taeyong mirrors the gesture, placing his palms downward above Ten’s, not touching but hovering an inch above them as instructed. He has to work himself up to it, but eventually, after he casts a last glance toward his brother—still engulfed in their enemy’s embrace, wronged and defiled in his death, a thing that burns in Taeyong’s gut with anger and hatred—he looks up and meets Ten’s eyes.

Everything else fades away. Distantly, he hears the chant uttered by the Priest—the old croak of their voice that spoke these words many times over their lifetime, just like their predecessor did and their apprentice will—and he hears the crackling of the fire as the torch is lowered toward the altar. Jonathan doesn’t scream as he dies in the embers, doesn’t utter a single sound as he is ground into ashes along with Mark; later, Taeyong will wonder why he didn’t pay enough attention to his brother’s body’s last moments—but now all he can see and feel and think about is Ten’s eyes, dark and shining, the whites of them almost obscene surrounded by black kohl. He smells burning flesh and cloth, yet it doesn’t have time to settle into his mind—for the next chant is uttered, and a deafening shriek fills the air as the Jar and the Ylo are freed from their previous hosts.

At the edge of his consciousness, Taeyong sees their shadows on the wall—their great darkness permeating the burning air and circling, spiraling until it is directed into their new abode. Into him. For just a moment before it happens, Taeyong wonders in a split-second inspiration if he should be afraid, if the tremor of his body is caused by the trepidation before his first death, if the acidic thrill on the root of his tongue is agony—but then Ten’s face shifts barely an inch, and Taeyong recognizes what he feels in the parted lips of his counterpart; both of them, in their first moment of unity, are excited.

The Jar, it feels, enters just a moment before the Ylo, because Taeyong can see Ten’s face change, his eyes roll back and disappear as his mouth falls open—before the same happens to him. It hurts as if someone thrust a dozen daggers into his head, and his face melts away under the excruciating heat, and all his bones crack and break and shatter. His soul screams in agony—and then something, just for a split moment, shifts.

He thinks he opens his eyes, because he sees something—a face so dear to him, so loved, so yearned for, so missed, no features on it yet the echo of the gentle recognition they have both felt countless times; and they have been here before and they are oh so weary of this constant chase; and he wants to reach over and embrace his beloved yet the walls constructed by the humans who never knew better are solid and burn to the touch, and he screams—someone he doesn’t know but someone who feels familiar; and then it is gone, and he sees Ten again.

Only this time, it’s different. With just a breath of a focus, Taeyong sees all the tiny creases and dips and imperfections of Ten’s stunning features, and it feels that he wasn’t seeing before, that he was watching through a thick veil, for now it is as clear as ever. He knows when Ten is about to shift just from observing the tiny vibrations in the air around his body, and he knows that Ten is about to frown and exhale because he hears as his muscles and lungs move, and he is mesmerized by this new power for all but a second—before he hears a low whistling sound.

Taeyong turns his head to the right with the speed he didn’t possess before and sees that Mark and Johnathan are no longer in existence—they are nothing but a stone statue of people embracing in their grief, their humanity slowly trickling away as the new foundation covers them. The features and similarities to their alive bodies and faces are exquisite, but yet again, Taeyong’s attention shifts as he feels a great urge within himself; as something inside of him, a new presence at the back of his mind like an itch and a throb, demands that he looks at Ten again.

As soon as their eyes meet, he feels a collision of joy and sorrow inside, both of them mixing into something that explodes a second later, and in the surge of fear and panic that suddenly rises within him, Taeyong lowers his hands and clasps Ten’s in his—and he feels that they were moving toward him too; and just for a moment, everything is quite, peaceful, right.

Then, they are torn away. It happens so suddenly and cruelly that he screams out in panic, and Ten’s responding gasp reaches him as he is dragged away by an invisible force, out of the cave and through the passage and into the sunlight, to the cheers and screams of his people. Yet the force doesn’t stop, pushing him forward, outside of the crowd, to the horse prepared for him. Taeyong doesn’t struggle, doesn’t even try to resist anymore; he lets it move him on its own volition as he throws his head back and tries to see Ten again—and there he is, moved just as he is toward his own horse. They climb them simultaneously, and the animals move in unison, taking them away from each other, toward the thick woods. The distance grows bigger with each passing second, yet Taeyong still keeps his eyes on Ten, a great anguish tearing at his insides, up until they are separated by the peisage of the trees.

The darkness of the forest consumes him, and everything falls quiet with a sudden ringing in his ears; and all he feels is sorrow. His head screams with the residue of pain, and as he tries to process what has happened so quickly, it becomes too much—his vision swims with fatigue and nausea, and he leans forward to fall onto his horse.

The last sound that reaches Taeyong is a horrifying sob—yet who it belongs to, he does not know.

~*~

Taeyong doesn’t remember the journey to the mansion, nor dismounting the horse or going inside. All he remembers, as he lies there in the bed his brother died in, is agony. It covered his body inch by inch like toxic mist, burning out of him the last remnants of humanity as he knew it, and it replaced each inch of his old kindness with its merciless fire of rebirth. He dreams of foreign faces and alien bodies, and he does not know any of them yet they share a look he knows he will find in the looking glass when he wakes—the aching loneliness of their shared unnatural existence, the anguish of their confinement, the helplessness of their immobility.

Vaguely, he is aware of days and nights passing; he floats on the edge of consciousness as Ylo builds his own lodgings within his body and soul, and he is powerless to stop or interfere. All he does, those long painful days, is observe. He observes Ylo raging within him at being caged yet again, the fire of his silhouette wreaking havoc within him and searching relentlessly, searching, searching for something neither of them know the whereabouts of. He observes the foggy outline of Lydia, the housekeeper he met a few days ago at the castle, washing his face with cold rags and pouring water into his cracked lips; he notes, distantly, that this must be the usual thing for her, for she has taken care of many hosts before him—yet something changes in her face after a few days, a new worry replaces the quiet habitual acceptance, and Taeyong wonders—does she think I ought to wake up now? Does she think I am weak? Weaker than my predecessors? It covers him with shame, and it floats above him like a glistening coat over a scarred body.

When he finally opens his eyes and feels, for once, clarity, it is sudden. Both to him and Lydia, it seems, as her eyes widen and fill with tears as they stop on him. She babbles on about something, about him being delirious for over nine days, expressing her worry and offering him comfort, but Taeyong finds that he does not care for it. He feels empty. Void of any emotion or feeling or thought; all that rambles inside of him is aching disappointment, dark grief, and careful fear.

Yet, it would not do to worry such a nice woman, so Taeyong smiles at her and accepts the hot stew she offers—and it does not taste of anything to him, and he knows clearly in that moment as if the knowledge was always there that he will not wish for taste of anything anymore, nor will he need any sort of nourishment. His body is not his own anymore, and his mind exists now only as a courtesy; and gods do not need to eat.

Still, he eats and drinks all that she offers him, and he talks softly to her and endures her rambling grief after his brother—and at the memory of him something does stir in him, an echo of a pain that felt much greater just two weeks ago, and he thinks that perhaps not all within him is lost; but he notes it with distant curiosity and none of the joy he would expect—and he waits until she goes to sleep, exhausted with her long task, to explore the castle.

It’s a castle in name only, for it, perhaps, is something short of a mansion; a long wooden structure with enough rooms to resonate with the emptiness that the glaring absence of other occupants brings, its windows wide and aglow with moonlight. He finds a library in the western wing, an enormous structure standing at the height of three floors, cherry wood banisters and stairs spiraling over its walls. There, he spends over a day, lost in time and space, never noticing the passage of hours and only becoming vaguely aware of them when Lydia finds him in there with dinner. He reflects in this gesture on the kindness of his brother who never told this poor woman that there was no need for food, no need for her care; he reflects on the kindness of each person who came before him and for whom Lydia cared, sacrificing her own life for them—yet another wasted destiny.

As days pass, Taeyong also reflects on his new power. It flows quietly as a gentle stream within him and doesn’t provide much discomfort; yet another knowledge comes to him that he will need to find and use it, lest it grow restless and poison him ever more. He tries, at first, to test the limits, and what he learns at first is just what he’s already seen his brother express. Sharp vision that allows him to see the rustling of leaves miles into the forest, the hearing that tells him there is a body of water nearby and an abundance of small animals skittering about, the oversensitive touch that can determine what a cloth is made of or feel the blood rushing and vibrating when he presses his fingers to his neck. He knows he can be fast now but doesn’t try it after one failed attempt to get through the library quickly that resulted in him crashing into the wall so hard an abundance of books fell on him—but at least he discovered it takes much more now to break or even bruise his skin.

The mental part of it is the one he grapples with the most difficulty. He knows the Ylo is inside, and he sees his silhouette each time he goes to sleep—a thing he does out of habit as he discovered there is no much necessity for him to rest—yet he always expected to be able to talk to the entity, perhaps find a sense of unity between them, an understanding that would allow them to cohabitate for as long as Taeyong can. For now, all he feels is the same loneliness, and even worse—he feels like an impostor in his own body; Ylo is soaked with grievance, and that grievance is with Taeyong. It feels unfair to him, for it was not his fault this happened. If anything, this was Ylo’s own fault—but that thought never brings him anything but a distant pang of anger that most certainly does not belong to him.

He explores the mansion, also, for any signs of his brother’s old life; yet there are none. He hesitates asking Lydia if Mark’s existence was forcibly removed, just like his body was once it was of no use, for even the thought of voicing the question brings a bitter sting to his eyes. As quiet time goes by, Taeyong finds himself finally feeling emotion, and that emotion is anger—with himself, for stalking the corridors of the mansion so uselessly, not sure of his purpose, and with Mark, for never breaking the seal of his silence and helping Taeyong see what he was supposed to do.

The tradition is simple. He invites Ylo into his body, and he arrives twice a year on the Equinox for a ritual of strengthening; other than that, he is to stay out of sight and make sure not a drop of the dark essence hiding within him spills. If it does, bad things happen. He thinks about his Grandma, so small in her casket, and wonders if it was this infuriating uselessness that has led his cousin to letting down his guards and allowing Ylo to spread his claws of darkness toward his people. At such a wonder, yet another pang echoes within him, and a new anger comes to him—anger at Ylo for being so silent, so affronted with Taeyong’s own attempts to communicate and do this right.

It feels detrimental; to have been preparing for this his entire life for it in the end to turn out to be a simple game of wait. In the moments when his resilience wears most thin, he wonders, almost fearfully, if Ten is doing much better. He scarcely knows how the Jar would be able to do his job better, since the Embers are so reckless about their duty they just throw any warrior who kills enough elk in a year into those caves. But perhaps, the life of barbarian tradition and bloody rituals would prepare one for this fate better than classrooms and prayers.

Taeyong chastises himself for those thoughts, because he knows well enough, even at his young age, that sympathies lead to compassion, and compassion leads to negligence of duty; yet it occurs to him one night, as he sits on his windowsill and gazes up at the full moon illuminating the dark body of the forest surrounding his castle, that perhaps Ten would be the only person to understand how it feels. Up here, in this solitude and reverence, Taeyong barely remembers the oppression suffocation of his home. The screams and cries of hatred that the Hills kingdom is soaked in are just echoes here, dull and distant.

Another pang sounds within him, and this one is so strong that his hand flies to his chest in surprise. It aches and throbs, so much so Taeyong pulls away his shirt to check for blood, but there is nothing but his smooth chest, unmarked and soft. His thoughts drift back to Ten, and the way his hands… They felt rough to the touch when they clasped Taeyong’s, and they dragged along Taeyong’s skins like coarse fabric of the farmer’s—or hunter’s—adornment. At this thought, the pang sounds again, and Taeyong hears that sob again, and he knows now for sure that it’s Ylo. He’s crying, but for what?

What anguish can an entity so dark it had to be cast away at great cost of sacrifice feel? What can it know of loss? Pain? Agony? All it did in its time was destroy and burn; and it does not get to be grieved now, just like Jonathan did not deserve to cry.

Just like Ten now does not deserve Taeyong’s thoughts, compassion, or care.

~*~

After waking up alone and aching from days curled up in agony, Ten finds himself bored quite quickly. He discovers his newfound lack of need for food very fast, and he discards it within the first hour, because even if he might not need to consume food to survive, he is still intent on doing it. In the name of preserving his habits, if nothing else. Johnny didn’t tell him a lot about what he’s supposed to do once the Jar takes up residence in him, but Ten could guess the threat of boredom of it without much input. He’s survived long winters well enough, when the tribe was akin to a bear hibernating until spring, hiding in their huts and keeping to themselves before the time for hunting and gathering and farming came again; he can survive this no trouble.

That’s what he thinks, at least, within those first weeks filled with unfamiliar silence—and it becomes oppressing too quickly for his liking. It never occurred to him just how polluted with noise his existence was before he came here, to the edge of the world, to reside in solitude until his body gives out. Even his newfound hearing can’t provide enough of the sounds that he’s so used to; because the chirping of birds and skittering of bugs is silence compared to the laughter of children and the neighing of horses, and because the rush of the river he can hear in the distance is a whisper against the churning of wheels at the mill back home or victorious thumps of the hunt. It’s too quiet for him, even when all he hears is noise, and that is why he goes out into the forest the first chance he gets.

Yet again, he does not need to feed, yet he still hunts, and he still cooks and skins the deer, and he talks to himself just like he always did, and at least here nobody finds it strange. What is strange to him, however, is the silence within him.

Back when Johnny just turned, Ten would frequently see him stand still, his ear cocked as if he was listening to something, his lips moving barely as he responded; he was talking to Jar, Johnny had told him, because back then they were still children and Johnny still told him things. This is what Ten had expected when he broke out from the crowd and kneeled before Johnny, asking him to accept his tribute; this is not what he gets. Jar isn’t silent as much as he refuses to talk to Ten. Ten knows it, feels it, and it confuses him to no end; yet he is powerless to change it.

He dreams about Jar, about his silver silhouette outlined against the rush of water, yet no words are exchanged between them; no sentiment passes in the looks they share. Ten screams at him inwardly, begs for anything, yet all that he gets in response is a wordless agony that aches in his bones like it did during his first days of delirium. He searches for the entity in the shadows of the wooden house consisting of four bedrooms and a large dining room—a luxury compared to the huts in the tribe, yet a luxury that presses down on his shoulders like an anvil—but all he finds are the ghosts of Johnny’s life tucked away into the corners. A lot of the things he finds surprise him—clothes made of cotton and not their usual tribal leather, books about things none of them ever had interest in, shiny trinkets that could only come from the Hills, which affronts Ten the most, because he didn’t know Johnny ever visited their lands outside of the rituals—and it makes no sense that Johnny would ever indulge in things like these, but then again, Ten didn’t really know him that well by the end. A story he never thought he would read unfurls before him in those details, and he aches for the times lost, for the times where he could still ask Johnny questions.

Would there be answers, though, he wonders? Jar is excruciatingly silent now, and so was Johnny; when in one body, they would probably be the perfect example of reticence. It annoys Ten to no end, and he feels conflicted about such a mundane emotion. When he prepared for it, he expected the grotesque theatricality of Johnny’s behavior this past few years to afflict him too—yet none of that happened. He doesn’t feel things quite the same anymore, and he finds himself more of an observer of events than their active participant, but that, he reckons, was always a part of the deal. It’s all he ought to do now—observe and stay resilient, and experience things that would be strange to him just a moon ago.

So it goes, then. He hunts, he cooks, he crafts, and he explores; each day going further and further into the woods. One day, he thinks he catches a whiff of roses and oranges, and it aches in him to go further, to find him, to look upon his face again and see if he feels the same exhilaration that coursed through him as they held hands near the bonfire; but he knows he should not allow himself into such temptations. This is what Jar wants; this is what their demise would start with.

He is curious about Taeyong, of course, how could he not be? The image of his wide, almost sparkling eyes haunts him, moves with him as he stalks through the woods; and the soft velvet of his touch yet lingers on his skin even after many dives into the river. He doesn’t know what he should do with it, this curiosity, for nobody ever explained it to him, and nobody is here to guide him.

There are things in his memory that promise answers, yet he is reluctant to pull them apart and learn their meaning. Johnny said that stories they were told as children were misinterpretation; the intimacy with which he held Mark’s dead body in their last moments, the stark relief on his face as he kneeled before the Ylo, the affronting assurance in his steps—they tell Ten a story of something that could, in its insane impossibility, be… Friendship.

Just the thought of it feels wrong. There is a sense of unity within him, for sure, but the thought of meeting Taeyong and feeling something aside from a snide distaste is abnormal, and Ten’s mind rejects it with all its might; yet when he goes to sleep he doesn’t need but still keeps to in the name of preserving his routine, the white silhouette of the entity within his soul turns to the thoughts about those single minutes of Taeyong’s presence—and it finds comfort within them.

Days melt into one, and nights are spent haunting the attic and the roof, where he sits looking at the moon and asking it for guidance; he hunts, he cooks, he crafts, and he thinks—and those thoughts leave the spirit within him aching.

~*~

After a while, Taeyong finds that there is nothing more hiding in the nooks of the castle that could be new to his imploring mind.

Ylo still refuses to give him anything but vague dreams and sudden bursts of agony that has him bending over with effort to contain whatever it is from spilling over, so eventually, as the days trickle by into almost a month of his new existence, he ventures further, beyond the castle’s scarce grounds and into the forest. The winter is close upon them, only due in a few weeks, but it has not yet touched the nature with its frosty kiss—the wind is chilly and smells of smoke as he travels through the woods in his thin shirt, no longer in need of covering up.

He isn’t sure for how long he walks, but each day, he knows he’s come further than he has the day before. From time to time, he senses that same smell of old leather and morning dew, but it evaporates before his body can take him toward it; and it is for the best, he knows. Knows, but not feels, and his soul aches and screams every time he turns away and purposely walks the other way. This new complication of his state keeps him up for long hours as he lies awake in his four-post bed, gazing up at the white satin of the hood and thinking up the ways to minimize the pull he feels toward the Jar. This is the purpose, isn’t it? To keep Ylo from reuniting with Jar, to keep them separated and unable to hurt the world. He was born to do this, and it brings him shame to have fantasies about meeting Ten again; so he buries them deep, and he never follows the trail of the smell.

There is no direction he consciously ever takes, yet he finds after a while that his feet carry him toward the sound of the water he caught during his first days. He doesn’t necessarily oppose to it, as somehow, the thought of the fresh lake thrills him more than the routine of his hot bath back at the castle. The more he thinks about it, the more excited he gets, and so one morning, he rises with the sun and leaves the castle, walking with joy in his step and heart; the first time the feeling has ever graced him since Ylo set him on fire. The entity doesn’t express anything about his idea, so he takes all the freedom he can get from it and finds the lake.

Such a beauty stands before him as he parts the branches of an ivy and steps through that his breath catches in his throat, and he stands there for a long moment, admiring the view. The lake is merely a pond, perhaps, yet it glistens and shines with black waters, surrounded on all sides by lush vegetation that pays no heed to changing of the seasons. There is a high cliff looming above it—and something about it tells Taeyong that there used to, or supposed to be, a waterfall descending from it. When Taeyong looks up to see its top, the midday sun blinds him for a moment, perched right at the edge of the fall.

Taeyong moves forward, shedding his shirt as he goes and reveling in the chill that sends shivers down his arms. He feels this cold yet not remotely as he would before, when he was still completely human, and he wishes to yet again test the limits of Ylo’s legacy—and jumping into a November lake sans any clothes seems like a good place to start. He approaches the shore and casts his gaze over the water, black as night yet somehow still inviting. He tries to see if there is danger inside, yet it seems calm, inviting, almost alluring. Slowly, he walks inside, and then, without giving himself time to think, dives in.

His lungs seize up once he’s fully submerged into the lake, assaulted by the cold, but they find their purpose again quite quickly, and Taeyong emerges from the water with a gasp and a laugh. The water is calm, so he swims around for a long time, undisturbed and in a peculiar harmony with the lake. There seems to be no danger as he enjoys his swimming; but there is a pull within him that tells there should be something more. He listens closely, and there, in the bubbling of the lake and the soft noises of the forest, he feels Ylo telling him something. It guides his hands, and he spreads them wide, responding to the call.

Right before his eyes, the water starts clearing. The blackness, the evil of it, steps away, dissipating as he moves. Taeyong finds his laughter after so many weeks of sorrow, and his lips remember the sweet touch of a smile as he looks down, observing the fish and the little turtles darting around, arriving from the small brook connecting to the lake. Caught in this wonderful surprise, Taeyong runs around, his legs gliding seamlessly through the water, and extends this strange power as far as he can. With each step, with each laugh of his, the darkness disappears; and after some time, he turns around himself and realizes that the water is completely clear. The lake is transparent now, and Taeyong feels elevated in this unexplained happiness. He finds himself smiling, uniquely in harmony with Ylo now, who rolls inside with a purr of a cat, as it, too, is perhaps finally deciding to take some respite from the constant agony of their shared ache.

His hands, cold and tired, yet itch for more, and he looks up, to where the edge of the cliff is molded with the same darkness. Led by a hunch and Ylo’s approval, Taeyong swims toward the mountain and presses his palms toward it. He can feel it, the movement within it, the cracks, the spread of his power as it searches for the water and pulls it forward, and before he knows it, a loud crunch comes from above—and clear, fresh water pours down on him, deafening him for a moment. He swims away and looks above to admire his work; he doesn’t know what is or how he’s done it, but he revels in his joy; and he leaves the worries for another day.

After the first initial shock, the fauna of the lake seems to recognize him as no threat, and he gets to enjoy watching flocks of bright orange, red, and blue fish dart around him, circling him as if they’re studying him but are too cautious to approach. The water is clear enough now for him to see every little detail even without his new vision, and after a while, Taeyong feels as one with the lake; a part of it, an extension, not an inhabitant but a host. Slowly, he lies down on his back and floats, and Ylo within him murmurs with satisfaction; he loses the feeling of his body, and a sense of dissolving comes over him. It is as if he could join with the lake, spread his cells within it and become just another wave, cold and merciless but soft and smooth.

Taeyong doesn’t know how long he lies there like that, but by the time he comes to and remembers that he is, in fact, a human and not water, the sun has already descended behind the cliffside. Its light still reaches the lake, but the shadows are longer and darker now—and yet, it brings Taeyong a strange sense of comfort. He feels at peace with Ylo for once, and the entity even feels like it will finally speak to him any second now. Taeyong feels its gentle nudge, its plea to prolong this pleasure; he spreads his fingers in the water and follows the direction of feeling Ylo seems to be leading him. It should be dangerous, but he’s alone here, and he’s strong enough to reel it in if anything goes out of control—he feels strong enough, and that gives him courage to let Ylo enjoy itself.

He raises his hands up and, slowly and reluctantly, the water follows him, rising into the air and dancing in it in drops and small disengaged waves. Taeyong huffs out a disbelieving laugh and wiggles his fingers—the water dances in the air like little people, and he feels even braver, jerking his hands around and watching the drops follow him like puppets on strings. A soft music of nature flows around him, and Ylo presses closely to him, accepting him in its gratitude, and Taeyong finally feels like he isn’t alone. This is a bad creature, he tries to remember, an evil one; but is it not implied that he, too, should be evil to a degree to be able to contain it in him? As long as he remembers that there is more good within him than what feels unified with Ylo, it will be alright—the realization settles over Taeyong and brings him comfort.

He raises his hands ever so, to raise the water above and see how high it can go, and that is when he happens to look up to the top of the waterfall and see him. Taeyong jerks away, panicked, and the connection breaks—the water splashes around him, but he pays it no mind. His attention and hungry eyes are turned to the silhouette of a man outlined against the gray afternoon sky, his leather-clad posture relaxed and observing, his arms loose and easy on the bow perched on his feet.

Taeyong could recognize him anywhere, see him and find him even after only knowing him for barely a moment; he stands there hypnotized and holds his gaze, his eyes distant but still clear to him. It feels like eternity of them frozen and looking at each other, but then Ten suddenly turns away and disappears back on the hill, and Taeyong realizes what mistake he has made. He drags his feet through the water, hurrying to get out and get dressed. His fingers shake and his body refuses to cooperate, as if this is the cost of such delicious harmony of the previous several hours. Ylo is restless inside, thrashing against Taeyong’s ribcage like a rabid animal, and no longer is the sense of their unity. Taeyong has to leave, get out, before anything happens that puts at risk everything his kingdom and the Embers have worked for so long.

“Well, this is a pity,” a drawled voice comes from up ahead.

Taeyong snaps his head up from where he was tugging his shirt on, and of course, there he is, just having come out from behind the ivy, his body still as lean and relaxed, as if he isn’t standing in the presence of his mortal enemy. For but a moment, Taeyong’s mind blanks out as he sees Ten’s face clearly for the first time, unobstructed by the black kohl or the fog of panic. He’s striking, it is undeniable, with a sharpness to him that, Taeyong has no doubt, has cut many a man.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Taeyong finds himself saying, his frozen fingers bundled up in his shirt.

Ten looks around them, as if daring any guards or soldiers to jump out and arrest him, his eyebrows raised and lips twisted in mocking.

“This is no man’s land,” he points out rightfully. “It belongs neither to the Embers nor the Hills. I have just as much right to be here as you do. In fact,” he takes a step forward; Taeyong mirrors it, stepping away, “this is our land. You and me. Only you and me. So, I was hunting.”

Taeyong swallows, suddenly aware of how cold it is, and struggles to get his shirt on. It comes down painfully slowly, as his limbs still refuse to cooperate. He thinks he hears Ten snorting but ignores it in favor of taking this time to rein in the absolute roar of Ylo’s, resonating in him as it struggles to break out and bridge the gap between him and Jar. He feels dizzy and much colder than he was when he was in the lake.

“Nevertheless,” he grumbles as soon as he succeeds in wrangling his shirt into submission, “neither of us should be in any proximity to each other.”

“Mhm.” Ten sighs and steps even closer; Taeyong moves away and has to partially step back into the water, now icy and cruel on his skin. “Don’t you think that’s boring?”

“Wh— Boring?” Taeyong gasps shrilly. “No!”

Ten twists his lips humorlessly and shrugs, stepping even closer—Taeyong moves away, submerging himself into the water almost to his knees. The ice of the water hurts him, and he isn’t sure if it’s the lake itself or Ten’s proximity. There is barely a few feet between them, and Ten insists on bridging the gap ever so.

“I just think,” Ten says, “that if we’re stuck being monsters, we might as well have fun with it. Aren’t you curious at how far you can push it?”

Taeyong is, but he would not be caught dead admitting that to an Ember, let alone this particular Ember, so he just shakes his head and crosses his arms on his chest. Ten drags a tongue across his lips and snorts, his fingers playing with the string of the bow flung across his torso.

“Fine, suit yourself.” He takes a pause, but a sinister premonition tells Taeyong he is far from being done with whatever theatrical performance this is. “I am curious, though.”

With that, he suddenly takes off and crosses the distance between them so fast Taeyong only has time to move away a bit—but Ten eliminates that space as well, and in a blink of an eye, he’s in front of Taeyong; so close that Taeyong could count his eyelashes. Could, if his chest wasn’t feeling like it’s caving in under immense pressure. He sees beads of sweat at the edge of Ten’s dark hairline and knows he’s feeling the same thing, so why is he still standing there, staring at Taeyong as if all the answers hide in his eyes?

Ylo is raging now inside of him, trying to push him forward, but Taeyong shakes his head vigorously, stepping away, into the lake, submerged now almost to his neck; and yet, Ten keeps walking toward him.

“Stop!” Taeyong pleads, his voice breaking. “Don’t you feel it too?!”

“I do,” Ten grits out.

“Then stop!”

“I can’t!” Ten yells, and his voice sounds like a roar; like it isn’t him who’s talking, who’s controlling his steps.

Taeyong’s breathing speeds up as he panics, contemplating diving into the water and swimming away to the other edge of the lake; but Ylo doesn’t let him. The truce established between them not an hour earlier breaks with the sonorous ringing of shattered glass, and Taeyong understands, with horrifying clarity, that he is powerless; he is weaker than he thought he was, than he hoped he was.

He feels Ylo taking control, moving his arms to reach for Ten—and he thinks about Mark; about his strength and power, his longevity, and he decides that he will not give in. Not this easy.

As soon as the thought crosses his mind, his body seems to start listening to him—only it feels more like it is simply listening to someone other than Ylo, for it opposes the entity’s call and seizes up with a painful spasm that breaks a gasp out of Taeyong’s lips. His lungs freeze and stop working, and his feet give out—he goes underwater; the ice gets into his mouth, his nose, his throat, and he drowns, and he cannot move nor control anything.

Ylo’s own horror reaches him for just a moment before the darkness takes him.

~*~

He doesn’t know how long he dreams of fire and ice and cold, but it feels like eternity. There is only darkness, and in it, he sees alien faces and he burns, and it hurts like being killed over and over again. Pain comes in different forms to him — his skin melts, his bones break, his head explodes, his lungs inflame.

The last one wakes him up.

He gasps awake, his eyes flying open to a twilight sky and a twisted, beautiful face above him. A moment passes before the recognition sets in, and in it, Taeyong feels nothing but joy—and then panic.

“Get away from me!” He screeches, pushing Ten away and crawling away from him with his back forward. His lungs burn with pain, and he connects the dots as he sees Ten’s palm raised in the air—somehow, he returned air into Taeyong.

Ten spits to the side and wipes wet hair from his forehead angrily. “You’re welcome.”

“For what?” Taeyong grits out, taking stock of his body and realizing his muscles ache and his head throbs with residue of suffocation.

Ylo is suspiciously silent, almost ashamed, as Ten’s eyes card over Taeyong’s body with darkness in them that he cannot place.

“I saved you from drowning?” Ten says, getting up his feet and shaking himself from mud and leaves scattered on the ground. “You passed out but were still bloody thrashing as if you didn’t want to be saved.”

“Maybe I wasn’t!” Taeyong snaps.

They both freeze in surprise; Taeyong didn’t realize what he was going to say before it left his lips, and it shocks him now to look back on it and try to see if he had meant it. Where did it come from? Does something within him wish him to die? There is an answer to that one, at least, but it doesn’t feel like something Ylo forced him to say.

“Well, your fucking majesty,” Ten breathes out, low and dangerous, his chest heaving, as he advances on Taeyong, “my survival depends on yours, so I would really fucking appreciate it if you at least tried to stay alive, you lilly-livered sissy little prick!”

Taeyong gasps out an affronted breath and shoots up to his wobbly feet, searching his mind for an appropriate retort to this barbarian, this savage, this rude boy, but nothing comes to his lips, so he simply shrieks in anger and pushes Ten away—or at least tries to. The second his palm makes contact with the exposed part of Ten’s shoulder peeking out from under a leather panel, his vision whitens—and he burns again, the searing pain shooting through both of them, hot needles penetrating his eyes. He jerks his hand away and, for a split moment before the world clears, he sees the face of Jonathan, his features twisted in relieved agony.

Ten is breathing heavily, his face angry and confused, and yet again, they stand there staring at each other—and then he turns away in a sharp twist and storms away, disappearing in the woods with the speed of the Jar fueling his step. Taeyong stays glued to his place, soaking wet and agitated, for a long time, and all he can see before him, on the backdrop of the dark ivy, is Ten’s retreating form.

The image of it brings him both agony and relief; and he hates all of it so much his eyes sting with tears.

~*~

Ten returns home empty-handed and pissed off beyond belief. One would think that his anger would leave him after his journey of stomping home through the forest, but each step—each inch separating him from Taeyong—seemed to have only doubled the agony of his rage. He throws his bow on the floor as soon as he storms inside the house, neither making sure nor caring that it survives the ordeal, and rushes upstairs, to the room that doesn’t yet feel like his. It’s covered in Johnny’s clothes and books and trinkets, and the sight of all of them enrages him even more. For just a moment does he stop in the middle of the room, taking stock of everything—and then he moves, compelled by the disgruntlement of Jar in him. He shuts the monster out, takes control of his own mind and body—his own bloody revenge for what Jar made him do at the lake—and goes about gathering everything he can see that doesn’t belong to him.

It takes him an amount of time he doesn’t notice, and by the time everything is gathered in a big pile on the ground by the well outside, the full moon is high up in the sky, painting everything black and silver. Ten stands over the pile, his chest rising and falling rapidly, and looks around himself for anything to start the fire with—until an urge inside, a peace offering rises up. He raises his head, led by an alien impulse, and directs his open palm to the pile of things. In an instant, it catches on fire, and he steps away with a gasp as he watches it spread rapidly, taking the books first and pausing just a little on the clothes. A minute regret passes through his heart, for it finally settles in what he’s doing; but he still doesn’t move. He lets Johnny’s memory burn.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you’re looking forward to it. The burning part.

Johnny was; so let him burn now.

Ten crashes to the ground. He’s cold enough to barely feel the sting of the impact on his backside. He props his arms on his knees and watches it all burn. In the palette of the moonlight and the bonfire, his tattoos look almost unnaturally black, deep and rich ink that looks a second away from breaking away from its confinements and covering his entire skin.

He sits there for a long time, watching the fire that never seems to grow smaller and replaying the day in his mind. It’s hard to pin down what exactly he felt when he looked down, compelled by a strange sound of laughter, and saw Taeyong down there. Exposed and wet, he was beautiful; undeniably so. His skin shone and glistened, and his smile stretched into a pink brush of rose paint. Unguarded and alone, he was more real than Ten had ever imagined him to be; especially when he watched him kneeling before his brother’s body. He laughed like a child, joyful and free, and a part of Ten yearned to join him.

But he didn’t know—and he still doesn’t—which part that was; how real, genuine, pure it was. For all he knows, the tremble he feels in his stomach when he recalls Taeyong’s happy face is just a trick of Jar, desperate to fool him into helping him to reunite with Ylo. This is it, this is the trial he’s been waiting for—his real purpose. Resisting the temptation; being stronger than the dark spirit permeating his being.

Ten sniffs and looks up at the fire. A gasp escapes him as he sees a figure crouching on the other side of it, off-center enough for him to see a part of their profile but not their face completely—and he doesn’t need it, for he could recognize Johnny by any small part of him.

“Are you—” He finds himself whispering; his throat hurts. “Are you real?”

A portion of a smile as Johnny leans in to let his fingers play with a flame. “As real as you feel yourself.”

Not entirely, then. Ten swallows and thinks about moving closer, but something tells him this a courtesy of an apparition. This is how it has to go; or he will remain without answers yet again.

“Did you feel the same?” Ten whispers.

“All of us did,” Johnny says. “It's part of the deal, isn’t it?”

“I— think so.” He frowns. “I knew I would want to get close to him, but I didn’t anticipate that it would…”

“Hurt so much?” Johnny nods and drops his chin to his chest, a sad image of a mourner. “What’s inside of you wants to be with him. Your body, however, is not built for… such a connection. It’s ancient magic, brother. The entities are… older than we can imagine; capable of more than we can conceive of. A human’s life is but a blink for them.”

“You lasted for twelve years,” Ten reminds him. “Would’ve lasted longer if that bastard didn’t give out.”

Johnny’s face darkens as he raises it back to the fire. “Keep his name out of your mouth,” he asks quietly. “You don’t know it. Not yet.”

Ten’s throat seizes up with wonder and so many questions, and they all rattle and struggle in his mind, desperate to be let out and voiced. A dark suspicion rises within him, a connection Ten didn’t want to make before, doesn’t want to make still; yet the image of the deadly embrace in those cave comes to him again. He tries to see any signs of confirmation or denial on Johnny’s face, but he would need to voice it first, wouldn’t he? He doesn’t know how.

“Did you…” His voice breaks again; fatigue pushes at his mind. “What was he to you?”

Johnny’s eyes flicker to him for barely a moment, and in there, Ten thinks he sees the answer—but he refuses to accept it. He waits.

“You’ll learn,” is all that Johnny says eventually. Before Ten can demand more, he laughs under his breath. “You’re lucky, though. You met up with yours, what, barely a moon after the ritual? It took me and Mark years to even cross paths outside of the Equinox. That fucking housekeeper of his wouldn’t let him out of his sight until he was nineteen.”

Ten frowns at the mention of a housekeeper. So Taeyong gets someone to serve him? How ostentatiously… typical of him.

He casts it out of his mind though. More pressing concerns for now.

“What then?” He asks, tilting his head. “What happened when you saw him?”

Johnny smiles. “That was it. There was no going back anymore.”

“From what?” Ten demands.

But Johnny’s lips remain sealed for a long time. He doesn’t disappear, and Ten decides not to push his luck, keep him here longer—a silent penance for burning his things. His eyelids become heavier with each passing minute, though, and he racks his brain for the most important questions to voice. A sense exists above them that the number of those Johnny can answer is limited; like an ancient oracle from all those pre-Jarylo times.

“What should I do, Johnny?” He says eventually, his lips trembling. “How do I stay away from him?”

“You don’t,” Johnny says simply. “The trick is to— ration it. You won’t be able to stay away from him now that you’ve seen him. Now, your journey will be inevitably intertwined with his.”

“That was already implied,” Ten argues.

“No.” Johnny shakes his head; his hair flows over his shoulders just like it did on the last night of his life. “Not like this.” He frowns and chuckles sadly. “You can’t give up on him, Ten. You can’t give him up.”

Ten opens his mouth to ask for more, but the sparks from the fire suddenly rise up—they explode in a shower that consumes Johnny and takes him away, before the entire thing goes out in a sudden burst of ash. Ten only has time to stare at the place Johnny was incredulously before his exhaustion overtakes him—and he falls asleep right there and then.

He dreams about water; and the water soothes the pain of burning.

~*~

The horrifying strain of the lake incident keeps Taeyong inside the library for almost two weeks. He convinces himself, with a great deal of effort, that there is nothing to see out there, and there are still many, many books that he is yet to study. He takes up cataloging the contents of the library, and that eats three days of his time until he discovers a small room hidden in the corner of the library that contains a few stray books and an already-done catalog, compiled in Mark’s unmistakable handwriting. The journal, sturdily bound in dark leather, tells the story of the years his brother spent in the Residence—first pages are clearly put down by a child’s hand, and with each new passage, the wobbly letters turn straighter, neater, even somehow warmer. Taeyong traces the long-dried ink with his fingertips and tries to chase the memory of his brother’s ghost, but all of it is in vain.

Ylo is silent yet again. Their fragile bond has been forgotten, and they are back to nonsensical nightmares and echoes of voices that belong to Mark and many more other people who, as Taeyong suspects, were the hosts before them. After the first initial anguish, Taeyong learns to listen to those voices, study their handprint on his soul, and he discovers a truth he has long been aware of in a childish sense but never took to heart.

Dead doesn’t mean gone. All of those people, all of the faces that bore the seal of Ylo before him—they are long gone, immortalized in statues kept in the Sacrifice Garden south of the Ember lands—yet their minds, at least fragments of them, remain within Taeyong. It makes him wonder how much of Ylo is the pure essence of it as it was when the Spell was first uttered, and how much is the shards of other souls, stuck and kept from passing on, caught on the thorns of Ylo’s being.

Eventually, though, he does get bored—and he inevitably thinks about Ten at that—of perusing the library and talking to ghosts inside his own head; and he goes outside. Nature seems to rejoice at his arrival, and he feels so painfully alive that it takes him a great effort to come back home when the sun sets. He avoids the lake and constantly takes walks in the direction opposite of where he thought Ten came from that day; yet his thoughts, so forever independent and disobedient, stray to the boy anyway. The initial shock of their encounter has worn off, and all that Taeyong is left with is the vague memory of Ten’s hands on him, his palm connecting with Taeyong’s face in an attempt to bring him back from whatever hellscape he went to when the water took him. He thinks he ought to have thanked Ten for saving him; but that would be detrimental, wouldn’t it? It is Ten’s purpose, just as it is Taeyong’s, to keep them both alive. No thanks needed; no gratitude required—and still, it tastes acidic.

Almost two moons pass like this, in his imposed solitude only rarely interrupted by Lydia, whom he considers, if he’s frank, yet another ghost. Just like them, she’s an inconsequential remnant of times old gone. She’s a part of his court life, even so far away from the kingdom, and it would do no good to get attached to her; so all he does is listen to her voice and takes what he needs from it, just like he does with the shards of old souls stuck in Ylo. The monster itself grows stronger, it feels, with each day, and eventually, they come back to something resembling what they had established before the lake. A begrudging acceptance of one another; if Ylo sending Taeyong nightmares and Taeyong depriving Ylo of even a whiff of Jar can be considered that. A truce, at most, but a dangerous one. They’re waiting each other out, and in that, they find a convoluted harmony.

He first notices that something is wrong on the two-month anniversary of the lake incident—and he believes he should not be judged for counting those days. His nightmares, a thing almost familiar now, turn… softer. The incoherent pleas and vague screams that come in his brother’s voice die down, slowly, gently; and in their place, another voice comes. It starts up as a part of the chorus, and gradually rises above them, until only it is audible in the ringing silence of his head. Taeyong knows that voice, and he tries to ignore it—but the consequences of it don’t let him.

His health, previously so bright and strengthened by the entity keeping him alive, starts declining. It happens just as slowly, always in connection to the voice, starting out with weak dizziness and eventually, after weeks of barely-tolerable torment, turns to a fever that never leaves his brow. He feels too hot all the time, so much so that he starts dreaming about the Equinox, the fire of the caves that took his brother, and all he hears is Ten’s voice, and all he sees is his face.

Lydia grows concerned about him and barrages him with brews and soups, but he throws them out as soon as she’s out of the room. He starts hiding his condition from her, to the point he locks himself in the library and practically lives there. Thankfully, there is a door leading outside in there, so he manages to hide his comings and goings from her; a thing that he thinks a blessing at first but that turns into a curse—of a prolongation of it, at least.

He’s not sure how it happens, but he finds himself, one night, outside, much further from his castle than he’s ever gone before. It’s as if he wakes up suddenly in the middle of the forest, dressed only in a thin shirt and old pants that have thinned around the knees. Taeyong wraps his arms around himself and tries to determine where he came from, but before he can take even a step in that direction, he feels a pull that moves him deeper into the woods; a pull he has felt once before. Only this time, it seems, it’s leading him toward the thing it pulled him away from last time.

Taeyong doesn’t fight it. He feels too hot as the fever still has its claws on him, and his legs move sluggishly through the thick fog covering the ground. He knows where he’s going to arrive ten minutes before he spots the ivy tree, but he doesn’t try to fight it. The only thing he can do now, he reckons, is have at least some control over his mind.

Ten is there, of course he is, and he seemed to have heard Taeyong approaching, as his eyes are trained expectantly toward him when he steps onto the shore. He’s in the lake, naked torso glistening in the light, and he seems—Taeyong almost laughs as his delirious mind registers it—to be fishing. Because of course he would.

His feet lead him forward, into the lake, and he feels as his fever grows stronger—but his mind clears, and Ylo purrs and paces the cage; Ten drops his fishing rod into the lake and turns fully toward Taeyong, taking a careful step forward. They walk toward each other, pulled by an invisible string; only barely a foot remains when they stop. From this close, Taeyong sees that Ten is just as fatigued as he is—dark circles under his eyes are deep and black, and his cheeks are hollow, thin skin hugging them as if it’s on the edge of breaking.

Yet again, they stand there in each other’s orbit; Taeyong’s body aches with agony but his mind sings with thrilling joy. He tries to smile, and his lips crack, and his eyes water and burn; his knees, heavy in the water, buckle—he falls, but never breaks the surface.

Ten catches him in his arms, and each point of skin-on-skin contact explodes with pain, and Taeyong thinks that if he looks down he will see it melt away; which is why he doesn’t. He closes his eyes and tucks his face into the crook of Ten’s neck and inhales deeply enough for his lungs to hurt. It burns like toxic gas penetrating his insides, but he is unable to move away; Ylo is content and happy, and just for tonight, Taeyong lets him be such.

He falls asleep right like that, standing up and cradled in Ten’s forbidden embrace—he drifts off to the sound of the waterfall and quiet, almost inaudible humming.

~*~

It’s a paradox.

Holding Taeyong in his arms is the hardest thing he has ever had to endure. Worse than being wounded, worse than the time in his youth when a hog ran him through, worse than when he fell down and broke both his arms, worse than long months of the plague he had barely survived when he was eight. It hurts like being ground through a mill, and each point of contact between them hurts even more—but Ten finds himself unable to let go. His mind soars and screams in joy, and he closes his eyes to press his cheek against Taeyong’s temple, and Jar within him feels like a wound finally soothed with balm.

It’s dangerous to be this close for so long; but Johnny’s apparition was right. From the moment they have met outside of the ritual, a gate has been opened. These past several weeks were torture filled with nightmares and anguish, his body giving out more and more with each passing day. More than once, Ten has found himself coming out of a delirious sleepwalking and finding himself just a breath away from Taeyong’s Residence, its looming stone peeking out from the trees. He’s caught his scent in the woods and would run for several minutes toward the source of it before he woke up from the hypnosis and pulled himself back.

He isn’t sure if Taeyong was aware of all the times Ten has stalked him like a predator sick with his obsession, for he made sure to never show his face and stay downwind, but everything in him fought to reveal himself, approach the boy, annoy him yet again. It was torture, and now it is over as he revels in the agony of Taeyong’s presence.

He will have to let go, he knows; he will pick Taeyong up and carry him home, find the first entrance and carry him to the closest bedding he finds. He will let go and leave, and he will stay away again for as long as he can bear it. He will let go.

You don’t have to.

He isn’t sure if the voice is Johnny’s or Jar’s—the entity has been getting louder with each night, and Ten has even started to recognize its unique voice among the echoes—but the words are clear as they resonate and bounce off of the hill’s stone and wood. Ten’s throat burns along with his bones, and he presses Taeyong tighter, in his delirium perhaps wishing that his scent would imprint into him; stay with him for longer than a wasted moment.

He will let go. Soon. When he feels that his body has no more to give, when he feels that it’s completely giving out, when the excruciating pain will grow unbearable—he will let go.

But for now, he stays there, and he aligns his breathing to the boy sleeping in his arms; and he endures.

~*~

It is by no means traditional nor appropriate for Taeyong to visit home so early after the ritual, but he doesn’t let the customs beaten into him stop him as he tells Lydia to take a day off and mounts his horse as soon as he has time to remember what happened upon waking up. He doesn’t know—but he can guess—how he wound up on the old couch in his library; but he knows that he hasn’t slept this well in ages, and he knows that it is not his own smell that he catches when he gets up, and he knows that his stupidity and lack of restraint has done irreparable damage to his purpose. So, he gets on his horse and he rides through the forest and back home as fast as he can.

The journey takes him several hours, and by the time he sees the kingdom on the horizon, the sun is already up. It would be faster if he never let his horse stop for a break, but even in his fever of regret he cannot cast away the compassion for a poor animal that barely ever gets to ride now that’s he chained to a single place. He takes his time to admire the view at one of those stops, while Meril fills up on whatever grass he can find under the first shallow dusting of stone. He can see the great caves from the hill they’re on, and such a menacing spirit permeates the air around them that he feels almost sick looking at them. Ylo seems more agitated than usual as they both go through the memories of the ritual; when the figure of the Priest comes to his mind, Ylo shrieks with hatred and disgust. It makes sense to Taeyong, for it is the Priest and those who came before him who chained Ylo to his cage; but just for a moment, before he turns away and mounts Meril again, Taeyong finds himself— sympathizing.

His family doesn’t expect him, and neither do the villagers who see him on the street when he rides into the capital. Each averted gaze and each step taken away from him lands in his stomach like hot coal. It used to be that he was a beloved prince; he spent his days running with the kids here and helping farmers as well as he could—now he is an outcast they fear, for his touch could bring horror and death to them. It pains him to know that they are right; it pains to remember the anguish on Ten's face as he saw it through the fog of his sleep.

His parents barely react to his arrival. Father grunts under his breath and nods before departing the room, and Mother asks after his health to receive a generic answer and follow Father out. Taeyong doesn’t let it hurt him; he has long learned that the guilt plaguing his parents has roots that go deep. They treated Mark much the same, and he’s not more special than his brother was. Just another child they had to send to slaughter.

Instead of wallowing in the misery of his childhood loneliness, he travels further into the castle, to where he knows his siblings are taking his classes. They are relieved just as he arrives at the west wing. Double doors of their classroom swing open, and a gaggle of them flies out to envelop him in tight hugs and sweet kisses. He finds, to his relief, that his touch doesn’t burn them; it even feels as if Ylo has loosened its hold on his heart to allow him this moment of respite. Taeyong laughs as he listens to their babbling stories, but as small children go, he does not hold their attention for long—the three of them depart soon after to play outside during their rare break from schooling, and only the eldest remains, his wonderful little Irene, only nine years of age but already so wise. He was her age when Mark was sent away; only Mark was barely older.

Irene leads him quietly to his old room and shows him all the flower pots she has set up there, her long black hair bouncing up and down with her excitement. She looks innocent, she is innocent—but he sees in the too-fast patter of her speech and barely-there tremble of her hands that she knows she is next. Her future is as uncertain as the winter blizzards; she cannot plan for her future or have any dreams, for her purpose is to survive for long enough to kneel before Taeyong’s own grave and take up his power. It constricts Taeyong’s throat and burns his eyes, but he keeps a smile firmly glued to his face as he listens to her talk about gardenias and hyacinths and carnations, Mark’s flowers.

He can’t stay long, for reasons a plenty, but he makes sure all the kids are smiling when he leaves. He doesn’t seek out his parents to say goodbye; they are most probably busy resolving yet another crisis plaguing their lands, or perhaps they’re avoiding him. He doesn’t hold that against them. He, even, finds himself at peace when he yet again rides through the capital that hurries away from his path and sets out home.

The visit was short, but the images of it burn in his mind’s eye as he travels through the fields. He sees his poor, wonderful, lovely sister, so bright and cherubic in her youth, and he understands ever more the sacrifice his brother has made for him. His childhood was so cruelly interrupted, and he was taken away from all that he knew—just so his little brother, the only child at the time, could laugh for a while longer. How could Taeyong ever complain about loneliness, in the days of his youth or even now, when he had the privilege of a calm, protected existence? His brother survived the pain of this curse at the age of ten, so how dare Taeyong complain now, when he’s nineteen and more of an adult that Mark was ever allowed to become? He would do anything to spare his sister of Mark’s fate, he realizes starkly as the cold wind whips in his face, and so therefore a decision is made, a decision that he feels as if Ylo agrees with.

So, upon arriving back at the Residence, Taeyong leads Meril to the stables but doesn’t enter the castle. He sets out for the woods right away, this time seeking out the scent that he has been avoiding for so long, and all through his journey, the plan, the obvious decision, forms in his mind.

Taeyong can’t get close enough to Ten to allow Ylo and Jar to communicate; he also cannot stay away from him without finding himself delirious in Ten’s arms anyway. There has to be a middle ground, and Taeyong never shied away from a challenge or figuring out a complicated riddle. This is just that, yet another riddle, and with its grotesque threat stripped away and the promise of his little sister’s bright youth presented, Taeyong is more than ready to find the answer.

It doesn’t take him long to catch the whiff of leather, and he stalks after it like a predator after prey. Ten is close, he can feel it—and so does Ylo, with a soft glow to his soul that worries Taeyong just a little. He remembers the mistakes he’s made, and he’s learned from them. He knows what to do now.

When he spots Ten in the distance, crouched on the ground with his bow positioned to fire, Taeyong stops in his tracks. Something in Ten’s figure catches his eyes—the lean slope of his muscled body, lying seemingly carelessly but upon closer look pulled taut just like his arrow, his sharp jaw standing out against the white of the ground. Taeyong exhales roughly and walks on, stomping over the branches and leaves to announce his arrival.

He hears Ten cursing and getting up on his elbows, just as a deer darts out from behind the trees and takes off into the distance. Ten stands up angrily, looking around himself. Taeyong’s stomach pangs with guilt but he still makes sure to school his face into a stony expression by the time Ten’s eyes land on him.

“For fuck’s sake,” he hears Ten swearing as he puts away his arrow and props his hip with a palm, waiting for Taeyong to reach him.

There are no signs of the last night and its anguish on him or his face, so Taeyong decides to follow the rules of the game just for now. Nonchalance it is. There are too many circumstances swirling between them to approach them head-on.

“How come that every time I find you,” Taeyong drawls, coming to stand a few feet away from Ten and leaning on the trunk of a pine tree, “you’re trying to kill something?”

Ten’s eyebrows fly up as an affrtoned smirk tugs at his lips.

“Maybe because unlike your pampered prince behind,” he says, placing both of his palms on top of his bow standing on the ground, “I’ve had to learn to provide my own food? Let me guess, you’ve never even wondered where your dinners came from?”

“I know where they come from!” Taeyong contradicts, crossing his arms.

Ten tilts his head forward, eyebrows raised, prompting Taeyong to follow up. Taeyong swallows and shifts from one leg to another, casting his eyes around the woods and not daring to meet Ten’s.

“...From the kitchen,” he says eventually.

Ten clicks his tongue. “My point exactly.”

With that, he grabs his bow and turns around, stalking away without so much as a goodbye. Annoyance flares up in Taeyong’s gut yet again, but he also has to admit that a few minutes spent in Ten’s presence, for now, have not yielded any bad outcomes. His body feels fine, and even his mind is suspiciously quiet.

He rushes after Ten. “It’s not like we have to eat. Why do you even hunt?”

Ten throws a strange glance over his shoulder and stops abruptly to face again. A throb of mild pain goes over Taeyong’s body when they end up too close—celebration came early, clearly—so he steps away just a bit.

(It occurs to him, suddenly, how painful it must have been for Ten to carry him all the way to his castle last night. Why did he do it? Why not just leave Taeyong on the lake’s shore?

Why care?)

“Routine.” Ten spits to the ground—how absolutely uncultured. “Helps me not go crazier than I already am. Why are you here?”

Taeyong raises his chin and inhales deeply. “I think we should spend more time together.”

Ten sputters, choking on his breath, and stares at Taeyong with wide eyes, probably expecting a punchline to the joke. None comes, though, because Taeyong has never been this serious in his entire life.

“Huh?” Ten utters then, master of eloquence that he is. “No, thank you? Did you forget the last time we were closer than this distance?”

He motions to the space between them wildly; Taeyong’s ears grow hotter as he, in fact, recalls what has happened. He fell asleep in Ten’s arms. Absolutely disgraceful and uniquely comforting.

“I remember,” he says quietly. “But look, we’re fine now. When we keep a distance.”

Ten’s jaw moves wildly as he undoubtedly prepares an angry retort; none comes. He raises his palm—clad in a fingerless glove, his slender fingers moving like strings of a harpsichord—and twirls his index finger by his temple.

“I have a demon within me,” he utters, almost pained, “torturing me with dreams about burning next to you. Why would I want more of it? We are not supposed to come near each other, even this distance, even if it’s fine.”

His eyes burn with his righteousness, and it is, like a painting of an ancient being bent down with its grief, mesmerizing. Taeyong can feel the internal battle raging in Ten, evident by his anguished face, and he wonders what the Jar is telling him. Are they the same tales of pleas and nonsensical screams that Taeyong, too, hears? Does Ten know something more? Was Johnny more open with him than Mark was with Taeyong?

“Then why—” He swallows nervously. “Why does it feel like we want to?”

Ten shakes his head with a dark chuckle; the sun peeks out from under the clouds, and suddenly he is all golden, his tattoos dark on fair skin, the leather lighting up with a glow that almost pains Taeyong to look at. Ten looks over him, silent, as if he is, too, suddenly stricken by the light. Ylo is hushed and reverent within him; Taeyong wonders if the entity is admiring something only it can see in the man in front of them.

“Because that’s the point,” Ten says finally. “That is why we take this pain on. The single rule of this whole thing is that under no circumstance should we ever get close to each other. These things— they will make you think you want them to reunite, but that is what should be avoided.”

“Why?” Taeyong breathes out desperately.

Ten’s eyebrows fly up even more as he cards a hand through his hair—it’s long and wild enough now to almost reach his shoulders. “Did you not get the end-of-the-world story? Aren’t you supposed to undergo a class on this or something?”

“I did, but—” Taeyong steps forward; this time, it is Ten who steps away. “I meant not why should we not let them reunite, but why should we follow the rules that someone who hasn’t gone through this laid out?” His breathing quickens as he yet again feels the desperation that visited him upon watching his small being of a sister play with her flowers. “From the moment I took Ylo into my soul, nothing of what I’ve been told has made any sense! So maybe it’s up to us to figure out the real rules and stick to them so I don’t have to watch my nine-year-old sister sacrifice her life to this!”

His hands are balled up in fists at his sides, and his eyes burn; but there is something akin to admiration and surprise in Ten’s eyes. His lips twist in contemplation as he looks down and rubs the bridge of his nose, and Taeyong stands there barely breathing, awaiting the verdict of a man he still, in a way, hates—yet that hatred feels stale, old, damp. Simply a residue of old habits; and he has had to shed those, so why not leave this one behind too?

“What do you suggest, then?” Ten says finally.

An explosion of joy bursts in Taeyong, and he doesn’t hold back a smile. Ten grimaces when he sees it, as if he’s already regretting it; but there is warmth on his face that Taeyong doesn’t hurry to attribute to Jar’s dark excitement over being close to Ylo.

“Just—” Taeyong bites his lip. “Let’s just spend time together. See where it leads us.”

“Christ.” Ten laughs darkly. “What else? Gonna braid each other’s hair and tell ghost stories?”

Taeyong sniffs and shrugs, letting his lips stretch in teasing. “Your hair does look like it could do with a comb.” His smile falls, just a touch. “And we are a ghost story already.”

Ten can’t seem to contain a smile at that, and Taeyong feels a strange, foreign thrill at having brought amusement to a boy who has brought him nothing but confusion and distress. He watches Ten shake his head and sigh so deeply his chest vibrates; but then he steps closer, and with each movement of his leather-clad body Taeyong’s own muscles weaken and ache. Ten extends his hand, palm up. Taeyong steps forward and holds his hands above his, palms down, just an inch separating them—but even through that inch they both feel the effects of proximity, sweat breaking out on their foreheads from the twin pain waves rolling through their bodies.

“Fine,” Ten breathes out. “Let’s try it.”

It is both a thrill and an agony to be this close; yet it is just a touch weaker than it used to be. Taeyong finds his heart filling with hope—it will only get easier from here.

~*~

And, wondrously, so it goes.

They never exactly agree on meeting, but somehow, once the first step was taken in a shaking whisper of a movement, the rest of them follow effortlessly. If before, Ten would avoid Taeyong as much as he could, running away at the first sign of his presence nearby—and what was in the minds of the first people who have built the Residences so close to each other, if the purpose was supposed to be the opposite?—then now he speeds up each time he catches a whiff of the oranges and roses, or, more often, hears Taeyong stampeding through the woods. For someone so refined and uptight, Taeyong walks around like he wishes to scare away all the prey and attract all the predators; and each time, Ten goes to him.

Other times it’s Taeyong who finds him, and he always looks disheveled and surprised when he lays eyes on Ten—as if he didn’t expect Ten to still be breathing; Ten understands that fear. Now that they spend time, deliberately, in each other’s orbit, the beast inside of Ten feels… liberated. He doesn’t struggle to breathe at nights anymore, and his dreams are less plagued by screams; as if the treat they have extended to Ylo and Jar have provided them with gifts in return. They let the entities exist close to each other, and their lives are easier for it. It almost makes Ten wonder if this is what Johnny meant; if this is why he wished so desperately to burn himself out of the world that didn’t have Mark in it anymore.

Each time they meet, the distance between them shortens, even if just by an inch—because it becomes easier to be close, less painful, less agonized. They learn things, like never pushing it, because the one time they do and stand side by side for ten minutes, it breaks both of them—Ten still remembers crashing to the ground and thrashing as bright images rise before his eyes, as he sees Taeyong catch aflame and burn away, as he screams for relief; it took them almost a week to recover and attempt to meet again, and Ten is time after time caught off guard by Taeyong’s dedication to his scheme. In his mind, Ten keeps twisting Taeyong’s noble cause around, searching for the crack that will reveal the truth, but there seems to be no misleading on Taeyong’s part. He truly wishes—and always wished—to take upon himself all the pain in the world just to spare someone he loves of it. It’s admirable, yet it’s next to impossible for Ten to truly admire it after almost two decades of singing obscene shanties about the Hill’s selfishness and poshness.

He grew up believing Taeyong was a creature of ice, a gray cloud on their land’s long-suffering sky; but he watches that boy stop in the middle of the hunt he insisted Ten takes him on to admire a lonely pansy peeking out from under the dead leaves and fresh snow. He watches him interrupt the supposedly quiet and focused process of stalking deer to kneel and not pick the flower as Ten expected him to do in a gesture of recklessness but simply admire it.

“Look at it,” Taeyong murmurs, and his smile is wide between the cheeks rosy from the cold. “It’s absolutely wonderful that it blooms in the snow. Isn’t it beautiful?”

His gentle fingers stroke the petals as those wretched shiny eyes of his widen even more than Ten thought they could, and he sniffs like a child as he sits there with his arms propped on his knees and memorizes the sight of the lilac petals against the white starkness of the snow. Ten cannot quite look away, for it is almost unnatural how well Taeyong fits in there; akin to a forest fairy, he belongs among nature.

“It is,” Ten whispers in response—the spirit inside of him aches and yearns; he grips his bow tighter and turns away.

Taeyong rushes after him and pants as he levels up to Ten. Ten glares at him in warning, and he raises his palms as he steps away to the distance they have established as harmless today.

“Just for the future, though,” Ten says once they’re safe. “When on a hunt, you ought to remain silent and maybe not stop to admire flowers.”

“What’s the point, then?” Taeyong shrugs and buries his nose in a luxurious woolen scarf that could feed a family for a week back in Ten’s tribe. “We don’t necessarily need the hunt to be successful, do we? Might as well admire nature. I think of your hunts as my strolls.”

Ten snorts and shakes his head, ignoring the flutter of his stomach each time that we falls from Taeyong’s pink lips so effortlessly. For someone who was angry at Ten for saving his life, Taeyong has grown accustomed to the idea of them too quickly for Ten’s liking. He isn’t sure how to feel about this; this new routine they have. The new contentment in the nook of his soul where Jar resides. It’s too good; too calm. As if before a storm.

“Why am I teaching you how to hunt, then?” Ten asks. “If you’re not going to use the knowledge?”

“I just… believe all life is sacred,” Taeyong shrugs.

“Oh, right.” Ten snorts and squints at him. “I’m sure you denied feasts of hogs and deer when you were at court.”

Taeyong sucks on his lips, reluctant to give a reply, and Ten shakes his head with a smile.

“Doesn’t it hurt you?” Taeyong speaks up almost too loudly. “Hurting animals?”

Ten stops, looking over him in contemplation, and tries to put into words he would understand. He swallows and strokes his bow, peeling out all the things he’s been feeling and thinking about in the past weeks to reveal the truth Taeyong would see for what it is.

“It’s… a chain, a cycle,” he says. “Simplified, deer eats grass, I eat deer, then I die and turn to mud where the grass grows. It has to go on like this.”

Taeyong steps closer to him, head tilted in curiosity and attempting to understand, and Ten’s heart does a funny little thing at that.

“These days, I hunt much better than I used to,” he murmurs. “It’s like— Something leads me to animals who would have died soon anyway. Wounded beyond saving and old. And— I don’t know how it happens but everywhere I spill blood, something grows.”

He looks around, at the dead-for-now trees, and inhales their grandeur, their power, stripped and weak after the exploits of man. He breaks off, and he finds that he is facing a difficult choice. Taeyong has opened himself to him, he’s shown him the beauty of his soul, the candor of it; Ten’s seen him talk to flowers and tread his hands through water as if he was talking to it, he’s seen Taeyong exist in his beauty and his honesty. It serves as something that Ten wishes to be as honest.

“I am led to this. I do not kill just to kill,” he murmurs quietly, looking at his hands.

Ten finally looks up, and he is blinded yet again by the warmth of those big shining eyes. Taeyong’s gaze is almost reverent on him, and Ten finds himself looking away; he smiles.

“But I’m teaching your soft pampered ass to hunt as a chance to teach you that life does not come from flowers and water you so fancy only.”

He looks up again, and Taeyong accepts his silent pleas to change the topic; he smirks and winks at Ten, and oh, that is not— not a good thing, it feels like.

“Maybe I’m only using it as a chance to teach you to appreciate little things?” Taeyong tilts his head in a gesture that feels entirely too familiar; his smile is blinding, so Ten averts his gaze from it.

“I can appreciate little things,” Ten argues as they continue walking toward Taeyong’s Residence. He unholsters one of the knives on his thigh and flips it in the air before catching it between two fingers. “This is a little thing, and I appreciate it.”

Taeyong rolls his eyes and tsks his tongue, and yet again, Ten thinks about the bond that is now almost glaring in his memory between Johnny and Mark. Were they the same? Did they come to the same conclusion? Did they, too, become reluctant friends that went on hunts and strolls? Did Johnny teach Mark to hunt? Did Mark teach Johnny the beauty of the books in his Residence? Ten remembers the books he burned; he wonders if he would find gaps if he saw Taeyong’s library. He wonders if Johnny, too, found it harder and harder to look away from Mark with each day they spent together.

“There I am,” Taeyong says, and Ten looks up to find that they have, indeed, arrived. “Do you want to come in?”

Ten’s mouth opens as he tries to come up with a response, his eyes running over the near-castle in front of him, its windows wide and tall and shining under the afternoon sun. In one of them, there is a pale round face framed with red hair, and it twists with fear and hatred when it sees him. Just for that, he is willing to go inside; and perhaps, to spend just a little more time testing his limits.

“Sure,” Ten drawls. “What can possibly go wrong?”

Taeyong rolls his eyes at his daring smile and leads the way inside; the way that Ten, as they both refuse to point out, already knows. It’s a passage that leads directly to the library, and Ten throws himself on one of the velvet reading couches unceremoniously while Taeyong leaves his scarf and jacket to dry by the fire.

“I wonder if it’s safe to leave an open fire running in a library,” Ten points out, eyeing the wide fireplace barely separated from the rest of the room.

“I put it out when I leave,” Taeyong scoffs. “Lydia must have started it again before I came back. I’ll go say hello to her. Do you want anything? Tea? Soup?”

“Sweet release of death?” Ten jokes, biting his lip. “That will rid me of your nagging.”

Taeyong squints at him and contemplates something for a moment before quickly closing the distance between them. A wave of agitation rises in Ten’s soul at that, but Taeyong is quick—he runs up to Ten and cuffs him on the head before retreating as quick as he approached; before any of the things inside of them can react.

“You’re not leaving until I do,” Taeyong says, half-threat and half-promise.

Ten doesn’t hide his smile as Taeyong leaves the library. He feels unusually warm and blames it on the fire. The library smells overwhelmingly like Taeyong and someone else; someone he assumes Johnny knew as well as Ten knows his boy now. Oranges and books, old leather and wood—it is, in a way, comforting. He casts his eyes over the shelves. It’s hard to see if there are any gaps here, for there are way too many books here than one person might possibly ever have need for, but he thinks he can imagine Johnny in here. With Mark. Were they reading? Johnny was never one for books, but mostly because they had other troubles to attend to. Perhaps, he discovered new things about himself when he met Mark; just how Ten has discovered that he quite likes flowers.

Deep in the house, far from the library but still not as far as to prevent him from accidentally hearing it, Lydia gasps. Taeyong says something in a quick hush that Ten can’t catch, and then a low pained voice responds.

“I have witnessed what it has done to Lord Mark!” Lydia says, her voice shaking from tears. “You are wrong to keep such a company. It is blasphemy, it is against tradition!”

“That tradition was set by the people who didn’t know any better,” Taeyong argues, quieter than her but still loud enough for Ten’s heart to skip a beat at the sound of his voice. “We know better.”

“Lord Mark said the same thing when he brought that abomination here,” Lydia spits out. Ten’s stomach drops; he feels suddenly like running away. “And then it ruined him.”

There is a stretch of silence, during which Ten rises from the couch and picks up his bow from where he put it against the wall. Then, a sigh escapes Taeyong’s lips.

“Do not ever dare to call him that,” Taeyong’s voice sounds kind, but there is a hard quality to it; Ten finds it… fascinating. “If you call him that, you also call me that. I can’t speak for myself, but I know he is not what you say.” He clears his throat. “You are always welcome to resign your services and return to the capital, Lydia. I don’t really need you anyway. I know how to hunt now.”

A snort of amusement breaks out of Ten at that, and he covers his mouth as a grin splits his face. He listens to Taeyong storm away and Lydia depart upstairs, and remembers that he was going to leave. He debates on it for a moment before hearing a soft voice; words uttered in a different room but directed to him, the only person who could hear them now.

“Don’t go,” Taeyong murmurs. “Please. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

“Do you?” Ten asks, just as quiet—he knows Taeyong will hear him anyway.

There is silence for a moment, and Ten looks at the wall of books, imagines Taeyong several of those walls away, looking his way too—and somehow, it feels as if they are closer than they ever were.

“I know I want you to stay.”

“Why?”

“Because…” Taeyong exhales. “I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

With that, his steps sound again as he goes into the kitchen to prepare the tea now that Lydia is otherwise occupied with refusing to appear in one room with Ten. Slowly, Ten sits back down, and he waits. He waits for Taeyong.

The thoughts at the back of his mind, the voices, the musings—they are quieter now. He still sees Johnny sometimes, the apparition visiting him at odd hours and occasions. It doesn’t say anything anymore; all it does is smile as it sees Ten walk in step with Taeyong.

It goes on for days and days, weeks and weeks, and the anxieties and worries visit Ten less and less. The beast is content, and so is he; and he finds himself almost comfortable in Taeyong’s presence. He certainly isn’t as lonely anymore, and judging by the fire in Taeyong’s eyes each time they land on Ten after a separation, the feeling is mutual.

They have firsts in those weeks of long walks and fateful meetings; Ten thought he ran out of those years ago, and yet he discovers them with Taeyong, just as he discovers the ways his hands can shake in his presence and his voice can break in his wake.

There was the first laugh Ten elicited out of Taeyong; a response to a joke so daft and stupid that Ten has long forgotten what it was. The first flash of his desire to make that laugh last, the fear that came with it and evaporated as soon as he saw Taeyong’s first real smile.

Then there is the first time he falls asleep in Taeyong’s library and wakes up to the embers of the fire dying out and Taeyong asleep across from him on another couch; he watches his gentle face and wonders if he could find that old hatred and distaste again—but it is gone.

The first time he recalls from memory the book Taeyong is talking about. The spark of joy in Taeyong’s eyes was worth the painful process of reading the said book; it all shows its true worth when Ten completes a quote and watches Taeyong lose speech from the scale of his smile.

The first time Taeyong shoots an arrow. He misses by a berth but insists he never wanted to kill the deer, for he much prefers appreciating lives than taking it, and his cheeky smile makes Ten want to tackle him to the ground—or do things that he knows are not coming from his own soul. At least he hopes he knows.

The Jar feels almost smug in those moments, as if it’s pushing Ten’s face into his own joy and says, There, this is it; this is why we should unite, for you want this as much as I want it.

You want him.

Ten doesn’t. There are a lot of things he can sometimes admit to feeling about Taeyong, but that one is simply wrong. It can’t be; for it would bring only horror in its wake. They are friends, at best, and that’s all they can afford, all that Ten can afford. Each time they meet, each time he sees Taeyong’s lovely face after a night filled with darkness, each time they come closer by another inch—the thrill and the agony grow stronger; staying away turns from an assumption of necessity into a despised sentiment.

“Why do you think they told us all those lies?” Ten finds himself blurting out once, as they sit on the lakeshore and watch the ice slowly cover every inch of the water but never quite set in, the waterfall preventing it from completing its picture.

Taeyong looks up from collecting pretty rocks from the edge of the lake. “What do you mean?”

They’re so close these days that Ten can see the miniscule frown creasing Taeyong’s brow; he can see the hollow craters in the deep brown of his eyes.

“I mean that—” Ten gestures around himself unsurely. “I thought that I would want to kill you if I got close to you. And I did for a while, but I think mostly because I convinced myself I would? Everyone told me that I would feel the urge to destroy us both if we got close. We have been… doing this, whatever it is, for moons now. By this point, I thought I would… fade away already, and the entity would take my place completely. But it’s—weak, at the back of my mind.”

It’s not a lie but it’s also not the full truth; it’s the best he can describe it. Taeyong will still understand it, he knows; for if not the only person in the world who feels the same thing as him, then whom? They are two sides of one sword, forever intertwined; and it hurts them both to sheathe it.

“Maybe it will change with time?” Taeyong tries, his lip caught between his teeth. “Mark never told me much but… but I think it was easy for him, too. The first few years. With time, perhaps, the barrier thins.”

His eyes gloss over with memories, and Ten turns to them too, struggling to recall the change in Johnny’s demeanor. There was none he could notice, because Johnny just stopped appearing one day; and by the time he did return, so much time had passed that it was impossible to say if the difference was forced or a simple result of them both growing up.

He hears a low scratching sound and looks over to see Taeyong slowly move his hand closer to him over the pebbles, fingers dancing in the air palm-up, as if he’s testing the waters. Ten suppresses a smile and reaches out too, holding his fingers above his; not quite touching, but in each other’s orbit—just like their bodies are. In the ache of the moment, Ten wishes for the first time so desperately that they would finally collide; he thinks he would take those horrid consequences just for that chance to see a new fire in Taeyong’s eyes.

“For what it’s worth,” Ten whispers, “I hope we get to be ourselves for a few years more.”

Because I have been hypnotized with you and what you are; with your laughter and your smile, with your voice and your stories, with your insistence that hunting is evil, with your books and your fires. I think I found in you what I have been missing; and I wish we had met before. I wish we weren’t cursed to destroy each other one day. I wish I had found you earlier.

I wish I had found you.

Taeyong’s eyes are glossy when they meet his; and he is caught in his gravity, and nothing else, truly, seems important enough. Jar is content at the back of Ten’s mind, and he’s not sure which one of them is allowing the other this respite—but does it matter, in the end?

“Me too,” Taeyong whispers back. “I wish— I could keep you from fading away.”

“You can’t save us all,” Ten says with a sad smile.

“I know.” Taeyong’s eyes are serious and warm. “But I want to.”

And for that, perhaps, Ten feels something for him he never thought he would. It is yet another first he thought he could never get, and he thinks—

I wish you would not fade away either; or if you would, I beg you, let me go first.

~*~

They find the meadow when the snow is still a soft blanket over the lands. Taeyong is busy describing a particularly boring novel he’s uncovered in the depths of his library, secretly applauding Ten for still acting interested, when he missteps and falls through the thick of pines into the large, bright clearing.

Ten rushes after him to see if he’s okay, but both of them lose their speech when they see the picture presented before them. It is still cold, and behind them, the snow is a white plato surface, but in this misshapen circle of a meadow, everything is bright and blooming. Taeyong steps forward carefully, eyes lost in the sea of lilac, red, pink, white, and yellow flowers, all of them at the height of their bloom and strength despite the weather.

“You’re the flower guy,” Ten says from behind him. “This isn’t supposed to be happening, is it?”

“No, it isn’t,” Taeyong says, his words muffled around a wide smile. “This is remarkable. Most of these don’t even grow back home— Look, camomiles! And these are dandelions! I’ve only seen them in botany books.” He falls to his knees in front of the bright white and yellow petals, intertwined in their fresh beauty, and strokes them with his fingers, careful not to harm them. “They disappeared from the Continent ages ago. Which was one of the first signs of the big decline.” He beckons Ten to kneel next to him. “They are technically weeds, and they spread their seeds as far as the wind goes, so when they disappeared, it was a big sign that nature was…”

“Dying,” Ten finishes in a whisper. His eyes are serious and dark as he looks around. “What is this extinct flower doing here, then?”

“I don’t know,” Taeyong whispers. “But— Mark loved them. Dandelions. He always said he wished we lived in the times to see them.”

He kneels further and presses his palms to the ground, warm and soft despite the harsh sky above, and he feels Mark’s presence, his unique trace of soul in every petal and blade of grass around them. Next to him, Ten is silent, almost brooding, as his unfocused eyes stare at the flowers.

“Do you think Mark did this?” Taeyong asks in a quiet tone, afraid that something—Ylo—overhears them and somehow punishes them for discovering such beauty by, perhaps, taking it away.

“It’s— possible.” Ten bites his lip. “I create fire and can make the wind dance. You revived the lake, and you—” He breaks off as his eyes widen where they’re focused on Taeyong’s hands. “And you do that.”

Taeyong looks down with a frown, only to gasp and tear his hands away—where they were, a small bush of white roses, which most definitely wasn’t there before, rises from the earth, the flowers blooming in front of their eyes. He grips his throat in shock, watching as the white appears among the green, his favorite flower transported here from his home.

“Ten…” The words itch at the back of his throat, the words that echo in his mind not in his voice but in the disembodied resonance of Ylo’s many voices. “We’re supposed to— ruin. Not create.”

Ten meets his eyes, his own dark but still warm when they stop on him. “Who’s to say this isn’t ruin?”

With that, he gets up and leaves, walking through the meadow and to the other side, into the thick of the woods; Taeyong is left there on his knees wondering, pondering on what he means—on what all the flowers here created by his brother mean.

~*~

The time spent with Ten flies like a bird; it struggles to find its wings at first but then, after a few wobbly attempts, takes off soaring into the clear blue sky of freedom and happiness. He is, Taeyong feels it, he is happy with Ten, he is happy with every second they spend in each other’s presence; and occasional hallucinations and weakness of body is a good enough price to pay for the sight of Ten’s smile—of the multitude of them.

Coming to a cathartic realization that he loves Ten is easy. He’s the best friend Taeyong has ever had, with his snark and his jokes and his brazen confidence, and it feels like they are just regular people who run through fields and read books together. He forgets sometimes, even if for short bursts of time, that touching Ten would bring them pain; that every second spent in each other’s presence is a second taken away from the other end of their lives. None of it matters, for he finds that he would much rather live a short happy life that ends in agony than live long and miserably. So it’s easy. It’s easy to find that when he looks at Ten and his stomach drops, it’s love.

What’s harder, much harder, is trying to understand which kind of love that is; it feels easy as breathing and hard as walking against the blizzard. He never runs out of things to tell Ten but at times he is struck speechless when he listens to Ten tell him about his old life, his tribe’s traditions and festivals, their resilience and adoration of freedom. Ten dismantles everything Taeyong ever thought he knew—about the Embers, about their world, about himself. He loves Ten; yet there is a knowledge that continues surfacing within him every time he catches himself smiling dreamily at the memory of Ten slipping and riding through a ravine on his behind—Ylo loves Ten too.

How does he separate them? How does he know, for sure, that what he feels is coming from his own pure soul, and not from the poisonous attachment living within him? It is Ylo’s sole purpose to make him believe he loves Ten, for that would bring him closer to Jar; so Taeyong doesn’t know, and that scares him.

Days and nights pass in a blink with the presence and memory of Ten; before they know it, the winter passes. The snow melts away under the pressure of snowdrops exploding in white splashes of paint on green grass; the sun is warm now, and the wind is pleasant. Taeyong barely has time to find out that there is a particular disarming beauty about Ten in his spring clothes—which expose his arms and all of the tattoos hugging his muscles—before they realize the Equinox is upon them.

“Do you think we’ll get reprimanded?” Ten asks one day, three days before the ritual, as Taeyong sits next to him with his chin propped on his knees and watches Ten fish for salmon.

(He will fail, because Taeyong might have used his newfound power of influencing water to divert all the fish from their path, but Taeyong doesn’t tell him that, rather content at watching Ten frown and curse in annoyance. There is a grace to him when he curses that Taeyong enjoys.)

“For not hating each other?” Taeyong clarifies, tilting his head and closing his eyes against the warmth of the midday sun.

“Hey, I never said I didn’t hate you,” Ten murmurs.

Without opening his eyes, Taeyong shoots up his leg and kicks him in the shin. Ten yelps, and Taeyong smiles—this is nice.

“I don’t know,” Taeyong sighs. “I’m not sure how it’ll even go.”

There’s silence for a while, and when Taeyong opens his eyes to check what’s wrong, he finds Ten’s gaze on him—so intense that it catches his breath. He bites his lips, praying for his ears not to betray him with a blood flush. Ten notices him watching and looks away, light pink high on his cheeks.

“I— talked to Johnny last night,” Ten says quietly, unsurely.

Taeyong straightens up a bit. Among the many topics they talk about, their respective predecessors or demons rarely appear. He knows that Johnny appears to Ten sometimes—which makes Taeyong begrudgingly wonder why he’s stuck with weak echoes of Mark’s voice in his dreams. Those never tell him anything anyway; Mark mostly just screams.

“And?” Taeyong prods gently.

“He just keeps saying the same thing about…” Ten frowns and jerks his chin. “Not giving up on… Not giving up.”

Taeyong squints at him, positive now after months of watching Ten that there is something he isn’t saying; but the topic is delicate enough, and he doesn’t want to risk unmaking all the progress they’ve made since the beginning, when Ten would just storm away suddenly every time Taeyong pushed it too much. He misses some things about those early days, but he does not miss Ten screaming at him; and the nightmares that come with.

“He also said to keep quiet,” Ten continues. “Don’t offer anything. Only speak if asked, and not say a lot. And—” He clears his throat. “He said that by this point we ought to know how to close off our minds.”

Taeyong’s eyebrows fly up. “Do you know how?”

“Nah, you?”

“Nope.” Taeyong chuckles darkly. “Maybe we should’ve been learning that instead of botany.”

“You insisted on that,” Ten reminds him with a smile; it falls away quickly, and Taeyong aches to bring it back. “Johnny also said that the reason we need to know how to do that is… is the Priest.”

Taeyong’s heart drops as his mood plummets instantly. He sits up to tuck his legs under himself and lean a bit closer toward Ten—a minute wave of nausea rolls over him, but it passes quickly, so he doesn’t move away.

“Why?” Taeyong licks his lips. “The Priest’s sole goal is to keep the entities locked up firmly within us. Wouldn’t it be a point in our favor? That we’ve made so much progress with it?”

Ten eyes him doubtfully; neither of them say the obvious response. Ylo might be calm and content now, enjoying what scraps of Jar’s presence it can get, but something about that silence, about that progress, reeks of threat. It’s too calm; and they both know what comes after the calm.

“Let’s just— pretend to hate each other for the ritual,” Ten suggests, his eyes warm with something that looks like a plea. Taeyong burns with curiosity at what else Johnny has told him.

“Alright,” Taeyong agrees quietly; he smirks. “Won’t be hard, like you said.”

Ten’s entire face lights up when he smiles; Taeyong aches for him, and yet again he wonders how much of it is Ylo’s doing. Ten turns back to his fruitless fishing, and Taeyong stays in his place, watching his profile almost glowing in the sun and thinking that with how close they’ve gotten, soon, they will, perhaps, be able to touch.

He isn’t sure what he would want to do then; but the thought, as usual, brings both thrill and agony with itself.

~*~

The journey to the caves is lonely.

Taeyong has gotten used to Ten by his side so much so that the road is hauntingly silent, even with the noise of the horse’s hooves and the sounds of the fields he rides past where people are already starting the work of sowing. The despondent image of dark fields, covered with earth that gives less and less crops each year, starkly reminds Taeyong about his great Purpose. This is why he’s enduring the pain, and this is why he was condemned to solitude—because if he’s not strong enough, there won’t be anything to feed them. His heart darkens at the thought, at the shame of Ten in all his thoughts; for the storm is coming, and if Taeyong allows another weakness, it will level everything to the ground.

Ten and the Priest are already there when he finally arrives. When he dismounts and walks up to them, his eyes inevitably drift toward Ten—and he starts at the pure, dark, unabashed hatred in there. His stomach drops in panic before he remembers their plan, and he tries to school his face into something resembling disdain. It’s hard, harder than he imagined, and Ten’s exceptional theatrical prowess leaves a sour taste in his mouth. Nevertheless, they follow the Priest into the caves.

It’s uncomfortably silent when they enter and kneel at the center. Not much has changed in this scenery aside from the statue of Mark and Johnny being gone. It feels too empty, but once they take their place, a harmony of completeness settles in a cover over their company of three. Taeyong wonders where the apprentice is, but in the next moment he doesn’t wonder about anything—Ylo realizes what’s happening and breaks into a scream so suddenly Taeyong shudders and doubles over. He can feel Ten’s concerned eyes on him but straightens up and takes control of his body before anybody can offer him any sympathies—although he doubts the Priest, their face covered by the mask, would provide him much comfort.

In a flick of a motion, all the torches light up. Ten extends his hands palms up, and Taeyong positions his own over his; it costs him a lot to keep off a smile, for this gesture has lost its cadence in the last six months and took upon something that Taeyong thinks of with fondness. He raises his eyes and meets Ten’s, and through that veil of disdain, he sees the warmth; and he remembers that he loves him. The thought sobers him up.

Without any preamble, the Priest starts the chant. Taeyong feels it instantly as the fire from the torches rises and floats around them, circling them with an amber lock of flames. Ylo beats inside the cage, screeching and protesting, but Taeyong wouldn’t have gotten this far if he didn’t know how to control him at this point. It’s hard, of course it is; but being close to Ten was hard too, and he’s mastered that.

The shadows on the walls grow longer and darker, and even though his eyes remain on Ten, Taeyong still sees their outlines—and he thinks he recognizes them, knows their dance. He has seen them already in his dreams, heard their voices pleading with him in a language he couldn’t understand. A seed of fear stalks into his heart as he wonders if this is what was supposed to happen.

The Priest’s voice rises above them with a boom of a thunderstorm, and it takes everything in Taeyong not to lower his hands and clasp Ten’s with them. It grows hotter and hotter until his vision swims with a fever; and then everything goes dark.

Vaguely, he is aware that he is still in fact kneeling on the floor of the cave across Ten; but his mind travels to another realm. It reminds him of his nightmares, but it’s clearer this time, sharper, almost too in focus. He sees their silhouettes, stark against the bright moonlight, and he sees Mark—Taeyong gasps in surprise and falls into his brother’s arms. They come around him like solid flesh, and his eyes sting with longing.

“I have missed you so, brother,” he murmurs, as he inhales carnations and leather and smoke.

Mark exhales roughly into his neck and rubs his back. “I’ve missed you too, but we don’t have much time.”

Taeyong leans away and looks around them. They’re in a meadow he knows; the meadow covered in flowers and life even in the dead of winter. After their first visit, Ten and him have been passing it frequently, and Taeyong thought to himself once that it would be a good place to rest before the lakeshore became their appointed spot. In the distance, he sees a ghost of a presence. He strains his eyes and realizes it’s a figure he knows—two of them, in fact. It’s Johnny and Mark, another Mark, and their desperate embrace reminds Taeyong of the last moments of his human life.

“What is this place?” He asks under his breath.

“My citadel,” Mark murmurs, solid and so real next to him. “Yours is nearby.”

Taeyong follows the movement of Mark’s hand and sees through the trees a ghastly scene—the familiar shore and two figures bent above the water. A gasp dies in his throat; he knows for sure who that is.

“What does this mean?”

“Dead doesn’t mean gone,” Mark whispers; a truth Taeyong has already discovered. “We’re all trapped here.”

Taeyong roams his face with his gaze, and all he sees there is sorrow and pain and anguish; tears glisten on Mark’s eyelashes in an image of morning dew.

“You have to do something for me,” Mark whispers, so quietly that Taeyong only reads it from his lips.

“Anything,” Taeyong promises, grabbing his hands and holding them to his own chest.

Mark’s eyes slowly slide off of the image of him with his—his Johnny—and land on Taeyong, and there is darkness in them that resonates with the roar of the monster inside.

“You have to kill the Priest.”

Reality warps with a shrill sound, and Taeyong opens his eyes back in the cave. Opposite of him, Ten’s eyes are wide and red-rimmed. He tries to move, but his limbs are locked in a struggle of a stone against granite; he can barely breathe from the heat and the panic.

The fire dies out, the shadows retreat; Taeyong’s chest feels like a devil danced a waltz upon it.

“Your bond is strong,” comes a hollow, dead voice. “The more you are intertwined, the less time you will have in this realm.”

In a slip of a second, control of his body returns to Taeyong. He snaps his eyes up, but the Priest is long gone—just an empty, light pocket of space is left on the ground where he stood, protecting it from gray ashes littering the ground around them. Taeyong’s breathing is quick and rapid, and his heart hammers in his chest; Mark’s plea rings in his ears.

“Are you okay?” Ten asks quietly.

Taeyong looks at him, and a strangeness strikes him—Ten looks empty, hollow, stricken with shock. He moves closer, his hands flying up on their own accord; his fingers stop barely a breath of space away from Ten’s cheek. There is a clear tearstreak on his ashen skin.

“Are you?” He asks.

“I don’t know,” Ten whispers. Their eyes meet. “Did you see anything?”

“A meadow.” Taeyong doesn’t elaborate, simply raises his eyebrows in a silent question.

Ten nods slightly, as if afraid, and then stronger; he closes his eyes firmly, and another tear escapes them. Taeyong sends all the warnings to hell and wipes it away with his fingers. It hurts, but only distantly. At least him. Ten shudders as if struck, and Taeyong snatches his hand away.

“We have to— go,” he pushes out, leaning away and standing up rapidly.

He doesn’t wait for Taeyong, and by the time he follows Ten out, the boy is already on his horse. He looks at Taeyong for a long moment, his lips moving, but in the end decides against speaking—his horse gallops away with a cloud of dust; Taeyong’s heart aches like never before as he watches Ten’s form retreat.

His mind feels in a daze, and it takes him a great effort to mount his own horse and set out home. Ylo is still rageful in him, but it’s something barely noticeable now—something behind a veil.

When he reaches home, he doesn’t even walk inside after leaving Meril at the stables; his feet carry him into the forest, through the trees and that wretched meadow—Taeyong sees their ghosts there, intertwined and aching, and he understands the vision with an almost uncomfortable clarity—and toward the lake. Ten is already there, and an invisible clawed hand loosens its grip on Taeyong’s heart.

“What else did you see?” Taeyong demands, marching over to where Ten is pacing the lakeshore.

Ten just shakes his head, and it angers Taeyong more than Ten’s attempt to save his life all those months ago. He closes the distance between them and reaches for Ten’s hand—but as soon as his fingers circle Ten’s wrist, Ten rips it away so suddenly and so strongly that Taeyong nails scratch at him, leaving a long gush along his forearm that instantly streaks with red.

“Oh my gods,” Taeyong breathes out, his eyes wide and horrified. “I’m so— I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Ten shakes his head impatiently. “It’s already healing, look.”

And true as it is, barely a few drops of blood have dripped onto the pebbles and sand before Ten’s skin starts coming back together. Right before their eyes, the scratch disappears with barely a thin white line to see it. They watch, together, as the blood that fell from Ten hisses with steam on the pebbles and sinks under it—only for a bush of familiar roses to rise up, instant and almost dizzyingly effective.

It’s those roses that add the final piece to the riddle Taeyong has been mulling over all this time without really realizing it. It all flashes before his eyes—the fire and air Ten creates, his own ministrations with water and earth and flowers, those wretched flowers.

“This isn’t ruin,” Taeyong whispers as he comes to the long-awaited clarity. “None of it is. We aren’t.” He looks up at Ten sharply. “We have to find the Priest. Mark said—”

“No!” Ten exclaims, and there is pure fear in his eyes. “Johnny specifically told me to keep you away from doing it, or—”

“Or what?” Taeyong demands, stepping closer; Ten steps away, and it aches. “Or what?”

“Or you’ll end up like him,” Ten grits out, and it looks like he has to claw the words out of his mouth; it would be befitting now to see blood on his teeth.

Taeyong’s mouth falls open in surprise and confusion. What happened? What happened to Mark that both killed him and kept him from renouncing his revenge even in death?

“The Priest is keeping the entities from reuniting,” Ten says, recounting the words they have both learned since little. “He knows much more than us, and he knows better.”

“Did Johnny say that to you?” Taeyong asks.

“He didn’t have to!” Ten exclaims. “It’s written, it is known!”

“You were the one who said that everything we have known was horseshit!” Taeyong almost screams. “I trust some stupid legends less than I trust my brother.”

“The vision of your brother!” Ten points out, his teeth gritted. “The vision that might as well have been brought to you by Ylo!”

Taeyong exhales sharply, trying to keep his anger and… and… and his desperation from controlling his mind. No matter how he looks at it, he only sees one answer.

“I feel that it is right to follow Mark’s words,” he says, quiet and as calm as he can. “What he asked me to do is… strange, but I cannot just let it go. All the things that have been happening to us, the things that should not have been happening! We’ve been so blind to them, so caught in our— I must see for myself, don’t you understand? I have to, I feel that I have to.”

“Because it is forcing you to!” Ten screams, and yet more tears fall from his eyes. “From the very beginning, it was forcing us both to meet, to talk, to— To do this, to feel this!”

The ground cranes under Taeyong’s feet as he sees the unspoken implication in Ten’s words; the unspoken regret. He listens for Ylo’s silent incantations, for those sneaky, tricky persuasions to permeate his heart, but nothing comes. Ylo is calm and silent; the stage is Taeyong’s.

Yet again, the time slows as Taeyong steals from it the image of Ten’s gorgeous face, alight with sunlight and tears, and he is, simply and wonderfully, perfect; so Taeyong lets go. He takes a step forward, and this time, Ten doesn’t step away from him, and it gives Taeyong courage.

He raises his hands and hugs Ten’s face with his palms; it hurts, but not like it did once. It won’t ever hurt that much again, and even if it does, it will not deter him. Taeyong closes the distance between them and, fast but still slow enough to see the yearning surprise on Ten’s face, presses their lips together.

Taeyong doesn’t know how long the kiss lasts; but he knows that Ten gasps and leans into him, his arms gripping Taeyong’s waist, his breath mingling with Taeyong’s. It tastes of salt and warmth; Ten tastes of spring. Everything within him roars with joy and agony, and he feels, for the first time in many weeks, like purely himself.

After what feels like an eternity, he breaks away and presses their foreheads together.

“Nobody forced me to do this,” he whispers. “Nobody forced me to love you.”

Ten’s face constricts with pain as his fingers travel to Taeyong’s cheek, and the point of contact burns—in all the best ways. He exhales; another tear rolls down his cheek and catches in the corner of Taeyong’s lips.

“How do you know?” Ten asks, with so much pain in his voice that it buries itself in the crooks of Taeyong’s heart that weren’t already occupied by Ten’s laugh, Ten’s smell, Ten’s warmth, Ten.

“I don’t,” Taeyong confesses; a small white lie. “But I’m going to find out for sure.”

With that, he tears himself away from Ten, and it feels like tearing his skin apart; he sees the second of panic in Ten’s eyes before he raises his hands and beckons the water closer. Ten doesn’t have time to react before the lake pulls him inside, beckoned by Taeyong’s call and the desperation he puts into it. It won’t drown Ten, but it will keep him there for long enough so that Taeyong has time to get away.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers as Ten struggles to break out from the waves holding him; but he didn’t spend as much time practicing his control over it.

Taeyong sees exertion take the better of Ten; being assaulted in such a way so soon after their ritual drains him of power. Taeyong doesn’t wait for the end of the scene.

“I love you,” he says; and then, he is gone.

~*~

Ten dreams about Johnny again when he drowns.

That’s how it feels, at least; but he knows, somewhere in the depth of his diluted conscience, that Taeyong wouldn’t leave him to die, wouldn’t leave him. Water is all around him, and all he can see is the broken blue of the sky through the surface, and he dreams that Johnny is next to him. He dreams of Johnny’s tears, and he dreams of the vision that visited him in the cave.

“It’s too late,” Johnny says as they watch the phantom of his love on the other edge of the meadow. “The Priest knows.”

“Knows what?” Ten demands; his lips are numb.

Johnny’s eyes land on him. “You have to stop Taeyong no matter what.”

“I—”

“If he’s anything like his brother, it won’t be easy,” Johnny says, speeding up as the reality distorts around them. “Mark buried me underground to get away. He grew weary of hiding and constant fear, so he thought we should act. I was too weak, I couldn’t protect him, but you have to.”

Ten grips Johnny’s shoulders, but his fingers slide through him like through mist. Panic rises within him as he sees Johnny slowly fade away.

“Protect Taeyong,” Johnny whispers in the fog. “We’ll be by your side as you do.”

Ten breaks the surface with a gasp; he drags himself through the water and falls to his knees on the shore, coughing violently. His vision swims with black dots before clearing, and he gives himself a small moment to catch his breath and recover from what Taeyong did to him. Darkly, he wonders if that’s how the Hills teach their boys to court others — kiss them within the inch of their life and then throw them into the water; despite the harrowing circumstances, a smile of amusement breaks its way to his lips. His eyes travel to the roses that grew from his own blood, and he tries so desperately, while he lies there finding his breathing again, to understand what Taeyong saw in them.

This isn’t ruin.

Ten’s lips burn as he falls on his back and raises his face to the sky, and instead of the golden sun, he sees Taeyong’s face, as it looked the moment he tore himself away; bliss streaked with agony, and isn’t it all too familiar?

GET UP!

Ten jerks up in horror and snaps his head around to find the source of the voice—but the lakeshore is empty save for a single lizard that darts into the grass once Ten spots it. He tries to listen for any steps or breathing, but wherever Taeyong is, he’s too far for Ten to reach. His heart hurts as if someone was squeezing it. He tries to control his breathing, but it occurs to him that the feeling isn’t phantom—it’s pretty real.

Get up, you git.

“The hell?” Ten murmurs, his hands coming to stroke over his chest—and that’s when he realizes it.

About time.

The vibration of the voice shakes through his ribcage, and Ten finally places it; he used to hear it distorted, mixed in with others, disembodied and weak—but now it’s loud and clear. Jar finally speaks to him.

Silence was not my choice, boy.

“You sure made it feel like it was,” Ten grumbles, getting up on his feet. “I could feel you being angry at me.”

Habit. That wretched ritual blocks my voice and mind.

“I just came back from it.”

I hid this time.

“Where?” Ten frowns.

Jar doesn’t respond with words—he shows Ten a flashing image of the meadow, Johnny’s body bent over Mark, an adoring smile on his face. He exhales, an epiphany lighting up his mind.

“Oh.” Ten swallows and tries to take a step, but he doesn’t know where to go, what to do. “I have to find Taeyong.”

We do.

Another image flashes before him, a path clearly laid out through the woods and going north, where neither of them has ever gone. Ten sets out toward it without a second though, hoping at least his clothes dry out by the time he gets to his destination.

“Talk, now that you’ve decided to.” He blinks the water dripping from his hair away. “What did Ylo ask Taeyong to do?”

Ylo didn’t do anything. I do not know if they hid too, but they have been weaker since this morning. I couldn’t—

Feel. Ten knows what it means; there is a gaping aching hole in the middle of his chest where Taeyong should be, the memory and the warmth of him; his taste. Ten drags his tongue across his lip as his legs move as fast as they can. He can hear the whisper of the sand falling down in the hourglass, and it is an agony to try and imagine what awaits him—Taeyong—when the glass chalice becomes empty.

Mark was a good boy.

“I’m sure,” Ten grits out, thinking about Johnny’s words; Johnny’s intent.

Taeyong is much the same, I fear.

“Fear?”

Mark figured it out quite fast, and he shared it with Johnny. I rejoiced when he did, for it meant the end of my torment.

Ten frowns. “But it wasn’t.”

No. They chose to steal their love from time. They played their parts well, but the Priest noticed nonetheless.

Grim thoughts bounce and pry at Ten’s mind but he casts them away. Taeyong has figured it out, and the only reason he did it first was because Ten kept denying the truth when it came to him in the night.

“You’re not really evil, are you?” He whispers.

No words come as response—only a wave of sorrowful gratitude, and a kaleidoscope of images that dance and twirl before Ten’s eyes in a span of a second. They are shards of a whole story, but Ten never needed more than a few pronounced brushstrokes to see the whole painting.

Greenery and prosperity; the fields golden with crops, the rivers blue with clarity, the forests thick with life. We were one, and we were everywhere, and we brought to humanity what they prayed for under the thundering skies.

We were Jarylo, and we never wished harm; we rewarded the faith and left sin to rot. We came to who asked for us, and we gave what plenty we could. We were happy, and they were happy with us, and the Continent thrived—and it was good.

Times changed; skies sharpened and went away. Humanity wavered in their faith; and the gods turned away, not out of malice but plagued by the faithless, fatigued and powerless. We held on for as long as we could; even in loneliness, when our siblings descended under earth and fell to slumber, we remained, for we could not turn away from our children.

We were one; we were the only one. He came with a sacrifice and a plea, and we went to the cold cave of the lands, and we were caged. He drank our youth and he ate our spirit and he was dark enough not to give us the mercy of death. He separated us and he lied; he deceived and he trapped.

We watched the lands decline, we watched nature wither, and we pleaded with our captors for release, for help, for love; we received nary a whisper. For centuries, we have remained, and we have had enough.

Ten’s lungs seizes up with exertion but he powers through, fuelled now by the images of the truth, by the realization of the scope of humanity’s crime. The rain starts up above him, pit-pattering on the fresh leaves.

“The Priest,” he growls. “Is it the same person?”

Yes. Each ritual, he takes a piece of us to sew them in his youth.

“But he has an apprentice. He’s supposed to give the knowledge over.”

Another image — an apparition that comes and goes; born out of mist and dead there. Ah. Ten’s heart darkens ever so.

“Is this where our powers come from?” Ten asks; a spark ignites between his fingers.

Yes. Each time we are reborn into the new host, we learn. It used to be that the first hosts could not feel us within at all. Their bodies carried us fearlessly until they drew their last breath. Yet the more powerful we become, the less time the human has.

A wave of pain and shame rolls over Ten, but it is not his own—Jar grieves for all the lives taken in vain, lives they used to live and work for. His eyes well up, but he powers through. He can see the edge of the forest before him, and beyond it—a stone castle, seemingly abandoned and void; but Jar writhes in pain and anger as they see it, and Ten knows. He has almost arrived.

“What happened to Mark?” Ten asks meanwhile. “You say he figured it out?”

Yes. We begged to release us, but he was…

Selfish, Ten thinks.

…greedy. For his love, for Johnathan. They spent several years together, yet in the end, his kind heart has won over him. He told Johnathan it was time, and it was the last time they saw each other. We found Mark’s body lifeless in the meadow.

Fear the likes of which Ten has never felt before strikes through him, and he takes off into an even faster pace; but it still doesn’t feel fast enough, and his heart breaks over and over as he imagines Taeyong’s lifeless body, discarded by the lakeshore or not even given the courtesy of his favorite place. Ten thinks about the roses, and he rebels against the future where he will need to lay them down; he will not kneel on that hill as Johnny kneeled.

“If the Priest is dead, will you be able to walk free?” Ten asks, grim and hoarse; his lungs burn and his heart is not with him.

Yes!

Finally, he reaches the gates; they melt away in seconds under the fire of his touch, and he runs inside, through the stone garden littered with tombs and around the towers just as the pattering rain turns to a storm. He knows where he will find them; by a pond.

Before he can take a step further, thorny vines emerge from the ground, reaching for his arms and legs; they cut and burn and keep him grounded, but he fights against their bounds with all the fervor of a lover scorned, and he burns them with his own skin and calls to the skies for help. The image of Taeyong, alone and dying, gives him the strength to fight through, and he doesn’t mind the blood and the torn flesh of his body, for his body is nothing but a vessel, and it cannot be hurt; not while his heart is still alive. Distantly but clearly, he hears Johnny’s voice, pleading with him to hurry; and next to him are ghosts of all the souls that came before them, pieces of them making up another entity, as strong and as resentful, and all of them, both alive and dead, have had enough. They tear and bite at the vines, and they stand together in Ten’s battle.

Against the thorns and the vines, they fight.

~*~

“I feel sorry for you,” the Priest says. “I truly do.”

Taeyong struggles against the vines of the ivy wrapped around his body in a painful grip, but the more he fights it, the more they cut into his flesh. He doesn’t care; he would rather die than spend another moment in sinful compliance. At the back of his mind, he thinks he hears Ten screaming for him, but Ylo is louder, stronger. They are bloodthirsty and ravenous, and Taeyong only hopes that Ten can forgive him for this.

“Your brother lasted much longer,” the Priest continues.

They’re resting casually on a tombstone nearby, nonchalant and calm as if someone coming to kill them is a regular, non-disturbing thing. It most definitely is, judging by the dark memories flashing before Taeyong’s eyes, beckoned by Ylo and the limits of his patience.

“Granted, he lasted because he was smart about it.” The voice that used to sound hollow and dead is now painfully, vindictively loud and alive. “He got stupid by the end. You came stupid from the start.”

They stand up and walk over the sand toward Taeyong’s kneeling form, their steps whispering with darkness as he moves—glides—through the twilight. Ylo thrashes within Taeyong, begging to be let out, but it would be useless, Taeyong tries to tell him. He may have learned the full truth not an hour ago, but even he understands that Ylo standing alone would be akin to letting a fish dry under the sun. Ylo is nothing without Jar—the Priest has seen to it; just like Taeyong feels like nothing without Ten.

One of them will have to find an answer nonetheless.

“It’s a pity you have to die so soon,” the Priest sighs, and it almost sounds genuine. “Two Hills in a row. I’m sure your sister will be able to break the streak.”

“Don’t you dare touch her!” Taeyong roars, the first thing he’s said since being entwined; and here he promised himself he would preserve his dignity.

Not without an effort, he falls forward and digs his fingers into the ground. Thorns and vines spring out from it, reaching for the Priest’s legs, yet they dissolve them into ash with a single flick of a wrist. Taeyong wants to sob but contains it; he tries again, reaching for the water, but the warlock dismisses it without a glance.

“Parlor tricks do not work on me, boy,” he snarls, almost bored. “I have been alive for far longer than you puny human mind can conceive of.”

“For what?” Taeyong barks out, swaying on his knees. “Eternal youth of loneliness?”

“Nobody has ever come as close to being a god as I have.” The Priest crouches before him, pinching their chin between their clawed fingers. They’re black and dark, and the eyes shining from under the hood are even darker. Taeyong shivers to imagine what hides under the cloak. “I have watched empires rise and fall. Clans and tribes collapse and be reborn. Humans come and go, bloom and wither. They are nothing but weakness; a parasite that has come after another parasite and precedes yet another one. Slowly, they are killing themselves. Soon, their final day shall come upon them, and I will be here for the reckoning. I will be here to welcome the new kind of creature that shall rise from the ashes.”

“Just to say that you led them there?” Taeyong asks desperately. “You speak of human weakness yet you were the one to take their strength away.”

“No. No, boy, I was not. They did this to themselves.” They inhale and raise their eyes to the sky. “Do you know that I used to serve gods as a hierophant? One by one, I watched them leave us, I watched our stupidity and weakness drive them away. Greed and lust have cast the entities away, and we were left stranded.”

“So you ensnared the only god yet remaining?” Taeyong chuckles darkly; it reminds him of Ten, and he aches. “I have a friend who would call you a hypocrite and a horse’s behind.”

A deep, resonating sigh comes from under the hood. “Ah, yes, your friend. You lot always fall into the same traps, you know that?” They walk around Taeyong; a kick strikes him in the back, bringing him to his stomach. “Jonathan and Mark. Oliver and Lylia three pairs before them. Marc and Layla. Rosalie and Victoria. So many more before them; always the same trap, and forever the same outcome.”

“It didn’t occur to you to change the game?” Taeyong spits out.

“Why? This is an exception, not the rule. I expected it. Humans do tend to be drawn to the forbidden.” They clap their hands and chuckle, and the sound comes as a scratch of metal on metal. “But oh, how funny you all writhe when you die!”

“What are you waiting for, then?” Taeyong asks, gathering his last strength to prepare for whatever attack comes.

He just needs to endure it until he comes up with another way; this has to end here and now, and if it will be his blood spilled along with the Priest’s, so shall be it. He just hopes that Ten remembers his smile; he hopes Mark is proud of him for learning from his scars.

“For the Jar to arrive, of course,” the Priest says; something hot burns into the back of his neck, and Taeyong barely holds back a scream. “I need him to see your last moments. I need him to blame himself, just like Jonathan did.” Another sigh; a hiss of fire on Taeyong’s flesh. “But I’m sure we can start without them.”

They grip Taeyong’s shoulder and throw him on his back—a boot comes down on his face; blood spills across Taeyong’s teeth. It tastes salty and washes away the taste of Ten, and Taeyong rebels against the idea. Yet again, he digs his fingers into the ground under his back and pulls—at the memories, at the laughter, at the burn of his touch, at the one and only kiss they shared. In the distance, something rumbles as if a thunderstorm is coming; Taeyong pulls farther as the Priest kneels and wraps a hand around his throat.

The Priest’s touch burns hotter than any pain Ten has ever brought him; it blinds him as he screams in agony, unable to contain it, unable to be as brave as he wished. All around them, so suddenly and so fast they block out the light, vines and roses grow, tall and thick and powerful—powerful enough to knock the Priest off their feet and wrap around their torso, bringing them to the ground. Taeyong racks his hands around them and finds a sharp little pebble that he uses to cut into the vines around him. With their owner out of focus, they die and fall away easily. The sky darkens above them, and icy droplets begin their descent as Taeyong shoots up to his feet and lands on the Priest, digging his knees into their chest.

He grabs the hood and pulls at it, and it comes away almost instantly with a crumble of old cloth and dust; under it, a face so hideous opens up at him that he feels nauseous for a moment. The Priest’s skin is gray and thin like old paper; his mouth is nothing but a straight white line that hides a toothless, black mouth. The eyes that used to bring Taeyong so much horror are the only bright thing about the face, stuck deep in the hollow sockets.

“Gods, are you ugly,” Taeyong can’t help but say.

The Priest writhes under him, but Taeyong doesn’t hesitate. It is the most natural thing to wrap his fingers around the thin throat, so small and dried away that it locks in a single ring of his palms.

“We were never meant to bring about the end of the world,” he hisses. “We were meant to bring an end to you!”

Ylo sings within him with triumph as Taeyong pushes down, and all the souls still trapped within him come together in a crowd that begs for blood and pushes his hands, and it’s almost too easy to kill a man, as it turns out; the Priest's throat crumbles under him, breaking with a sick but satisfying crunch as the storm begins in earnest. Taeyong’s fingers slip and freeze but he doesn’t let go; he doesn’t notice the deep scratches left on his face and arms by the dying monster, he doesn’t notice a part of him die along with it, he doesn’t care. All he cares about is the boy miles away from here, the boy who will live now, the boy who may never forgive him but who will live.

As the life leaves the being under his fingers, so does Taeyong’s own light fades. He didn’t know; he didn’t suspect that there would be a correlation—but he is glad to let go. He is glad to die. After all, the continent needs Ylo; and there is only one way to let him out.

As the last breath leaves the Priest's mouth, the world cranes—Taeyong falls to his side, turning over on his back and closing his eyes. The rain beats against his skin, but it has nothing on him next to the pain and joy he has drank in the past six months. He thinks he hears Ten’s voice, and Ylo is trying to tell him something, but Taeyong lets his mind slip away into the rain—for it is only natural for him to return to the skies now that his purpose has been fulfilled.

Ten’s voice reaches him again, and he opens his eyes just as hands land on his face, searching and pleading. Taeyong watches his face, so breathtaking and so painfully real, and he steals this from time, just like he steals many things. He steals his own last moments to touch Ten’s lips with his fingers; and he smiles.

“You came,” he whispers. “I thought you were mad at me.”

Ten gasps in a wet laugh, his gentle fingers stroking Taeyong’s wet hair away from his forehead.

“I love you,” he utters, “even when you’re being a stupid selfless prick.”

The insult rolls off of Taeyong just like the rain water; his lips crack with blood as they stretch in his last smile. Even if Ten is just his last hallucination, it is enough.

He was always enough, in the end.

“They’re coming, Ten, dear,” Taeyong whispers; his ribs crack with pressure as Ylo prepares to emerge.

“I know,” Ten sniffs and snakes a hand under Taeyong’s shoulders, helping him up. It hurts to move, but for Ten, he would die—oh. Oh, well, he already is. “I was rushing here to kill the Priest, but you did your own thing, as usual.”

His smile is wobbly and pained, but it’s his, and Taeyong loves him beyond any reason or belief; he leans in and presses their foreheads together, and when he places a hand over Ten’s chest, there is a beat of resonance with his own heart. Jar and Ylo are coming to each other.

“I think it will kill us,” Ten says, his eyes closed; his arms around Taeyong are solid and eternal.

“I don’t care.” Taeyong reaches over to place a chaste kiss of a sinner upon his lips. “I’ve known you in life, and that is worth dying for.”

His arms come around Ten, and he falls into his embrace; and in this storm, on his knees but never broken, Taeyong prepares to die—but never fade away.

He was loved; and love never fades.

~*~

In the end, he’s right.

There is no world where dead can return to finish their paths; yet there is an exception for the dead who are still tethered to their last breath. Jarylo come together yet again; and Taeyong finds himself in the woods, chasing the scent of leather within a light that blinds him and burns his body until white, and he finds its source—Ten catches his hand and presses it to his lips, and the gentle lake waters lap at their feet.

They don’t walk through; they remain, unfaded.

~*~

They come again to the lakeshore.

The summer has descended upon the lands, and they are golden in their glow of prosperity and bountiful in their gifts. The forest is green now, alight with life and light; it smells divine as they walk through it, and Taeyong makes sure to spot and gather every dandelion. Ten tsks his tongue at him, but when they arrive and Taeyong sits down and weaves a flower crown from them, he doesn’t utter a word against putting it on. It settles on his fair white hair like drops of heavenly yellow, and the picture is warm—it glows before Taeyong.

His eyes fall down to Ten’s exposed forearm, where in between his tattoos, that old scar brought upon by Taeyong’s hand is white against the tanned ink, among the tiny little cuts that Ten received when fighting his way through to Taeyong. Ten catches his gaze and leans in to kiss him, bringing his attention, quite successfully, to more important matters.

“It is of no significance, my angel,” he whispers against Taeyong’s lips.

Taeyong exhales, overwhelmed with the pressure of his feelings; but these days, they are the only inhabitants of his soul, so he knows he will learn to handle them with time.

“I just don’t see how Jarylo could give us back our lives but didn’t fix the scars,” he mumbles.

Ten laughs and falls into him, pressing his forehead into his neck as Taeyong looks over the blue lake.

“I quite like the scars,” he says. “They show the story of our journey. I’m not too fond of the new hair, though.” He tugs at a strand of his hair, white-and-gold as sand, and then looks up at Taeyong’s, his smile turning warm. “It suits you, though.”

“You think everything suits me,” Taeyong points out.

“And I’m never wrong.”

Their eyes meet, and he knows they’re remembering the same day, when Taeyong dressed himself in Ten’s leather clothes and couldn’t walk through the room before finding himself pinned down—in an otherwise satisfactory, even pleasant, manner. The tips of his ears grow hot as he looks away and at the waterfall; it is stronger now even than when he revived it, and it is just one of the many, many gifts of Jarylo reunited with themselves. If he listens close enough in the night, he thinks he hears their laughter; and it comforts him as he falls asleep next to Ten, forever there and forever bringing him both pain and pleasure.

“I love you, Hill,” Ten whispers suddenly close to him, and Taeyong bites his lips as he looks down on their intertwined hands.

He inhales leather and morning dew, the fresh-and-salty taste of the ocean, the pinpricks of straw and camomiles.

“I love you, Ember,” he says; smiles wide. “Although technically, aren’t you a Hill now too?”

“Ugh.” Ten leans away and sighs dramatically. “Only through my impending nuptials. Can’t believe I’m bringing shame to my whole tribe. What would Johnny say of it?!”

Taeyong knows it's a joke, yet he still sees the sadness in the creases of Ten’s eyes; the same sadness lives in his heart, the same grief. Taeyong exhales and sends his mind, weaker now without Ylo yet still powerful in its own way, toward the meadow, where the statue of his brother and his love is nestled among dandelions, carnations, and sunflowers. They have found their peace, even if only in death; but Taeyong believes that if there are gods who can walk among them, there is a place to meet in the afterlife. On the shore of a lake or in a meadow covered in impossible flowers, there is always a space wherein you and your love can exist.

“I’m happy I was born to hate you,” Taeyong whispers, placing a kiss on Ten’s temple. Ten smiles; his lips find Taeyong’s fingers, and there, intertwined, they remain. Jarylo sings in the warm air and golden glow of the sun and the blue clarity of the lake; they are alone now, but never lonely.

Never again.

Notes:

twt // ask me a question