We were all just... children that aged too fast.

            We were fools in play.

            We thought we were unstoppable, but we were not.

            I dragged an injured Baekhyun through the thick snow. He had been unconscious for far too long. He kept on writhing in pain, and his whole face was an undesirable blue black color. Ara must have had caused it somehow. This meant that her touch was just as poisonous as mine. I glanced at Baekhyun again. There was nothing I could do to help him at the moment.

            Our entire hideout had collapsed from the Water Dragon's anger. The walls came cracking down in a flash, and it took me a good beating before I realized that I should run away instead of trying to fix everything. This place was no good anymore. Too many had known and it was time to move out. I couldn't be any more glad to do so, because frankly, living in an isolated waterfall was starting to bore me a little.

            "Baekhyun?" I gently took him in my arms and patted his cheeks with utmost care. He was sweating crazily even when we were in the middle of a snowing mountain. He had high fever, and my hand was burning like fire when I touched his forehead. If I didn't help him soon, he would die. If I did help him, we would both collapse in the human world. I decided the risk was worth the pain and carried him by the shoulder like a rack doll. He was very light, despite his bulky muscle.

            I started running like my own life was depended on the speed of my feet. Not long after, I saw a glimpse of a small village nearby. Good. Any place with any human would do. I ran faster, and almost knocked onto the thin, wooden frame of the village's statue. I put Baekhyun down, and dragged him to one of the houses. There seemed to be a gathering because the house was lit up with bright lights whereas the others were not. This meant that the entire villagers must be there, and things were bound to get messy, one way or another.

            Before I proceeded to knock on the door, I tore the clothes I wore and sliced my own skin. The smell of blood was ever as sweet when I smeared it onto my face. I my lips in anticipation and knocked on the door.

            “Who is that?” A gruff voice asked from the inside. The chatters had died down. I could sense the tension inside the room, even before they opened the door. Then, came a shout of warning, “Yoon-ah, don't open it!”

            I frowned. This village wasn't used to strangers. They were right in that. But I wasn't about to give up so easily.

            “He...lp,” I fell down onto the floor and grabbed my own throat. I clung onto the knob and weakly banged onto it. Would they buy this pitiful act? I didn't know. But I still had to try. If they didn't open the door, I would forcefully do it, and that wouldn't end pretty, either. With the weakest voice I could muster, I yelled again, “Help, please!”

            “Someone is asking for help! How can we ignore this?!” The person speaking was close to the door, so I assumed this was that someone named Yoon. She grabbed the knob and unlocked the door. When she finally had the door open, I looked up and saw an elderly woman with the kindest eyes I had ever seen. I almost vomited. I felt guilt rising up. I grabbed onto her feet and tearily said, 

            “Please help my boyfriend, please. We got lost in the mountain for days without food supply. He... he...” I barely whispered the last part as I was choking on every words that I said. Yoon, the Elderly eyed me like she knew something, but said nothing. She patted my head gently and I froze at the sudden kind gesture. I wasn't used to this kindness. I hated it.

            “Jaejin, bring her in! Someone help the boy!”

            When Yoon instructed, everyone listened, but that didn't mean that they were less suspecting of us. Two women came for my aid and lifted me up. My wounds had completely closed up. No scratches whatsoever. If they found out about this... I grimaced at the thought.

            When I heard Baekhyun yelled out in pain, I knew time was running out. I jumped out of their strong arms and knocked them down instantly with a single touch on their necks. The women fell down onto the floor and I caught them and threw them to the side, as gently as I could.

            I wanted to do this quietly, but time gave me no choice. There were thirty and more villagers, all screaming and running around. This was fine, too. They'd better run before I caught onto them. I put my hands over Baekhyun's face and felt excruciating pain of the dark magic being transferred from his body to mine. I had never done this before, but I ran to the closest person and grabbed his neck. I breathed in and out to control my ability. Then it happened.

            The person's neck turned dark that instant, while Baekhyun's body turned back to its normal pale color. The poison had been transferred into another being. Baekhyun wouldn't die anymore. He would open his eyes any moment now. I breathed in relief. And fell onto the floor, collapsing. My ability had started to take its tool on me.

            My ability was deemed the rarest in the Shadow world, and few had it before me. Now I was the only person with a stealing ability, a dangerous type feared across the world, because once I had the ability stolen, it wouldn't return unless I wanted to. But every time I did it, my body would fall into unconsciousness, and my mind dancing in fire. These were the consequences for defying nature's law.

            Baekhyun was the only one I could depend on right now...

            If he didn't wake up, I'd be ashamed of dying in the hands of mere human. And I would come back to haunt him for the rest of my life.

***

                  Slap.

            The sound echoed through the room. Baekhyun formed a fist that his nails hurt his palm and it bled. Another slap, another heart break. And I took all the beatings in because I deserved this.

            “You could have died!” Jinki angrily yelled. I gulped down the saliva forming in my mouth and I swore it had never been any more bitter than this. Tears stung my eyes, but I wouldn't let them fall. Guilt had overridden the fear and pain in my heart that I no longer saw black and white of what I had done. I almost died, indeed.

            If it weren't for Baekhyun...

            “You could have died for this Halfling!” Jinki shouted. I silently nodded. “You still do not understand the value of your existence, do you?!” I did. But maybe that was not enough. “The Blood Ritual is in two days, and we haven't found his body yet. If this continues, we are going to have to wait for another thousand year, and by the time the Blood Moon comes again, the Demon Clan will be no more!”

            We were still in the small village in the middle of nowhere, but there were bodies everywhere; courtesy of Baekhyun and a very angry Jinki. No one lived and survived through the massacre. All because I had to save the half-werewolf, half-Demon lover of mine. I didn't think through and just rushed for it. I swallowed another painful gulp and kept my eyes closed so that no one would see my tears. I hadn't cried for fifty years. Now wasn't time to start again.

            “Answer me!”

            “I apologize,” I whispered, too weak to be heard. I almost sobbed, almost, almost threw a tantrum that I did make a mistake and so what? Everybody did. They had to tolerate me. But instead, I looked down at the floor with so much intensity and spoke again, much harsher and louder, “I made a mistake.”

            “She did it to save me. Beat me, not her,” Baekhyun grabbed Jinki's hand before he could hit me again and stared up at him. As much as I appreciated his gesture to stand up for me, the three of us knew it was useless. When Jinki was angry, everything was wrong. And he nagged and whined and yelled at everything.

            “You think I won't beat you after I beat her?!” Jinki threw Baekhyun off the wall. He wasn't as muscular as Baekhyun but he was much stronger. And Jinki wasn't even in his Demon form yet.

            “You,” Jinki pointed at me and I froze. “Do you know what I do to bad children who never listens?”

            I nodded. Jinki knew he couldn't do anything to change what happened before, but he could prevent things from happening again. And this was the worst part of Jinki's punishment. He looked over to Baekhyun, who was groaning from the recovery. I didn't like the careful glint in Jinki's eyes.

***

            “So, where are we going? The entire hideout has collapsed. The prisoners are probably dead. How can we get a vampire and a werewolf in two days?”

            Jinki clicked his tongue, clearly annoyed. It had been both Baekhyun's and my fault. But at least we got Ara and Kyungsoo's blood. Now that we lost the prisoners we had to find another before the full moon. And it couldn't be just any Shadow creatures, it had to be a pure blood with a direct descendant to the clan leader.

            “We kidnap more,” Jinki replied with a grim expression. He wasn't angry anymore, though the after-taste still was not pretty. The three of us were walking together through the snow after burying the village into one thick pile of snow grave. That was the least we could do to respect the dead. Though we might be antagonistic in nature, but we did not hold grudge towards the departing souls in the Underworld. Only the livings deserved it.

            You would probably asked, why? Weren't the dead once alive? Why did we give them respect when they were dead and not when they were alive?

            The answer lied in the history.

            Unfortunately, not a lot of books recorded the darkest moment of the Shadow world. And not a lot of Elders were alive long enough to tell the stories of the Untold. This was an old tale only remembered by those who had lost and mourned. Like Jinki, he'd lived through the Dark Age and battled through constant wars of the living and the unrest. He had lost two of his dearest friends during that time; our clan Leader and his beloved wife.

            Most of the Shadow creatures believed that our Clan leader, the greatest warrior of time, was dead. They thought he killed himself after the death of his wife. Only the Demons knew the truth. As much as he had loved Joo Ri, she wasn't his mate. He tried before, but his effort was fruitless. She was his, but he was meant for another. And when she died, he had his heart broken for the very first time. He couldn't handle the pain, and fell into a deep slumber until the time was right.

            To many, our Leader was a living nightmare. The monsters I saw in the books were nothing compared to him. Legend said he stood a battle and killed a thousand with his bare hands. It might seem like a mere numbers to you, but in the Shadow world, that number was huge. No one had heard of a being so deadly that the sound of his name became forbidden to be spoken of. His pictures were banished. His stories forgotten.

            He sounded bad, didn't he? That we shouldn't wake him up if he would create chaos in this God-damned-world. But that was how the story recorded him. That was how the book described this monster that shouldn't have lived. Jinki had another version of the story, of which he told me during one of the many nights we spent in hiding and running away from enemies.

            “What are you thinking of?” Jinki asked. He sounded tired. He didn't look so well these few days. As was I. Maybe the nervousness and anxiety had taken hold of our conscience. Two more days, and everything would end. I had worked on this for nearly half a century. Jinki had been waiting for a thousand years. It was all or nothing.

            “Just...” I smiled at him. My heart and mind was battling each other, and I was sure I would get a terrible headache soon. “Stories of the past...” 

            In 1012, Seo Joo Ri was brutally murdered by a group of assassins.

            They were trained murderers, highly skilled and very secretive. No one knew about them until the night of Joo Ri's murder. The case remained unsolved for those who knew. But Jinki managed to find out after a long time searching for the responsible parties of this unjust murder. Joo Ri had done nothing wrong. The only mistake she had was falling in love with our Leader. Love shouldn't be a mistake, Jinki once said. Her love for him became a double-sided knife that ended up in her own death. And his.

            These assassins were formed by the union of the other three major clans; the Faery, the werewolf and the vampire. According to Jinki, our clan had grown too strong that sooner or later, we would be the only clan that ruled over all others. Knowing that it was impossible to kill the Great Demon himself, they sent the assassins to his wife, knowing that his love for her would kill him.

            Shadow creatures said we were the antagonist in this long-winded story.

            If what they meant by antagonistic was to have our revenge for the unjust murder happened too long ago to be remembered, then that was what we would grow to be. To be the vilest of all anti-heroes. I was fine with getting my hand dirty for this. My clan would raise to glory once again. And he would have his sweet revenge, all in time.

            After all, we were Demons. Not one book had recorded us as good beings. What more could we do to be worse. We were already in the bottom. Might as well try to climb up and see the light.