*I am really sorry for the italic, it was not supposed to come out like this but something messed up with the document and I cannot seem to make the text normal. I will be working on trying to fix it, for now, please enjoy the chapter!*

V

The rain outside was pouring, banging against the thin glass of the apartment windows. The heavy clouds hanging beneath the sky were casting a dark shadow over Seoul. Inside, although it was only midday, the lights were already on. A clock on the wall seemed louder than it usually would, as if it was competing with the rain outside. And when it twelve, it appeared to be creating its own thunderstorm in the closed space of the flat.

Baekhyun shivered, when he heard the clock, and looked around confused, it was as if he was woken up from a heavy dream. As he looked around, he realized how cold and empty the place appeared. Raising his eyes up higher, he spotted three figures on the other side of the apartment, whispering to each other in the kitchen across from him. As he looked from one to the other, he noticed Minseok staring head of himself intensively. He was about to turn his gaze to follow the elder’s, curious as to what captivated the man so bad, when Chanyeol looked up and their eyes met. The other smiled softly and sympathetically at Baekhyun, and the boy only swallowed. He quickly adverted his eyes and turned around, looking for his friend. He found Jongdae standing by the window behind the couch, staring at the world outside, deeply in thought. Baekhyun frowned, and as he looked back at the eldest of them once more, he realized Minseok’s gaze was focused on Jongdae.

He stood up and approached his friend and placed a hand on the younger’s shoulder. Jongdae shivered under the touch, but as he looked Baekhyun in the eyes, he forced a smile. Baekhyun looked his friend up and down carefully, noticing the small details that gave away the hidden fear and bother. The way Jongdae’s skin was paler than usual; the way his eyes kept on moving from one object to another, unable to focus; the way his fingers were playing with a ring on his hand; the way his shoulders tensed, and his breath hitched when he approached him.

“What is going on?” he asked in a whisper, frowning his eyebrows. And although Baekhyun knew very well what was going on, it took him by surprise when Jongdae didn’t answer, just looked away. Then he looked back at Baekhyun again, pain and confusing evident in his eyes, but he never said a word. He just looked away once more. Baekhyun was ready to push to get answers, but the door to the apartment opened and someone walked in.

“I brought food!” Sehun yelled, startling everyone inside. “Wow, it’s worse than a graveyard in here,” he mumbled, looking around at everyone. He placed the bags with takeout on the table and neared the boys by the window. He smiled softly at them, and said “would you wanna eat something? I don’t really know what I’ve brought, but I hope it’s good.”

As they all sat down by the table to eat, the grave silence was weighing on everyone. The food was slowly getting cold, but no one made the first move to dig in.

“What are we even eating?” Chanyeol asked, taking a piece of tofu and raising it up from the cold soup. He took a bit and then spit it out, “that’s just nasty!”

Baekhyun chuckled quietly to himself, and everyone looked at him. “For starters, it should be warm,” he said standing up and taking the soup with him back to the kitchen. He opened a few cupboards and once he found a pot, he started warming the soup up.

“Should this also be warm?” Sehun asked, pointing at some kimchi.

“This one’s just alright cold,” Baekhyun replied.

“What about this?” Chanyeol asked, pointing at some fishcake.

“Also, good cold,” came the answer. They talked like that for a few minutes, Sehun and Chanyeol asking food questions and Baekhyun giving them short answers. When the soup was finally heated up, and Baekhyun sat down by the table again, Chanyeol quickly moved to have a try. This time, he declared tofu more suitable to his taste. After him, Sehun dug into what was on the table, and slowly Yixing and Minseok followed. Only Jongdae remained unmoved, his gaze focused on something on the table, but never anything in particular.

“Are you alright?” Minseok finally asked, raising an eyebrow, “you’re oddly quiet, Jongdae.” Upon hearing his name, Jongdae averted his gaze from whatever he was focusing it on, and looked around, trying to establish who was the one calling him. He felt as if he was walking in a fog.

“Dae,” Baekhyun frowned, nudging his friend in the ribs. Jongdae quickly looked at him, his gaze fogged. “What is wrong with you?” Baekhyun asked, concerned. “What has happened?”

Jongdae swallowed and as he looked around at everyone at the table, he took a deep breath in. He opened his mouth to say something, but then closed them again. Then again and again, but as he was unable to form a coherent thought, he ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t even know how to say it,” he finally whispered, looking Baekhyun in the eyes. The elder frowned. He knew something wasn’t right. Beyond everything that had already not been right.

“Could you please excuse us for a moment?” he asked, looking at everyone else. “I think we need a minute to talk,” he said, and Jongdae only rolled his eyes.

“It’s like you’re scolding me,” he mumbled standing up.

“There’s a room down the hall,” Yixing mentioned, “take your time.”

⚚⚚⚚

“Spill, Jongdae, what the hell is going on?” Baekhyun said the moment the door closed.

Jongdae took a deep breath in and said “I’ve heard something today, Baekhyun. I’ve heard mum and dad talk about… us.”

Baekhyun nodded, “alright. And what were they talking about?”

“The same thing they say,” he whispered and pointed somewhere at the door. Baekhyun inhaled loudly. “That we are… that we’re the children of the gods.”

Baekhyun’s head spanned. “What?” he mumbled, feeling dizzy.

“And your father seemed really concerned about the fact that you were digging into the Mesopotamian myths… that you found the story of the twelve elements…”

Baekhyun sat down, unable to keep himself up any longer. And then it hit him, “that book… it was missing. The night after dad found me reading it… it was gone…”

Jongdae knelt down by his friend, “do you think that maybe… he was the one who took it?” Baekhyun confirmed, nodding. “We need to find it,” Jongdae whispered.

“Now I feel sick,” Baekhyun mumbled, looking Jongdae in the eyes, “did they say anything else?” Jongdae looked his friend in the eyes.

“Something has already happened, once,” he said after a moment, “mum said that they were lucky nothing major has happened since that last time. But I’ve no idea what it means…”

“Oh my…” Baekhyun breathed out, “my head is about to explode.”

“I know it’s a lot… and with them in it as well…” Jongdae said, nodding in the direction of the door.

“Do you think… do you think they might be telling us the truth? About… everything?”

“I have no idea what to think anymore, Baekhyun…”

They sat in silence for a moment, observing the pouring rain outside, when Baekhyun spoke again. “Do you think that our parents know the whole truth?” he asked, “about whatever the hell is going on?”

“They certainly know half of it… whatever that truth is, anymore.”

“And do you… do you think that it all could be… true? That this…” Jongdae looked at his friend and could see the other’s inner struggle in his eyes. Everything that was happening was against anything Baekhyun has ever believed in. It was against logic and laws of the natural world. “Do you think that this nightmare can coexist with our world? With the world in which people don’t freeze other to the ground, in which people don’t create fair out of thin air… in which they don’t just disappear into thin air and… monsters with claws don’t imprint their marks on people’s skin…” he mumbled, looking down at his wrist. His voice broke and madness clouded his eyes. “In a world in which I don’t just pop light out,” he cried out and a tear roll down his cheek as his breathing quickened. Jongdae quickly leant forward to hug the elder.

“Shhh,” he whispered, caressing the other’s hair, “we’ll figure it out… we’ll figure it out.”

“But how, Jongdae? How will we ever figure it out?”

Jongdae looked towards the door. “We’ll start with what we have,” he mumbled, “and we’ll ask a few questions.”

⚚⚚⚚

When they walked back to the living room, four pairs of eyes looked up at them. Jongdae cleared his throat and looked at Minseok. “It seemed like you were very desperate to tell us something yesterday,” he stated and the other raised his eyebrow, “here’s your second chance. Tell us what you wanted to say yesterday, we’ll listen.”

“Hmmm,” Minseok mused, “what about the change of heart?”

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” Jongdae said, his gaze steady on the elder. They sat down on a couch facing the window, opposite another one on which Sehun and Yixing were sitting and made themselves comfortable. “What did you want to tell us?”

The other boys looked among themselves and then at the two boys in front of them.

“It’s really hard to try and explain what we want to tell you. You see, what we’re about to tell you may seem ridiculous, but you need to promise us to keep your minds open, okay?” Yixing looked at both of them, waiting for a nod.

“I presume it’s going to be a rather long story?” Jongdae asked rhetorically and stood up, “anyone wants some coffee?” And without waiting for an answer he walked into the kitchen.

“Well, not a coffee, but since I know just how long the story will be,” Chanyeol said and then looked at Baekhyun, “just about a couple of millenniums,” he winked, “I’d get some of that lunch hardly anyone touched,” he smiled and followed Jongdae to heat up the food.

Fifteen minutes later they were all sitting comfortably in the living room, with warm beverages in their hands, listening to the sound of rain hitting against the window.

“So?” Baekhyun started looking up at the strangers, “wanna start your story? So that we don’t spend millenniums sitting in here?” he proposed and looked at Chanyeol with a slight uplift in the corner of his lips. “We promise to keep our minds open… at least try to.”

Yixing took a deep breath in and started, “from what I’ve gathered, I imagine you guys don’t know much about your own heritage, am I right?” he looked at the boys, who shrugged reluctantly. “The thing is, we,” Yixing said, mentioning to all of them, “we actually go way back… back to the beginning of the universe,” he said and made a pause, waiting for the boys to freak out, chuckle or roll their eyes. To everyone’s surprise, they were calmly listening. “Each of us started to exist as pure energy, as part of nature. We create nature and the world as it exists. We are the natural order of things,” he said and looked at Baekhyun, “we are the logic, the laws and the rules of anything that exists,” he explained and the younger inhaled loudly. “Even though it seems like nothing but chaos to you know, we are the chaos that creates the order.”

He paused for a moment to let it all sink it.

“Jongin is the chaos,” he started again, “he was the one to be out of nothingness. Tao is time. He is the one making the time pass,” he said, mentioning towards the clock on the wall, “Minseok here is coldness,” he said and as the eldest opened the palm of his hand, there was a beautiful snowflake on it and a moment later there were millions of them floating around the whole room. Jongdae looked at it in awe, and his heart skipped. Suddenly, he felt as if he was somewhere else, somewhere dark and cold. And there were thousands of such snowflakes floating around him. And then he blinked and was back in the room again.

“Jongdae?” he heard Baekhyun’s voice, but it still seemed as if it was coming from somewhere far away, “is everything alright?”

He blinked again and the world came to focus, “yeah, I’m fine. Please, do carry on,” he said looking at Yixing. But something lingered on his heart, a feeling he couldn’t shake. His gaze was constantly running towards the elder, the unsettling feeling spreading through his veins.

“You, Jongdae, are the lightning,” Yixing said, looking intensively at the boy, “you control thunders.” A shiver ran down Jongdae’s spine, and his gaze once again ran towards Minseok. As if he was looking for comfort. And then he quickly adverted his gaze towards the rain and the uneasy sky, doing his best to stay calm. “You, Baekhyun, are the light. The two of you are more connected then you might think,” Yixing smiled at the two of them, and the boys only looked at each other, breathing in at the same time. “Chanyeol is fire and warmth,” he said and looked at the boy sitting next to him, and as Chanyeol opened his palm, a small ball of fire lit up above it. Baekhyun inhaled deeply and flinched a little. “Junmyeon is water, and Kyungsoo is earth—”

“Kyungsoo? Do Kyungsoo and Kim Junmyeon?!” Jongdae mumbled, struck by the information. Yixing frowned.

“Do you know Junmyeon?” Yixing mumbled, his voice weak, and eyes focused on Jongdae. Minseok, Chanyeol and Sehun quickly looked at their friend.

Both Jongdae and Baekhyun nodded, “yeah, we know both of them,” Baekhyun said, “why?”

Yixing was so stunned he was not able to say anything else. Minseok quickly cleared his throat and picked up where the other left off, “Sehun, here,” he mentioned at the younger, “is wind. And then there is Kris, the Moon, and Luhan, the Sun. Yixing is harmony. It is because of him that there is balance in the universe. You recalled Genesis and the Mayans and the Mesopotamian myths. It was none of them that took their believes from the other. It was all of them who took it from us. All the stories about the beginning of the world where taken from us. We are the beginning of it all,” he said, looking at the boys. “The thing is, we’ve been the ones who’s been there from the dawn of creation. We made it all possible,” he spoke, looking outside the window.

“Then why don’t we remember any one it? Why don’t we know any of it, or any of you?” Jongdae asked, his voice almost accusing.

“Because something happened,” Sehun said when no one wanted to follow the question, “something happened that changed everything for us.”

“What was it?” Jongdae looked at the blond, posing the question.

“You and the Greek gods,” Sehun said and heavy silence fell above all of them.

⚚⚚⚚

Junmyeon looked outside the window and sighed as the heavy rain poured down from the sky. He stretched his arms and neck and taking a deep breath in jumped into the cold water of the swimming pool. The moment his body made it fully underneath the surface of the water, he felt all the worries and stress leaving him. He smiled and started moving his arms and legs as fast as he could. Twenty-five lengths later, he swam up and took a deep breath in.

“How was it, Soo?” he asked, a big smile on his lips, as he looked up at his friend. “Did I break it?”

“Eight minutes twenty-four seconds,” the other boy replied, looking down at the phone in his hand, “I think you broke your own record,” he smiled at Junmyeon, high fiving him, “good job!”

“Do you think I could beat this one?” he asked, and his eyes shone even brighter, “I feel like I could make it down to eight minutes. And then six. I want to make it beneath four! Or maybe three!”

“Jun, I know you’re the son of Poseidon, but you’d need to have literal fins for that,” the other laughed, helping his friend out of water. Junmyeon laughed, accepting his friend’s help.

“There will come a day I’ll learn how to do that!” the elder joked, “Kyungsoo, how do you feel about a chill movie night and some dinner, hmm?”

“Are you asking just because you want me to cook, again?” the younger asked, looking at his friend pointedly.

“Busted. So?”

Kyungsoo sighed, looking outside, “I would love to, Jun, but I’m so exhausted after the exams and with school in general, can we just go out and have a drink somewhere?” he pleaded as they walked towards the exit out of the swimming pool area. Junmyeon laughed but agreed.

“No worries, Soo. You’ve been helping me out so much lately, it’s my treat! But!” he quickly added, “only up to the third bottle of soju, my friend! After that, it’s a split!” Kyungsoo laughed at his friend, and as the elder walked into the changing room, he went outside to wait from him in front of the building.

Kyungsoo liked when it rained, and he loved it even more right after the rain, when the whole world smelt fresh. He looked around and as he realized there was no one around, he knelt down and grabbed a handful of dirt in his hand. A smile made it up his lips and he took a deep breath it. He felt truly alive. And timeless.

“Let’s go partyyy!!!!” Junmyeon exclaimed, stepping outside to join his friend twenty minutes later. Kyungsoo stood up from the ground and looked up at his friend.

“It’s twelve thirty in the afternoon, Jun. How about we leave around five at least, hmm?” They looked at each other for a few seconds and then Junmyeon spoke:

“You’re gonna go study, don’t you?”

“I already skipped classes for you, today, let me have my fair share of life and academic success, alright?”

“You’re a half god, Kyungsoo, why do you care about uni so much?” the elder asked, walking up to the car.

“It’s not necessarily something I can turn into a career, you know.”

⚚⚚⚚

“Me?” Jongdae asked, stunned, and felt the heaviness of everyone’s gaze on him.

“It was you who led to our fall down. You are the reason we were separated and weakened,” Sehun said, his eyes full of fire as he looked the other boy.

“Sehun,” Minseok spoke sharply, looking at the younger, “that’s enough!”

“Let him speak,” Jongdae said, looking at the elder, “I wanna know the whole story you’ve got to tell.”

“We’ve been there from the dawn of time, through the rise and fall of every civilization, every sort of gods and spirits, we’ve seen and experienced it all. And then we happened to be in the ancient Greece… wrong place and wrong time. The thing is, Jongdae, nobody truly knows what happened, but it started with you and you took Baekhyun, Kyungsoo and Junmyeon down with you. You trusted the wrong god and they fooled you and defeated you. That’s another thing that we don’t know—how did they manage to defeat a being so much more powerful then them? How did they manage to trap all four of you and cast away Kris and Luhan? You see, I am pretty sure I know how it went down with you,” he said, looking Jongdae in the eyes, “not only have you always had a big mouth but also a hugely soft spot for wine. I see how they could’ve fooled you… but for you to take three others down with you and damn all of us? That I still don’t understand,” Sehun said, his eyes glassy from tears threatening to fall down. “You took the only thing that ever mattered away from me,” he whispered and looked away.

“Sehun, that was unnecessary,” Chanyeol barked, but the younger remained unbothered. “Don’t listen to him, Jongdae. He sounds more judgemental than he is in reality. Don’t take it personally.”

“I’m sorry,” Jongdae just said, and Sehun looked at him, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. What any of you is talking about. And although all of it sounds made up and truly unbelievable… the pain in your voice convinced me to believe in more than I would like to admit… for whatever way I ever caused you pain, I am truly sorry.”

Sehun never said anything, but the look in his eyes softened.

“What happened was,” Chanyeol picked up, “that we don’t know what happened. But the thing is, what Yixing and Minseok just said, this is all true, and then what Sehun said is partially true as well. Something happened between you and the gods that none of us truly knows about that took you all from us, separated us and led to out downfall. They trapped your souls in magical items and took you hostage for over a millennium. It was only over twenty years ago that your souls were freed.”

Yixing, Chanyeol and Minseok took something out of their pockets. There were objects resting on the palm of their hands, each different, yet all seemingly familiar to the boys. Just looking at them made them feel uneasy. Jongdae and Bakehyun moved further into the couch, as if trying to get away from the objects. “These are the prisons of your souls,” Chanyeol explained, looking at the piece of glass in his hand, “this is where you were trapped for thousands of years…”

“Jongdae,” Baekhyun whispered, “why does it feel so damn familiar?”

“What happened twenty years ago?” Jongdae asked, looking at the stone resting in Minseok’s palm.

“We aren’t humans, we are more of spirits… forces of nature. Therefore, when they trapped you, they trapped an essence of existence. A literal force of nature,” Minseok started explaining, “therefore, it was either us saving you,” he said, looking down at the ground, “which never happened and would have never happened, probably,” he confessed in embarrassment, “or them making a mistake and trapping that essence in a container… a soulless embodiment of life. Which is a human child. When the gods, in this manner your parents, had with your human parents, they created such a container. A soulless human being. And when in that act of creating these,” he said, raising the stone in his hand, “touched the human body, your essence was freed and therefore trapped in the child’s body. In the form of you that you’re existing in currently.”

“You said very clearly, last time, that you guys are not gods. And now you’ve just told us that we’re both… whatever you are and gods at the same time. Then what does it make us?” Baekhyun asked, looking between the boys.

“You are one third us, one third gods, one third humans,” Yixing explained, “it’s something we don’t yet know how to deal with… but we’ll figure it out.”

“Deal with? What do you mean?”

“The innocence and purity of your existence has been stained. Humanity makes you mortal. Divine nature of the gods makes you transient,” Minseok sighed, “all if it makes you weak.”

Baekhyun and Jongdae looked at each other, thorn between their minds and hearts.