He rocked awake, screaming at the voice in his head, covered head to toe in sweat. The house creaked around him in the midnight breeze, and there was a rustling of leaves outside his window. Normal sounds. Everyday sounds.

For a moment he couldn’t remember his name, and he inhaled on a soggy, thick breath. The nightmare rode him like sour milk, rancid in the back of his throat.

No one came in response to the scream, but then he lived alone up here in the mountains, where the air was clear and he could be ‘closer to the visions’. That thought sickened him as well. He hardly needed to be closer to the visions. They were too close, too close by far, and didn’t need any amount of mountain air to make them clearer. He swung his feet out from underneath the blanket and off the bed, aware that he’d get no sleep. Again.

It wasn’t until he was standing entirely that he noticed a patch of shadows in the corner that was far deeper than it should be. The edges of it stirred with black feathers, and he inhaled slowly as a man stepped forward from it. Tall where he was only middling height himself, but lithe with muscle. Oddly enough he didn’t feel afraid; instead, a great sense of lassitude overwhelmed him, as if the man’s presence was a warm blanket, and he blinked owlishly up at him.

“You’re tired of the visions,” the man said softly. “They’re not meant to break you, you know. They’re merely glimpses of what was. Distant memories.”

He cleared his throat, cold toes curling into the bare wooden floor. “Yes, okay,” he whispered, too tired to argue that they were very much breaking him. “But then no. That last wasn’t a memory, was it?”

The man tilted his head and considered him carefully, feathered cloak rustling and shivering around his tall shoulders. “No,” he finally said. “Someone has lost their way, and so they’re calling for someone to help. You’re not the only lonely boy, not even the only lonely one near Geumjeongsan. But you’re the only one that heard him. He’s like you, in a way. Both of you listen more than is safe for your heart.”

The boy sat down on the rumpled bed and crossed his legs in underneath himself, tucking cold toes in to warm up. “Does he also see things?” he asked curiously. “Visions and… and…” He ran out of steam, shrugging instead.

The man followed his actions, though he sat on thin air on a cushion of febrile green fox-fire. “No, he doesn’t see things, not like you do. His gifts lie in other directions. You don’t see things either, you know. Well… you do, but that’s not what’s causing the nightmares.” He lifted his hand to his mouth and breathed out, soft vapour filling the room with a deadly chill. “There, do you see it?”

The boy blinked and looked around, and finally he did see. There, shimmering from the interaction with the vapour was a line so thin he couldn’t see it straight on, but caught it flashing and twinkling if he turned his head just the right way. It led off into the distance, but reached to his chest, terminating seemingly against his bone. “Is that a thread?” he asked disbelievingly. “It looks like spider-silk.”

“It’s thinner than that, but stronger than spider-silk if you treat it right,” the man said with a small smile. “He’s the other side of your soul. The things that you see, those are things that happen to him throughout years and lives. Your powers haven’t awoken yet. You’re just… really sensitive, which is to be expected with your heritage.”

He tilted his head up to stare at the man, and stare, and blinked, then stared some more for good measure. “My soulmate is a boy?” he finally asked, ignoring the part about his heritage for a moment. Confused, he looked down at himself, wondering for a moment whether he was a girl. 

“Lady forfend,” the man said with a sigh. “Why do they always get bogged down on that part? Listen… look. Containers matter very little to souls, whether they be male or female. You were female before, and male. No matter what society tells you, that kind of thing is… is a speck of nothingness in an ocean.”

The boy frowned, trying to chew on the thought of having a boy for a soulmate. He might be a hermit on top of a mountain range and an unwilling one at that, but he had enough contact with the shrine keepers and people around to know that homouality was frowned upon here, whether a figment of his mindscape told him otherwise or not. “Who are you?” he asked softly, leaving the topic undigested for the moment. “You’re clearly not human.”

The man’s mouth tilted into a small, sideways smile. “You’re very frank,” he pointed out. “If it helps, you can think of me as a friend of the local sansin. I owed him a favour, and you’re so unhappy here that he asked me to step in. This world is not ready for someone like you anymore.”

The boy’s cheeks bloomed with a blush, eyes moving involuntarily to the window outside, through which he could see a bit of dark mountainside. “It’s not that I’m not happy here…”

“You should never lie to a god, and even less to yourself,” the man muttered, fingers flicking as he drew his feather-cloak around himself. “You’re not happy here, he can taste that in every prayer that you make. But he likes you, you’re a nice enough person when you forget where you are, so he’d like to help you and have your prayers taste less like ashes and tears. Would you want to do that?”

“I don’t know,” the boy said after a few moments of thought. “I’ve never been down the mountain, really. And… and I’m afraid. And if I leave him, who will listen?”

That elicited a small smile which canted the man’s expression a little, turning him more fox-like and fey. “Fear is how you know that you’re still living,” he said smoothly, darkly, with just a ripple of power disturbing the blanket of comfort he projected. It only lasted for a moment before the gentle warmth returned. “Your world is dying, you know,” he said at last. “The spirits, the life-force that makes it a world as opposed to just another planet is dying. He won’t be around for much longer either.”

Despite hating the enforced quiet, despite his confusion, the boy’s eyes still teared up, heart aching for a person he had tried to understand, but could never quite befriend.

“Now… I know someone that owes me a favour. Someone with… power, I guess you might say, in a place that is more suitable to your talents. The world is different there, but I think you might like it. What do you say?” the almost-man continued.

Fear did shiver up his spine then, but the winds outside rustled again, whispering with the mountain god’s breath, and he fancied that he could hear a voice urging him to take the opportunity. He bit his lip, not quite sure, and tilted his head instead. “What is your name?” he instead asked of the fey creature sitting on the air in front of him.

“Names have power,” the tall man said, smiling slowly through the vapour still creeping around him. The smile revealed teeth just slightly sharp, but utterly pristine. “You, however, may call me Rama. It’s not my name, but it is close enough.”

Outside somewhere, surely freezing in the night air, birds started chirping sleepily, signalling that false dawn was approaching. The boy lifted his gaze to the window again, considering the choice in front of him. “I have to make the choice tonight?” he whispered, pulling his legs up to press his knees against his chest. It wasn’t that he had family to hold him back, but the fear of the unknown loomed large over him. “How do they even feel about people like me there?”

Rama lifted his chin to blow foxfire smoke at the window, obscuring them in darkness for a little longer. “It’s a very different world,” he commented. “It is still filled with magic, but also quite advanced, an unusual mix. Most of the mundanes are weak, hardly able to lift a cup of water or spin a curse, or slide more than a step.” He looked towards the window again. “I do not have much time left. You must make your choice before the night ends and the first rays of dawn strike.”

The boy thought for a little more, looking from the window where he still heard the whispering from to the tiny piece of mirror against the wall, outlining his still-soft features. The unknown yawed in a gulf beneath him, a canyon, but perhaps if he was very lucky…

“Anything to make the nightmares stop,” he finally said. “I realise it’s not the best motive ever; I should be enough of a decent person to help, but I’m not. I just want them to stop.”

Rama uncurled from his perch on the air and stood easily, moving with an ease of motion he’s only seen in dancers before. “As rough as this sounds, I’m not doing this on the basis of your merit,” he murmured with a smile on his face, reaching out to touch his shoulder. “Come on, Park Jimin. It’s time for you to forget.”

Jimin blinked at the heavy feel of the hand on his shoulder. “Wait, what...? I didn’t agree to that!”

“Oh,” Rama says, smiling like a Cheshire cat as they both faded. “Didn’t you?”

---

1. This entire story is an AU. Though the characters enjoy music and it is particularly important to some, it is not to the level of all seven of them being an internationally acclaimed idol group. It’s just not that world, although it might be the next one over. Instead, it has a heavy emphasis on mythology and the supernatural, and whilst it is an avid interest of mine, I’ve had to change some elements and ignore others to make things work as I imagined them. I mean no disrespects to any of the cultures and religions mentioned! I’ve tried to stay true to some preconceptions about the Bangtan guys.
2. The world Jimin is in has been through some pretty bad things. Its spirits are old, and its lands tired.
3. Although Jimin’s temple is not specifically Buddhist in origin, in real life there is a temple on the mountain he’s living on in this story! It’s called Beomeosa and is one of the country’s most known urban temples.
4. Though I’m reasonably fluent in English, it’s the Queen’s English, and readers from countries that use American spelling might see the odd rogue u pop up. These aren’t spelling mistakes, just a different way of writing the words altogether. Add to that the fact that it is not my first language, and the way I phrase things might sound strange – please forgive me for that!