--

23

--

Fifty years came and went. Seungho could feel the pressure of his age on him now, and he was a little bit nervous, wondering if fifty years was enough to train Myungsoo to do his job. He received a letter from Myungsoo about thirty years ago, accepting the position of apprentice to the High Mage.

And since then, Seungho had been detailing all of the requirements for the job, little tidbits of knowledge he’d picked up along the years, and some secrets that only the High Mage was supposed to know into a journal, a guide of sorts for Myungsoo to look over.

Past High Mages had the luxury of time, minus your father, but Seungho could feel time pressing on him, even if a hundred years left of living was an entire lifetime for normal humans.

A lifetime. Seungho got lost in his thoughts again, leaving his quill pressed to the page. He looked down and sighed at the growing ink blob on the page and frowned before pressing his finger to it and fixing it.

A lifetime for Seungho had so many memories, but it still felt incomplete. He shook his head, bringing his thoughts to the present. Right now, he didn’t have time to think about the past for the future. He had to concentrate on what was happening now.

--

You and Woohyun fell into a simple routine, one that you didn’t seem to bore you for some strange reason.

You would wake up in the evening, share some kisses and laughs with Woohyun before getting ready for the day. Woohyun would disappear somewhere while you had lessons with Seungho, and other times, he would stay with you.

Seungho would teach you various tricks in magic in the early night, simple things like how to put things where they belong, fixing mistakes in your writing, cleaning stains off of your clothes. It all seemed so trivial to you, but Seungho insisted that maybe it would save your life one day, making you roll your eyes at him.

Then you would have some free time, which you usually spent eating lunch with Woohyun or taking walks with him. He’d tell you about his life, his thoughts on places he’d traveled, and sometimes, you practiced what you learned earlier with him.

After lunch, it was back to training with Seungho. He’d exercise your combat skills, teaching you advanced footwork, how to dodge attacks, and training you to move faster, to attack with precision and accuracy, and to know when and how to escape a losing battle.

The trainees were stable enough to train on their own, so Byunghee spent time teaching you weaponry. You had a mean touch with swords, but you weren’t very good with projectile weapons since you had a hard time judging distance.

“I’d appreciate it if you don’t kill my trainees before they can reach their full potential,” Byunghee said as some of them ducked out of the way of a stray throwing knife. You rubbed the back of your head sheepishly as some of the trainees gave you a frightened look.

“We’ve been working on this for years. I don’t know how you can aim magic but not these.” Byunghee went to retrieve the knife and sighed dramatically.

“It’s just not my thing,” you said, frowning at the knives you were wearing.

“I know, I know. It’s a beautiful sight to see your swordplay.”

--

Myungsoo was progressing much further than anyone else at the knight’s den. He couldn’t train with the others anymore since he was almost twice as strong as they were, so Soohyun took him out at all hours of the day, since Myungsoo didn’t need to sleep anymore.

“Ideally, you were supposed to be this strong by the end of your training. We’re only halfway through,” Soohyun said as he watched Myungsoo eat. Over the years, Myungsoo bulked up a little bit.

He wasn’t as soft anymore, his body showing lean muscles where baby fat used to be. A small scar marred his face where he accidentally set a trap, and a small dark grazed his face. If Soohyun recalled correctly, it took half an hour for the paralysis to set in from the dart whereas it would normally take a few minutes.

His hands were calloused, rough. Soohyun commended Myungsoo on the amount of control and self-restraint he showed. Most of the other trainees were impatient, using brute force to get done whatever they had while Myungsoo was calculating, taking his time to explore his options. That wasn’t to say he didn’t have good instincts as well.

Soohyun started to wonder if Myungsoo was already reading minds like Seungho did.

One thing he hadn’t seen from Myungsoo in a while was a genuine smile. When the trainees bet amongst themselves, or heard the bets among the knights, Myungsoo would almost always come out on top, smirk on his face. Soohyun always saw a passive face, grins, smirks, but never a genuine smile.

“Myungsoo, are you happy?”

“As happy as someone can be knowing that they could be attacked at any moment, that anything can be a test, and knowing that my food could be poisoned,” Myungsoo said, raising an eyebrow at Soohyun before taking another bite of his food. That was the first thing he tested for when he sat down to eat.

“Just keeping you on your toes, that’s all. But really. Are you happy with this training?”

Myungsoo pursed his lips and swallowed his food before picking up his napkin to clean off his hands and wipe at his mouth. “I suppose. As happy as anyone can be.”

Soohyun nodded quietly, thinking of what else Myungsoo had left to do before he could complete his training.

“Myungsoo? Seunggi wants to see you. He says he’s found a way to remove the binding curse on you,” Eli said, sticking his head into the cafeteria.

Myungsoo his lips before shoving his plate away from him and getting up without another word. He brushed past Eli and made his way to Seunggi’s house. Eli raised an eyebrow before turning to Soohyun.

“Is he okay?”

“I don’t know.”

--

Myungsoo opened up the door to Seunggi’s house, hearing the familiar crash of something falling over and breaking.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. Just a tea cup,” Seunggi said as he flitted around the room, drawing something on the floor in magic of the front room around the chair of doom as everyone kindly referred. It pulsed an eerie blue, getting brighter as Seunggi added more characters.

“Gyuri did a good job of weaving this spell, but having hundreds of years worth of magical practice under my belt is certainly helpful. I just have to follow the curse and unravel it from end to the beginning.”

“This looks a bit dangerous,” Myungsoo said, flinching back when a spark of magic burst into the air. Seunggi chuckled and continued to write.

“Well. I never said this would be easy.”

“You always say it’ll be painful.”

“Nothing’s ever painless with me.”

“I had no idea,” Myungsoo said sarcastically, reaching up to place his hand over the eternity stone on his chest. Seunggi laughed again before finishing off the last of the characters.

“Alright. Hop on the chair, and let’s hope this works.”

Seunggi stepped out of the magical characters, careful not to smear anything. Myungsoo did the same as he took cautious steps towards the chair and sat down, bracing himself. The amount of pain he was going through was going to be worth it eventually. He was halfway done.

Seunggi closed his eyes and squatted down to press his hand to a spot in the middle of the magical characters and started to chant. Myungsoo immediately felt his body lock and squeezed his eyes shut.

Seunggi’s chanting got faster, and Myungsoo could feel like something was unraveling from his body, starting from his toes and working its way up. The room started to shake, more and more until Myungsoo was sure that the house was going to collapse. Seunggi’s voice echoed around him until suddenly, it was all gone, replaced by a white space.

Myungsoo’s eyes snapped open, and he was no longer sitting on the chair in Seunggi’s house. He was sitting on the porch of a small house. He looked around, and all he saw was empty land until he heard a cry coming from behind him, inside of the house.

Curious, he turned around and gently pushed the door open to see a woman holding a baby in her arms while the parents held each other with wide eyes.

“Our son? He’s...”

“He’s destined for greatness. He’ll either bring destruction to the land of the dead, or help protect it. He’ll destroy it if I don’t bind his powers now.”

“But... Will it hurt?” the mother asked, giving the woman a worried look. Myungsoo narrowed his eyes and stepped in closer. The baby was sleeping peacefully in the woman’s arms as he gazed down at him.

“No, it won’t. I promise it won’t hurt him.”

“If it’ll save the land... then please do as you must,” the father said, holding his wife. Myungsoo tired to get a look at the woman’s face, but she kept moving and rocking the baby in her arms as she started to sing something that sounded almost like a haunting lullaby.

Myungsoo watched as glowing blue lines started to wrap themselves in a pattern around the baby and narrowed his eyes.

It couldn’t be.

The baby woke up as the woman finished singing the song and started to cry. The woman brushed her hair out of her face before rocking the baby gently again.

“Don’t cry, Myungsoo. Don’t cry,” she said gently.

Myungsoo stared at her face and felt his heart drop.

Gyuri?

--

“Myungsoo!”

Myungsoo’s eyes snapped open to see Soohyun, Eli, and Seunggi hovering over him with worried expressions on his face.

“Oh god. You’re alive! You’re alive! Thank all the gods, I don’t have to tell Seungho you died!” Eli cried, throwing his arms over Myungsoo. Myungsoo groaned and pushed him away, rubbing at his head. He had the worst headache in the history of the world.

“How are you feeling?”

Myungsoo blinked a few times before letting out a deep breath. “... Like normal. Nothing feels like it’s changed.”

“Oh. Well. I’m sure it removed the binding curse. I can’t really sense it in your body anymore, and it doesn’t appear in your eternity stone. I officially declare you a free man! Which is disappointing because now I don’t really have much to do anymore,” Seunggi said with a sigh.

Soohyun blinked a few times before giving the other man a look. “Well... You do have some trainees to train. Just saying.”

“Oh, right. Them.”

--

The years flew by for both parties. Myungsoo occupied his time with training and not much else. He tried not to think of you often, but you always managed to pop up when the moon was out, and he glanced up at the sky to see the stars twinkling at him.

He reached up to the ring he wore around his neck and sighed.

Woohyun was training harder than ever. His natural strength was great, but he had a hard time controlling it still. He started to train while you were sleeping, because he knew that your powers were even greater than his at the moment, and he wanted to protect you, not the other way around.

Seungho did whatever it was he did around Rivedon to keep it running smoothly. His thoughts would blank out every now and then at random moments, and he would start to see things in his memories that he’d never seen before. He wrote them all down, to try to make some sense out of them, but they were too scattered and too random.

Sometimes, he saw a flash, and sometimes, he saw a whole scene unfold. One thing was always the same, though, Joon would be standing next to him with a cup of tea to help alleviate the headache that followed.

“Joon, why is it that I get the feeling you know more than you’re letting on?” Seungho asked one day as Joon sat in front of his desk, tapping his fingers on the armrest.

“I don’t know. People are allowed to have feelings, aren’t they?”

Seungho chuckled. Joon was getting witter as time passed.

“Do you remember when we first met?” Joon asked, leaning forward in his chair.

“I do. You were doing heavy labor in the country. Once you finished that, you were out of the job, so I brought you here to the castle. Gave you a job, a home, some security.”

“Oh, okay,” Joon said. They sat in silence for a few moments before Joon got up and said that he had other matters to attend to, leaving Seungho mildly confused.

“Wait. Joon. Was that not the first time we met?” Joon scoffed and gave him a sad smile before slipping out of his study without another word.

--

And then there was you.

You passed the time away leisurely with Woohyun or by yourself. Seungho taught you a few administrative duties, but you always made an excuse to get out of doing those, making Seungho sigh. He was going to be stuck doing paperwork forever.

Most of your time was spent training, or trying out magical weaving on complex spells. Woohyun banned you from practicing in your room after one of your spells accidentally fell apart and blew up a small part of the room. He wanted to ban you from practicing them altogether, but Seungho gave him a ‘mages will be mages’ speech, and Woohyun had no room to argue.

The more time passed though, the more a nagging feeling in the back of your mind became apparent. Some days, it drove you insane. It was like something wanted you to remember, but you couldn’t for the life of you figure out what it was.

“Woohyun, I feel like I’m forgetting something,” you said one day as the two of you got ready for bed. You technically had enough energy to abstain from sleeping altogether, but you enjoyed the feeling and slept when you didn’t have pressing matters to attend to, which you never did.

“Forgetting something?” Woohyun asked, pulling you into his arms. You nodded and furrowed your eyebrows, trying to think. “Did you remember to brush your teeth?”

“Yes.”

“Throw your clothes in the laundry hamper? You know Joon hates it when you leave them all over the bathroom.”

“Yes,” you said, rolling your eyes.

“I would ask if you remembered to eat dinner, but you never forget to eat,” Woohyun said with a smirk on his face as you frowned at him and slapped his chest. “Then I don’t really know. Did you remember to water the garden?”

You blinked a few times. Did you remember to water the garden?

“Oh. I don’t think I did. Maybe that’s what I forgot,” you said, not feeling any sense of relief.

“Well, don’t worry so much about it. You’re going to get permanent lines on your forehead.” Woohyun poked your forehead, and you saw a flash of someone else doing the same thing with a smirk on their face. But it was too fast for you to see who it was.

You furrowed your eyebrows and tried to pull the image from your memory but couldn’t. Woohyun called your name and gave you a concerned look. “Are you okay?”

You snapped out of your daze and nodded, snuggling closer to him. “Thanks for remembering stuff for me. I thought I was going crazy.”

I still am going crazy.

--

The final days of training were upon then, and none of the trainees were happier than Sungyeol.

“Oh my god, I can’t wait to go back home to the castle where my old comfy bed is, meet up with some girls and-” Myungsoo rolled his eyes and threw his arm over Sungyeol’s shoulder.

“Girls? Did some girls promise they’d wait for you or something?” he asked with a smirk on his face.

“I’ll have you know, I’m very popular back home.”

The two of them had just gotten fitted for knight’s armor. Myungsoo’s was going to be special made, with some enforcement on the chestplate, just like Eli’s to protect the eternity stone on his chest. Myungsoo didn’t even think about it anymore.

“I can’t wait to get back home for the ceremony. And I’m betting you can’t wait to see the Arch Mage,” Sungyeol said, elbowing Myungsoo in the ribs. Myungsoo got quiet and looked away.

“She’s married now. It’s been a hundred years. I don’t think she’s waiting for me anymore.”

Sungyeol scoffed. “Right. If I have a few flings waiting for me, there’s no way true love like yours and hers isn’t.”

“Right, whatever.” Myungsoo said, reaching out to punch Sungyeol in the arm.

--

“Oh, the knights in training are coming back soon? Has it really been a hundred years already?” you asked in a daze. Seungho pulled you into his office so he could go over the details of the ceremony with you.

“Yes. Seems like it was just yesterday when they left, right?”

“I guess... I don’t really remember it too well,” you said frowning slightly.

“Well, they’ll be back soon, and it’s a big celebration. I heard they’ve got a show planned for us to open up the ceremony. I’ll talk to Soohyun about it to see what we need to get done for them when they come back. The ceremony will take place a day after they return because Soohyun wants them to ‘look alive,’” Seungho said, making air quotes with his fingers.

Seungho started to go into the details, but for some reason, you couldn’t pay attention. Something in your heart was nervous and excited for the knights to come back.

But why?