“No.” My hand flew up. “You didn’t do this for me, Jisoo. You did this for yourself.”
His brows furrowed, wounded.
“I did it to protect—”
“You lied. Youheld Taeyang down. You did nothing while the demon king’s fire swallowed the only person who’s ever truly seen me. And now you want to, what? Say you did it forme?”
He stepped forward and I slapped him.
The crack of it echoed louder than his betrayal.
He flinched, not from the pain—but from the truth in my touch. I saw it. The same way I saw the flicker of red in his eyes—the demon side he kept buried trembling beneath the guilt.
“You don’t get to decide what sacrifices I’m worth,” I said, voice breaking. “You broke me. You broke her. And now you want to wear the weight of it like some noble martyr? You don’t get that.”
The silence between us was suffocating.
“I thought…” he whispered. “I thought you were my redemption.”
“I was never yours to redeem,” I said, turning away before he could see the tears burning down my cheeks.
“And you were never mine to trust.”
Jisoo
The ruin I made
Her slap still echoed in my skull long after she walked away.
Not because of the pain. I’d survived blades through the heart, had my wings torn off by the ones who once called me brother. Pain was nothing new to me.
But Minji’s pain? Herdisappointment? That tore deeper than anything I’d ever bled for.
I stood frozen in place, staring at the space where she’d just been, her voice still slicing through me like a cursed dagger.
“You don’t get to decide what sacrifices I’m worth.”
Gods.
I told myself I’d done the right thing. That if they had hurt her—if they had taken her instead of Seori—I wouldn’t have survived it. I acted. Ichose.
And in doing so, I became the very thing she had never feared until now: a traitor.
My fingers trembled as I touched the mark beneath my shirt. It still burned. Still pulsed in time with hers. As if the bond was mocking me. Reminding me that fate didn’t care if I was ready.
I wasn’t.
I never wanted this.
Not her. Not the mark. Not the part of me that craved her like salvation and damnation all at once.
And yet… I’d chosen her. In the worst way. Not by protecting her honorably. But by letting another girl—her friend—be taken in her place. A girl she loved like a sister. A girl I, too, should’ve protected.
I clenched my fists, the shadows curling around my feet like they sensed the storm building in my chest.
Minji had every right to hate me.
Because I hated me.
