Rheon
I won't break you
I saw her lips move.
"I love you. Now break me."
No.
No.
The mark on my chest flared, searing so violently I tasted iron. The bond burned like a brand beneath my ribs — rage, sorrow, desperation all crashing together into something primal. She was still chanting, still completing the ritual. She was going to die to save me.
Not like this.
Not like this.
My shadows erupted before I even realized I had summoned them, twisting like wrath-born flame through the battlefield. I pushed forward, slicing through the first demon in my path with my bare hands. His scream was an afterthought — a flicker of noise lost beneath the roar of my fury.
“GET OUT OF MY WAY!” I roared.
Jisoo was beside me in an instant, his blade drawn, wings unfurled.
“We’ve got you, brother.”
Taeyang followed — blood on his fists, his eyes ablaze with something more than war. He was no longer holding back. None of us were.
“She’s still up there,” I said, gasping. “She’s still… trying to finish it.”
“I know,” Taeyang growled. “Then let’s cut them all down.”
They came at us like a wave — demon soldiers, corrupted and feral, some of them even I recognized from the courts I once walked. But I didn’t care. Every one of them was between me and the only thing that mattered.
Seori.
The crown on her head glowed with a light too holy for this wretched realm. She was glowing. Sacred. Untouchable.
Mine.
“You’re not dying for me,” I snarled under my breath, ripping through another enemy. “You’re not.”
I reached the stairs to the obsidian dais, my lungs burning, my body screaming — but I didn’t stop. The bond pulsed louder now, louder than any war cry.
Behind me, Minji and Yuna were protecting the gate. Jisoo and Taeyang were taking wounds for me — bleeding for me — and I didn’t even look back. I couldn’t.
Because she was there.
She turned — and her eyes…
Gods, her eyes.
They held nothing but love.
And goodbye.
“No,” I gasped, stumbling up the final steps. “No, don’t do this.”
I was almost there. Just a few feet.
But I could already feel it in the magic laced in the air — the final line of the ritual forming.
She was giving everything. And I wouldn’t let her.
I was just steps away.
So close I could hear her breath catching between each word of the incantation. So close I could reach her, pull her away from this madness, break the circle of light searing into the platform.
Then he appeared — stepping from the shadows like a nightmare pulled from my blood.
The Demon King.
My father.
His armor shimmered obsidian-black, runes glowing faintly across his shoulders and gauntlets like they pulsed with the breath of death itself. His gaze locked onto mine, that same twisted grin playing at the corners of his cruel mouth.
“So predictable,” he murmured. “Just like your mother.”
I stopped cold. My shadows surged behind me, curling with rage.
“Move,” I growled.
He didn’t.
“She has to finish it, boy,” he said, voice lined with centuries of command. “You should be thanking me. I’m giving you the chance to live. Immortal. Uncursed. Free.”
“I don’t want your freedom if it means losing her.”
His smile faltered.
“I warned you once, didn’t I? That love was your weakness.”
My power flared at the word — love. Not a curse. Not a mistake. But my power.
I stepped forward.
“You burned her. You burned my mother for choosing humanity. And now you want me to do the same?”
“She was soft,” he spat. “Like this girl. But Seori is different. She's strong. The ritual will remake you both. She will bleed, yes—but the world will kneel.”
“She’s not a weapon.”
“She’s not yours.”
That was the last thing he said.
I lunged.
Our powers collided like colliding storms — shadow and flame, blood and bone. The entire palace trembled as I struck him across the jaw with a fist burning with the bond’s fury. He reeled, but laughed, wings of black flame unfurling from his back.
He struck me once — and I flew backward, crashing through the side of the dais.
"You're weak," he snarled, approaching. “Love has made you soft.”
I wiped the blood from my mouth and rose.
“No,” I growled. “Love has made me dangerous.”
I roared as I launched myself forward again, our fists and powers slamming into one another — each blow cracking the air like thunder. Behind him, I saw her — still chanting, but her eyes were wide now, tears running down her cheeks as she saw what I was doing.
Fighting him. My maker. My ruin.
Her hands trembled. I could feel it — her breaking. Not from the magic. But from watching me fall. I wouldn’t let her watch me fall.
Not today.
I struck my father with all the power I had — my shadows, my flame, my pain, my love.
And I screamed:
“You don’t get to take her!”