“Hopeless? Or finally on your level?”
Minji smiled softly.
“Maybe we were all destined to fall for monsters.”
Rheon
Echoes of the past
The air in the safehouse was thick with smoke and tension. We had gone silent hours ago. Only the occasional hiss of Jisoo’s blade sharpening, the creak of Taeyang’s knuckles as he clenched his fists, filled the space between our thoughts. And all those thoughts led back to one thing.
Her.
Seori.
The hunter who should’ve killed me. The woman with a soul wrapped in fire and restraint. The one who made my markburn.
“You’re doing it again,” Jisoo said, voice flat.
“Doing what?” I asked, eyes still fixed on the city lights beyond the shattered window.
“Staring into the void like it’s going to give you permission to fall for her.”
“I’m not falling—”
“Rheon,” Taeyang interrupted. “Last time you said that, she died.”
That shut the room up. I turned. Slowly.
“She is not her,” I said, carefully. “And this time… I won’t lose control.”
“You already have,” Jisoo said. “I saw your face when she kissed you in that shrine. Like you’d finally found something worth dying for.”
“Or killing for,” Taeyang muttered. “That mark glows when she’s near. We’ve seen it. I felt it. She's yours. But are you ready to pay the price again?”
I didn’t answer right away. My throat was a tomb for old names. My heart, a battlefield of ghosts.
But still I said,
“She’s not a replacement. She's fate. I’ve waited six hundred years to feel again, and I won’t let the Guild take her from me.”
Jisoo grunted.
“Then you better be ready to burn everything.”
Taeyang rolled his neck, leaning against the wall.
“I already sharpened the blades.”
Jisoo smirked.
“That other girl though. Minji. The quiet one.”
“You noticed her,” I said dryly.
“She noticed me first,” he replied, smug. “Eyes like secrets. I like secrets.”
Taeyang scoffed.
