“You don’t need to be so serious right now, Yoongi,” you teased as he led you into the back, stacks of books scattered everywhere over his desk. You gasped at how much he had invested into researching the stone. Turning your wide-eyed expression towards your best friend, you shook your head in astonishment. “Woah, you’ve been busy.”
Shoving aside some papers strewn on his chair, Yoongi placed you within it and handed you an opened book, pointing at the page.

“Read.”

It was another handwritten journal, and you blinked a couple of times before settling into the passage. You grinned when you read the words Stone of Blood and looked up at Yoongi. “The bloodstone!”

“Just… read it, won’t you?” he urged, his expression void of any happiness.

Troubled by Yoongi’s response, you returned your focus to the book you held.

Victoria had fallen greatly for the strange man who appeared from her dreams. As her lady’s maid, I was the only one privy to the man staying within her chambers. Mr Percy charmed her in the greatest sense and my Lady was overjoyed that her lonely days were over. They planned to wed in the spring and children were often discussed. After her troubled childhood, I was relieved she was smiling once again.

Just as strange as his arrival, was his departure. I awoke to the shrill of my mistress, and by the time I reached her side, she was hysterical. Her hands were bleeding as she held shards of a red stone within them and her cries woke the entire village.

She was never the same after that night.

You stopped reading then, placing the book down on the table and distancing yourself from it. Yoongi retrieved it and cleared his throat. “It goes on to say that Victoria ended up hanging herself from the second-floor landing of the manor home when she realised Percy wasn’t going to return.”

“It’s just someone else’s experience,” you murmured, trying to clasp your shaking hands together. “Perhaps there was a problem with how the stone embedded within him.”

“It’s not the only one. The stone seemed more actively used back then. In fifteen-”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“Y/N!” Yoongi exasperatedly called, placing the book down and reaching for your shuddering shoulders. You couldn’t quite look him in the eye, convincing yourself that what you had read was just a story from long ago. Shaking you roughly, Yoongi finally caught your attention. “You did as the book told you to. You fell in love. The stone has you both fooled that this union is meant to be because it’s controlling you. But the stone once overwhelmed with that love, will shatter. Namjoon won’t be here for long. If you keep up with this delusional love for him-”

“It’s not delusional. I know what is from the stone and what is from my heart!”

Yoongi raked a hand down his face in frustration. “Do you really? Because what you’re experiencing is just what Eliza and Victoria and all these people did. And look at the misfortune they all experienced. This stone will kill you both if you’re not careful. I don’t want to lose you. Please listen to me. You need to send him away, for both of your sakes.”

---

 

You couldn’t relax, not even when you returned home later that evening. The words on that page continued to haunt you, much as Yoongi’s urgent warning did. You were in a stage of disbelief, detached from your physical self, fumbling around the house for any sense of clarity.

Namjoon gripped at your shoulders firmly. “Maybe you should go rest. You don’t look well, my love.”

“That’s a good idea,” you murmured, slowly making your way down to your bed.

You slept soundlessly for several hours and then awoke with a start, relieved to find Namjoon beside you still. Whilst your slumber had been dreamless, you had jolted awake, shackled with fear that he was no longer in your world.

You couldn’t cope with this building anxiety.

Getting up quietly, you headed into the study, reaching for the journal Namjoon knew more intimately than you did. As you read each entry Eliza had made, you felt yourself relating more with the woman. Her joy had been yours recently. You understood how she felt when she gushed over holding Namwoo’s hand and how food tasted better at his side.

As you continued, the rollercoaster of emotions overwhelmed you. Reaching the final entry, you choked on your sobs, realising why Eliza had done as she had.

“Why are you in here?” a voice questioned softly and you turned to look at Namjoon, your emotions flooding from your eyes.

“I know why now. She wasn’t awful at all. Eliza gave up your father to save him.”

---

 

The statement shook Namjoon and he rushed to your side, brushing away the endless stream of tears as best as he could. You turned your head away from him as you tried to gather your emotions up into a box as you had earlier in the day. However, Namjoon stopped this, wanting to know more, wanting to see everything.

He couldn’t help you otherwise.

“She broke my father.”

“He would have died if she hadn’t!”

“Wh-what?” Namjoon breathed, his eyebrows knitting together. “Why would he-”

“Yoongi told me everything. The stone is cruel, Namjoon. It doesn’t want to harness long-lasting love. It just wants its fill of the emotion. And then when it’s done, it shatters, unable to handle the weight of that love anymore.”

“That’s… it makes no sense!”

You explained all that you had read in the bookstore earlier and Yoongi’s warning as well. You were distraught; clinging to the front of Namjoon’s bed shirt as if holding on would keep him there for longer.

None of it made sense to him and Namjoon gripped at his head. “You’re telling me, the stone will poison me if you choose to give me up, or it will shatter when our love grows too great?”

“Something like that.”

“But it states its binding two entities together in the truest of love. That’s powerful.”

“And deadly,” you wailed, a fresh wave of emotions trailing down your face. “I don’t want you to die like Percy did.”

“Victoria didn’t know if Percy actually died or just vanished,” Namjoon pointed out but you shook your head.

“He never returned and she ended her life. This is so tragic. Why did my grandmother give me such a terrible curse?!”

“Calm down, what we have isn’t a curse,” he soothed, reaching for your shuddering body.

As you sobbed on Namjoon’s shoulder, he tried to understand why the stone even existed if its sole purpose was to destroy the very love it sought out each time. He was certain there was more to understand in this lesson. The stone wouldn’t continue to bring two different life forces together like this for such a trivial need of love. The ongoing tribulations of sourcing out the right people felt like the path of destiny. His father had been the right fit for Eliza. He firmly believed his heart was meant to entangle with yours.

This couldn’t end so catastrophically.

Your emotions weakened you and you spent the remainder of the morning in bed. Although it pained Namjoon to leave you alone whilst unwell, he held a pressing need to revisit Yoongi’s store.

Setting off at a quick pace and following the route he had paid attention to yesterday, he eventually found himself standing in front of the building. Heaving in a deep breath, he strode to the door, the bell chiming above to announce of his arrival.

Namjoon still couldn’t understand what Yoongi said, unlike you. However, after an intense stare down, Yoongi sighed and nodded, gesturing for Namjoon to follow him. He stepped through a curtained doorway into the back room of the store and blinked at all the stacks of ancient texts littered everywhere.

For a moment, Namjoon was overwhelmed with admiration for the human. Whether or not they had their differences, he could appreciate that beneath that bristly exterior was an intellectual man who genuinely cared about you.

Yoongi shuffled towards the desk and picked up a book, handing it over to him.

Just as you had read, there was the tale of Percy and Victoria’s love before him. He, however, took longer than you had, perusing each page for a better indication of what could happen to him and you.

Namjoon wasn’t prepared to give up on your love. Although your time together hadn’t been very long, in all his years of existence, he hadn’t felt this way before. He was certain that meant something. Why else would he get to experience something this powerful if it was all meant to end in disaster?

He continued to think over Percy’s departure. If all that remained behind was a shattered stone, surely that didn’t mean he had died. Namjoon thought over this for some time, vaguely hearing Yoongi talking on his phone.

It wasn’t until he felt your arms wrap around him tightly that Namjoon snapped back into full awareness of his surroundings.

“Don’t leave me ever again!” you begged, clinging to him as you shook with your emotions.

Namjoon glanced up at Yoongi watching on from the doorway and then pulled you into his lap, sighing heavily with the thought of what he needed to say next. “Listen to me carefully, Y/N. I’m going to have to leave you.”