Rheon The Softest Flame
Rheon
The Softest Flame
The ruins had fallen quiet. No more alarms. No more magic surging through the halls. Just the crackle of distant flames and the faint whisper of rain pattering through shattered skylights above.
I sat beside Seori in the chamber’s corner, watching her chest rise and fall steadily. She was stable. She’d live. And for the first time since all this began… I allowed myself to breathe.
But Jisoo hadn’t moved from the far edge of the altar room — not since he carried Minji there like something precious and broken. The golden glow of his mark still shimmered faintly beneath his open shirt, but his expression was unreadable.
He was usually so loud. So irreverent.
Now?
He was as quiet as death.
Minji lay in his lap, her head nestled against his thigh. He’d removed her jacket, rolled up her bloodied shirt, and was carefully cleaning the deep gash across her ribs with a soft cloth.
It was reverent, the way his fingers moved — like he was terrified he might hurt her more. Like she was something sacred.
She stirred.
“Easy,” he whispered, voice low and raw. “Don’t move. You’re safe now.”
She winced but didn’t pull away. “You killed them.”
“I should’ve done it sooner.”
He pressed the warm cloth to her side again and hissed softly as if the pain were his, not hers.
“Why?” she asked, voice barely above a breath. “Why do I feel this way around you?”
He swallowed hard, jaw tight. His hand hovered near her ribs, uncertain — and then slowly settled.
“Because you’re mine,” he whispered. “And I’m yours. Even if I never deserved you.”
Her breath caught. My chest tightened.
I’d never seen Jisoo like this. Not once in all our centuries together. Not even when his wings were stripped and the heavens cast him out. That pain didn’t compare to this… whatever this was blooming between them now.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me,” he added, softer this time. “But I’ll be terrified of losing you.”
Minji raised a trembling hand and touched his cheek.
“You’re not what I thought,” she said.
He leaned into her palm, eyes fluttering shut.
“I’m not what I thought either,” he murmured.
The bond between them pulsed — soft, golden, like a candle lit in a room full of ghosts. And I knew.
He’d burn for her.
And if anyone tried to take her again — he’d burn the world.
Not all flames consume. Some heal. Some guide.
And some, like Jisoo’s — when finally claimed — become the light a soul never knew it needed.
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The night after the rescue felt too still. Too quiet.
The three of them — Seori, Minji, and Yuna — were finally safe, resting in the abandoned fae temple we’d turned into a sanctuary.
But peace wasn’t peace when your soul was screaming.
And Taeyang’s soul… was on fire.
He stood just outside the archway, shoulders tense, knuckles white around the hilt of his sword. The crescent moon bathed him in cold light, but the heat rippling off his skin came from within — a war not fought with weapons, but with identity. With destiny.
With desire.
He hadn’t looked at Yuna once since we’d escaped.
But I knew better.
“She’s not mine,” he rasped as I stepped up beside him. “She can’t be mine.”
“You can lie to yourself all you want,” I said quietly, “but you can’t lie to the mark.”
His hand pressed flat against his chest, where the faint glow had reappeared again — the bond flaring when she smiled in her sleep. When she called his name. When she touched his arm without even realizing what it did to him.
“I’m a berserker, Rheon,” he hissed. “You know what that means. What I was made for.”
“Destruction,” I said. “And yet… look at how gently you carried her.”
That made him flinch.
“She’s fae,” he ground out.
“And Seori’s a demon hunter,” I replied. “And Minji was raised by the very people who tortured Jisoo.”
He turned away.
“You think the bond cares what you hate?” I whispered. “It wasn’t made to be easy. It was made to break you. And then make you whole.”
Still silence.
Until—
Yuna stepped into the archway, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Her hair was down, messy and soft in the moonlight. She was wearing one of Seori’s oversized jackets, drowning in it, her steps unsure but steady.
“Taeyang?” she asked softly.
And that was the moment. He looked at her. Really looked at her. And fell to his knees.
Not because he was weak. But because his body couldn’t carry the weight anymore. The denial. The rage. The desperate yearning that had been eating him from the inside out.
His hands trembled.
And then… he bowed his head.
“Fate is cruel,” he whispered. “But you… you make it seem like it is worth the pain.”
Yuna blinked, surprised. Her breath caught.
“What are you saying?”
He lifted his eyes — stormy, desperate, reverent.
“I think you were always mine,” he said. “I just didn’t want to believe I could be yours.”
Some warriors shatter when touched by love. Others kneel — not in surrender, but in awe. And in that moment, Taeyang realized he may not be able to fight this anymore. So, he felt lost for once in his entire existence.