Save for the softly flowing river and the gentle breeze brushing through the high grass, the moment was silent as Yunho took in more and more of the creature stoically perched beside their newest brother under the moonlight. Its figure, black as the shimmering midnight and feathered, seemed almost too otherworldly to imagine, as it quietly watched Jaejoong stare out over the water in quiet contemplation.

“What is it?”

“Unknown.” replied Junsu. “But it’s barely moved since the moment I spotted it.”

“Is he in danger?”

“Unlikely.” he replied. “Jaejoong seems completely content with it by his side.”

“Though...” Junsu added just as an ear-piercing screech from high above echoed into the small canyon. “Faldire seems to disagree.”

Glancing up to the moonlit and star-filled sky, Yunho immediate caught a glimpse of his aerial scout and guardian as the creature circled high above, ever watchful.

“He’s been circling since I stumbled upon them...a few hours ago.”

“Tell me, what have you seen?”

“I found them, as they are now. No words have been exchanged as I can ascertain.” reported Junsu. “The creature...raven, as it looks to me...was by his side since before I came. It has barely moved, only turning its head now and then, and Jaejoong seems almost oblivious to its presence yet perfectly aware.”

“How did he get to the river?” questioned Yunho.

“Unknown.” replied Junsu. “He shouldn’t have been able to move on his own power.”

“Yunho...” he added as he looked up at his brother’s face. “All of this seems far too strange to be coincidence. Don’t you think? No matter which way I look at the situation we now find ourselves in, it all seems...I don’t know...suspicious. I’ve been thinking about it for days...From the moment we entered my ancestor’s refuge.”

“We should have been able to notice his presence. The pain he was in, the injuries he’d sustained, would have surely invoked some kind of outburst of discomfort at the sound of our entrance. Yet, his presence didn’t become known to us until after we laid Sumin to rest...as if his very existence had been cloaked under some strange magical machination until the proper time.  And then, only hours after we found him, seemingly out of nowhere, Salia shows up and gives you a Divine command to watch over him.”

“His injuries should have surely shackled him to nothing but bed rest for weeks, yet he seems almost completely healed in a matter of days...” he sighed.

“And, now this.” he emphasized with a wave of his hand in Jaejoong’s direction. “Something is at work here, Yunho, something far beyond even our perception.”

“I know...” sighed Yunho with a disappointed shake of the head.

“Do you really want to continue being involved with this?” questioned Junsu softly. “We have such an enormous task ahead of us. The safety and survivability of our word is at stake. Can we really continue with such an unknown in our midst?”

“We have no choice.” muttered Yunho as he continued to watch Jaejoong sitting quietly.

“Yes, we do.” countered Junsu. “Let’s leave him here and head to Emberstone as we began, just the four of us.”

“You want to abandon him?” whispered Yunho incredulously.

“What is he to us?” justified Junsu. “We have our duty, our quest, and in none of its instruction was he ever mentioned. Don’t you think Lady Islan would have warned us if it was so? That, if it was our duty to see to that young man, she would have told us?”

“I’m sorry, my brother. I know that my tone may sound cruel...And I’m being uncharacteristically suspicious...” apologized Junsu half-heartedly. “But all of this seems very sinister to me. And...”

“And...?” prompted Yunho.

“Jaejoong seems to be far more complicated than we had first thought.” he answered. “Perhaps, even more so, now than ever.”

“I have a really bad feeling about all of this, Yunho.” he added. “It started out as a small worry but as the days have passed, and now with all of this, my intuition is even more wary.”

“I understand you concern, my brother.” nodded Yunho. “But, I cannot go back on my promise to the Goddess.”

“If I do...she would have cause to punish us all.” he justified. “And our mission is far too important to jeopardize just because of our wariness of the unknown. Without any real proof.”

“We will have to take this as it goes.” Yunho sighed. “And deal with it for the time being.”

As they fell into silence, the two brothers continued to watch Jaejoong with an air of curiosity laced with mistrust. From the moment Yunho had found Junsu, Jaejoong had yet to move nor interact with his feathery and silent companion. The more he watched, the more Yunho began to feel a strange sense of concern for the man. Though the raven seemed docile, almost as if it too were as familiar to Jaejoong as breathing, Yunho couldn’t help but be skeptical of the creature’s intentions.

“Where are you going?” whispered Junsu as his hand instantly shot out and grabbed Yunho’s arm the second he sensed the man’s movements.

“We have to find out what’s going on, don’t we?” whispered Yunho. “I’m going to get a little closer and see what I can find out.”

“Let me do It.” countered Junsu. “It’s my purpose, after all.”

“Stay here.” ordered Yunho softly. “He’s my responsibility.”

Pulling away from his brother’s grip, Yunho quietly made his way through the high grass of the embankment as silently as he possible could. Rather than taking the direct route down to the riverbank, to a direct confrontation, he strafed along the hillside until he cleared Jaejoong’s line of sight and made a beeline for a nearby cliff face that jutted out over the lower ledge on which the unlikely pair of man and foul perched seemingly contently. With a higher vantage point, and sticking close to the granite underneath him, Yunho slowly crawled across the ledge till he reached the edge. Laying down upon his newly acquired perch and peering over, he studied the scene with reserved suspicion.

Just as witness moments before, Jaejoong and his feathery companion remained. No words spoken, no movement; whether for good or ill; made between them. 

As he sat there quietly watching the man look out over the water, he couldn’t help but wonder about Junsu’s carefully voiced concerns as they echoed in his already weary mind.

If he were to be honest with himself, stepping back and looking at the entire situation with more objectivity than he currently possessed, the path that they now found themselves on did seem far more suspicious than he had ever thought.

He had been raised to be a pious lad. His ever-faithful parents believed in the Divines: in their teachings, their covenants, and their divinity; and had raised him to be as such. Devout and trusting; but the more the days passed on, the more encounters he experienced with those of such heavenly idiosyncrasies, the more things and events seemed to be even more ordained, the more he began to feel that their indoctrinated goodness was more fairy tale than reality. His faith, though once strong, had begun to waver. Leading him to a feeling of uncertainty that, until this very moment, he had never felt in all his young life.

There were just too many falsehoods, misconceptions, and misunderstandings that a part of his heart just couldn’t accept fully.

The world as they had known it, in their miniature world of bountiful harvests, beautiful winters, clarifying springs, and contented summers, of friendship and family, love and comradery, peaceful hearts and peace of mind, had begun to lose its gloriously happy luster. Revealing a truth that the blindingly faithful would never see: something was truly wrong with their world.

And the Divines were at the center of it all.

From the moment he had read Sumin’s journal, accounting the lives of their ancestors and their fall from the Divine’s grace, until now, the spark of doubt had begun to grow. The world that Sumin had lived in, the tragedy that befell him and his brothers, and the consequences of their actions and inactions that now reverberated in their own time, had touched his heart far more so than he would have ever thought his calm spirit and logical mind would have accepted. At first he didn’t want to believe it, what they had endured; what they had suffered. He didn’t want to believe that the Divines, those who had been so beloved by everyone he had ever known, could be so manipulative; so cruel and unrelenting in their utterly sinister machinations; that his mind rejected the notion of their lacking divinity or goodness even though his heart could feel the truth behind those ancient heartfelt words nearly lost to time itself just as he read them.

After the truth of their story had finally been revealed to him, and their inescapable fate was lain before them, he had still clung to the hope that somehow, all of this, was nothing but a cruel and elaborate hoax; a joke for some unknown reason. He would have been content in that knowledge, that everything that had happened in the past, and all the things that Lady Islan had told him, were simply in jest, but deep inside some part of him had always known that there was a purpose to his existence far beyond just the simple title of Prince and heir.  There was something else he was meant to do, something far more important than anything he could ever suspect. And that moment, it seemed, was hastily finding its way to his reality. Whether he accepted it or not.

With all the unanswered questions and confusing thoughts rattling around in his head since this all began, even Jaejoong –who seemed, for the most part, more of an innocent than anything- wasn’t immune to his growing mistrust of others and the will of the Divines. While Yunho had no real justification to feel that Lady Salia, and her request to protect the young man, was something other than a loving Goddess giving a simple order to a devout follower, the timing of it all seemed almost to coincidental to be a random occurrence. Who Jaejoong was; what was so important about him that he had to be protected; and his so called destiny, she spoke of, had yet to be revealed and something about it all left him feeling both uneasy and secure all at the same time. Call it intuition. Call it foresight.  Call it a mindful awareness. Whatever it was, he just knew. He felt it in his gut; somewhere deep down, at the heart of himself; he knew that the man had some significant role to play that had yet to be revealed. And a part of him, worried over it. Over him.

Quietly shaking away his thoughts of the unknown, he refocused on the task at hand. He had to find out what was going on with their newest little brother. He had to understand why he had truly been tasked to keep him, what made the would-be stranger so significant to that of an all-knowing Goddess like Lady Salia and, more importantly, what was really going on between him and those below.

Peering, once again over the edge of the rock formation, he looked down at Jaejoong only see that nothing had changed. They were still there, just as quiet before. Deciding to study Jaejoong’s feathery companion a little more, he shifted just barely to get a better look. The movement turned from simple to detriment, instantly, as less than a child’s handful of seemingly minute stone pebbles, particles, and dust rolled over the formation’s edge and fell on the granite below him; alerting those below of his presence.

The raven-like creature instinctually bellowed a call of alarm, without hesitation, and took flight in a flurry of beating wings.

“Myeol!” shouted Jaejoong, with slight panic lacing his voice, as he turned to see why the creature had launched itself from his side so readily.

The creature soared up above the cliff’s edge and banked left before stopping to hover for a few milliseconds. On spotting their unknown intruder, it instantly dove to attack.

“Don’t! Myeol!” cried out Jaejoong as he pulled himself to his feet as quickly as he could manage and scurried his limping self towards the upper cliff face.

Striking Yunho across the top of his head with its razor sharp talons on the first swooping dive, the creature made hard bank, left then right, and countered its first attack with another. This time coming to a nearly impossible stop, for its speed, right in front of Yunho. Without a moment’s hesitation, suddenly and furiously, the raven instantly began to peck and scratch at his face. Crying out in pain from the onslaught, Yunho did his best he could to defend himself. Pulling a dagger from his belt, he absentmindedly swung the weapon towards the animal in hopes that at least one of his blows would land as he felt the warm flow of blood begin to trickle down his face. As one of the creatures strikes precariously landed just millimeters from his eye, he immediately knew that if he didn’t do something quick he would surely lose his sight. Flailing his arms over his head, he collapsed to his knees and covered his face as best as he could.

“HELP!” he cried out.

And help found him, as if by Divine gift.

With a resounding screech, alerting Yunho of his presence, Faldire swooped down and, in an unbelievable feat of dexterity, tackled the raven to the ground. As the creature struggle under the grasp of his beloved Fa