Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seokjin stood in the snow and looked toward the capital.

He felt nothing but cold.

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

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

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

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

They threw the boy overboard during the night.

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

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

He did not speak of the sword.

He never did.

Paris, 1912.

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

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

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

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

But the stories were all the same in the end:

The Goblin waits for his bride.

Only she can draw the sword from his chest.

Only then will he be free to die.

Seokjin stopped correcting them after a century.

Seoul. Present day.

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

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

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

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

Seokjin did not turn.

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

Behind him, the gate clicked open.

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

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

He was Death.

He did not remember his name.

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

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

He stepped forward.

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

But soon, he would remember.

And then — the real story would begin.

Chapter Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until now.

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

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

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

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

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

##

The mansion was… extravagant.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Paid in full.”

“And he’s okay with this?”

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

The door creaked open as Hoseok stepped inside.

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

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

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

“No, you don’t.”

“I paid rent.”

“To whom?”

“To Kim Tae-“

They both turned—

Taehyung was gone.

The silence was deep. Painful. Eternal.

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

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

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

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

He turned and walked into the house without another word.

“Great talk,” Hoseok muttered, stepping inside.

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

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

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

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

They clashed immediately.

Seokjin liked symphonies in the morning. Hoseok liked silence.

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

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

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

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

A second pair of chopsticks set out at dinner.

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

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

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

Breakfast became a ritual.

Dinner became comfort.

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

“Who are you?”

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

“That makes two of us.”

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

The ghosts began whispering again.

And Hoseok started listening.

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

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

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

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

That night, Hoseok passed Seokjin in the hall.

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

He paused halfway to his room, looking back.

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

Hoseok turned away, frowning to himself.

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

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

He shut his door and leaned against it.

“Why did I notice that?” he whispered.

No answer came.

But he didn’t take it back.

The Goblin was gorgeous.

Chapter Text

The prophecy came first.

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

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

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

The king paled, haunted. The Goblin was born.

…the battlefield still smoked.

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

He’d died. That much was certain.

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

But then—

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

And Seokjin opened his eyes.

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

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

It was still there.

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

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

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

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

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

No one answered.

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

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

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

He blinked. “You… can see me?”

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

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

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

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

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

He looked at her, wild. “Who?”

“The one who can end your immortality.”

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

“She will knock three times.”

And then she was gone.

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

Hundreds of Years Later.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“She is fated to be born,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

The Goblin stood.

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

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

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

“What’s her name?” Asks the Goblin.

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

And far above, the stars blinked quietly in approval.

Eun-Tuk’s 8th birthday.

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

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

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

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

The silence screamed.

“Mom..?” She asked. “Are you dead?”

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

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

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

Present day — 8 years later.

The sea wind tugged at her hair.

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

She didn’t look back.

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

She set the cake down on a flat rock.

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

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

Then she closed her eyes.

“I wish…”

A pause.

“…for someone to love me.”

She opened her eyes and blew.

The flames vanished. Smoke curled upward.

And then—

The wind stilled.

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

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

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

Eun-Tuk turned, startled.

The man stared at her.

She took a step back. “Who—?”

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

“You can see me?” he asked.

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

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

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

His eyes narrowed.

“You’re the Goblin, aren’t you?”

Silence fell between them.

A single gull cried overhead.

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

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

He stared at her like he’d been struck.

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

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

“You summoned me.”

“I just made a wish.”

“That’s how it works.”

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

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

Only Days Later

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

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

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

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

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

In the kitchen, Hoseok dropped his tea.

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

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

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

Hoseok’s eyebrows lifted—and did not fall.

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

Hoseok watched…and waited. Seconds ticked.

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

He went back inside, confused. Where was Jin?

He reappeared moments later, walking through the front door.

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

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

Jin didn’t notice and that was the problem.

Later That Night

The door clicked locked.

Boxes of kimchi and rice sat stacked in the hall.

Jin and Hoseok stood side by side, finishing supper.

Knock.

Jin stiffened.
Hoseok said nothing.

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

“It’s the girl!” Jin tells Hoseok.

Knock.

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

She froze.

Her eyes met his.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You should come in,” he said finally.

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

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

He paused, listening.

Silence.

Then footsteps upstairs.

Muffled voices.

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

A breath caught in his throat. Something was shifting.

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

No one answered.

Not even the house.

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

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

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

“Not even a word.”

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

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

It was full. Almost like a home.

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

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

Eun-Tuk blinked. “What?”

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

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

The Goblin turned.

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

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

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

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

“That’s your idea of compatibility now?”

“She hasn’t knocked three times.”

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

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

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

“It’s working so far.”

They both chuckled.

A moment passed.

Then:

Knock. Knock. Knock.

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

The laughter stopped instantly.

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

Jin was already halfway down the hall.

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

Before anyone could speak again—

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Again. Louder. Faster.

This time Jin didn’t walk.

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

The night was clear.

The stars above glistened as though waiting for something.

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

He blinked at Jin.

“…Why are you outside?”

Seokjin didn’t answer.

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

“You knocked.”

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

“You knocked three times.”

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

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

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

“You shouldn’t have knocked three times.”

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

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

His eyes narrowed.

“…Unless it means something.”

Jin didn’t reply. He couldn’t.

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

Fate had a wicked sense of humor.

And it had just knocked.

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

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

“She’s upstairs,” Jin said flatly.

“Who?”

“The girl. Eun-Tuk.”

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

“She had nowhere else to go.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“She knocked.”

“So did I!”

“That’s different.”

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

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

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

“She shouldn’t be able to see—”

Jin stopped himself.

Hoseok narrows his eyes. “See what?”

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

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

“I don’t know what you mean.”

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

Jin said nothing.

So Hoseok asked it for him:

“Can she see the sword?”

The hallway was silent.

The question lingered like a spark in dry air.

And then—

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

“Because I can.”

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

His eyes met Hoseok’s.

He wasn’t lying.

He could see it.

And suddenly, nothing made sense.

Not the knocks.

Not the girl.

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

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

Not a bride.

Not the girl he thought.

But a Reaper.

And he could see the sword.

Chapter Text

The wind stilled.

Seokjin didn’t breathe.

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

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

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

Or so he’d always believed.

“No,” Seokjin rasped.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seokjin stared.

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

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

“You never once considered it might be me?”

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

A pause.

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

That was the question, wasn’t it?

Seokjin said nothing.

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

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

He looked up without surprise.

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

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

“You were floating like a ghost.”

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

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

“Like fate?” she asked.

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

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

Taehyung glanced over at her. “Is it?”

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

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

She turned toward him, curious.

“Like what?”

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

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

The lights above them flickered.

Just once.

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

It was almost like he was used to it.

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

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

This time — longer. Slower.

He smiled to himself, lips tight.

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

“Hey. Want to see something cool?”

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

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

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

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

Something watching from inside.

900 Years Ago

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The king’s fingers clenched tighter.

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

A pause.

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

The king swallowed. “Mortal.”

“Replaceable,” Joong-heon corrected, coldly.

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

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

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

And the villain smiled.

He hated him.

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

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

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

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

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

Joong-heon.

The name lingered in the silence like smoke.

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

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

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

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

He exhaled shakily.

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

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

Jin’s fingers curled tightly into his blanket.

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

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

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

And perhaps… something had never truly ended.

The Next Morning

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

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

“Can I touch it?”

The sword.

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

“He saw the sword.”

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

“Hoseok!”

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

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

Namjoon raised a brow. “Saw…?”

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

Taehyung blinked. “Maybe he’s curious?”

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

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

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

There it was.

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

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

Silence. Even the wind seemed to pause outside.

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

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

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

“I don’t want it to be him.”

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

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

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

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

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

The Goblin didn’t answer.

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

The tea water boiled. Then stilled. Then cooled.

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

The Goblin was gone.

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

He could still feel it.

The sword.

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

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

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

It was with panic.

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

And then — he was gone.

Back in the kitchen, Hoseok whispered into the quiet:

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

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

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

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

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

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

But she didn’t look at him. Not yet.

Because just then, he arrived.

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

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

“I waited,” she said.

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

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

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

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

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

Just fear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The flames died. The world folded.

And Jin appeared.

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

He didn’t say hello.

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

Hoseok took a breath.

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

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

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

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

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

And for once, neither of them moved.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“My Bride… kills me.”

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

Chapter Text

900 Years Ago

The crown was too heavy.

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

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

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

Not yet.

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

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

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

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

And he did.

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

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

“You’re too bold,” Seokjin whispered.

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

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

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

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

Joong-heon didn’t believe in coincidence.

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

And him. The King.

They were laughing.

Laughing like lovers.

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

Joong-heon’s lip curled.

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

He would not strike today.

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

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

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

The spell broke.

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

“No,” he whispered. “We run.”

They ran.

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

Joong-heon approached last, calm and righteous.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But inside, Joong-heon seethed.

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

Because the King was his — not Seokjin’s.

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

900 Years Later

Seokjin woke with a gasp.

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

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

“Joong-heon,” he whispered.

He hadn’t thought of that name in centuries.

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

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

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

The venom hidden behind a bow.

And the King.

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

Seokjin pressed his palm to the center of his chest.

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

Why now? Why tonight?

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

The man who had knocked three times.

The man who had pointed to the sword.

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

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

What did it mean?

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

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

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

The temple had no name.

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

Except someone had.

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

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

Candles.

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

Then he saw him.

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

“You summoned me,” said Seokjin, flatly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Then tell me.”

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

“So?”

“And the Goblin dies.”

The silence that followed was thick with unsaid things.

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

Hoseok stepped closer, eyes searching.

“You don’t have to be alone.”

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

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

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

He turned away.

And walked. Hoseok followed.

One room became five. Five became ten.

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

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

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

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

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

A breath.

A shimmer.

And then he was gone.

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

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

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

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

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

Seokjin’s breath caught. “You—”

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

Seokjin looked away. “I needed… air.”

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

They stood in silence, winter pressing in between them.

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

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

Seokjin glanced at him, wary.

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

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

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

“Then why are you eating it?”

“You suggested it.”

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

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

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

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

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

“I… used to.”

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

“You’re different here,” Hoseok said.

“Because there are no ghosts.”

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

Seokjin blinked. “I do not.”

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

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

“Liar.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taehyung laughed, a short exhale. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it doesn’t believe in me.”

She tilted her head. “That sucks.”

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

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

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

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

“You’ve got static,” he teased.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Three poses,” the screen announced.

Seokjin stared ahead, unmoving.

First click: Hoseok grinned. Jin scowled.

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

Third click: Jin laughed.

A full, unguarded, breathless laugh.

The flash caught it.

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

They didn’t have to.

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

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

Seokjin stood a few feet behind him, watching.

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

But his eyes lingered.

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

On how the wind moved through his hair.

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

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

Seokjin didn’t realize he was smiling.

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

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

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

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

“Then tell me!” Jin demanded.

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

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

Chapter Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

The words curled around his ribs like smoke.

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

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

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

He woke with a start.

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

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

Hoseok swung his legs off the bed.

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

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

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

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

“What did I do to him?” he whispered.

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

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

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

Namjoon didn’t look up. “Hoseok?”

A pause. Then: “He knocked.”

Namjoon finally turned. “Three times?”

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

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

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

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

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

“You just described Hoseok,” Namjoon said dryly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

They stood in silence.

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

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

“I don’t know anymore.”

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

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

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

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

Taehyung stopped walking.

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

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

“I didn’t say that.”

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

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

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

He didn’t answer.

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

Eun-Tuk noticed. “What was that?”

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

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

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

Eun-Tuk blinked.

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

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

And didn’t come back on.

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

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

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

Since the summoning.

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

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

“You didn’t deny it either.”

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

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

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

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

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

“It reminded me of someone.”

“A lover?”

Jin turned his head. “No. A brother.”

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

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

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

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

Jin looked at him, puzzled.

“It suits you.”

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

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

Matching steps.

Not leading.

Just… walking.

Together.

The cake was in her hands.

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

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

Sixteen.

Wasn’t that supposed to mean something?

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

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

She blew out the candle.

For a moment, the world held its breath.

But no one came.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where was Taehyung?
Where was anyone?

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

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

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

She screamed for him.

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

“Goblin!”

Silence.

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

But the men didn’t notice.

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

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

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

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

But she had wanted him.

And that was enough.

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

And then:

A sword gleamed.
A man appeared.

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

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

“Let her go,” Seokjin said quietly.

The thugs froze.

And then they laughed.

“Who the hell are—”

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

They turned too late.

Jung Hoseok was already there.

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

The others scrambled back.

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

Only to meet Hoseok’s gaze.

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

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

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

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

“You alright?” Seokjin asked her.

She nodded, dazed. “You came.”

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

“You were fast.”

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

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

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

The wind rustled again, soft this time.

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

Seokjin met his gaze. “Neither did you.”

It wasn’t a thank you.

It wasn’t an apology.

It was something else. Older. Deeper.

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

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

“Something you were never meant to see.”

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

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

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

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

She shook her head. “Just bruises.”

He exhaled, but it wasn’t relief.

It was guilt.

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

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

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

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

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

“Thank you,” she said softly.

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

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

He crouched beside her and offered the cup.

“You’re safe now.”

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

He didn’t answer.

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

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

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

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

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

Seokjin flinched. Just slightly.

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

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

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

Not from fate.

Not from the past.

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

She knocks. “Taehyung?”

The door flies open.

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

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

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

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

But she doesn’t let the moment settle.

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

His brows knit. “What?”

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

His hands fall away from her arms.

He takes a half-step back.

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

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

He flinches.

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

Another step back.

“Taehyung?” she asks.

But the boy who answers isn’t Taehyung anymore.

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

It holds no youth. No nervousness. No teasing.

Only something that feels older than time. Something watching.

Eun-Tuk’s breath catches.

She knows that Taehyung has left the building.

She knows.

Chapter Text

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

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

Hoseok knew her.

Except he didn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hoseok gasped.

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

He tried to run. To reach her.

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

The dream lingered longer than most.

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

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

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

The dream wasn’t. Not anymore.

Still, he whispered to the silence:

“Who were you?”

And from somewhere deeper:

“Why do I feel like I… loved you?”

But no answer came.

The silence in the room was as still as ever.

Until morning.

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

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

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

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

Seokjin offered a wry smile. “Not wrong.”

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

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

Seokjin didn’t answer right away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I know,” Seokjin murmured.

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

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

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

The garden was quiet again.

Seokjin looked down at his coffee, untouched.

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

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

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

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

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

She wasn’t supposed to be back yet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seokjin stood slowly, his gaze never leaving the clip.

He was no longer looking at a teenage girl.

He was looking through time.

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

She hesitated at his door, then knocked twice.

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

“You cook?” he asked, blinking.

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

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

“Maybe. Just in case.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then the moment passed.

“Goodnight,” she said.

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

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

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

He rubbed his arms, suddenly cold.

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

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

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

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

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

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

His reflection smiled.

He hadn’t.

Taehyung stumbled back a step, heart pounding.

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

The lights flickered once more.

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

No answer.

Only silence.

But deep in his bones, Taehyung felt something smile.

The tea room was quiet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like Eun-Tuk.

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

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

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

The woman gasped.

“Minho.”

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

Neither looked back as they stepped into the light.

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

Then his voice broke the silence.

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

He didn’t finish the thought.

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

Kim Seokjin.

The ink shimmered — faint, pulsing like a warning.

Not today.

But soon.

The name burned.

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

He didn’t move for a long time.

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

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

It was Seokjin.

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

Hoseok folded the paper in half.

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

But Hoseok knew better.

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

It was Seokjin.

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

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

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

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

Hoseok flinched.

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

“I didn’t know I was expected.”

“You always are.”

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

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

Seokjin hesitated, then nodded.

He stepped over the threshold.

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

A Palace Hall, Centuries Ago

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

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

The people were chanting his name.

Not the King’s.

His.

Seokjin’s.

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

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

Joong-Heon.

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

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

The king’s fingers curled on the armrest.

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

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

His love.

But the boy looked away.

And Joong-Heon smiled wider.

Present Day

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

Hoseok was kneeling now, crouched in front of him.

“Jin—?”

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

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

Hoseok frowned, still holding onto his arm.

“Who?”

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

He looked into Hoseok’s eyes, haunted.

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

Hoseok’s silence was answer enough.

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

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

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

And revenge.

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

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

But tonight, the dream had unsettled him.

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

Hoseok followed without asking.

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

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

A covered frame.

He drew back the silk cloth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I had a dream,” he whispered.

Jin turned.

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

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

Kim Sun.

Jin looked at him, eyes flickering with something unreadable.

“She was killed because of me.”

Neither of them spoke for a long time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then he found it.

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

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

The names made his blood ice over.

Wang Yeo.

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

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

His hands began to shake.

A final line shimmered at the bottom of the record.

Current Reincarnation: Ji Eun-Tuk

He dropped the book.

“No,” he whispered. “It can’t be…”

But it was.

Eun-Tuk was Kim Sun.

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

His mind spun. Everything was unraveling.

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

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

Seokjin.

Hoseok pressed a trembling hand to the page again.

Wang Yeo.

The boy king.

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