once there was a young girl
who feared she was going insane
nightmares beset her sleep
violent thoughts consumed her mind
and black birds watched her from the trees

one day the girl saw an old woman
and the woman looked back
and the two knew
they had known each other
longer than time itself

they fought with hands, nails and teeth
perished as one under burning skies
in pools of blood
with blossoming skin
skin like gossamer
and earth welcomed their bodies
back into her embrace
while life and death
continued on
evermore

──

All Minho can see is black. It isn't the darkness behind his eyelids or the darkness in a room without light — it's a void. An abyss. Nothing. He's surrounded by nothing. Trying to move is an infinite weight and a thousand-year journey. There are words screaming in his ears, clawing through his skin, burrowing into his bones.

For just a second, there's a flash of light. He struggles toward it, trying to move without a body, trying to see without eyes. The shape is a figure. A human made of light, like the one in his dreams. The presence is palpable, emanating — so strong, so there, a force like ice-cold wind.

Please, he hears himself say, his voice echoing in the Dark — help me.

Maybe he's falling or maybe he's hit the ground. The Dark stretches and folds and flows, consumes and crushes and rebuilds. His cells are all wrong, his cells have changed. They've seen creation and evolution and apocalypse, abided by animal flesh and morning condensation and unknowable dark matter.

He falls upside-down, through the ground and lands on his hands and knees, and his body is suddenly real again, all his edges inward. He pulls air down his throat, filling his spasming lungs. There's dirt in his mouth. His eyes are blurred. His heart is racing. For a moment he thinks he's having a heart attack. Then he thinks he's drowning. Drowning on air. It feels like acid.

A sound — a screech. He flinches hard, clutching his head in his hands. An oil-black crow is there before him, staring at him. Calm, curious, inches from his face. It settles back, bowing its head as if in reverence.

Minho reels backward, pushing himself away with his feet. There are crows everywhere. Mice and deer and beetles too. His back hits something hard — a tree, half-fallen, sloping away from him, bark gnarled and sickly grey. The whole forest is on a slant, as if an explosion hit it from the centre outward. The tree canopy is a perfect frame for the ring of fire in the night sky. A solar eclipse.

A shout brings him back to earth. There's a body on the other side of the surging creek, a halo of light surrounding it. The figure from the Dark. The one from his dreams.

Jisung.

He's coughing, laying in a bed of moss, ferns and budding flowers. The forest floor has come alive around him, radiating divine light.

Minho says his name without thinking. Jisung slowly raises his head, takes in the animals and the roiling creek and fiery eclipse. His eyes meet Minho's. So much passes between them, all questions, no answers.

And then something else. Jisung's eyes change.

He staggers to his feet and moves toward Minho. The animals clear a path for him. He walks straight into the creek, through the angry waist-high water. Minho is crawling toward him too, standing on shaky knees. He has a thousand words on his tongue but all that comes out is an "Are you okay?" His own voice sounds so faraway. "Jisung, are you okay?"

Jisung climbs the bank, stands in front of Minho, and lifts his hands, placing them carefully on Minho's neck.

Jisung tries to strangle him.

Minho grabs his wrists, faltering back onto the ground. Jisung straddles him, hands squeezing tighter and tighter and tighter. Minho shouts his name, fighting for air, staring into his eyes. All he sees is hate. Hot, seething hate.

What is he thinking? What the fuck is happening?

Minho's heart boils up his throat, his pulse thrums out his ears. And slowly, he begins to understand. The poems.

A prison of reincarnation / a new shell every generation / as far as time pushed on

This is the cycle. This is Death and Life after the Balance was shattered. This is the curse.

Across decades and centuries and millennia... the feeling of his violent hands is all too familiar.

Minho rakes his hand desperately across the ground, grabs the first thing he touches and slams it into the side of Jisung's head. He pitches over and lands on his back, clutching his head in his hands.

Minho is frozen, panting, staring at the sky. He has a stone in his hand.

He jolts up, leans over Jisung, tries to touch him, but Jisung shoves him away, pushing himself back. His eyes have changed again. No more hatred, only shock, panic, fear.

"I'm... sorry," Minho murmurs. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to hit you. I-I don't know what the fuck just happened."

Jisung squeezes his eyes closed, grabbing at his chest. He's dirty and soaked and panting. "I... I almost... oh god, I'm so sorry."

He folds in on himself. The ground has slowly started to blossom beneath him. It's beautiful.

When Minho touches his finger to a flower, it shrivels and dies. His breath catches.

"This isn't real," he whispers. "This isn't real... the dark place, the words..."

"You heard them too?"

They look at each other. The air feels alive with electricity. Like a bolt of lightning is living inside the forest, inside them.

"The dreams you were talking about," Jisung asks quietly.

Minho just nods.

"How long?"

"Months, every night. I feel a... presence. A person made of light. I think that person is you."

No, he knows it's Jisung. It's been him all along. The knowing is seeping into Minho's every cell, each dream he never remembered, each question with no answer. All of it is so clear now.

Even before they met, they were connected.

Minho's house feels heavy, suffocating. Dead. Jisung's is thriving, blooming, like life itself is coursing through it. Hara shrinks from Minho, reaches out to Jisung. Flowers grow under Jisung's body, responding to his every movement. The ground is dead beneath Minho, brittle leaves, cracked ground, like the remnants of a wildfire.

They are opposites. Antithetical. Irreconcilable.

They are going to destroy each other.

All because... Minho wasn't strong enough to destroy him the first time.

Minho's hand tightens around the stone. His heart is beating faster.

"Minho...?"

Minho braces at the sound of Jisung's voice. He's about to do something bad. The control is draining from his body.

He stares into the woods, trying to let go of the stone. Let go of the stone.

"Please," he murmurs. "Run."

There's a pause in the wind. It takes everything in Minho not to look up, not to meet Jisung's eyes. See if he's scared. Hurt. Angry. Shaking with rage. About to attack Minho again. Hands around his throat, hate in his eyes.

But when Minho looks up, Jisung is gone, running through the trees, a trail of budding flowers in his path.

—

Minho wanders through the forest toward his house, walking outside his body. The sun is free again, but its light is a pall over the house, deceptive, crushing. The rose garden is empty. If Minho didn't know better, he might be able to convince himself the whole party was a dream. The only sign of life are the champagne flutes sitting idle on the flower beds.

Inside the house, he can hear the cooks in the kitchen, the TV chattering, Hara crying in the nursery. He walks quickly to his room and closes the door behind him. He's going to avoid his family for as long as he can manage. The garden party was anything but a dream, and soon he realizes what happened in the forest wasn't a dream either. His neck is covered in fresh bruises.

So this is the mark Jisung leaves him with.

He rakes his hands through his hair. Jesus Christ. Even after what happened, the violence, the fear — his lips linger. Minho can't reconcile the two. He wants to hold him but he has to hate him. He wishes the fog in his mind would clear. He wishes he weren't thinking about blood. Jisung's blood. Am I going insane?

There's a quiet knock on the door. Minho runs across the room, yanks a scarf out of his dresser and wraps it around his neck. The door opens and Sooyun peeks in.

"Can we talk?" she says.

He's jumpy, like she'll be able to read the thoughts on his face. "Yeah, fine."

She closes the door and sits on his bed. She looks scruffy and slightly drunk. Minho is sure she was running damage control all afternoon. He's about to start apologizing, but Sooyun interrupts.

"Minho, I'm so sorry," she says. "I should have stuck up for you and your... friend. Jisung, I mean. I was just... Father and I are at a good place in our relationship, he's giving me more responsibilities and I didn't want to jeopardize that. I should've said something. I'm sorry."

Minho swallows back something spiky in his throat. "It's fine. I know what it's like, to feel powerless."

"You've always taken the brunt of it — of him. And I just, I clam up. I never protect you. I'm such a failure. I'm a shitty sister."

She hangs her head, sniffling. Her eyes are red. Minho squints at her.

"Are you crying right now?"

She scoffs. "No. I drank, like, seven mint Schnapps before I got here." She empties her pockets, dropping little opaque bottles on his bed. "Want one?"

He really does. He sits next to her and downs a bottle.

"God, that's disgusting." He cracks open a second. "We don't have to talk about this ever again, okay?"

"Okay, good." She pokes her elbow into his side. "So. What'd you and Jisung get up to after the party?"

Minho tries not to let it show, how hearing that name makes his chest tighten and the alcohol simmer in his stomach. "Nothing. We talked. Then he left." He knocks back another bottle. "What happened at the party?"

"Uncomfortable small talk. Polite ignorance. Father's angry, but I doubt he'll acknowledge it unless you do. Mother cried in my arms." She scrubs her face. "Total shitshow. It was supposed to be sunny today — maybe the eclipse was a sign."

"You saw that too?"

"Yeah. The party never should've happened."

"Yeah... maybe not."

She just shakes her head for a moment before saying, "Hara's sick. Came on quick — fever, cough, puke everywhere. The colic is getting worse. I don't know. It's freaking me out a little bit."

Minho shuts his eyes tight, guilt washing over him. What happened in the forest... maybe she felt it too. He can't believe he's at fault for her constant pain. He's been poisoning her without even knowing it. He had no say in it. His body has been possessed by the fucking essence of death, and his family are the ones who have to pay for it.

When he opens his eyes, looks down at his hands, the little glass bottle is warped between his fingers.