The moment is frozen in time, delicately so, almost as if oblivion and the whole universe were hanging treacherously from a thread all at once.

Or perhaps it’s just the way he forgets to breathe, or the way he swears his heart stops beating in his chest. The air still, too still, and everything he’s ever known blurs into nihility. His voice catches in his throat, like a convict wrestling helplessly against unrelenting metal bars. His mouth is dry, drier than ever before, and terror crawls through his spine like a ghost running his or her fingernails across his skin.

His world goes red, pure crimson red, violent, earth-shattering red, the same brutal red as when hellfire rises up from the cracking-apart earth or when the skies let loose clouds raining blood down on the earth below.

Everything goes white, red, white. The white-hot of pain spreading through his every limb. He feels a sharp pain he’s never felt before, feels his eyes going hot with tears, feels a scream rise up in his throat and leave his mouth as a weak, choked whimper.

He stabbed me.

Yesung is directly in front of him; he can hazily make out the assassin’s cold features. The man pulls the dagger out, sending ripples of acute pain spiralling through Jungsoo’s body and igniting his senses aflame with affliction.

I’m going to die here.

Today.

Now.

“Get away from him!” Youngwoon rushes at Yesung, dagger equipped in hand - as he passes, Jungsoo can see the unrestrained trepidation written clear on his facial features, the consternation that sparks in his eyes as he sees the gaping wound that issues blood on Jungsoo’s upper body.

“Do you think you can take me on? You fool,” Yesung’s voice comes out an in-between of a snarl and a hiss as he swipes at Youngwoon, carefully deflecting the angered slice of the dagger. “You stayed away for work so long to stay with your beloved old friend - what a shame, isn’t it, that you can’t protect him now when he needs you the most?”

He can read the tears that shine in Youngwoon’s eyes too easily, he can recognise the weary rage that fuels through his limbs as he starts to slash blindly with his dagger.

His blood begins to run cold, colder than ice that spreads across the ground in the dead of winter, as he sees more and more lines dripping carmine appear on Youngwoon’s exposed skin, Yesung’s dagger only getting stained more and more red - and yet Yesung’s skin remains untouched, flawlessly unmarked by sharp metal.

What is this?

How are you losing like this?

“It really does take evil to read evil’s thoughts. I figured you would come here once you heard the news, Jongwoon.”

The words are spat out with such an intense fury Yesung freezes in his spot; Jungsoo can feel his legs going limp, his shoulders slumping, his heart beating a little faster, his body going weak with relief.

How are you always here right when I need you to save my life?

He catches the desperation in Yesung’s eyes as the assassin pivots and points his blade; and yet, before his clock can start its countdown towards the entrance to oblivion, he feels another body colliding into his, and he closes his eyes and allows himself to be taken away, allows himself to inhale and take comfort in the faint scent of peaches and wild flowers.

The comforting presence leaves his side in less than a breath; he watches, unmoving - enraged, dual daggers glinting, the man looks more tall and imposing and more utterly terrifying than ever before.

His gaze is coloured a violent, catastrophic red, scorching into Yesung - he rears his head high like a god of war rising above a battlefield of fallen bodies, he wields his daggers proudly in his hands as if he had been born with them by his side. His voice is tight with rage, icy and dripping with malice all at once, almost like the coldest part of hell swathed in an ocean coated deep obsidian with potent poison.

It’s the first time he’s ever seen Kim Heechul furious. He looks as if he were ready to begin a war - and in all his angry glory and intimidating strength, if one were to tell Jungsoo that Heechul would break marble with the clashing of a fist he’d believe that person.

He looks as if he were ready to challenge the world to a war between the skies and the pits of the earth; a war that will break the heavens apart and let the blood of harmed gods rain upon the common earth, a war so intense war spirits will tremble and their graves will crack open till they roam the streets amongst still-mortals who soon join the spirits in their realm - a war so terrifying the only sound ringing through one’s ears would be the wailing of children and mothers and fathers being lost to the storm of destruction, a war so violent that all feelings melt away into numbness, all love is translated into loss, to the point that mothers still have smiles plastered to their lips watching their beloved children being ripped from limb to limb before their eyes; a war so cold and blood-thirsty bodies will lie strewn upon hard stone with still-open gashes, one where intricate daggers and curved metal is lost in favour of the cracking of bones and the tearing of flesh as limbs are pulled apart.

And Jungsoo knows that Kim Heechul will let the war erupt - no more silly little battles with Yesung, only a cold finality.