A quiet murmur filtered through the darkness, undistinguished sounds that slowly wound themselves into Myungsoo's consciousness and pulled him from sleep. His eyes flickered open to see the top of the tent, his vision at first blurry but rapidly clearing. The buzz of conversation dropped almost instantly and then Sungjong was leaning over him, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes.

"Welcome back," he said brightly, one hand reaching out to brush away the hair that had fallen into Myungsoo's eyes. His fingers lingered for a moment, but then he shifted and stepped back, hands dropping to his sides as Myungsoo sat up slowly.

"What... happened?" he asked carefully, the remembered pain in his crushed wrist being nothing except that, a memory. His hands were both steady, held out in front of him with his fingers splayed. Raising his eyes from them in disbelief, he met Sungjong's gaze, and the Seeker simply gave him a shrug.

"You saved me," he said simply, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "And so I healed you."

Healed...? Myungsoo found that he had even more questions concerning the Seekers and their immortality, but before he could begin to try and place the thoughts into words, the tent flap was pushed back and Hoya stepped inside.

The short Seeker's eyes met Myungsoo's for just a moment, but though there was anger aplenty there, the stocky man dropped a bow to the mortal warrior. "Thank you," he said, almost sounding grudging, but his eyes jumped to Sungjong for a moment before he looked back to Myungsoo. "Honestly. Thank you."

Sungjong's face split into a smile and he reached a hand out to touch the shorter Seeker on the shoulder gently, an almost intimate act that left an inexplicable burn of jealousy in Myungsoo. The tall immortal then moved around Hoya to duck out of the tent, mumbling something in his ear before exiting and leaving the two to sit there and stare at each other.

Though more accurately, he left Myungsoo to stare at Hoya while the Seeker studied the rugs under his feet. There was an almost palpable tension in the air between them, and the silence stretched until finally the warrior pushed himself to his feet and moved to go around Hoya and leave.

"He's like my heart," Hoya's soft voice caught him by surprise, and he paused with one hand on the flap, curiosity warring with jealousy as he waited for the stocky Seeker to continue. When nothing more came, though, he turned with arms crossed to face the other's stiff back.

"So you two are... together?" he asked, surprising himself at the bitterness in his voice, but Hoya only let out a quiet laugh.

"No, nothing of the sort. I... hmmm." He scrubbed a hand through short black locks, then he stepped forward and took a seat on the blanket pile that Myungsoo had just evacuated. "It's kind of a long story."

Curiosity won, and Myungsoo found himself taking a seat across from the shorter Seeker, tucking his feet underneath him as he settled in. "We have time."

Hoya let out a long, soft breath, his teeth worrying his lower lip as he considered where to start. "Seej... Sungjong... he told you about our beginnings?" When the mortal shrugged Hoya seemed to take it as a well enough and continued on. "Well... we were first made to be Seekers through the spell that the monks cast. It's what birthed us, what formed our bodies and souls... if we have them, anyway. But we were supposed to fight for good and honestly, not all of us did. That many powerful beings in one place is just a bad idea all around." Hoya's fingers tangled in the strings off of one of the rugs at his feet, his eyes trained downwards as if he were nervous to see Myungsoo's face as he told the story.

"Well. I was one of those who thought that maybe I ought to just take the power given me and become a god (and that was in the first lifetime?  Like the spell the monk's cast worked but so poorly that it didn't even keep the Seekers focused on their real purpose for more than a single lifetime?). It was stupid, I know," he scoffed, letting out a shrug, "but it was what I thought. I can't change that. Anyway, Seej was one of those who was adamant that we do our duty. We split up, our two factions going our own separate ways, but it was inevitable that we came back together again, under worse circumstances. The Seekers who were determined to be what they were created for eventually hunted us others down, came to put a stop to our idiocy.  

"I... in that battle... I killed Sungjong. I also died, shortly thereafter, but in the next life, I felt like a fool. He'd done nothing wrong, done nothing but what he was meant to do. He'd only been trying to stop me from being a tyrant, and yet I'd killed him for it, given him his first death." Hoya's voice was pained as he spoke of it, even though the events were in the long dead past, and Myungsoo shifted uncomfortably as he too felt the discomfort of the situation. 

"I found him in the next life, and I made a promise to him then. From then on, in that life and every single one following, I would protect him and fight for him. He's like my brother, Myungsoo. Truly. He's the one person I would die for and so w