Baek’s anger spread through the barracks like rot; no one would speak for him. No one would risk becoming next.
??????
When night fell, and the barracks slept, Haneul dragged himself free—bones cracked, skin flayed, blood dried to fevered flesh. He wrapped the remnants of a robe around his body, cinched his braid with fingers shaking from cold and exhaustion, and crawled out into the night, every step a prayer to the mountain, to the moon, to anything that would hear him.
He chanted ancient poems with chattering teeth—
Longing for the empty mountain,
white snow mightfall upon the river.
Before the snow falls…
He scaled the mountain paths, nails blue with chill, boots lost to the climb, magic too spent to warm him. He left a trail of blood on old rocks, a myth’s footprints, unguarded and unclaimed.
At the Fire King’s walls, the guards never saw him. He was a shadow, a rumor, a story of the boy who would not die. He dragged himself up the stone wall, ice daggers in his fists, stubbornness the only thing keeping his heart from stuttering to a stop.
The fire hadn’t gone out in Seungho’s chamber for two nights. He sat shirtless in its glow, arms bandaged from sparring with captains too foolish to strike clean. His own bruises bloomed dark across his ribs. Pain was only noise; lately, he couldn’t hear anything but the silence left by Haneul’s absence.
Then—he felt it. Not magic. Not fire.
Presence.
He turned—slowly—and there Haneul was.
Not standing proud.
Not shining.
But crouched on the window sill like something carved from the bones of the moon, shivering violently, robes clinging to blood-slicked skin, braid half-untied, fingers white from clenching the ice daggers that brought him up the wall. Snow in his hair. Eyes—glowing. Just for a second, a flash of white-blue lightning under lids heavy with exhaustion.
He looked destroyed.
A desecrated godling in temple silks and bruises.
A holy child in open rebellion against the body that bore him.
A prince who came barefoot through pain and punishment to knock not on the door of his enemy—but on Seungho’s.
The king didn’t speak.
He crossed the room in silence, stood before him.
Neither moved. The fire crackled between them. Haneul’s blood dripped onto the floor. He swayed, blinking slow like a fox drugged on poison and winter.
Then the voice, hoarse and choked:
“Before the snow falls…”
A tremor racked his body. His foot slipped on the edge of the stone.
He crumpled.
Seungho caught him before his knees even touched the floor.
Haneul gasped at the contact—heat, arms, hands larger than his lifting him like a soaked robe, pressing his torn chest to bare muscle, scenting the air of fire and skin. Seungho’s breath hitched against his temple, cradling him closer, fever bright against his heart.
Seungho whispered it against Haneul’s cheek, low and quiet, a truth he would never dare speak aloud to anyone but this storm in his arms:
