Seori Eyes That Burn
Seori
Eyes That Burn
The air still smells like smoke and salt. The Guild hall is ash and ruin now, patched by hurried wards and nervous apprentices pretending everything is under control. But I can feel it. The crack under the surface. The unease crawling beneath our skin.
They’re shaken. We all are. Especially me. I keep hearing the girl’s scream.
Keep seeing him — Rheon — throwing himself into fire for a child who would’ve slit his throat if she’d known what he was.
No demon should have done that.
But he did. And that’s what haunts me.
I slip outside into the courtyard long past curfew. The shrine candles are snuffed. Fog curls low across the stone floor like something alive.
And then I feel it — a ripple through the air. Not magic. Something worse.
Fallen grace.
Jisoo.
I turn slowly. He’s leaning against the stone gate like he’s been waiting all night.
Dark suit. Messy hair. Wings long gone, but the echo of them still radiates from him like static. He’s beautiful in that dangerous, untouchable way — the kind of pretty that makes you forget your guard until it’s too late.
He claps slowly. Mocking. Soft.
“Congratulations, Hunter,” he purrs. “You made him bleed and blush in the same week.”
I don’t answer. My hand finds the dagger hidden in my sleeve. He lifts his hands in mock surrender.
“Relax. I’m not here to hurt you. If I wanted that…” — he tilts his head — “you’d already be screaming.”
“You were part of the raid,” I say.
He nods, unapologetic.
“And I’d do it again.”
“Why?”
Jisoo steps closer, boots echoing on stone. His eyes burn gold, like dying suns.
“Because that man you chained? He’s not just my prince. He’s the last thing holding the bloodlines together.”
I blink.
“What does that mean?”
He leans in, voice low.
“It means your little Guild has no idea what they’re poking with their holy sticks. And neither do you.”
I narrow my eyes.
“He saved a child. Why?”
Jisoo smirks, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Because he remembers what it means to lose something precious.”
My throat tightens. I don’t know why that hits me so hard. Jisoo takes one last step forward, and suddenly, I can feel his aura curl around me like velvet blades. Not threatening — not exactly. But heavy. Immense. Ancient.
“You think you’re resisting him, but you’re not. The bond already knows. It’s pulling you toward him because you belong to him.”
I shake my head.
“No,” I say. “I’m not his.”
He smiles. Slowly. Cruelly.
“Then why do you keep looking for him in the fire?”
He leans in close, breath brushing my cheek.
“You can fight it all you want, Seori. But here’s the truth—”
“When he falls, you’ll fall with him.”
He turns, coat swirling, and walks into the fog without another word. I stand alone under the dying moon, heart hammering, unsure if I want to scream or sob.
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Sleep doesn’t come easily. Not after Jisoo’s warning. Not after Rheon’s mercy. I lie on my side, the apartment silent around me, my fingers tracing the place where the mark glows faintly beneath my skin. It’s quiet now. Dormant.
But it feels awake.
Like it’s waiting. When sleep finally takes me, it doesn’t come gently. I’m five. Maybe six. Too small to carry the blade strapped to my back. Too wild to know fear.
I’m standing in the middle of the old shrine. The one beneath the Guild’s training grounds — the one no one speaks of anymore. Red banners sway in stale wind. Lanterns burn with cold flame.
And she’s there.
My adoptive mother.
Only… not really her.
Not the way I remember. This version of her is younger. Her hair spills down her back in waves, glowing like starlight. She’s dressed in ceremonial black. Her eyes shine with something fierce and unknowable.
She’s holding a bowl of blood.
There’s chanting in the background — low, guttural, in a language I don’t recognize but understand.
I step forward. I shouldn’t, but I do.
“Who are you?” I whisper.
She looks up. Smiles like the moon bleeding red.
“You are more than you think, she made us promise to protect you.”
The dream shifts. I’m kneeling in a ring of fire. The same fire from the raid — the one Rheon carried the child through. Only this time, I’m not afraid.
The flames don’t burn me. They curl around my fingers like threads. And in the center of the circle stands a man cloaked in shadow — tall, impossibly still, with wings of smoke and eyes like void.
He reaches out, palm marked with a spiral — the same one that glows on Rheon’s chest.
“You are ours,” he says, voice echoing like wind in tombs. “Sealed in fire. Claimed in blood. Bound by fate.”
“You carry his spark.”
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I jolt awake, gasping, drenched in sweat. The room is dark. The mark under my collarbone is searing — not from the outside… but the inside.
Burning. Remembering. I don’t know what that was.
A vision? A memory? A curse?
But something inside me whispers the truth.
The Guild didn’t raise me. They hid me.
And now that the bond is waking…
so am I.