#Blade of Demon Destruction | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kedsandtubesocks · 5 months ago

Text

Prisonic Fairytale

Pyramid Head!Joel Miller x F!Reader

summary: You’re looking for someone… what you find here in the fog instead has you staring into the abyss - and you discover it stares back (& wears the face of someone terrifyingly handsome)

warnings/tags: 18+ ONLY MDNI. dark themes. Silent Hill AU blended with TLOU canon (major spoilers for TLOU2), monsterfucking, distorted reality, limbo world & dreamlike states, sex pollen, dubcon, fingering, unprotected p in v, creampie, feelings & themes of dread/terror/hopelessness, angst, monstrous!Joel, moments of violence, death mentions, blood imagery, protective!Joel, possessive!Joel, Joel lifts reader multiple times with scary monster strength, scary guard dog Joel vibes, ambiguous happy ending (?)

word count: 5.7k

a/n: please be aware of the warnings - this fic I know won’t be everyone’s cup of tea & I kindly ask if it isn’t please just scroll away… if you haven’t played Silent Hill or don’t even know what it is know this was written for anyone to jump in & read! Big thank you @pedgito for beta reading ily forever, and to you, if you’re reading this know i truly appreciate it & thank you too ♡ divider credit to the ever talented @saradika-graphics

This town, this possible pocket of a morbid nightmare, holds a plethora of ghastly creatures that stalk your very soul. Contorted bodies on the floor, lying fiends crawling as if straight from a hellish pit, all chase after you. Twitching infected, now distorted demons, also plague the streets.

But the monster enclosed in the large metal pyramid shaped device, who drags a sword the size of a small tree, terrifies you most of all.

You’ve seen the pyramid headed creature lurking through the thicket of the town, unwavering in his journey, almost even patrolling at times.

The body appears like that of a man. Broad shoulders sturdy, aged with thick veiny arms effortlessly pulling along the terrifying blade.

You think of the woman you met in the cemetery and what she said: “There’s something… wrong with that town.”

You fully understand now.

In a world surviving after its destruction, you never thought you’d see another form of hell. Yet an even more sinister darkness festers within every inch of this town waiting to strike. There is no peace.

Because when you open your eyes after dozing off on the crusty couch in the home you've been taking refuge in…

You discover the pyramid headed beast now looms above you.

His form towers imposing and striking, a monster conjured from a child’s nightmare now casting his shadow over you.

You didn’t even hear this hulking behemoth walk into the house.

The time spent here continues making your mind melt.

The only refuge you’ve found came in this abandoned home along the outskirts of town.

Which is now not so safe anymore.

Communication with Maria, your late mother’s oldest friend, has gone dead silent. You feel foolish not leaving with her, but now…

The searching, the endless days, the long walks, all have brought you here. Though you can’t even fully describe where here is.

You’ve seen doomed abandoned cities, but nothing like this. The buildings stand vacant, paint chipping away like decayed remnants of a world gone. Crusted crimson coats every inch of this place as if no one but angels tread here. Or possibly ghosts, or demons.

Thick fog blankets the town like the personified angel of death, blurring your sense of direction and casting you into an abyss of dread.

The town becomes an endless maze stretching on and on. You haven’t found another person for what feels like weeks. Only whispers and chills of dread like eyes watch from the shadows. The creatures and infected prey on you, maws open wide.

Now you stare up at their god, the most terrifying beast in this macabre world.

Stunned, petrified, barely even able to breathe, you stare at the pyramid monster so frightened you can't cry in terror, numb to the horrors.

But that’s when you see it. Black ink spilling against the creature’s side.

He’s injured.

Even injured you don’t doubt he can swing his sword and attack you within seconds.

Demonic screeches suddenly howl into the air breaking this tense moment. Your eyes, panicked, dart to the kitchen. The open back door gives you a clear shot to the backyard.

Monsters, macabre and bloody, claw towards your distorted sanctuary through the decayed wooden fence of the porch.

Adrenaline, instinctive primal fear, possesses you and you bolt off the couch.

You move, grabbing your weapon, a discarded pipe and start swinging. You ward off as many of the creatures as you can.

That’s when you realize the pyramid head beast hasn’t chased after you. So you continue swatting away the monsters long enough until you can barricade the opening shut with discarded lawn chairs.

Heading back inside, there, the pyramid monster waits.

In this barbaric wasteland, it unnerves you seeing this creature simply standing in the middle of the dimly lit living room. You’re grateful this home had matches and candles that brought some illumination.

It’s just you and the metal monster now.

Dark liquid, rusted ink like blood, spills down his arms and across his body.

The monstrosity does bleed.

It feels like a standoff, you staring at this tremendous wounded beast.

Through the rusted metal you hear it - heaved breathes, heavy wheezing.

This creature is wounded and hurting.

Too many thoughts buzz rapid and angry in your brain. You’re worried this monster man at any minute will chase and attack you. He already blocks your exit out the front door, possibly dooming you.

But some sort of scabbing human pity wells in you. If you were this injured and alone, you pray someone would spare you, help and save you with a grace filled hand of salvation.

So viewing this beast like a cornered animal, you slowly walk back into the kitchen. You grab a pack of kitchen towels, old and covered in cobwebs, but still the most you could manage as wrappings.

Back in the living room, you cautiously place the items on the couch near the pyramid head man.

He doesn’t move.

Keeping your focus on him and tiptoeing within the edges of terror, you head back to the kitchen. If he does decide to attack you can at least try running out the back door. It might be swifter than trying to dodge his great sword.

Patiently, you sit waiting, too stunned to sleep.

It’s simply you and the pyramid headed monster. He never once enters your space.

You don’t even know how much time has passed or if any time has passed at all.

Daybreak soon leaks into the kitchen. The sunlight hitting your face wakes you, electrifying your heart.

You fell asleep.

Rapidly you rush into the living room.

He’s gone. The creature is gone.

That’s when you notice the wide open porch door, the source of the light that woke you. Hesitantly you peer outside.

The bulking monster towers on the porch, faintly statuesque. His back is back to you. His rusting metal sword stands at the ready.

The pyramid headed creature turns to face you.

You feel cornered, a small prey within the eyes of a demonic god waiting to feel its wrath. The rusted pyramid head simply stands still.

The wound isn’t bleeding anymore, but his dark ink like blood stains his clothing.

The creature picks up the great dreaded sword. Instantly your body coils like a rabid ready to spring and run for the door…

Until the pyramid head moves and walks away.

The sight stuns you. You even wait expecting him to return.

He doesn’t.

The rush of emotions barrels into your body, causing you to hold onto the banister of the porch.

Three things bounce rabidly in your mind.

First, the pyramid head creature didn’t kill you, didn’t even once attack you even while you slept.

Second, it might possibly be the lack of human contact or the absence of cohesive reality in this town, but if you didn’t know better…it looked like the beast stood on the porch keeping watch.

And third -

The pyramid head man wore a broken watch.

Strangely enough, that thought sticks with you most of all.

—

Fear shakes your hands while you shake open door after door trying to find sanctuary. Night approaches. You’ve learned night unleashes the worst of this town, a catalytic shift. Now an unforgiving storm with thick wailing winds threatens to blow you away. You knew you wandered too far again to head back to your makeshift home.

You have to find shelter.

The mist thickens, a sinister soup. The scratching of claws, the clicking of infected, seem to come from all around. You’re on the verge of tears trying another door.

Eventually you find sanctuary in the bar.

With the storm raging outside this will be your rest stop for the night. You begin scavenging around.

Various notes, journal scraps, even receipts, scatter across the town like fallen leaves among the debris. You’ve been gathering them curious to what they entail.

The crunched up book entries become vital fast when you discover many hold information about the creatures residing in this molding disaster.

Here you find one with a simple pyramid drawing on it etched out in dried blood.

Below the drawing is a note. The scribble handwriting paints the pyramid head monster as a hunter, unstoppable in his rampage and the hand of destruction itself.

“Born from the most human yet selfish desires that ravages a soul. It brings him to the edge of losing his humanity. Or maybe it is because he cares too much that this darkness consumed him…whatever it is, that is what created this creature. This once man, who stole the candidate is”

Blood stains the rest of the journal scrap, like the town refuses to let you know the name of this creature.

You pray you don’t run into the pyramid head again.

Tired and not wanting to sleep on the disgusting floor, you pull up a seat at the bar top folding your arms to rest upon them.

The wind howls. Muffled creaks of the creatures still wandering around are unsettling. But your eyes finally close all the same.

You swear you now hear the soft tunes of an old country song, and someone whispering your name.

Delicate fingers, warm and callous, brush against your forehead. Wearily you open your eyes.

The bar has been transformed. Instead of the boarded up abandoned shell of a building, it’s incredibly cozy. Lights are strung up. Gentle music floats all around.

“Y’wanna drink, sweetheart?”

The voice is smooth, accented and twanged beautifully. It feels like it’s been so long since you even spoke to another person much less heard one.

Scrambling up, you discover the voice comes from a man behind the bar.

There stands the most gorgeous man you’ve ever seen. And yet what sadness clouds around him. An aged rugged grace paints him like some country romance love interest. Brown eyes as dark as earthen caverns beg you to get lost in.

The bar is beautiful, and he’s beautiful.

“You’ve been fightin hard.” He says, pouring out a drink for you.

You’re stunned, can’t process what’s even happening.

“Where are we?” You ask stunned.

“A museum,” he dully replies, but you can tell he’s joking.

The sip of the drink tastes heavenly, warms you up and settles you down.

“Ya seem tired.” He adds, and you exhale feeling the weight of this world seep into your bones.

“Wanna talk about it?” He asks gently.

So you spill your heart to him. How Maria, the closest person you’ve had left to family, vanished into the wind. How you don’t know what’s even going on anymore.

“And now I’m here.” You sigh.

“Maybe you’re here for a reason.” The bartender suggests. “This town…it knows more than we realize.”

You don’t know how to reply. So all you can do is take a quiet sip.

A quiet thump comes, and you glance up. The man behind the bar with darts in his hand now tries throwing them at the target across the wall.

The second dart he throws barely lands on the bullseye.

“Wow, you kinda suck.” You snort.

He scoffs looking at you. “Think you’d be any better?”

So that’s how you end up behind the bar now, trying to throw darts in competition with this beautiful older man. He smirks at how pissed you get seeing one of your darts just miss the target.

A vague familiarity swirls around this man, as if something at the back of your mind claws to get out.

You dream of him and this bar often, like your mind slips into this space to escape the horrors clamoring for your flesh.

Your favorite handsome bartender refuses to give you his name, no matter how many times you’ve tried weaseling it out of him.

“My name’s not important.” He tells you, and it only draws a cold ache in your chest.

Then, the nightmares of this town squash your peaceful dreams.

The decayed buildings wither away more and more into desolation the further you travel into the town.

Butterflied fungal growths sprout over certain buildings, crawling over the cracks and branching over the surface of anything they touch. You were worried they too carried the infection.

“Don’t touch fungus shit.” A note written on an old receipt had warned you about the vines and flora of this town.

But it’s getting hard heeding that warning. The monsters rage more bloodthirsty, ruthless and violent in their attacks.

The apartments you’re running through are hard to navigate. Walls crumble and the dark corridors make it difficult to see which way is which. You’re reminded of a twisted diabolical version of wonderland.

Turning a corner, one of the creatures emerges from the darkness screeching and swinging at you. Scrambling away you collide hard against the wall and a puff of dust clogs your senses.

You try not inhaling and swing your metal pipe until it makes contact, stopping the attack.

But what had you run into?

Your heart drops seeing one of the vines cracked open and the faint dust like spores dancing in the air.

Panic rages in your chest.

You flee, fast as you can, running through familiar spaces until you’re out of the apartment hallway. You need to get back to the safe house you’ve been hiding in.

But the wind outside whips feral, screaming with a blustering force that you can barely step outside.

Then your hands start shaking and suddenly heat floods over your body.

The spores, you realize, unleashed a sudden sickness because it feels like you got hit with a sudden fever. Dread spreads in you. You know these aren’t the typical symptoms of the cordyceps infection, but you can’t risk it.

So you wait inside the apartment complex’s entrance office.

No sensation of twitching.

Instead, your mouth dries out and a slickness pools between your legs.

Shit.

What kind of reaction did these vines cause?

Your body drifts between a sensation of being weighed down by an anchor to almost floating through the air until you stumble down onto the floor.

The clothes you wear now scratch your skin, and your mind slowly fogs up more. So you slip out of your pants.

You’re aware that you’re on the floor of the abandoned receptionist office and hope this will provide you enough cover as your fingers dip into your soaking core.

The orgasmic release clumsily comes, but it’s like unleashing a dam.

Your body twitches wishing for more. Unsatisfied, hungry, everything feels empty.

Please, your mind whispers out, please someone… help.

Slipping your fingers inside, the loud wet squelch of your arousal makes your cheeks burn. It’s almost sacrilegious hearing this debauched erotic sound among such a decayed morbid wasteland.

You’re lost in the sensation, trying to fight through this heat. Your eyes even haze over as the pleasure bubbles more.

Aloud clang collides against the door, snapping your attention forward. Towering above you again is the pyramid head man.

You don’t even scream. It gets logged in your throat instead transforming into a twisted moan.

In this small space, the metal covered demon looms larger than ever. The pyramid prisoned monster stays focused solely on you.

Slowly, he lumbers closer. You can’t even find the strength to move, scramble with some dignity and leave. If anything your legs move like jello shifting as you take in the sight of his strong thick arms, his broad shoulders.

You wonder what he looks like under the helm.

A low rumble vibrates through the room. Wearily your eyes drift down and spot the obvious bulge straining against his pants.

“Please.” The word croaks out of you before you can stop it. You don’t know if this will even help, or if this is even real.

Quickly he crouches down and large firm hands grasp your legs, dragging you across the floor. The movement makes your body twitch, and your eyes shut bracing for pain.

Instead you're gingerly placed on the edge of a table in the receptionist room.

Hesitantly your eyes open. All you see is rusted archaic metal. A sound rips into the air, the tearing of clothes, your underwear specifically. Your core feels colder, yet the cool breeze melts into unbearable flames as the air hits your bare skin.

Gentle fingers twitch moving across your thighs and you moan, almost want to sob. How long has it been since someone’s last touched you? And so reverently?

The low rumbling sound rattles all around you, mixing with your own moans. Everything heightens when his fingers slip inside you.

Thick, his fingers are so damn thick making your hips fidget to feel more of him.

This creature, this monster that’s ripped apart bodies and bathed itself in blood, now fully devotes itself to your pleasure. You feel drunk on that knowledge.

But your release runs away further from you now, hiding just out of reach making you whine frustrated and almost feral.

More, more, you need more.

“Inside.” You manage to croak to the beast. “Need more…inside.”

It’s as if this nightmare world has slipped under your skin, becoming a part of your bloodstream allowing you to transmute the terror into terrible pleasure.

The twitch of the monster’s large cock drags across your bare thighs. The sensation jolts you awake, aware and hyper focused. His grimey blood crusted hands rapidly grab onto your soft hips. You don’t even care if they were inside you, touching you.

Especially when your mind melts as the creature slips inside.

He’s thick, knocking your breathless. It’s delicious feeling so full that you swear you almost feel him in your ribs. It makes the skin melt off your bones.

The monster relentlessly pounds into you, shaking the table unabashedly loud mixing with your delirious moans.

Your legs twist around his strong waist, locking him into you tighter. The pyramid headed beast rumbles louder in this closer position. More distorted groans mix with yours as his hands run up your body, tracing every inch of you.

You should be frightened. This creature sent from hell has you at its mercy. But instead the sensations flooding your body make you’re hungrier for him.

“More, more.” You whine loud and unrelenting.

And he gives.

Your climax is beautifully fierce. Your screams blend into the white void swallowing you whole. Your legs thrash. Your eyes roll back as your fingers dig into the creature’s cold arms. This, you believe, might be the last taste of heaven you’ll ever find in this hell pit.

Exhaustion crashed in immediately. You feel like a ragdoll on the table while this monster continues thrusting into you sloppy and messy, broken growls distorting your mind.

Teetering between bliss and dreams, your hands move up, slowly trade up to the rusting metal.

Tenderly, you wonder what would be like if you could free this creature -

Your hands tracing across the rusting metal containing this pyramid headed monster does something to him. He roars, distorted and hellish, and suddenly spills into you.

You don’t even care he came inside. You thought you had been stated before, now it’s like floating into a new realm of pleasure. You moan now in tandem with him.

Full, you’ve never felt this full. A thick hand affectionate and soft rest against your lower belly. You think it almost aches of a revenant tenderness.

But you’re barely awake now, barely process what’s going on. All you sense are arms cradling you while you fade in and out.

Then you wake up wondering if it was all a dream.

Because instead of the corroded apartment complex you were in, you’re resting back in bed of the home you’ve been staying at.

Did that monster carry you back all the way here?

You don’t know. For a moment you don’t even know if that fuck in the apartments was real, until you stand up and the ache that rips across your body says otherwise.

So you stay resting in this hollow soul of a home. After gaining some rest you start snooping around.

There’s so many photos of a bright young girl with warm sparkling intelligent eyes. Her playing soccer, her roofing showing off her school achievements. She's with two other men.

One is a handsome younger man, a relative from how easy you can see the similarities in their warm smiles.

The other man in any photo… his face is missing.

Either scratched out or simply ripped from the photo.

You heartaches thinking of this family preserved here in the grief of it all, frozen after the world ended and now in this pocket of macabre.

You fall back asleep in the large main bedroom you first woke up in. The faintest hints of pine and sandalwood strangely still cling in the sheets.

It pulls you into the softest dream.

This time you dream of this home you're in now full alive, warm and inviting.

A man stands at the kitchen, his sturdy beautifully broad back to you, dressed in that familiar green plaid. He catches your presence, hears your footsteps and turns.

In the soft morning light, he’s painted ethereal. A rugged whisper of a man out of reach yet so close. Then as a gentle grin tugs his lips, you feel like you already do know him.

You and him settle into a soft morning, simply preparing breakfast. Then thick strong arms slide around you from behind, and the smell of pine and sandalwood washes over you.

Your bartender hums a deep sigh while burying his face against your shoulder.

“Wanna taste ya. Can I taste y’honey?” He mutters letting his words roll out a soft seductive purr.

Something firm already pokes against you and when he grinds into you, everything in you molds into him.

Kissing this man, finally tasting his lips clashing into you, is akin to unleashing a great beast, a creature laying dormant that now consumes unrelenting.

His teeth nip and dig at your skin, trying to devour you whole. But it’s with a fierce devotion that almost brings tears to your eyes when he kisses you again.

Then he says your name…

His voice is like a beautiful country twang wrapped in the delicacy of a moth’s wing. The tenderness of his fingers running across your face, holding you in his grasp - it’s drenched in the deepest affection you’ve ever experienced.

He tastes of something sweet, a promise of home.

And then he fucks you wild from behind pressed up against the counter.

His mouth is again all over your neck, biting licking any inch of you he can.

“God damn baby,” he moans with a slurp as he sucks on your skin. “Wanted this, wanted to taste ya for so long. Was losin’ my mind before.”

Before?

Even among the delicious haze that catches you off guard slightly.

But then all worry drifts away when his fingers slide down to your clit.

“You’re m’fucking baby, yeah? All fucking mine?” He growls and the rumble sounds familiar, like a creature you’ve heard prowling in the dark.

“Yes.” You sob, nodding best as you can.

The way he pounds into you, carves a new universe into you. You feel like you’re completely tied to him. Something inside you whispers maybe you always have been.

His hand curls around your throat, possessive but tender.

It’s wonderful for a dream.

But dreams here don’t last long. You realize that now.

After you finish, and after he spills into you, he pulls himself away from leaving you empty and stunned.

There’s a composed wilderness clouding his eyes. He moves to clean you up and it’s quiet, thick with choking tension.

“This town…” his voice cuts clipped as he shakes his head. He sounds worried, strained and panicked. After you and him compose yourselves, he quickly moves to a drawer to pull out a simple pistol.

Determined and unwavering, he loads it then places it in your hand.

You even tear up.

“Next time I see ya I don’t know what’ll happen. Don’t know if I’ll be able to get to ya in time.” He mutters.

Next time?

“Stay safe…” this man whispers, then leans forward to place a sweet kiss against your forehead.

A chittering growl, the static hiss of one of the monsters, echoes outside the window. Fear clutches at your heart overshadowing the warmth.

You scramble to glance outside trying to spot the demon in the mist.

Thankfully the creature doesn’t spot you, only shuffles further down the street, clicking and twisting its body.

Sighing you turn back to the man -

And no one is there.

Now the warm kitchen stands with the corroded wood, matted cobwebs and an empty space. The kitchen stares back desolate and mocking.

Yet a real gun still sits in your hand.

Was this even a dream? Were you awake this entire time?

A hand comes over your mouth to silence the sob and stop the bleeding panic of realizing this distorted reality is possibly infecting you whole.

—

The next dream you have, another man greets you. This man also seems familiar. You’ve seen in the photos, warm eyes and a handsome youthful charming smile.

Brother to your lover, you can’t explain how but those two you just know are brothers.

He’s working the bar now.

“Where’s…” you feel foolish not being able to say the name of the man you long for.

“Out.” The current bartender say with a familiar twang. “He’s… on patrol.”

Those words hang ominous.

“Y’know…a town like this used to be our paradise.” He explains.

You can see remnants of that wherever you go, whispers of peace corrupted and overrun by the darkness.

“But this town… it knows.” He adds.

You’re reminded of a journal scrap you came across in the main part of town.

“The town will read your heart, manifest the darkness into willpower… but it will come with a tax.”

You even read that outloud to this man. His face darkens.

“Yeah, shit that’s exactly it.” He coughs.

Then his eyes search yours.

“You’re… you know you can move on.” There’s an ache wavering in his voice that rips your heart open.

You shake your head.

You almost feel guilty. You came here looking for Maria and now chase after a ghost. But, it feels as if you’re looking for a multitude of them now. Like this one ghost will unlock them all.

“Tell me about him, about your brother.” You ask.

The handsome younger man barks a laugh.

“Stubborn as a god damn mule. Prideful at times. But… maybe the best damn man I’ve ever known.” The fondness gleams ever true in his words, brotherly love unending.

“Y’know, his birthday…it was on-”

“Outbreak day.” You finish before you even process the words.

You inhale sharp.

His birthday…

Yes. You remember. That’s right, he told you his birthday was the day the world ended.

“Love and grief are funny fuckin’ things. Might even be brothers at times.” The younger brother comments, and your throat feels dry.

You need to leave. Your skin crawls unbearable now.

Forcing yourself awake, you cough among the stale air of the hospital. The dust stings your lungs.

Tucking this dream into the corner of your heart, you wake up back to your journey.

So many bodies litter the hospital. So many bullets and abandoned guns are scatter among the floors. The place is crawling with more monsters running amuck here.

Rushing down a hallway, you stumble down the stairs. Exhaustion outweighs your adrenaline. Eventually you end up back down at the lower level parking garage of the hospital.

At least you can try to heading back home.

Then something scrapes against the concrete.

“You.” A distorted voice growls demonic. Behind you is another monster, this one sounds like a woman and you can see distinct features, echoes of this woman, among the monstrous.

“This is what he did to us.” The creature screeches at you with angered venom.

“It’s all his fault, he brought the end of the world with him, was born to bring destruction. He takes…All he does is take! We had salvation in our hands and he took it from us! He took Ellie!”

Ellie…

The name flashes to your mind bringing a warm familiar laugh of a young girl telling you a bad dad joke, the image of her so close yet still out of reach has you blinking back tears.

Then the monster’s screech rattles the walls, singing of ancient pain that makes your legs weak.

She fights with so much power. There’s only so much hiding and your pistol can do.

Trying to flee from her attacks, you stumble and fall onto the floor.

It’s over. This has to be the end.

“He can’t save you now.” The creature cackles gleeful.

A sob escapes you.

“Joel.”

You whisper the name, feeling it scramble and scratch at your throat. Why it suddenly came to you now, you don’t know. But it feels as if it’s been hiding this entire time, simply waiting for you to call upon it.

Suddenly distorted violent scratching comes, and your body freezes. Something loud collides hard and fast against the metal.

The swing of the terrible executioner’s sword comes first. Then, the rust of metal follows.

The pyramid head creature emerges from the darkness.

He is every bit the destroyer you once feared. Yet now he stands solely between you and the other monster, protecting you.

She screeches loud seeing her new opponent.

The two battle, ferocious beast unchained, and you stare petrified.

That’s when you catch the glimpse of the pyramid head’s arm again.

The watch. The broken watch.

The same watch you’re realizing your bartender wore, the one you know so fondly.

And now that you fully stare at the great sword, you’re reminded of a pocket knife a man you loved once used.

“Joel.” You say again.

The pyramid head turns to you, like a guard dog being called back and waiting for your command.

It’s him underneath it. It really is him…

Everything clicks into place.

The realization unfolds soft, steady and quiet.

This town, the grief but ultimately the love he held turned him into this.

The town knighted him as both executioner and protector.

Within the eternal welded metal, he’s punished to stay locked up from ever tasting true blissful peace. The grief of losing his daughter, of trying to save another, feeling like he’s never been able to protect or bring any goodness into this world only for him to lose it - all layered and sealed itself around him.

Now he’s here…

Here to protect you like he has been this entire time.

Joel with every might swings his sword, powerful and true. He lands hit after hit to the creature roaring unholy, powerful and fierce.

This baptism in his wrath, the comfort in knowing the bloodshed comes because he’s protecting you brings a laugh from your chest.

It’s a laugh freeing and loud. It bounces off the walls, mixes with the gurgles of blood and the ripping of flesh.

Your Joel won’t lose.

The demonic screeches of the woman come to a crescendo and then she falls deadly silent. Before you realize it, a soft hand is against your face. The shadow of the pyramid rusted metal falls over you like the shade of angel wings.

“Joel.” You whisper his name reverent.

Gingerly, like you’re something precious, you’re gathered into his arms. Soft pur rumbles are the last thing you hear before the darkness pulls you under.

You wake up in a med clinic. You can’t tell if this is a dream or not.

“Finally made it… took ya a while.” The voice, gentle and comforting, makes you bolt up from bed.

Maria sits beside you with soft eyes and a kind smile.

“You’re here.” You sob relieved.

“Knew you’d find us.” She nods.

A knock arrives cutting Maria off. Inside steps the familiar younger brother who beams comfortingly.

“Tommy.” You effortlessly greet him, like the name has been with you all along.

“Knew you’d figure it out.” He grins, familiar and sweet.

“Come on.” Maria says with a knowing look. “We should let her rest some more.”

“But wait…” you say and they both pause, turning to you. “What…”

What had happened? What’s really going on? You can even gather your thoughts, put them into words.

Then all that worry dies out when another drawl of a voice pierces the room.

“Alright, leave her alone.”

Joel.

Maria sighs, playfully exhausted. While Tommy turns to you with a wink. They both slide out of the door while Joel instead rushes in. Tommy makes playfully kissing noises. Joel shots him a look before he then quickly moves to the side of your bed.

Your hand finds his immediately.

“You’re here.” You croak and he nods.

“Ain’t leaving you, honey.” It sounds like a promise, ever true. You don’t ever want to leave him now, or here…

“Let’s go home.” You nod.

Without another word Joel gathers you into his arms, kisses the top of your head and steps out of the door.

The fog greets you soft and wispy. A chill runs up your spine from the cold air, but Joel curls you tighter in his arms. All of the monsters and creatures in the streets now scurry away in fear.

This man… the memories flutter in hazy now.

There was a time where you left looking for Maria and ran into a man with that special headstrong girl. A love grew for the two of them and you ending up in the safety of a town… a heaven on earth. You made a home with that man. Watched that girl grow up.

But then that man you loved died, and so did your world.

Then you woke up here at the edge of this town in the graveyard… Did the grief send you here?

You don’t even know anymore. Especially because all of that seems like another world now.

You’re here now. That’s what matters.

“Joel, you deserve love,” you whisper into his chest. “You did what your heart told you…that’s why I’m here. I’ll remind you everyday that you’re a good man. I’m your baby, remember?”

Your hand reaches up to softly stroke the metal pyramid encasing. He rumbles soft, familiar, the most comforting sound.

You think of how lucky you are to find love in the devil’s arms and discover peace within his hell.

In the arms of your man, your monster, you happily enter the fog embracing it all around.

#I know this one is a strange (& extra spooky dark) but I’m proud of how this turned out #and I seriously can’t thank you enough if you read this!!!#pyramid head!joel #Joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller x y/n #Joel miller fanfic #dark content tw #Joel 🤎

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slylycurioustreasure · 1 month ago

Text

The Obsidian-Eyed Guardian

— Part 2.2

Summary: Heir to a cursed line of sorcerers, you carry on your shoulders the weight of an ancestral pact: to prevent the destruction of the world, you must unite with four men from clans once enemies of your own kind—a demon, a celestial, an immortal fox, and a human.

But nothing is simple when love, hate, desire, and betrayal intertwine. Torn between your curse and your feelings, protected by some, judged by others, you will have to face the truth about your blood... and what you are willing to sacrifice to survive.

What if it wasn't you, but them... who were trapped from the start?

Genre: Fantasy, Dark Romance, Drama, Action, Reverse Harem, Supernatural, Wuxia, Historical

Pairing : Park Sunghoon x reader

Word : 19k

⚠️ Warning: Blood, betrayal, jealousy, heartbreaking separations, desperate and all-consuming love, loneliness, magic, pain, deep introspection, ambiguous morality, binding and painful bonds, toxic loyalty, feelings of rejection, psychological violence.

Sexual content: vulgar and crude language, vaginal and oral sex, magic related to the sexual act, explicit and provocative dialogue, voluntary submission, intense rhythms alternating between violence and tenderness, body marks left by bites and scratches, sex in a forbidden place, blasphemy, domination, implicit BDSM practices, crude language and consensual sexual violence.

PREV PART— NEXT ✘ SERIES MASTERLIST ✘

Yànluò Kèzhàn Inn (焰落客栈) — The Inn of Falling Flames

The door had barely closed behind you when Sunghoon grabbed you—not roughly, but with that stifled anger you recognize in men who have struggled with themselves for too long. His arm circled your waist, the other slid across the back of your neck, and your back hit the icy wall softly, like a silent cleaver. Not a word. Just the shudder of his breath against your cheek, burning like white-hot metal, as he fought not to give in too quickly.

Sunghoon looks at you as if he's about to devour you. And maybe that's exactly what he's about to do.

His eyes, unfathomably black, stare into yours with the intensity of lost men. It's no longer desire. It's a fever. A damnation. A silent oath that only your body can exorcise. The silence around you is almost sacred, taut like a rope about to snap. Your breaths are short, out of tune, desperately hungry.

Outside, the first fireworks burst. Blood red. They illuminate your faces with a supernatural glow, bathe the room in a crimson glow, and make shadows dance on the walls like spirits summoned by your sins. The paper lanterns quiver and tremble, as if they were watching, complicit, a forbidden ceremony.

Sunghoon approaches. Slowly. Too slowly. His hand slides against your cheek, trembling, almost hesitant—but it's not gentleness, it's the storm before the rush. And when his lips reach the tip of your nose, he kisses you so gently it makes you gasp.

A farewell. Or a prelude to oblivion.

He moves down, his mouth brushing your cheek, your ear, your neck. Sunghoon doesn't kiss. He writes. He traces on your skin the silent verses of a desire so ancient it becomes sacred. Each kiss is a confession he can't express. Each touch is a war he's losing.

Then, Sunghoon reaches the corner of your mouth. He doesn't kiss yet. He lets your lips brush, search for each other, miss each other. You feel his breath brush yours, rough, feverish. The space between your lips is reduced to a thread, and yet he strives not to break it. He wants you to beg him. He wants your silence to implore his. And when you finally move forward to capture his mouth, he flees—his tongue brushes your cheek, trails down your neck, and you moan in frustration.

His mouth reaches the hollow of your throat. He stays there. For a long time. Too long. His lips close over your skin with agonizing slowness. He licks, he sucks, he tastes. He marks. And when he reaches the beat of your heart, he stops. His lips rest there like a blade on a still-raw wound.

“I want to drink until your last light…”

Your throat tightens. You don't know if you're gasping or sobbing. Your fingers stray into his hair, desperate, clutching at it like a prayer. Your legs buckle. Your breath hitches. And he continues. His voice, hoarse, seeps into you like poison:

“You will be my fate…”

Then Sunghoon attacks your hanfu. He doesn't undo the knots: he rips them out. The silk tears beneath his fingers, a sound both delicate and violent, and each layer falls away like a lie being exposed. Your skin is revealed, shivers in the icy air, tenses under his gaze. He steps back, contemplates you. As one contemplates a sacred object. As one gazes upon a curse.

“You are a work of art… And works of art are locked up. They are stolen. They are broken… Do you want to be one, my little judge?”

Sunghoon lifts you up, as if he's been carrying your weight for a thousand lifetimes. Your legs wrap around him, your forehead presses against his throat. You tremble. He lays you down with a heartbreaking gentleness, as if he fears losing you in the very act of possessing you. His fingers slide into your hair, remove your pin. Your hair collapses, like a sudden night. And outside, a firework explodes, flooding the room with a bloody red.

He freezes. His gaze is feverish, haunted.

"If you don't answer... You will be punished. Mistakes always have a sentence."

You smile. Slowly. You are a priestess offered to her executioner. You stretch out your throat. You expose your belly. You open your heart.

“Yes… Lock me up. Punish me. Devour me… As long as in the end, it’s you. Only you.”

You tug at his hanfu. Sunghoon gives in. He lets you do it. Your hand explores, bares, brushes against him. Beneath your fingers, his skin is burning. His muscles are hard, carved by war and rage. He is made of flames and ice. Of punishments and prayers. Of you.

It lies upon you like a sentence, a fall, a war that can no longer be stopped.

His body is warm, burning, as if emerging from a blaze. And when his hands rest on you, Sunghoon doesn't touch you: he examines you. He explores your skin like a mad calligrapher copying the verses of a forbidden sutra, his fingers trembling with rage, desire, hunger. He deciphers you. He reads you in a low voice, in a forgotten language, pagan and sacred. Every hollow becomes a sanctuary. Every fold, a trap. Every flaw, an offering.

His palm brushes your throat, and you feel the edge of the saber—not the caress. You feel like he could squeeze. Like he could open you, there, with a slow gesture. He moves down slowly, so slowly, toward your sternum, then traces the valley of your breasts as if following the scars of a past too heavy to bear. His breath becomes hoarse. His irises darken, the color of a storm, the color of a moonless night.

Sunghoon whispers, in a hollow, strangled voice:

“You are mine. Mine. Not the world’s. Not theirs. Not even yours.”

His words lacerate. They enter you like an ancient poison, a cursed pact you've already signed—with your blood, your soul, your will.

And Sunghoon's fingers slide along your skin like white-hot jade blades, first grazing, then tracing cruel lines across the contours of your breast. When they reach your nipple, he doesn't brush against it—he grasps it. Between two knuckles as precise as metal pliers, he pinches it with a methodical, almost searching slowness, as if searching for the exact point where pleasure turns to torture.

You inhale too deeply, too sharply. A cry escapes your throat, hoarse, wild, raw, as if a part of your soul had just been ripped from you. Your back arches violently against the dark silk mattress, taut as a bowstring about to snap, and your neck tilts, offering your bare throat like a sacrifice.

Sunghoon says nothing.

He doesn't need to speak.

For his mouth acts. It descends. Slowly. Terribly slowly. His lips are sweet poison and his breath is a bite of hot ashes on your trembling skin. When he encloses your other breast in the burning hollow of his mouth, it is no longer a kiss—it is a combustion. A sacrificial offering.

You're burning.

You're burning from the inside out. You feel the heat, that rising tide, swallowing your belly, consuming your loins, ravaging the secret sanctuary between your thighs. It's not just a shudder—it's a fracture. As if something is breaking deep inside you, a forgotten dam, an ancient seal, something dark and powerful that even your own power couldn't name.

And you scream. Again. But this time, it's a scream that has nothing human about it. It's not a complaint. It's a perverted prayer, a call from the depths of your body to this celestial being who crushes you, explores you, consumes you. It's the echo of a chasm he has awakened within you, a chasm that had never known light—only shadows. Primitive, violent impulses that had always slept beneath the calm surface of your mask.

Sunghoon's teeth graze your still-wet nipple, trapping it for a moment, then pull with cruel delicacy, a patience that borders on refined torture. You moan again, but this time, it's no longer pain. It's no longer fear.

It's abandonment.

You are his. You feel it. Not in a romantic sense. Not in a naive pact. You are his like a terrain conquered by war. Like a city set ablaze. Like a body caught in a forbidden ritual. He desecrates and sanctifies you in the same breath.

His gaze rises back up to you—black, unfathomable, merciless. And in his eyes, you see your own reflection: a broken, possessed being, magnificent in his ruin. Sunghoon releases your breast slowly, as if reluctantly returning your flesh, and his hand moves down to your stomach, his palm burning, possessive, marking your skin with an invisible but indelible imprint.

And your whole body, on fire, waits for what happens next. Not to flee. But to be annihilated.

And then… It happens.

Your link.

The mark tattooed on your shoulder blade glows, like an ember blown out after centuries of oblivion. Blood red. Sob red. Condemnation red. It throbs like a beast's heart. His, etched vividly on his wrist, pulses in echo, a furious, brutal, uncontrollable beat. Their glow seeks each other, seizes each other, devours each other. Your bodies attract like two magnets that hate each other, two chained gods who can only crush each other with each revolution.

Sunghoon descends, kneeling before you like a fallen king before the idol he is about to desecrate.

But there is nothing tender in his submission. Nothing sweet. This isn't a kiss he steals from you. It's a silent war, a sacrilege whispered between his cursed lips. You feel his breath brush the inside of your thighs—a damp, disordered, irrational heat. Like the wind from ancient tombs. Like the sigh of a celestial freed by breaking a forgotten seal.

Sunghoon no longer looks at you with human eyes. He devours you with the fever of a black priest. With the madness of an ascetic who has finally found the beating heart of his heresy.

His palms slide slowly over your hips, then part them, gently but firmly, like two blades opening onto a living heart. He cuts you open. Literally. He tears you away from yourself. Every millimeter of your skin he reveals becomes a dirge, an offering to chaos. You are no longer a woman. You are an invocation. You are the burning hearth of an unholy ritual.

And he—Sunghoon—is not a lover. He is the instrument of the pact.

When his mouth reaches your center, it's not a shudder that runs through your body, but a telluric jolt, a tremor of the soul. His tongue enters you with the grave slowness of a forbidden spell, with the unholy precision of a monk tattooing forbidden runes on flesh. This is not pleasure. This is not sweetness.

It's a power grab.

It is enslavement.

It's an incantation.

The first pressure tears a hoarse, inhuman cry from you, and you feel your muscles tense, your stomach hollow, your back arch as if your body were trying to flee—or hold it in. But Sunghoon is relentless. He drinks from your source like a cursed cup. Every movement of his tongue seems calculated to break something inside you: modesty, will, resistance.

Sunghoon moans against you. A hoarse, hungry, almost animal sound. And in that vibration, you lose your bearings. You moan, gasp, lose all sense of time. You convulse beneath his mouth like a woman possessed. You are nothing more than a black torch consumed by his breath. More than a sacrilegious fire.

Sunghoon adores you like one adores a demon:

With fanaticism.

With despair.

With violence.

His hands grip your thighs, pushing them further apart, not asking—not begging—but demanding. He opens you like an offering on the altar of a fallen god. You feel your magic escaping you with every strangled moan. You feel your essence abandon you and flow into him like a poison only he knows how to tame.

You are no longer a woman in his arms. You are an oracle in a trance. A living artifact.

You collapse, finally, under his tongue. You break. You scream. You cry. You plead. But he continues, tireless, until he makes you convulse again, until your cries break into hoarse sobs and your sighs become silent prayers.

And then… Sunghoon climbs back up. Gently. Slowly. Too slowly. Every inch of his ascent is torture. His mouth traces a trail of black fire across your wet skin, and you feel him marking you, imprinting something inside you, something eternal, unspeakable. Your fingers close around his shoulders as if you're afraid of falling—when you're already falling, inside.

When he finally reaches your face, Sunghoon is breathless, but his eyes… His eyes are no longer human. They shine with a mad glare. A feverish, almost painful glare. His pupils are dilated, as if he's tasted some divine drug. He's trembling. He's on the edge. You feel it—he's reeling, like a warrior drunk on slaughter, like a blade vibrating just before it cuts. All it takes is a word. A sigh. A breath.

And Sunghoon would dive.

He kisses you then, brutally. Tongue against tongue, taste against taste, you against him. And you understand, in this devouring kiss, that it's not over. That this was only the first door of the temple.

And as he is about to cross the second, he says:

“Tell me you love me… or I’ll lose myself.”

You grab him. Like holding a condemned man. You scream, sob, hiccup.

"I love you. I hate you. I want you."

And then suddenly... Sunghoon enters. Not gently. Not hesitantly. But all at once, all at once, like a sentence spoken in a low voice under a rain of ashes. He enters you brutally , without a word, without a warning, like a drawn saber, a deadly strike in the shadows.

The pain is raw. Total. A sharp fire, pure and raw, ripping you open. You scream—but it's not your voice. It's not that of the woman you were. It's the beast inside you. The witch. The creature the war left behind. A heartbreaking, inhuman scream, as if your very soul is split open, caught in magic older than you.

He growls against your skin, his teeth clenched, every muscle tense like a bow. He pushes deeper, slowly now, merciless, as if he wants to inhabit you . As if he wants to destroy you from the inside out. And you feel… Everything. Every inch of him. Every pulse of his desire, raging, blind, desperate.

Sunghoon doesn't make love. He takes revenge. He takes you like you cast an irreversible spell. Like you destroy what you can't have.

Your legs close around him—reflexively, out of need, or out of defiance. Your back arches. Your nails dig into his skin. You want to run away. You want to stay. You want to die and be reborn, all at once.

And Sunghoon... He accelerates. His movements become wild, rhythmic, inhuman. His thrusts are furious, uncontrolled waves, strikes of passion pent up for too many years, too many silences.

He grabs your hips, lifts you, pushes you against the silk sheets. Your back hits the headboard. Your forehead falls on his shoulder. You gasp. He turns you over, abruptly. Your stomach on the bed. He takes you again, without slowing down, harder. Deeper. And you lose yourself.

You lose track of up, down, time. The world becomes his breath against your neck. His hands around your throat. His name you moan like an oracle, like a poison you want to swallow to the end.

Sunghoon moaned back—hoarse, almost painful—as if taking you was ripping him apart too. As if your warmth were exorcising him.

And he whispers, panting, his breath breaking:

“You… You’re killing me…”

But Sunghoon doesn't stop. He pushes deeper, all the way to the bone. He rips moans, tears, and sobs out of your control. Your body vibrates, your legs tremble, your hands try to find a place to anchor themselves—in his hair, on his chest, in his blood.

You scratch him. You hurt him. He bites your shoulder, brutally, leaving a red, raw, hot mark.

And outside, the sky bursts.

The lanterns burn out. Fireworks tear silently through the night. But none of their bursts are as incandescent as what you are becoming . A demon and a witch. A judge and a criminal. Two hearts that have never learned to love except with violence.

Sunghoon slows down. His thrusts become slower. Deeper. Each thrust is an unspoken oath. An "I love you" choked in his throat. A goodbye whispered between moans.

His hand slides between your legs. He wants you to fall with him. To be lost, burned, erased. And you do. You come against him. Once. Twice. You lose count. Your body arches, shaken, seized by convulsions you can't hold back. He follows you. With a final cry. A low, hoarse, animal rattle.

Sunghoon empties himself into you. And for a few seconds, he stops breathing.

When he falls back on you, panting, trembling, it's as if he's collapsing against his own past. He stays there, anchored inside you, his breath hot on your neck, his skin covered in sweat, your blood, the shadow of a love he no longer knows how to refuse.

“I hate you,” he whispers in a dead voice. And then, in a whisper, “But I love you even more. And I’m… Lost.”

You don't answer. You cry. Silently. Your tears fall onto the bed, onto him, onto this night that engulfs you both.

Sunghoon kisses the back of your neck. Not tenderly. Desperately. As if he wants to keep you in his mouth forever. As if he'll spit you out tomorrow.

And he whispers, in a voice so low that only your heart hears it:

“You are mine. Forever. Even if I have to burn to keep you.”

Sunghoon never left you.

Or rather, he never really let go of you.

His shadow was everywhere around you, a silent weight, an icy breath on the back of your neck, a presence that insinuated itself into every corner of your body and mind. You no longer knew where your breath ended and his began.

Sunghoon was there, always there, like a dull ache in the hollow of your skin. Not a moment of respite, not a moment of freedom. His presence was an invisible chain, a bond of blood and curse that you shared. A mark that burned beneath your clothes, there, on your skin, pulsing like a cursed heart, beating in unison yet light years apart.

You sat on his lap, back straight, hands immersed in the cold inkstone, slowly grinding the black ink stick. The acrid smell of soot and pigment crept into your nostrils, bitter, lingering, like poison. The white paper before you was sacred territory, a battlefield where his brushes traced signs and destinies, while your hand slowly turned the black powder into a dark, hypnotic liquid.

His free hand, the one not holding the brush, slid over your stomach, slow and heavy, each caress like a threat, a promise, a half-whispered oath. His fingers traced burning circles, awakening buried pains and forbidden desires. You shivered, despite yourself, as he let his hot breath fan against your bare skin, his nose brushing against the nape of your neck, his lips a breath away from your ear.

"At this rate, my legs will end up numb before all this ink is even ready..." His voice, hoarse, broken by emotion held back for too long, betrayed bitter amusement and deep weariness.

You shrugged, a sad smile on your lips, staring at the black ink you were melting.

"If you didn't spend all your time distracting me... Maybe I'd be a better student." Your laughter was a breath, a fragile glimmer of humanity in this dark universe.

Sunghoon gently nuzzled your skin, and a shiver ran through you. His touch was both a caress and a torture, a tender bite that consumed your defenses.

"You're the one who distracts me from my duties," he murmured, his voice heavy with silent reproaches and unleashed desires.

His fingers slid slowly lower, brushing against the small of your back, teetering between restraint and surrender, making your heart race.

You wanted to get away, to escape this grip that was both suffocating and consuming you. Slowly, you slid off his lap, seeking refuge on the cold, hard floor, your back straight, the inkstone in front of you.

“I’ll continue here,” you breathed, your voice fragile, almost breaking. “So as not to be a distraction.”

You pretended to pout, puffing out your cheeks slightly, a desperate play to keep a distance you didn't know how to maintain.

But he didn't let you go.

With a sure, relentless gesture, Sunghoon pulled you towards him, placing you back on his lap, your chest crushed against his. His warmth enveloped you, a black flame that devoured what remained of your resistance.

He buried his face in your neck, like a shipwrecked man clinging to the last lifeline, whispering your name like a desperate prayer:

“Don't go away from me… Y/n.” His voice was broken, shaky, filled with a deep pain that reached your core.

You couldn't help the lump rising in your throat, that harsh, icy weight that stifled all hope. So you slowly stroked his hair, your fingers sliding gently along the back of his neck, trying to soothe the storm rumbling within him, to calm the black fire consuming him from within. The warmth of his skin beneath your palm, the slowness of his breath against yours, all of it formed a fragile bubble, suspended outside of time, far from the cries of the world and its storms. You felt beneath your hand that paradoxical mixture of tension and need, of restrained power and barely veiled vulnerability.

In this almost sacred silence, your heart beat to the rhythm of the caresses you offered it, in the hope of bringing back a semblance of peace to this chaos that it was.

But then, brutally, heartbreakingly, the silence was shattered.

The door exploded.

A wild crash echoed like thunder in the dark night. The wood splintered, sending splinters into the air, and an icy blast rushed in, carrying with it the warmth and tenderness you shared. The atmosphere froze, heavy with a dull, implacable threat. The next moment, you felt his body tense against yours, a bow ready to release its deadly arrow.

Sunghoon leaped upright, his muscles tense, his gaze turning cold, warlike, almost animal. The gentleness that enveloped you was fading beneath the icy bite of imminent danger. He was no longer the man who sought refuge in your arms, but the soldier, the sharp shadow that cut through the night.

Before you, a figure flickered, trembling, like a flame about to go out. Jang Wonyoung. The mortal. The woman for whom, once, his heart had burned with a tender and cruel fire, this flame that he had believed he could nourish, until fate came to crush his dreams under the weight of your shadow.

She lay there, collapsed, almost unreal, pale as death itself, panting, breathing with difficulty. Her once immaculate clothes were torn, soaked with a dark red that seemed to ooze from her invisible wounds. Her face bore the pallor of a ghost, her livid lips betraying an icy, unfathomable fear. She slowly opened her wild eyes, meeting Sunghoon's with a heartbreaking intensity: a storm of horror, relief, and a love shattered by time and silence.

Her body faltered, her legs gave way, and without strength, she collapsed, unconscious, on the cold floor.

Silence fell again, heavy, oppressive, like a sealed coffin. The air seemed saturated with pain, regret, unspoken words, and dead promises.

“Wonyoung…” Sunghoon breathed, his voice broken, trembling, a silent scream that tore through the icy night of his heart.

Without even meeting your gaze, without an ounce of hesitation, he abruptly pushed you away. You fell to your knees, breathless, your body bruised by the sudden rejection, abandoned like a broken toy, a shattered fragment tossed to the ground without remorse.

He rushed to her, lifted her up with a desperate, infinitely fragile, almost painful tenderness that you had never seen in him. His hands were trembling, betraying the depth of an emotion he always hid behind his impenetrable mask. Then, in a burst of cold, harsh light, they both disappeared, leaving you alone. Alone with the immense emptiness their absence had left in your chest.

The ink stick slowly slipped from your clenched fingers, shattering into hard, black shards that lacerated your palm without you feeling the slightest pain. Your skin felt numb, your mind filled with an icy cold. Your stomach tightened violently, as if an invisible force were strangling you from within. Your heart screamed silently, a dull, tortured cry that had no echo. No anger, no jealousy, none of it.

No.

You were beyond that.

You were the shadow, the curse incarnate. Cursed, condemned to bear the weight of an impossible love, sealed by a pact of shadows, blood, and suffering. You were a witch, a creature locked in an invisible cage, prisoner of a cruel destiny, of a dark and inescapable fate.

In this silence where the light was going out, where the world seemed to collapse around you, an icy certainty took hold: you would never be the one he saw. You would never be able to share a future. You would always be the open wound in his soul, the creeping shadow that gnawed at his light.

And maybe…

Not even in this life.

You stayed.

Even as every fiber of your being screamed to flee, to dissolve into darkness, to turn your back once and for all on this kingdom of ashes that your heart had become. To go far away, out of this night where your own silence echoed, to disappear into the folds of shadow where no one would call you, where the pain would perhaps dissipate into oblivion. As you had done so many times before, withdrawing from the battle of the world, fleeing the wounds that life kept planting in you. But this time, you had stayed. You had not shunned.

For what ?

Because love is an irremediable madness, a wound you carry like a brand, a poison from which you never truly heal. Because even when the fire consumed you to the bone, you still wanted to sink into its embers. Hoping, against all reason, that one day, perhaps, that very fire could be reborn, illuminate the ashes with a miracle. That something impossible would emerge from the nothingness to which it had relegated you.

You had chosen Sunghoon. Again and again. Despite the insurmountable distance that had grown between you, an icy, impenetrable wall, a chasm where your hands broke with every attempt. Despite the hard, cruel frost in his gaze, those steely eyes that had ceased to call to you except through the force of worn-out habit. Despite his silences, heavy with unsaid words sharper than a thousand blades, silences so deep they drowned every spark within you. Despite his absences, long, cold, deep, like so many chasms that swallowed every fragment of your life.

You had clung to what he had been. To the almost extinguished glow of an ancient tenderness, to the fragile silhouette of a past where Sunghoon had loved you. As if love could survive from these faded vestiges, these hollow echoes, these broken memories. As if that were enough to resurrect the light.

You had reached out. You had held out your heart, fragile, beating, offering, hoping for an answer—even if it was just a whisper, a breath, a flutter of an eyelid that would tell you there was still something left. But each time, your voice broke, shattered against the stone wall he had erected around himself. You had tried to pierce that fortress of ice, to touch the man beneath the cold shell, to brush against his frozen soul. But Sunghoon wouldn't give in. He wouldn't.

"I have more serious concerns." Those words struck your heart like a saber blow. Sharp, sharp, final. Sunghoon hadn't even looked at you. He had turned his face away from your despair. Those words were a sentence. A condemnation sealed with an iron seal, the final tombstone placed on your bond. A grave where you had thought hope would still blossom.

You had smiled. A broken, torn, desperate smile. You had believed those words because you wanted to believe. Because you clung, like a drowning woman to a piece of wood, to the idea that there remained a crack, a flaw through which the light could return. That he could remember you. That he could come back.

So you waited.

You had waited for him to come back, to look at you, to care, to love you. You had waited, mercilessly, in the invisible cage of your patience, that trap of suffering and mad hope, day after day, minute after minute, in the slow agony of an all-consuming wait.

Hands clasped, lips closed, heart offered like a sacrifice, beating dully, a funeral drum in your chest. You waited like a damned woman, condemned never to see salvation, prisoner of a love that would never be returned. Every day, you felt your life crumble, unravel into a thousand threads of pain woven into your bones, in the hollow of your chest. A dull, insidious agony, all-consuming, silently gnawing at the soul, invisible to those who don't know how to look.

But nothing came. Sunghoon did not return. Sunghoon wasn't looking at you anymore.

You were nothing more than a ghost in his world, a shadow he could barely bear. A wound he carried, but one he longed to see disappear, like a weight too heavy. Your love, that burning blaze, was no longer enough. You were no longer the light that lit his days, but the fleeting shadow his eyes avoided. And you could no longer deny that.

So your steps had led you, on that starless night, to the Hanging Garden of Perfumes. Xuánxiāng Yuán. A place of cruel beauty, a beauty so pure it tore at the heart. A forest of silence suspended in the shadows of sky lanterns.

Bleached wooden walkways, like ancestral bones, stretched over the deep, black waters, shimmering like open wounds to infinity. Serpentine bridges connected the jade-roofed pavilions, all enveloped in a silver mist that stretched like a breath of death. Everywhere, dormant lotuses, frozen in icy stillness, shone with a spectral light beneath the pale halo of hanging lanterns.

The wind itself seemed to have frozen. Time suspended. Absolute stillness. Not a breath, not a sigh, nothing but that oppressive, perfect silence, which held you in its icy embrace. And the only sound that broke that silence was the dull, heavy beating of your own heart—a drum of pain, a condemned man's hammer.

You had moved forward, each step echoing like a death knell on the cold flagstones, each echo reverberating like a dire omen. You were alone. But the weight of your grief made you a thousand times heavier. A thousand pains, a thousand regrets, a thousand disappointments crushed your fragile body.

At the edge of a black pool, water as still as the starless night, you leaned over. You wanted to see something other than your reflection—a fragment of light, a forgotten smile, a sliver of hope to be gathered from the night. But the mirror returned only your pale face. A bent silhouette, eyes hollowed by sleepless nights, dark circles hollowed like ravines of shadow, lips cracked by the overflow of silences and unspoken words.

You were kneeling.

And the weight of grief had broken you.

A heart-rending sob erupted from your chest, an invisible blade piercing you without warning. You collapsed, your body trembling on the icy stones, your arms wrapped around your own being, as if to keep your heart from falling apart, as if to hold back the tide of pain that threatened to engulf you, to swallow up what little light you had left.

You had cried.

But not the kind of furtive, almost timid tears that slide silently over the edge of your eyelids in the secrecy of a fading night. No. What you were shedding wasn't just clear water. It was a raging torrent, a furious river of pain, bitter and burning, that dug into your skin, cutting into your flesh and soul deeper than the sharpest blade.

Each tear, heavy and inflamed, was an invisible dagger planted in the hollow of your being, a corrosive venom insinuating itself into the smallest folds of your pain, tearing away what remained of your strength, tearing at the fragile bonds that bound you to life. Your whole body was shaking, vibrating with that dull, wild pain—as ferocious as a hunted, wounded tiger, ready to bite the earth with its bloody claws.

Muffled sobs, hoarse and primitive, escaped your tight throat, death rattles of agony and despair that seemed to come from a time before time, from the forgotten echo of a broken melody. They were the lamentations of your martyred heart, woven from buried regrets, silent humiliations, from all those hours stolen from hope, spent staring at a silent, impassive sky, as cruel as a merciless judge.

"Why... Why am I always the one who loves the most?" Your voice, a broken breath, a whisper broken by pain, faded into the icy air.

You were teetering on the edge of the abyss, fragile and trembling, a child broken under the weight of a world too hard, too cold. Around you, Xuánxiāng Yuán stretched, silent and motionless, a golden prison within an empty white palace. Its pale wooden galleries reflected the spectral glow of the suspended sky lanterns, frozen in a still, icy light, as if petrified in a frozen dream. The lotuses, heavy and motionless, drifted on black, lifeless water, prisoners of an eternal, merciless sleep. Like you. Frozen in a painful beauty. Captive of a winter that would never end.

You had no more strength. More willpower. So, with desperate rage, you hit the ground with all your might. Again. Again. Again. Your fists crashed against the icy stone, tearing your fragile skin, letting blood flow, hot and raw, splashing the immaculate whiteness of the cobblestones, a macabre painting, a silent cry of your suffering that no one would come to wipe away.

You wanted your pain to become visible, palpable, undeniable. You wanted to scream your misery to the whole world, to him, to this ghost who had left you wandering in the shadows.

But Sunghoon wasn't there. And he wouldn't come.

First, you whispered his name, a cursed breath thrown into the eternal night. "Park Sunghoon..."

Then, pain consumed you. And you screamed. Wildly. Desperately. A heart-rending, primal scream, shattering the frozen silence of the garden, a scream that carried the anger of a thousand shattered heavens.

“You destroyed me! You took me, consumed me, then abandoned me!” Your voice trembled, choked with rage and pain, a howl of agony that tore through the starless night. “You made me a ruin… An abandoned carcass! And you don’t even realize it!”

But the deepest, most intolerable wound was the one that burned silently, invisible.

You couldn't even hate him.

“But the worst part… I can’t even hate you…” Those words, whispered with the desperate weariness of a broken soul, were sharper than all the swords in the world.

They betrayed the cruellest truth: you were captive to an impossible love, chained by invisible bonds, torn promises, by the same pain you were trying to escape.

You let yourself fall onto your back, exposed and vulnerable on the cold stone. Your body trembled, naked, abandoned under the merciless light of the hanging lanterns, their soft, cruel glow illuminating your pale face, helpless before the abyss that was devouring you from within. Every breath was torture, a cruel reminder of his absence. Every beat of your bruised heart sounded the cadence of an abysmal emptiness, deeper than the darkest abyss.

You were nothing more than a living wound, a witch with a shattered heart, marked not by runes or pacts, but by a love torn from the flesh. A dull poison. A gaping wound that bled endlessly.

In that night of silver and ashes, you finally understood the bitter truth of the sorrow of loving a celestial. Of loving a divine being, too high, too distant, too perfect for this imperfect world. Of loving an inaccessible star. Of loving an elusive wind. An icy breath that eats away at you to the bone.

You loved the impossible.

And the stars, they never go down.

So you closed your eyes, engulfed in a sea of shadows and regrets, praying that the pain would consume you entirely, that the night would devour your last ember, that silence would swallow your sobs. Because anything was better than this half-dead survival, this slow sinking in an ocean of endless agony.

You were a faded flower in a hanging garden. A shadow without light. A broken soul, lost between two worlds. And no one, ever, would come to save you.

Night was not falling : it was descending.

Like a funeral cloak, like a living shroud spread across the rooftops of the celestial palace, it bore neither star, nor moon, nor respite. The sky seemed to ooze a black, almost liquid substance, as if darkness itself were bleeding from the firmament. Even the sacred lanterns arranged around the medical pavilion had gone out one by one, in an almost religious silence. The air was heavy, laden with a strange, metallic scent, which had nothing to do with the medicinal roots hanging from the ceiling. It was the smell of a world turning upside down.

And at the heart of this chaos, Sunghoon. Frozen. On his knees. Mute.

Her fingers, once so sure, trembled above Wonyoung's inanimate body. The light that bathed them, usually a pure and restorative white, had taken on a sickly hue. Filaments of ink snaked beneath the celestial brightness, like veins of shadow infecting divine magic itself. Healing became contamination. The sacred, a curse.

And yet, Sunghoon didn't stop. Because if he stopped, he knew what he'd see. The mark. And it was just waiting to wake up. A pulse. Slow. Dull. Then another, stronger one. It struck his flesh like an ominous bell, like a call to pain etched into his bones. And finally the third—an invisible hammer blow, driven into his nerves.

The mark opened. Literally. Like a mouth. Like a scream. It cracked, expanded, stretched until his skin gave way. Blood flowed, thick, black, incandescent. It gushed from his wrist as if from a foreign heart, from another living being grafted onto his soul.

Sunghoon stifled a groan. His knees hit the floor. A spasm ran through him.

« No… »

But it was already too late. Pain seeped into his body like acid. It rose through his veins, burned his lungs, and tightened his throat until it choked him. His breathing became erratic, ragged, as if he were drowning in an invisible liquid.

And in the depths of this torture, a name. Your name.

Y/n.

His jaw tightened. Sunghoon bit his own tongue, hard, very hard, until the bite made blood run down his throat.

Why? Why was it your name that kept coming back? Why your face? Why this silhouette—yours—cloaked in the mist of his memory, both desired and cursed?

Sunghoon wanted to forget you. He was supposed to forget you. But he felt you. There. Somewhere. Far away, yet so close. And you were crying. You were in pain. He didn't have proof, but he knew it the way we know the rain is coming from the trembling of the leaves.

The pain you felt screamed through the mark like a sob from the depths of time. Like an unholy prayer. A plea addressed to no one. To him. His magic became unstable, his celestial energy decaying, tearing apart under the force of this cursed resonance. Sunghoon was going to get up. Join you. Cross the mountains, the forbidden places, the celestial chains. Even if it meant losing everything.

But then... A voice. A barely audible breath. Like an echo from the other side of life.

« Sunghoon… Is that you? »

He froze. His heart skipped a beat. His hands fell dead to his sides. His gaze, devoid of light, slowly rose to the source of the voice.

Wonyoung.

She was awake. Her lips were trembling. Her eyes were red and swollen. Her body, so frail, seemed carried by a silk thread, ready to break at the slightest movement. But she was breathing. She was alive.

And suddenly, everything inside Sunghoon flickered.

The bond. The mark. Your name. Your suffering.

Everything was thrown into a sea of confusion. Everything that had been tearing him apart a few seconds earlier was pushed into the background, because she was alive, and he had thought her lost.

Sunghoon approached her slowly, like a man crossing a field of ruins. He took her in his arms. She was already sobbing against his chest, her breath ragged, her body burning. He wanted to speak, but the words caught in his throat.

“Wonyoung… What happened?”

She coughed, spitting up a little blood. He handed her a bowl of water, which she frantically drained. Then she looked up, and he read something in her eyes he'd never seen before. An ancient fear.

“The village… Nothing remains of it.” His voice was hoarse, raw. “A mist. Black. Dense. Living. It arrived without warning. It covered everything. Then… there was fire. The smell of blood. Screams. Howls…”

She collapsed against him. Tears were streaming from her wide-open eyes, as if she didn't dare close them anymore, afraid of seeing what she had experienced again.

“They're all dead, Sunghoon… All of them. Even the children. Even the old people. It was just me.” She screamed silently, her fists clenching on her tunic. Her whole body was shaking.

And Sunghoon… He felt anger rising. It rose. Dully. First like a burning in his stomach. Then it unfolded, vast, violent, unbearable. He closed his eyes. The mark pulsed again. And he knew. He knew what his heart refused to admit.

It was you. Y/n. It was your magic. This mist. This darkness. This chaos. This blood.

Maybe you did it unintentionally. Maybe you were just an unwitting weapon. But that didn't change the outcome. You had killed. Again. And Sunghoon… He loved you. Sunghoon had opened his home to you. Sunghoon had kissed you. Sunghoon had seen you cry in the shadows and believed that his love would be enough to heal your wounds.

What a fool. What a blind man. He saw your face, the one from a few nights ago. Your fingers on his skin. That whisper against his mouth. Your ragged breath, that shiver he thought he shared. Sunghoon had seen you as fragile. He had thought you were human. But you were a curse. And he was only a man, too weak to stop.

He gritted his teeth until he heard the bone crack in his jaw. His magic bucked, out of control. He pushed Wonyoung away with fierce tenderness and laid her back down, gently. She was already asleep, exhausted from the confession.

Sunghoon stood up. And his gaze was no longer the same. Something inside him had died. A fire. A faith. A light.

The next time he laid eyes on you… It wouldn't be to love you anymore. It would be to judge you. And this time, he wouldn't tremble.

Hēi Lián Gé (黑莲阁) — Black Lotus Pavilion

You've been back at the Black Lotus Pavilion for five whole days, but that return has only added shadows to the chasm gnawing at your soul. Every step on this familiar ground is a slap to your will to breathe, a bite of icy steel to your already bruised chest. Here, you thought you'd find refuge—a secret enclave outside of time, far from the poisonous venom of the White Wheel Palace. But peace would not rest its wings on your heart.

This place, this dark wooden dwelling with walls tattooed with dancing shadows, exudes a scent of memory and regret. The walls, imbued with the whispers of those who have gone before you, seem to weigh on your shoulders like an invisible weight. You have banished the name of the celestial—Park Sunghoon—from your mind, but it returns with every beat of your heart, like a blade too deeply planted to be extracted without pain.

You lay down on the old, varnished wooden deckchair, the one that creaks under the slightest movement, as if even the material refuses to accept your weight. Your bare skin, sunburned and drenched in cold sweat, clashes with the roughness of the wood, each roughness reminding you of your own vulnerability—a fragile balance between bruised flesh and bleeding soul. Your breath hitches and freezes, both heavy and shaky, on the verge of a muffled scream you barely hold back.

The wind, that traitor, plays with your untidy hair, its strands falling across your face like invisible chains. It caresses your skin like an icy hand, carrying the memories of sleepless nights, of lightless days. Its breath is a deadly cold that snakes through your bones, as if it wanted to finish you off or freeze you alive, imprisoned in this infinite silence.

Before you, the forest stretches out, a sea of darkness where ancient trees, standing as silent sentinels, observe and judge. They are the motionless witnesses of a pain no one dares to name. Each dead leaf that flutters, fragile and uncertain, dances like a soul condemned to wander endlessly, prisoner of a past it cannot escape. The sky above this black sea is an ocean of lead, heavy, suffocating, like an open coffin ready to swallow you up.

You feel the bite of the moment—the wood beneath your body, the bland, acrid taste of chrysanthemum tea slowly fading on your tongue, the icy bite of the wind on the back of your neck, the sly caress that lights a black flame in your gut. Your fan, once a symbol of your mastery and grace, trembles in your hand, victim of an uncontrollable nervous tic, an absurd, chaotic dance without rhythm or end.

Your eyelids close with infinite heaviness, you seek refuge in oblivion, in the fragile illusion that is silence. But you know, deep down, that this calm is a lie. A cruel and fatal trap. This lie has a name, a face, a breath that resonates in your blood: Park Sunghoon.

You don't move as he approaches. You don't need to open your eyes to feel his presence freezing the air around you, tightening it into a steel cage. He's there, his rigid, cutting aura falling on you like a silent condemnation. He is that icicle of the heavens, motionless, perfect, uncompromising. The very breath of divine justice, a crystal sword suspended above your head.

And yet... You know. You've glimpsed the other side of the mask, the crack no one else sees. A secret, ancient pain, a deep wound that tears him apart from within, though he refuses to show it. Sunghoon carries his grief like a weapon, cold and sharp, hidden behind his stony gaze. He doesn't cry. He doesn't speak. But he bleeds. You never forget those who bleed.

The wind suddenly stops, as if terrified, and the world becomes heavier, more stifling.

You slowly open your eyes. Your eyelids flutter open to reveal this motionless figure. Your gaze meets his, hard, clear, burning with a cold flame. He stands there, erect, dignified, a living statue carved from crystal. His white hanfu with gold trim seems to float around him, but even perfection has its flaws—his sleeves are wrinkled, his forehead is beaded with sweat that the wind struggles to dry, his strands of black hair escape and caress his face like rebellious snakes.

“The icicle of heaven deigns to honor me with its presence…” you breathe, sarcasm dripping from each syllable. “What a beautiful day to die.”

Your smile is a cold blade, a sharp irony, a veil of pain and resentment. You slowly place your fan on the wooden table, the dull sound like a death knell, and raise your cup of tea to your lips. You drink slowly, silently, as if this moment weren't his, as if you were standing somewhere else, far from him, far from his coldness.

But you should have known. Sunghoon won't stop there. His voice falls, heavy and sharp, an implacable axe:

“Unclean woman… What have you done to the village of Qinglin?”

There is no nuance, no gentleness, only the dry and final condemnation.

Sunghoon's hand hits the table with a sharp thud. Your cup flies, topples, spilling its hot liquid like blood onto the dusty floor, the red pool spreading, sinister and silent, a macabre reflection of the unspoken truth. You stare at him, and in that gaze, a shard of you cracks and shatters. A dull ache crushes your insides, invisible, unbearable, a dead weight that makes you stagger.

"You're tiring me out, ice block," you whisper through gritted teeth, your voice trembling with an icy anger that refuses to die down. "Why is any of this any of your business?"

A sob twists your throat, but you swallow the weakness. Not in front of him. He dared to cross the line of silence, to violate your fragile peace, to judge you as always, to accuse you as always, to crush you as always. This injustice is a blade that slashes at your heart, even if it beats only weakly beneath the black ashes of your despair.

You raise your head, your burning gaze piercing his steel eyes, and launch a poisoned arrow:

“Don't tell me you're worried about your lovely girlfriend… Or should I say, your ex-girlfriend?” A broken, raspy laugh, laden with pain and disdain, escapes your throat. The laugh is a silent scream, a breath of fire amidst the ice. You see it flicker, if only for a moment.

Sunghoon doesn't respond. His jaw tightens, his hand trembles imperceptibly.

And you, deep in your chest, a pain you refuse to name spreads. Jealousy? Sadness? Despair? You refuse to give it that power. You're not jealous. You're the one he betrayed before he even knew he loved you. You are the one he wanted to save, but chose to condemn.

The wind rushes in again, violent, laden with dust and ash. Beneath this dying sky, the air seems to tear itself apart. The pain within you ignites into a black blaze, a fire that threatens to consume everything.

Your fingers dig into the lacquered wood of your fan, tense, white with tension. Your deep black hanfu floats around you like a veil of mourning.

Park Sunghoon stands there, majestic and terrifying, an ivory statue frozen in the storm. His eyes reflect a silent war: a dull anger, a deep melancholy, a fierce struggle between duty and desire, order and passion.

Without a word, he summons his sword, a blade of cold, sharp light. It is an extension of his unyielding will, a divine judgment hanging over you. With a quick movement, he brings the sharp point to your throat. The pressure is light, almost a caress of icy metal, but suffocating. An icy shudder runs through your skin, a slight burn. A trickle of bright red blood escapes, slowly, drop by drop, a scarlet trail in the gloom.

"I will not let a sinner like you bring calamity to this world," he snarls, his voice thick with suppressed anger, a silent threat of storm.

You stand still, silent defiance burning in your eyes, ablaze with icy hatred. With a firm hand, you grasp the blade, ignoring the burn in your palm. Blood flows, hot drops on the cold metal, falling as an offering to this grim silence.

“You claim to want to save this world,” you whisper, your voice low, vibrating with pain and bitterness, “but you are unable to reach out to the one bleeding before you.” Each word is a blade, a blow against the wall of ice around his heart.

“Hypocrite. Coward. You hide behind these celestial laws, this justice you brandish like a mask, but what you're running from is yourself. You're running from this marriage, from what you could have been, from this love that silently consumes you.” A harsh, bitter laugh escapes you, the pain in your chest burning like a black fire, but you refuse to bend, to cry. Not in front of him.

“Then do it. Kill me. If it will assuage your shame, your fear, your hatred. Kill me, and be free.”

Your fingers, frozen by visceral fear and abysmal exhaustion, finally release the blade of the sword that Sunghoon holds with terrible rigor, its cold steel resting on the delicate skin of your neck. This contact is a blast of icy wind that freezes your entire being, your spine stiffens as if it were trying to break, while a shudder of agony electrifies you from head to toe.

Your muscles contract in a painful dance, but it is your mind, that fragile, cracked temple, that reels most violently, buffeted by the inner storm that rumbles dully.

Your short, uneven breaths beat against your ribs like hungry claws. The silence that envelops you, heavy and suffocating, is broken only by the high-pitched murmur of your sobs. They have not yet flowed, but burn beneath your skin like an invisible poison, torrents of liquid pain, secret, forcing their way into the shadows of your flesh.

Then, in that abyss of darkness and silent screams, you see—just for a moment, but that brief flash pierces you—a crack in the impassive mask he wears. The cold mask of the man you loved, or at least thought you loved. This crack is tiny, fragile, but it reveals all his pain: the dull regret that grips him deep inside, the invisible, incessant struggle against his own demons, a pain so ancient that it seems to have dug into his soul like a sharpened blade.

Sunghoon looks up at you. His pupils are black wells drowning in pent-up anger, resentment, and a silent pain that crushes you as much as it tears him apart. His fists clench, white with extreme tension, as if every nerve in his body is straining toward an explosion he's barely holding back. He's chained to this inner war, this fight he refuses to wage out loud, a prisoner of his own shadows and his heartbreaking pride.

Then, suddenly, the sword disappears, swallowed by a burst of cold light, as fleeting as life itself. A breath escapes your tight throat—a broken, trembling sob—as you collapse, broken, to the cold ground. And it's there, in the depths of this silent chaos, that your gaze falls on the burning mark on his arm. It pulses with the force of a burning heart, burning flesh and blood. The black fire emanating from it slowly eats away at his skin, a living wound that bleeds in dark streaks onto the cold ground.

A moan, low and plaintive, almost human, escapes his throat. A strangled wail, barely a breath, that tears your heart into a thousand pieces. You wanted him broken. You wanted him to know what suffering was, to know the icy bite of despair, the bitter taste of the pain that has always eaten away at you. You wanted to see his ashes. But deep down, hidden beneath thick layers of anger and hatred, you know you love him. Too much. Too much to let him sink without reaching out to him. Too much not to buckle under the cruel weight of this poisonous bond.

You stand up, a frail figure caught in a freezing wind, trembling but determined. Your fan falls to the ground with a sharp clap that tears through the silence like a clap of thunder on a stormy night. Your hands seek his; this contact is your anchor in the storm. You grasp his hand, cold and weak, and with a clumsy gesture but filled with all the desperate tenderness you can muster, you roll up the sleeve of his hanfu.

The mark is there, black and split, bleeding, like a cruel mirror of your own silently bleeding heart. The metallic smell of blood, the burn of burning flesh, the palpable pain that unites you in a single invisible torture.

Sunghoon instinctively recoils, trying to flee this presence that tears him apart, to escape from your gaze that sees him, that illuminates him, that makes him vulnerable. He is a coward, yes. It is in this cowardice that he finds refuge, a fragile shelter where he cannot face the truth. He doesn't want you to see his face broken by the tears he refuses to shed, nor the anger that boils quietly, ready to consume everything.

But he can't run away. Not this time. He stands there, motionless, his eyes fixed on yours. Your pupils, clouded with tears this time, no longer carry the anger of before but an infinite sadness, heavy as the starless night, a sadness that only love can inflict, that bittersweet pain that tears without healing.

His heart stops, suspended in this eternal silence.

"Is it... Is it my fault?" Your voice breaks, cracking, fragile like a branch under the snow. You stare at his bleeding arm, then at his drawn features, trapped in an invisible struggle between the man he is and the man he wants to be.

Sunghoon wants to reassure you, protect you, tell you that you're not responsible, that you're innocent. But no words leave his lips; his silence is a chasm more terrible than any accusation. In this void, you understand everything.

“I’m sorry…” you whisper, your throat tight with old, genuine grief.

Sunghoon doesn't know why you're apologizing. Yet when you pull him close, when you embrace him with the fragile strength of your broken love, a spark flickers in his eyes. A faint, wild glimmer of hope that whispers that one day, perhaps, you could be happy. That you could grow old together, silent, united, like those simple, mortal couples.

But Sunghoon knows it's just wishful thinking, a fragile illusion.

“Y/n…” His voice becomes hoarse, torn.

“If you must condemn me… Do it. But listen to me.” Your voice is a trembling breath as you release your grip, but don't step back, staying within reach of his hesitations. Your gazes lock, heavy with pain and unspoken words.

“I'm innocent. I know you don't believe me, that you don't trust me. But I, too, have the right to the presumption of innocence.” Your voice wavers. You look down, nervously biting your lip. Then, slowly, you raise your head, ready to reveal the truth you've hidden for so long. “I've done my research. You won't like what I'm about to tell you. But Wonyoung… She's not a mere mortal. She's chaos incarnate.”

And then, you reach out your hand. But it's not a gesture. It's a farewell. A summons. A pact with darkness. Your lips move, slowly, and what you speak is no longer a human language. It's a forgotten breath from ancient kingdoms. A song that shouldn't exist. Grave. Fractured. Flayed. As if the world itself were choking under the weight of your truth.

The magic obeys. First, it's a wind. Slow. Frozen. Sharp like a blade of black jade. Then comes the mist. It creeps along the ground like a wounded beast. Thick. Heavy. Oozing. It rises, it surrounds your bodies, it erases the trees, the ground, the skies. You no longer breathe the air of the world. You breathe oblivion. And then, the mirror rises. Not a mirror. But a wound. A nightmare eye. A gaping rift between dimensions, between reality and what we would have preferred never to see again. It throbs. It pulses. It bleeds a dark, almost carnal light. And then it opens—not like a door, but like a deep wound in the flesh of time.

And the memories come flooding back. Not like a story. But like a scream. Qinglin. The village. Or what's left of it. Impure red flames lick the collapsed roofs. The sky is inky, split by purple lightning. The ground is blackened by blood. Not red. Not scarlet. Black. Burnt. Stained by magic. It runs underground like a rabid beast. It oozes between the paving stones. It makes the walls tremble.

And in this nightmare theater—the bodies. Small. Frail. Children. Eyes open. Frozen in terror. Their hands outstretched. Their charred limbs. Women clinging to their corpses. Men crucified in the air, suspended by chains of screaming spells.

And in the center—Wonyoung. Or rather… What's left of her. A being consumed by shadow. Disfigured by dark magic. Her eyes are empty, hollowed out like two graves. Her smile is cracked to the temples. She laughs. A hollow, mechanical, morbid sound. And suddenly—she opens her stomach. Slowly. Deliberately. She traces symbols into her flesh. She mutilates herself before your eyes.

And in the mirror—in this perverse illusion—it's you holding the dagger. It's you she's imitating. You she's accusing. You she's sullying. And all of this… To keep Sunghoon away from you. To steal his gaze. His love. His soul.

The mirror closes. With a rattle. As if reality itself had just died. And silence, then, is no longer silence. It is drowning. It is the exact moment when the heart stops beating before it starts again—or never starts again. It is nothingness breathing.

Sunghoon doesn't speak. Doesn't back away. Doesn't moan. But his body betrays him. His shoulders slump. His breath becomes short. Ragged. As if he's suddenly carrying the weight of a thousand deaths. His fists clench. His chin trembles. And his eyes—my god, his eyes—slowly close, with that desperate slowness warriors have when they finally accept their fate.

You want to say something. You want to catch up with him. Touch him. But he beats you to it. His voice, when it falls, is not a word. It's dizzying. A bottomless pit where one falls endlessly. It's a strangled wail, woven of blood and dust, slicing through the air like a black thread suspended between the jaws of a collapsing world. It doesn't strike your eardrums. It wraps around your heart and squeezes. Again. Again. Until you stop breathing.

And you understand. Because deep down... you were waiting for this question. Or rather: you were afraid it would come too late.

“Why… did you run away?”

But that's not a question. Not really. It's an echo. A barely articulated plea. A fracture that speaks through the voice of a broken man, too proud to implore, too empty to pretend. It's not a blade. It's what remains after the blade. That silence that still bleeds, even when the wound seems closed.

And before you, it is not the Heavenly Judge. Not the sword of Heaven. Not the son of the Law, nor the living weapon of a world devoured by order. It’s Sunghoon. Just Sunghoon. The man. The one you loved until you lost sleep, speech, and even your name. The one you could have hated if only you had loved him a little less. The one you fled not out of weakness... But because staying was slowly killing you.

And in his eyes—there is no rage, no pride, no justice. There is only fear. Raw. Unhealthy. Twisted. The fear of never having been enough. The fear that your love was a dream stolen from a life that didn't belong to him. The fear that if he lost you, it was because he unwittingly killed you. And worse… the fear that you never really loved him. Or that you stopped loving him when he became who he is.

But you know. You've always known. And now that the blood is pounding in your temples like a war drum, you can no longer remain silent. Even if your throat is tight. Even if your soul is crumbling.

You breathe in.

You're bleeding inside.

And you speak.

“I didn’t run away…” Your voice isn’t a voice. It’s a rattle. A rattle of agony. Your knees are shaking. Your mouth is dry. Your hands are cold as death. “I left.”

And you see him collapse. Not physically. Not yet. But his gaze. His gaze becomes empty. Like a fortress crumbling in the rain. A thousand-year-old stone wall eaten away by salt and shame. He doesn't even blink. He takes it in. He absorbs it. And you feel each word sink into Sunghoon like an arrow.

You should keep quiet. But if there's one thing you've learned from loving him... It's that silence kills.

"I didn't leave because I didn't love you." Sunghoon flexes. Barely. But you see it. His shoulders, usually so straight, tilt a millimeter. And then you tell the truth. Whole. Dirty. Heartbreaking. “I left… because I loved you too much.” You don't have time to breathe in. You're not allowed to cry. Because you have to keep going. “You weren't looking at me anymore. You were sleeping by my side, but your mind… It was elsewhere. With her. With Wonyoung. Even your silences, they no longer belonged to me.”

You're shaking.

“And I… I was there. Motionless. On my knees before your absence. Screaming silently. Consuming myself in anticipation.” Your voice breaks. “I was jealous. Jealous of what I couldn’t be. Of what she represented. And I was ashamed. Ashamed of being human. Ashamed of needing you more than you needed me. Ashamed of loving a man who no longer had room for me.”

And there you see it. That quiver in his lower lip. That dark glow growing in his pupils. You take a step back.

“You no longer made room for me in your life, Sunghoon. And I understood… That I was becoming a burden. A speck of dust. A weakness. And I loved you too much to become a weakness for you.”

The silence that falls after your words is so thick it could kill.

But it's not Sunghoon who moves first. It's you who staggers when he falls to his knees. His knees hit the ground. Brutally. Like a verdict. Sunghoon. The man with hands covered in sentence. The chosen one of heaven. The weapon of the world. On his knees before you. Not to beg. Not to be forgiven. But because his legs no longer carry him. Because your absence has cut him down more violently than a thousand wars.

His hands cling to your dress like a prayer. His forehead rests against your stomach. And then, in a whisper that comes from the abyss:

“You don’t need to be jealous, my little judge…” Her voice clears her throat. It’s hoarse, destroyed, drenched in ash and pain. “You are my universe. My chaos. My breath. Even when I lost myself, it was you I was looking for.” Sunghoon finally looks up at you. And in his gaze—those aren't tears. They're storms. Years of unspoken words. Sustained torments. And that tenderness. Immense. All-consuming. “During those five days, I died. Not once. Hundreds of times. Every time I woke up. Because in my dreams… I saw you. You laughed. You were there. But when I woke up… All that remained was the smell of your absence. The emptiness of your warmth. And I thought… That I wouldn't survive.”

You hiccup.

Sunghoon continues, his voice breaking:

“I dreamed of you. Pregnant with my children. In a place without war, without oaths. I dreamed of a world where I could touch you without having to punish myself. Where I could love you without having to judge you.” And then—her voice falters. Her eyes moisten again. “I love you, Y/n. I love you like a curse. I love you enough to tear my heart open to the bone. I love you enough to extinguish me so that you can shine. And I beg you… Don’t leave me in this shadow. I can change. I want to change. For you.”

He's there, prostrate. Offered. Sacrificed. Then you fall in turn. Your body no longer belongs to you. You kneel. Your hands frame his face. And there, you force him to look at you.

"I don't want you to change." Sunghoon blinks, lost. You breathe, "I want you. Not a perfect husband. Not a repentant god. You, with your silences. You, with your darkness. You, with your pride, your violence, your sick love. You... With your heart that still beats for me."

And then you kiss him. But it's not a kiss. It's a rush. An affront. A scream. A shipwreck. Your mouth collides with his like blades meet blades atop a battlefield—not to seduce, but to survive. You don't kiss him like you'd find a lover. You kiss him like you'd catch a condemned man you love too much to let die.

Your teeth catch his lip. Your tongue invades him. You bite him. You drink him. You tear him apart. And Sunghoon answers.

Gods… He answers.

His hands, initially frozen by shock, roughly grab you by the waist. Not gently. With the urgency of a man who has lost too much, waited too long, dreamed too much. He presses you against him, so hard your ribs protest, your breath hitches, your body struggles to keep pace with a heart beating on the verge of bursting.

It's not a kiss of love. It's a kiss of instinct. Of agony. Of obsession.

Your fingers dig into the nape of his neck, into his black hair soaked with sweat, fever, and nightmares. And you pull him closer. As if you wanted to drown him inside you. As if his salvation could only come in your mouth, in your blood, in your ravaged devotion.

Sunghoon moaned—A hoarse, almost painful sound. Not of pleasure. But of need. The raw, brutal need to never be alone again. To have you, here, all of you. Flesh, soul, abyss included. His mouth opens beneath yours, but Sunghoon doesn't lead. You're the one who dominates. You're the one who ravages. You're the one who demands accountability from the hollow of his tongue. You kiss him like someone screams. Like someone hits. Like someone cries.

And Sunghoon offers himself. His back arches. His knees tighten beneath you, pressed into the damp earth. His hands, large and trembling, slide down your back, as if he wanted to carve his nails, his imprint, his last prayer. It's not erotic. It's animal. It's spiritual. It's too much. Far too much. And yet, not enough. Sunghoon wants more. He wants your throat. Your breath. Your sighs. Your pain. He wants the child you never carried. The future he ruined. The forgiveness he doesn't deserve.

Sunghoon wants everything you deny this world—and he wants you to give it to him, right here, right now, in the hollow of your mouth, in the blaze of your rage. And you give it to him. You give him your anger. You give him your abandonment. You give him your grief, your love, your broken silence. You don't need words. You don't want them.

This kiss is a testament. An oath without promise. A hand-to-hand combat between two ruined souls.

And Sunghoon… He capsizes. He falls into you, against you, for you. His arms embrace you like a last refuge, as if he wanted to lock you away against his skin, in his breath, beneath his bones. And his lips—those lips that have judged you so much, ignored you so much, burned you so much—finally become yours again. Supple. Fierce. Painful.

You feel his hand slide down the back of your neck, trembling, almost feverish. He's not guiding you. Sunghoon isn't imposing anything on you. He's begging you. And you understand. That it's not your kiss he's receiving. It's your newfound faith. It's your flame. It's your choice. So Sunghoon cries into your mouth. Not visible tears. But by the tension of his jaw. By the heaves of his stomach. By the way he presses his forehead against yours between gasps, like a man out of breath, out of life, out of love.

“Y/n…” Sunghoon moans your name between kisses, like a prayer. Like a condemnation. Like a sacred fire. And you fold your legs around his waist, both kneeling in this black earth, this field of ruins turned altar. You cling to Sunghoon like a ship in a storm. And you continue to kiss him. For a long time. Fiercely. Tirelessly. Until the night itself seems to close in around you.

Until all you hear is his breath, hoarse and broken, mingling with yours. Until his fingers slip under the fabric of your neck, searching for warmth, for life, for reality—You.

And in that kiss, you finally feel it. The silent cry he never dared to utter. The pain he kept silent for too long. The love he locked away in the folds of a heart too proud. And you know. That Sunghoon never forgot you. Not for a second. Not for a breath. Not for a night. That he punished himself for your absence. That he hated himself for having been loved by you. That he dreamed of dying… But only after seeing you one last time.

So you open your eyes. And you look at him, there, a few inches away. His face flushed, his lips swollen, his pupils dilated by withdrawal, by ecstasy, by fear. And you whisper, your mouth still glued to his, your tears mingled with his:

“If you lose me again… I won’t come back.”

Sunghoon grabs you. His breath catches. And with one last kiss, almost gentle this time—a touch, a whisper of lips—he answers:

"Then I won't let you go. Even if heaven punishes me. Even if I have to sell my soul."

And in this silent oath, your united brows, your bruised lips, your hearts finally freed from silence - the world, at last, falls silent. There's no more pact. No more war. No more Wonyoung. No more blood. No more revenge. Only you. Two souls in tatters. Two hearts on fire. Two lost beings, who have stopped running.

And in the night, in this ravaged embrace, a love is born stronger than the gods themselves.

Juébié Tái (诀别台) — The Terrace of the Final Separation

The horizon, once a clear line between heaven and earth, was now nothing but a deep quagmire, an ocean of blood mixed with ash. A red, visceral, almost living abyss—as if the earth itself were bleeding, sliced by a wound no hand could close. This was no simple sunset, nor a natural end, but the last gasp of a torn world, a burning farewell hurled in the face of deaf gods. The sky seemed to vomit up its own heart, saturated with a dull anger, an ancient despair, a visceral resentment that only war can breed.

The heavy, low clouds, black as the entrails of a dead dragon, poured their acrid smoke over the landscape, weaving a web of doom. Each ray of light tore the scarlet horizon into bursts of fire and soot, like glaring scars on the skin of a dying giant. That deep, thick red pulsed in the air—a hue of farewell, of broken promises, of consumed souls.

A gloomy wind blew through the ruins of the Juébié Tái temple, once a sanctuary of peace and light, now a silent tomb of dead illusions. The wind carried with it the stifled sighs of the dead—invisible ghosts slipping between the cracked stones, carrying with them faded dreams and torn oaths. Dead leaves swirled in a dance of death, scattering across the cracked paving stones like a shower of dying ashes, witnesses to an end come too soon.

In the heart of this desolate landscape, a figure stood, motionless like a statue carved in the night. Sunghoon. He stood there, frozen, like a warrior worn to the bone, marked by the weight of years of internal struggles far crueler than those waged outside. Every tense muscle, every held breath, vibrated with a dull tension ready to explode. The silence around him was not absence, but an oppressive cage filled with suppressed anger, buried pain.

His shadow, long and menacing, stretched across the shattered stones of the temple, drawn by the last rays of a glowing, dying sun. This sun refused to illuminate his face, as if afraid to reveal the invisible scars, the deep wounds etched in his soul. His steely gaze, icy and unfathomable, was a restless sea of shadows and secrets, a night where even the moon would have hesitated to land.

The sword strapped to his back seemed to pulse in unison with his pent-up rage, vibrating beneath his dark tunic with a cruel glow, ready to spring forth like a venomous snake, to spill a torrent of pain and blood. The blade, cold as death, caught the faint light and sent it back in menacing flashes.

Sunghoon didn't move, but his very stillness was a statement—a silent warning that beneath that apparent stone lurked a raging storm, ready to sweep everything away. Then, slowly, his winter eyes rose. They tore themselves from an abyss of solitude and scanned the gloom before him with icy intensity, until at last they encountered a flickering figure.

She was there. Wonyoung. Fragile. Broken. And yet, painfully beautiful in its desolation. Her hanfu, once bright and silky, was torn to shreds like a funeral shroud, stained with dust, dried blood, and silent tears that time would not wash away. Every step she took seemed torture, a struggle against an invisible weight that chained her, shackled her, pulled her toward the depths of this waking nightmare.

Her hands trembled, carrying the burden of the world, her lips quivered under the weight of an oppressive silence, heavy with secrets and repressed pain. She wanted to scream, to tear the sky apart with her cries, to shatter the night with her despair, but she no longer found the strength to beg, even in silence. His breath, short and panting, was a broken prayer, a whisper of life in this theater of death.

The world around them seemed to hold its breath, suspended on the fragile thread of their encounter.

« Sunghoon… »

The simple word, barely more than a breath, escaped her lips like a hoarse whisper, a fragile tremor on the verge of extinction. It was both a plea and a condemnation, a flickering flame in an eternal winter wind. The name carried all the pent-up pain of so many years, the weight of a love twisted by betrayal and blood. It was a glowing ember, an open wound that time had failed to heal.

Her gaze, tired and dull, finally met Sunghoon's. But this gaze was no longer that of a man she had known. It was a frozen chasm, a black abyss in which all the shards of humanity had drowned, a desert of ice where no flowers grew. In his eyes, the fire had gone out, replaced by an implacable coldness, an armor of steel tempered in resentment and despair. Sunghoon didn't answer. He couldn't. His silence was an impenetrable wall, a silent refusal, the death of all tenderness.

Then, slowly, terribly slowly, like a tightrope walker walking the sharp edge of fate, Sunghoon took a step back. This movement seemed sealed by a grim destiny, a sentence carved in stone. Every millimeter of retreat was a wound inflicted on Wonyoung's heart, an even deeper fracture. Sunghoon was moving away from her not only physically, but from his entire life, from everything they had ever been.

Sunghoon's voice finally broke through the silence, icy, sharp, honed like a blade that cuts flesh with precision. It cleaved the frozen air, shattering the fragile ephemeral of their shared memories, tearing at the fragile fabric that had united them.

"Don't come any closer."

It wasn't a request, nor advice, but a guillotine, a final decision. The simple order resonated in Wonyoung's chest like an iron hammer hitting an anvil. The weight of the words crashed down on her, crushing what life remained in her veins. Her heart exploded silently, a firework of sharp shards that embedded themselves in her flesh and soul. The pain was no longer physical; it was visceral, burning, heartbreaking. It consumed everything, gnawed at the last fibers of her being, lacerating the fragile veil she still wore.

The air around them suddenly became thin, as if the universe itself had decided to abandon them, suspending their breaths, suspending time. Emptiness seeped in everywhere, icy, voracious, ready to swallow them up.

“This situation… Disgusts me,” Sunghoon breathed, his voice choked with deep hatred, a silent venom that had been eating away at his insides for years. “I didn’t expect this. Not from you.” A dry, hoarse, bitter laugh slipped through his lips—the broken laugh of a man forged in the depths of silence and pain. A laugh that was both a plea and a farewell. “Years, Wonyoung… Years.” Sunghoon swallowed his rage like a deadly poison, like a bitter medicine he had to absorb to survive. “And because I respect those years, I’m going to let you go. Without consequences. Today.”

Sunghoon took a heavy step forward, laden with faded promises and open wounds. But it was Wonyoung who stepped back this time, her legs trembling, fragile, about to buckle under the weight of a past too heavy. She felt anchored to a cold, dead earth, unable to escape this unbearable pain. Her breath broke, shattering into a thousand shards in her throat, an echo of despair that seemed like it could consume her entirely.

"But listen to me carefully..." Sunghoon's voice, when it finally broke the silence, was hoarse, as if torn by years of silence and hurt. "If you ever cross that line. If you ever come close again to what I swore to protect..." The words crashed down between them, heavy as invisible blades, sharp as a grim promise. Sunghoon's eyes darkened, hardened, becoming that hardened metal that cannot be bent, a sword raised in the dark, ready to strike. “I will not turn away my eyes. I will not tremble. I will raise my sword against you, and I will not fail.”

The wind moaned in the ruins, a low sob that seemed to carry the voices of the dead, a dirge suspended in time, a final farewell to what might have been. Wonyoung felt that weight crash down on her heart, an icy storm that froze her insides. She wasn't crying yet, but in her wide-open eyes shone a light worse than fear—the agony of betrayal, the suffocating weight of incomprehension.

Her legs buckled, wobbled, but she took another step, trapped in a nightmare that refused to go away.

“A… relationship…” she whispered, her voice cracking, shattered into a thousand pieces. “You mean… our relationship.” Every breath was a dagger in the pit of his chest, every breath a torture that his body rejected but could not escape. “The one you destroyed with your own hands. For her. For that cursed witch to whom you offered what you promised me. Your heart.”

She staggered, her fingers seeking his, not in anger, nor in gentleness, but with that empty embrace of a hope that no longer existed, a painful pressure, a last breath of life in a still-warm corpse.

“You swore to me… You promised me that you would never forget me. That despite the chaos, despite the war, our souls would remain linked. That your gaze would never change.”

But Sunghoon didn't answer. His steely gaze, cold and distant, scrutinized her like one observing a ghost, an illusion one would want to banish.

She felt the abyss opening beneath her feet. The tearing, the black hollow that swallowed everything.

“You lied to me, Sunghoon. You betrayed me like a blade in your back. You left me. Abandoned me. Forgotten me. And you dare speak of justice? Of morality?” Wonyoung’s voice rose, heartbreaking, a burning howl that tore through the night and into his own heart. It was fire and ashes, anger and despair mingled in one incandescent scream.

“Don't tell me you cared about me. Don't tell me you suffered. Because I… I waited for you. In silence. In the shadows. In blood. I sacrificed everything. And you?” She laughed, a dry, bitter, stillborn laugh, a broken shard, a shard lost in the emptiness of a shattered soul. “You ran away. You watched my collapse without lifting a finger.”

Sunghoon looked at her again, implacable, merciless, his eyes cold, like frozen glass. Not an ounce of trembling, not a sign of pity.

"No. I never loved you." The words were like a sword cut, slicing through flesh, tearing through flesh, leaving a gaping void where a heart still beat. "I was nothing to you, Wonyoung. And you were nothing to me." Sunghoon took a step back, moving away from her like a bad dream you want to shake off. “You were just a reflection. A shadow of what I could have become if I had embraced the darkness.”

The silence stretched between them, thick, crushing, laden with the echo of a pain too raw. Then Sunghoon slowly turned his back, abandoning this last bond that united them.

"Find someone who can look at you without throwing up at the thought of the dead people you're dragging around. I can't. I won't. I'll never forgive you." The wind grew stronger, howling through the ruins, carrying his words away like a cursed oath suspended in nothingness. “Atoned… That’s all you have left. Until your last night, until your last breath. Pray that the heavens have mercy, for I have none left.”

His departure was a blast of icy wind, an implacable end.

Wonyoung fell. His knees hit the cold stone, his back bent, fragile and broken like a broken bow. His face was lost in his trembling hands, in that infinite solitude. A dull, silent, nameless cry burst from the depths of her being, forged in the dust, ashes and pain of a world she had just lost forever.

The last glimmer of a murdered love.

And, in a breath, a murmur of agony:

"If she hadn't existed... Maybe... Just maybe... You would have loved me, too."

But there was only silence. Such night. Such void.

Bai Lun Yan (白轮殿) — The Palace of the White Wheel

The Wheel Room was bathed in a murky gloom, broken only by the flickering glow of a few red lanterns suspended from rusty chains. The air was heavy, saturated with old sweat, musk, dried blood, and datura. Each breath seemed to collide with the oozing walls of forgotten desires. It was like entering a womb—living, warm, obscene.

And you, you were offered.

Pressed against the Wheel like a condemned woman, like a virgin ready to be sacrificed to a god she herself had summoned. The black wood, engraved with ancient glyphs and dead curses, bit into your bare skin. Your arms were raised, tense, your muscles trembling, your fingers clenched in the grooves of the thousand-year-old wheel. Your hanfu, torn in places, slid slowly from your shoulders, revealing your taut stomach, your heaving chest, and lower still—your pussy, naked, swollen, glistening with anticipation. Open like an offering. Vibrant like a living scar.

And he—Sunghoon—was there. On my knees before you. Not as a lover. Not as a servant. But as a devoted executioner, ready to implode you, piece by piece.

Sunghoon looked down at you, his eyelids half-closed, his breathing already erratic, as if he were holding himself back from devouring you too quickly. And then, he dove. His tongue found your clitoris in one swift stroke—like a saber cut. You arched your back so hard the pain took your breath away, but the pleasure swept it away immediately. He licked like a thirsty man, as if your pleasure were the only elixir capable of saving him. His tongue swirled, slid, felt, searching every millimeter of flesh inside you. And he didn't just lick: he sucked, growled against your sex, nibbled just enough to make your body arch even more.

You were dirty. You were sublime. You were broken.

Strings of drool stretched from your parted lips to your chin. You gasped. You cried unintentionally. Your legs trembled, twitched, your stomach contracted in an uncontrollable spasm. And Sunghoon… He moved his hands up your thighs. Slowly. Exasperatingly slowly. His fingers dug violently into your flesh, leaving painful, red marks. Then he yanked your legs apart. Your foot found itself on his shoulder, spread-eagled before him like a captured slave.

And then he bit you. Right there. On your already swollen clitoris. A precise, sadistic bite. You are screaming. And Sunghoon whispered against your soaked skin:

“You want me to break you here, on this Wheel? You want me to ruin you?”

Then he slid a finger inside you. Slowly. Rough, hot, merciless. He didn't let you adjust—he pushed in all the way to his palm, then he moved. Slowly. Then harder. Then faster. Your inner wall sucked in that finger like a living sinkhole. You were on fire. Sunghoon added a second finger, sharply. And you cried out again, your head slamming against the wheel. Your body bucked—and he held you, tight, too tight. His fingers were now moving at an animal pace. And then a third. Inside you. Entirely. He was fucking you with his hand, fucking you to the core.

And meanwhile—his tongue never stopped. Sunghoon let his chin rub against you, let his saliva mix with your juices. And you were dripping. You were a river. A tide. A tidal wave of desire. The sound of his fingers sliding in and out of you was indecent. A wet, sticky, extremely erotic sound. The floor was becoming slippery. The stone beneath you was stained. And Sunghoon was growling between your thighs like a rutting beast.

"You have a pussy made to be devoured. You stink of sex. You're crying so I can open you up even more."

And you were crying, yes. With pleasure. With shame. With desire. Your eyes watered, your thighs trembling. You didn't even know if you wanted to run away or be killed right there.

Then, abruptly, Sunghoon pushed his fingers deeper, curved them—and you exploded. The orgasm pierced you like a poisoned blade. You screamed. You began to squirt, to ejaculate like a fury. Powerful, uncontrollable jets, spurting against his mouth, on his face, on his neck. He barely pulled back, grabbed your pussy with both hands, and leaned down to drink. To drink it all. He swallowed, he gulped loudly, moans rising from his throat as if he were choking on your pleasure.

And Sunghoon continued. He was still licking. He lapped at your soaking wet pussy, cleaning it with horrible tenderness, the patience of a monster. He kissed you. He sucked on your intimate lips. He pushed his tongue inside you to collect every last drop.

Then he finally stopped. Slowly. Very slowly.

And stood up.

His chest was heaving. His chin was shiny. His neck was dripping. His mouth—covered with you. And in his eyes, there was nothing human anymore.

"You taste divine, my little judge..." he said, his voice hoarse like a death rattle.

Sunghoon lifted two fingers covered in your juices and brought them to your mouth. You opened your lips wide. You sucked them slowly. One by one. Then both together. You pushed them all the way into your mouth, hollowing your cheeks, rolling your tongue like a learned whore. He moaned. A low, painful whimper.

"Are you hungry?" he said. He leaned down, his chest brushing against your burning stomach. "Me too."

And then he grabbed you roughly by the back of the neck and kissed you. A wild kiss. A brutal kiss. His tongue invaded your mouth. He tasted your pleasure on your tongue. He rubbed himself against it like a wild animal. His hand slid to his belt, which he undid with a brutal gesture. The hanfu opened.

You placed your hands on his bare, taut, veiny torso. And lower down—you saw his cock. Erect. Long. Wide. Throbbing. Slightly curved. A droplet beaded from its tip, and you saw it slide slowly down his shaft.

Sunghoon was ready.

And you couldn't take it anymore.

Your hand slid, slow and trembling, like a snake exploring offered flesh, first brushing against the smooth skin of his belly, that cold, hard surface sculpted by years of combat and discipline. The coldness of the polished stone beneath your palm contrasted with the dull, menacing heat rising within you, a latent fire flowing beneath your skin like magma ready to overflow. Your finger descended, almost groping, to the hard, taut bulge throbbing against your palm, a promise of destruction and ecstasy, a sharpened weapon that already made you tremble.

Sunghoon's breath was raspy, laden with suppressed impatience, and the thick silence of the night seemed to hold its breath as well. The tension hanging in the air was palpable, a rope stretched to its limit, ready to snap like an executioner's whip.

But before you could fully surrender, your hand slid lower, eager, his wrist closing roughly around yours. His grip was firm, commanding, undeniably powerful, yet within that raw strength, there was a strange sweetness, a silent oath that only your bodies could understand. No need for words. No need for promises. Just the certainty that this battle was not just a war of flesh, but a war of torn souls, chained in a cruel fate.

Sunghoon lifted you then, seemingly effortlessly, as if you were mist, a feather abandoned to the wind. Your legs instinctively wrapped around his waist, your arms clinging to his strong shoulders, as he carried you to the Wheel—that black, icy circle that seemed to absorb all light. He set you down with surgical precision, your bare skin hitting the cold surface. The contact lasted a split second, enough to take your breath away. A hoarse, muffled cry escaped your throat, a mixture of astonishment, fear, and burning desire.

Your heart pounded, a war drum in your chest, as the weight of his body crushed you against the Wheel, locking your body in an embrace as cruel as an oath. This weight was both threat and promise—a prison and a sanctuary.

Suddenly, Sunghoon's hand lit up with a vibrant, unearthly white glow. A cold flame burst from his fingers, filling the space with a spectral light that made your mind flicker. Your eyes blurred, went out, engulfed in a night blacker than the deepest ink, an absolute void, an absolute nothingness. Celestial magic had just stolen your vision, condemning you to total darkness.

You were blind.

But you felt it. Oh yes, you felt it.

His hot breath brushing the back of your neck, his fingers digging into your flesh, scratching with a ferocious gentleness. His pelvis pressing, forcing its hardness against your vulnerable stomach, the burning line of his cock rising against your skin like a burning blade. His desire consumed you, unleashed, wild, unstoppable.

A dark smile split your lips, carnivorous, a flash of provocation in the silence of the night.

“Block of ice…” you whispered, your voice trembling, saturated with desire and defiance. “You’re playing a dangerous game, you know… Fucking your blind wife, hanging from that cursed wheel, which could turn at any moment… Aren’t you afraid she’ll end up crushed?” Your tone was sweet venom, a slow poison that flowed between you, a challenge thrown into the gloom. But beneath that provocation slid a fierce expectation, a visceral need.

Your hand moved then, exploring his torso like a lover eager to discover every secret. You brushed against every tense muscle, every invisible scar, tracing furrows of fire beneath his skin. Then, with a cruel gesture, you let your nails sink into his flesh, scratching, marking, drawing red lines, thin but deep. A hoarse, almost bestial rattle rose from his throat—the awakening of a wounded, excited, hungry beast.

You bit your lip, biting and wild, happy with this answer.

“You’re a bad husband,” you breathed, a hot breath that brushed against his lips, sliding down his tense jaw. “So… bad.”

Your fingers found the back of his neck, digging in like hooks, and you pulled gently, eliciting a deep moan. His body crushed against you, every muscle tense, his hard, demanding cock pressed against your stomach, demanding, hungry. Your head was spinning, your soul was burning, and the fever was rising inside you like a black tide.

Then, his voice hoarse, low, almost a growl:

"I should have gagged you..."

Without warning, Sunghoon skewered you brutally, with a sharp, deep, merciless thrust. A wild cry escaped your throat—a mixture of astonishment, delicious pain, and obscene pleasure. Your body arched violently, oscillating between heartbreak and ecstasy; his cock was a sword tearing you apart from the inside, a burning blade that marked your flesh forever.

Sunghoon gave you no respite. No time to adjust. His all-consuming urgency, his insatiable hunger, pulverized you. Every thrust of his hips promised destruction and rebirth. The erratic rhythm of his movements tore through the air saturated with sweat and incense, fever and cum. The Wheel vibrated beneath your bound bodies, each impact resonating like a war drum.

You wanted to flee, but your body, furious and revolted, rose up with every movement, seeking to receive it, to provoke it, to demand it. You wanted to scream at the heavens, to break the silence, but only hoarse moans, sighs of delicious pain and adoration escaped your mouth. You were both submissive and queen, prisoner and sovereign.

Your hands skidded across his broad back, clinging to it, clawing at the skin with a savage rage. You dug and dug again, until blood gushed forth, hot and salty. He groaned, not a gasp of pain, but a primal cry of pleasure, a bestial explosion. Sunghoon loved this savagery. This struggle. He loved dominating you, crushing you, losing you.

You responded to every movement with ferocious jerks, pelvic undulations that shattered what little restraint he had left. You were nothing but fire, burning flesh, madness incarnate.

You were his hell, his heaven, his downfall.

Then Sunghoon gripped your hips with beastly strength, his fingers digging in like talons, pulling you closer, deeper, more violently. You felt every inch of him penetrate you, tear you apart, melt you. An explosive cry, a heart-rending rattle, escaped your throat—a wild, black orgasm, an infinite fall into an abyss of pleasure and pain. Your body tensed, convulsed; the Wheel may have been turning, but you saw nothing. You felt only Sunghoon.

But it wasn't over. No. There would never be an end.

"You're dripping..." Sunghoon spat between wild thrusts, his voice raspy, saturated with a brutal thirst, an unbridled desire that seemed to want to reduce you to incandescent ashes. Each word was a blade, sharp, ferocious, a promise of mingled pain and pleasure, a silent pact sealed in the fire of your intertwined bodies. "You scream like a fucking, sacrificial virgin, trembling, offered up, burning to the core. Do you want me to ruin you, to smash you against this Wheel until it turns again and again, so that your screams become the dirge of your flesh?"

Your breath crashed against your throat—short, raspy, ragged—like a tumultuous torrent drowned in a boiling sea of ecstasy and pain. You nodded, mute, unable to formulate anything but raw, wild, almost bestial gasps, wordless cries, silent pleas of fire and surrender.

Without warning, Sunghoon grabbed your hips with an iron grip, his fingers digging into your damp skin, biting into the flesh with the controlled violence of a hunting beast. Every tense muscle beneath his palm vibrated with a savage, precise power. He lifted you slightly, holding you in a position where you were entirely open, vulnerable, offered like a flower torn by the storm of steel roaring within him.

His cock, hard as a sharp saber blade, penetrated your tender flesh with calculated, merciless cruelty. The angle was perfect, incisive, each thrust a cruel explosion in your burning flesh, an exquisite tear that tore a primal, brutal, heart-rending scream from you, echoing against the cold, damp walls of the room. This cry mingled with Sunghoon's guttural growls, like a furious warrior on the rampage, a savage symphony of destruction and creation.

The rhythm he imposed was frantic, wild, a sensual carnage where your bodies collided with an almost sacrificial violence. The ancient wood of the Wheel vibrated beneath you, each impact drumming out the secret war tearing at your skin, each thrust sculpting your pain into pleasure, your suffering into ecstasy. Sweat slid in burning rivulets down your entwined skin, carrying with it the last vestiges of all restraint, all fear.

Then, suddenly, everything slows down. His strokes grew heavier, deeper, slower, each thrust a painful promise, a silent oath of domination and devour. The fire consuming your body still burned, but dull, insidious, an exquisite torture fevering your insides, a slow fire that trickled beneath your skin. His hands slid down, exploring your sweaty, panting skin, his fingers brushing, caressing, until they reached that burning spot, that incandescent focus: your clitoris, feverish, swollen, so painfully sensitive that it made you teeter on the edge of madness and ecstasy.

Then Sunghoon's fingers fell upon this offered flesh with the methodical cruelty of a mad craftsman. They rubbed, pinched, and mistreated this source of your pleasure with an almost sadistic insistence, a slow, delicious torture that made you scream without restraint, a wild, wrenching cry escaping from your entrails like a raging torrent. The Wheel vibrated beneath the scream, capturing it, echoing it, a dark, haunting litany in the vast silence of the room. Your blood pounded in your temples, your heart hammered against your ribcage like a war drum, and yet it was your body betraying you, burning in that forbidden fire.

“Come,” Sunghoon breathed, his voice raspy, low, a command charged with dominance and dark passion, a hot whisper in your ear. “Cry out for me. Squirt, my Queen. Show me your burning fire, let the night tremble beneath your tear.”

You then gave in, to Sunghoon, to yourself, to this maelstrom of pain and pleasure. Your body exploded suddenly, devastated by an orgasm of raw intensity, an incandescent flash that struck you from the inside out, sweeping every fiber of your being away in a burst of merciless spasms. Your muscles contracted so violently that you felt as if you were tearing yourself apart, tearing yourself away, disintegrating, only to be reborn with that wild scream.

Your hot, burning juice splashed his stiff cock, trickled down his powerful hips, stained the icy surface of the Wheel, blending your bodies in a wild, sacred, chaotic union, a hellish dance of flesh and blood. You could feel the consuming hunger in his dark eyes, the insatiable fire in his throat that swallowed your come like a hungry, voracious, inhuman beast.

Then, in a slow, almost possessive movement, he brought his burning face closer, licking with cruel slowness the burning hollow between your breasts, where the thin, fragile skin burned beneath his rough tongue. The contrast between velvety softness and fiery bite sent a wild shiver down your spine, a shiver that tore you apart, crushed you, set you ablaze. Without warning, Sunghoon bit your neck with restrained, controlled violence, a flash of pain and pleasure that set a new fire exploding in every nerve. A sharp, delicious pain that sharpened your pleasure, chained you to his bites, to his hot breath, to his relentless domination, to this wild force that tore you apart slowly, surely, until the ultimate ecstasy.

You were nothing but at his mercy, a willing prisoner of the burning fire he lit within you, until you were nothing more than a broken breath, an incandescent body, a painful and proud promise of what was yet to come.

But he wasn't finished.

He possessed you with a sovereign brutality, tearing every inch of you apart with every thrust, every blow, like a warrior wielding his blade in a battle of shadow and blood. His hips pulsed, crushing your body, breaking your will, sculpting your pain into pleasure, your suffering into ecstasy.

Your body arched, writhed beneath the relentless force of his assaults, every cry, every moan, every short breath becoming a savage offering to this silent duel between domination and surrender. The Wheel vibrated beneath your bestial union, your blood mingled with your sweat, the heavy, acrid odors of primal desire filling the saturated air. Each spasm tore you deeper, until you were nothing more than a trembling, submissive shadow—but triumphant, sovereign in this secret war of flesh and blood, bearing the burning scars of this carnal battle with a fierce and desperate pride.

The cold wind blew around you, carrying away your wild cries, mingling them with the darkness, the mystery, the endless night of your forbidden pact.

And you couldn't take it anymore. Your breath, short and ragged, burned your chest with a black, dull, and merciless fire. Every tense muscle, every fiber of your being vibrated under the brutal and merciless rhythm that Sunghoon imposed on your body, like a master shaping a weapon of flesh. You felt your will waver, swept away in this whirlwind of ecstasy and fatigue, but he showed no sign of weakness. On the contrary, his blows accelerated, feverish, almost desperate, as if he were seeking to engrave this moment in eternity, to mark you forever with his essence.

“Sunghoon…” Your moan broke between pain and desire, tiredness and longing, “I’m exhausted…”

But his eyes, dark as a moonless night, yielded nothing. Sunghoon growled, a deep, wild sound filled with possession: "I won't stop until I've put a child inside you."

His hand grew rougher, digging into your hips, his fingers leaving new burning marks on your skin. His thumb slid down to your clit, which he rubbed relentlessly, a cruel, methodical movement, as if he wanted to draw every spark of fire from your bruised body. Each caress triggered electric shocks within you, a delectable pain that made you teeter on the edge.

The pace suddenly slowed, but each thrust was deeper, more violent, slowly tearing at your flesh, tearing you from your senses. You felt his thick member insinuate itself deep inside you, consuming you from the inside out. Sunghoon brought his lips to yours, his hot breaths crashing against your skin, damp with sweat and desire. His lips swallowed you in a voracious kiss, a collision of storms and sweetness, a silent promise of domination and eternity.

Your tongue was captured, swept into a wild dance, his harsh breath playing with yours, nibbling, teasing, exploring every corner of your mouth. His body kept grinding into you, penetrating you with an almost inhuman intensity, and you felt the pain mix with the pleasure in a chaotic whirlwind, driving you mad.

Then, suddenly, Sunghoon exploded inside you. His burning seed flowed deep into your flesh, marking your womanhood like an indelible seal. You let out a cry, a wild, vibrant cry, mixed with ecstasy and pain, as your fingers clung to his shoulders, trying not to sink into the surge.

Your moans intertwined, a bestial, heartbreaking melody, as Sunghoon curled his tongue around yours, nibbling gently and cruelly at the intimate connection. When he finally pulled away, a trickle of drool still connected your lips, a clear sign of the hurricane you had just experienced.

Sunghoon then placed his hand on your face, brushing back the strands of hair stuck to your forehead by sweat, caressing your burning skin with a tenderness that was almost incongruous in the midst of this passionate chaos. Your eyes fluttered open, surprised to regain your sight, faced with this unexpected softness in the midst of the storm. You looked at him, a tired and sincere smile illuminating your bruised face, as if the simple fact of having survived this ordeal was enough to justify your reason for being.

“That really would have been the best way to die, you know…” you whispered, your voice shaky, almost breaking, a breath mixed with a fragile laugh as you felt your pussy instinctively tighten around his still-tense member inside you.

Sunghoon responded with a raspy growl, holding you tighter, his possessiveness turning into a protective hug. "Stop talking nonsense." His voice, low and vibrant, was a silent declaration of power and love. Without letting go, he lifted you into his arms, carrying you like a precious conquest to his room, his kingdom.

You moan with every touch, the constant pressure of his manhood against you waking every dormant nerve, leaving you vulnerable, captive, drunk on Sunghoon.

"And help me make a child with my wife," he whispered in your ear, stealing a burning kiss, a carnivorous smile stretching his lips. Sunghoon sensed your nascent protest, smothering it with a deeper, more demanding kiss, where desire and promise intertwined, inseparable.

So you lay, night after night, day after day, enveloped in the thick darkness of that room where every breath, every shiver, every bead of sweat was offered to the black fire that consumed your bodies. The supposed excuse of conception was only a fragile veil masking the raw truth: Sunghoon wanted your body, your soul, your essence, without restraint or hindrance, and you let yourself be devoured, because nothing else could bring you such intensity, such release.

Your hands traced invisible marks on his warm skin, your fingers running over every curve, every hollow, every scar, while his mercilessly explored your exposed flesh. Your bodies spoke a silent language, a wild and sensual dance where domination and submission intertwined endlessly, melting into a gentle and absolute violence.

And in this carnal chaos, this storm of shadow and light, you found a strange peace—being both broken and whole, devastated and uplifted, alive beyond anything you had ever known.

Taglist : @weepingsweep @immelissaaa

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