[house of cards - bts] 
[will edit as soon as I get home from work omg]

chapter 21;

The trees around them are ash gray, dark shadows falling all throughout the crevices, the wind humming and chiming through the dry bushes, grass crumpling beneath their feet. She loses breath with each step she takes, the world darkening into two moons and stars that look so incredibly different from the night sky she is used to. Her ears begin to pound the further into the forest she gets.

They trudge through the dim forest, the night sky overhead a deep shade of violet, the stars tinted a soft lavender-bordering-on-pink that would be gorgeous at any other time, a color scheme in the sky Hyemi would never had imagined to appear somewhere like the sky.

They walk and walk, Baekhyun leading the way while Sehun keeps his steps in pace with Hyemi, until they get to an opening in the trees, an exit into a clearing. Baekhyun steps through first before holding out an arm, Hyemi quickly skidding to a halt before she collides into his outstretched arm. Sehun blinks.

"Woah." Sehun murmurs, all wide eyes and lingering gasp.

Hyemi thinks woah is an understatement.  The clearing isn't huge, exactly, but it's deep, like a crater, a pockmark permanently engraved into the surface of Exo Planet, staining it.

And right in the center of it, like a cluster or a small cul-de-sac, sits half a dozen houses, like the ones Hyemi used to see in American shows, single homes with a porch and looming windows and potted plants beside the front door, strangely welcoming, strangely familiar, in a world where Hyemi hasn’t seen anything so familiar in a long, long time. It’s like an American neighborhood, separated by so much empty space Hyemi is not used to (especially since she's lived in a cramped city all her life), from Earth has somehow ended up in this crater, isolated from the rest of the planet, living in limbo and deserted, a relic Hyemi feels drawn to.

“Please tell me we’re not going in there.” Sehun murmurs, Hyemi nodding in agreement, both of them turning to look at Baekhyun.

Hyemi watches as Baekhyun kicks at the edge of the crater, a rock breaking loose before it tips over the side, a cloud of dirt rising in its wake. His fingers are tangled in his hair, his back to Hyemi and Sehun, and Hyemi wishes she could see his face; she wishes she could flatten her palms against his back and knead the tension away from his shoulders.

“The storm’s eye sits right above it.” Hyemi answers for Baekhyun, her eyes drifting upwards, a small shiver running up her spine when lightning shatters the dark, angry gray clouds.

Baekhyun just nods, acknowledging her words with that gesture alone, before he takes a step into the crater, deliberately slow and hesitant.

Going in would be inevitable, she concludes.

Sehun lets out a soft, exasperated sigh before nudging at Hyemi's back, the two of them following after Baekhyun.

~.~.~.~.~

Hyemi has dust in her eyes, no doubt all over her face and hair, by the time they get down to the cluster of houses, lingering at the center of one of the dirt roads, pretty white homes looming over them with a silent, frankly creepy sort of grace Hyemi can't seem to wrap her head around. There’s not a speck of dirt on the white walls.

"What is this supposed to be?" Sehun murmurs, more to himself than to either Hyemi or Baekhyun.

Baekhyun steps up to one of the houses, pretty fingers outstretched as he slides his fingertips along the rough, peeling wood of the porch stair railings, his eyes unreadable and his mouth pressed into a tight line.

Something about Baekhyun's expression makes Hyemi think that he's been here before and that's what baffles her most about all this. How could Baekhyun have been to a place like this before? Do neighborhoods like this exist in this planet too?

Hyemi steps further into the neighborhood, closer to the house across from the one Baekhyun is touching and she feels a jolt of electricity surge through her veins, her eyes widening as she feels energy, a sort of heaviness settle through her.

It feels like the time Hyemi had visited the tree, she can feel the energies of people, living things whom Jonah imagines must have died here, their energy and thoughts and memories coursing through her blood stream, invading her mind.

Hyemi crouches where she stands, her fingers brushing along the dried, brittle dirt and her eyes unfocused as she stares off in the distance, her breath catching in .

And for a moment, she's reliving this little abandoned neighborhood's past. She can imagine the flickering images of little children running though the roads and it's a familiar sight, despite the unfamiliarity of the children's appearances. One of the children has green skin and eyes the size of dinner plates, the other is different inhumanly so,  adorned with a curve to the spine Hyemi can't describe as anything but terrifying though she doubts this child could do any harm to her.  There are species living on this planet that Hyemi has no idea about, she realizes, in awe. She wonders why she hasn't seen these kinds of people yet, why they weren't governing or guarding the castle, why she had only caught glimpses of them in the form of angry mobs.

And then she realizes that perhaps that was the point. These species weren't allowed to govern the planet and Hyemi momentarily wonders how race works here, especially since discrimination is already so blatantly present with regards to those who were born on the day of the second moon.

Every society, she's come to learn, governs with an intent to hold power, and more often than not, that comes in the form of institutionalized power, in racial or ethnic discrimination, in finding a group of people to control and pin the blame on, especially when the world as they know it is slowly crumbling before their very eyes.

(So far, she knows the blame had been pinned on the Children of the Second Moon, the vessel of the tree, and maybe just maybe the people who used to live out here beyond the wall. Perhaps the people who used to live in this crater were scapegoated, too.)

"Hyemi?" Sehun speaks from right above her and she looks up, the backdrop behind his head an eerie bright orange where grey-black angry clouds and calm pink sky meet, blending together almost seamlessly.

Hyemi's eyes flicker to Baekhyun and she doesn't miss the concern in his eyes, at least until he meets her gaze and purses his lips, expression closing off immediately. "Kids." She blinks, frowning as she straightens up, forcing down the hurt and guilt she feels at how he ignores her. "I see kids playing. But they look different.”

Hyemi looks at Baekhyun, observing him, and he purses his lips, eyes a little too knowing for her taste, her eyes lingering on his expression, taking in the sight of him, his soft, off-white skin and the curve of his eyes, the way his lips purse just enough to thin out his upper lip, his bottom lip full and pink. He speaks, then, and his voice is smooth as velvet, drifting through the empty neighborhood. “Earth and Exo Planet have a stronger connection than most people think. Sometimes, places disappear from Earth, only to reappear anywhere on our planet.” Baekhyun explains.

Hyemi looks around, eyeing the crater they’re standing in, the pockmark of destruction she feels awfully connected to, the dust and the Earthly homes familiar to her. Then she looks up, past leafy tree tops, her eyes focusing on the top of the concrete wall, and she thinks it looks like something that was built to keep things (people) out, more than anything. Lightning cracks through the sky, just beyond the wall. “Why was that wall built?” She asks, her eyes dropping back to Baekhyun, flickering sideways to Sehun, before returning to Baekhyun.

But Sehun answers, “Civil War.”

Hyemi nods and it all clicks into place. “With who?” She asks anyway.

“You may have noticed it by now.” Baekhyun sighs, crossing his arms as he leans back on the porch railings, his stance casual and his eyes appraising her carefully. She ignores the butterflies kicking up a storm at the pit of her stomach, because the eerie light coming from the eye of the storm drenches him, and he looks good, he looks good and he’s looking at her for the first time in a long time and she hates that he has any sort of effect on her. Baekhyun gestures around them and there’s a sort of bitter bite to his tone, one she doesn’t understand. “Only certain…types…of people are allowed to live under protection of the wall, closer to the palace.” Baekhyun sighs, “In Earth, you’d call it race, but here the population is made up of different types of people. I think…” Baekhyun frowns, pausing as if he’s searching for the right word. “Species is the best word for it. The Great Civil War was fought between the Wall Dwellers and the Outsiders. The Outsiders were different, they looked different, they spoke differently, some of them could barely stand being out in the sun for longer than a few minutes and it terrified a lot of…our people. Long story short, the Wall Dwellers won and the Outsiders live under the King’s jurisdiction, beyond the wall. They’re not allowed within any of the walls.”

“Here.” Hyemi murmurs, gesturing around them.

Baekhyun nods. “But that war happened a long, long time ago. Before our parents were even born.”

“But…” Hyemi looks around, eyes rising to the edges of the crater, to the dust filled ground surrounding this out-of-place neighborhood. “The effects of it are still going strong.” Then Hyemi frowns, her brows furrowing. “These people were attacked and your king didn’t do a thing.”

“Hyemi.” Baekhyun gives her a sympathetic look, as if she isn’t getting the whole thing. “Prejudices run deep.”

And then it all clicks.

“Your king did this.” Hyemi blinks, eyes wide. It’s quiet for a long time and when Hyemi looks over at Sehun, Sehun seems incredibly interested with paint job on the house, eyes never meeting hers.

“A long time ago.” Baekhyun says, voice soft, drifting. “Kris’s grandfather did this.”

“What if…” Hyemi blinks, a shiver running down her spine, her voice as soft as Baekhyun’s. “What if Yeonma isn’t forcing the people beyond the wall into his army? What if they’re joining him because of a common enemy?”

Hyemi wonders how the the royal family could screw things up this much. Was there anything they haven’t ruined with prejudice and greed?

“Wait.” Sehun curses, his eyes widening as he looks between Baekhyun and Hyemi, his expression stoic and so serious, “That would explain why Yeonma’s armies have been mobilizing so quickly. But.” Sehun’s fingers twist together, his brows furrowing, lips turning down in a questioning pout, “That doesn’t explain why Yeonma took Luhan. Yeonma wouldn’t need Luhan’s abilities if…if joining him is voluntary.”

“Maybe it’s because—” Baekhyun’s voice is cut off by a loud creaking sound and Hyemi jumps, her eyes darting around them, eyes wide.

It sounds like someone’s pulling back a door with unoiled hinges, the soft, human-like groan echoing in the empty silence. Only then does Hyemi realize that it’s silent.

Her eyes flicker upwards and the sky is still filled with storm clouds, lightning striking through the sky at random intervals, but there’s something off about the whole scene.

It’s too silent.

The cracking whip sound that accompanies the lightning is missing and not even a leaf rustles in the wind. It’s so silent that Hyemi can hear herself breathing, a soft ragged sound that seems to grow louder with each passing second, her heart pumping in her chest.

Creak.

Hyemi’s head snaps up and she searches for the source of the creaking, her eyes eventually falling on one of the houses further up the street, the one with a pot of white flowers on either side of the stairs leading up to the porch. She watches, with wide eyes and her heart in , as one of the rocking chairs continues to rock back and forth back and forth, the creaking sound echoing all around them. It’s empty and there is not wind.

Hyemi shivers.

“We need to go.” Sehun murmurs, his fingers curling into tense fists.

The words barely leave his mouth when there’s a loud bang.

The three of them turn in their spots, Baekhyun stepping away from the house he was leaning on, the house the sound had come from, and Hyemi has no idea what to do when she realizes that the front door is wide open on its hinges, leading into darkness, unhindered and abysmal.

Bang.

The front door of the house behind Hyemi, across from the first one slams open, and Hyemi jumps, stepping away from the house and closer to the center of the road.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

One after the other three other front doors slam open, the gunshot-like sound of it echoing in the silence, loud and terrifying and Hyemi is frozen to her spot, watching as the final door, the one with the rocking chair still rocking, slowly, mockingly, creaks open, revealing black darkness, daring them to enter.

“We are not going in there.” Sehun murmurs.

Lighting cracks through the sky and the sound of it reminds Hyemi of screaming, of Jongdae, the reason they wandered off the trail in the first place, and her blood runs cold. Whatever is in there has Jongdae. Whatever is inside that house isn’t going to let them out so easily.

The door drifts open, knocking against the wall beside the door, before it swings back closed, swinging open again, until the door is swinging back and forth on its hinges, banging against the wall at a rhythmical speed.

Lightning strikes couples with the loud screech, ear-shattering and bone-chilling.

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bangbangbangbangbangbang—

“We need to go.” Hyemi chokes out, her head pounding as she tries to tear her focus off of the door. Sehun shakes his head, exasperation and the smallest hint of fear in his eyes. Baekhyun’s expression is unreadable. “Whatever—whatever is in there—in here—won’t let us leave.”

The door isn’t swinging on its hinges anymore; it just sways in place, gently, like someone’s hanging onto it, watching them step forward with barely contained anticipation.

They stand at the foot of the porch and all Hyemi can focus on is the fact that the potted white flowers are chrysanthemums, funeral flowers. That every house in this tiny cluster is adorned with funeral flowers, glittering white against the eerie storm light. Baekhyun steps up first and Hyemi can’t even find solace in the fact that Baekhyun actually looks down at her, from the porch, and stretches a hand out, lips pressed together into a thin, distressed line. His eyes are filled with reassurance she knows is only for her sake, despite everything he’s said to her before they had got here. His fingers thread through hers and he pulls her up the stairs, Sehun’s comforting hand pressed to her back, though she can feel him trembling the slightest bit.

Hyemi stares at the dark doorway and takes a deep breath, steadying herself as she straightens up, stepping in first, despite Baekhyun’s sounds of protest coming from behind her.

~.~.~.~.~

She’s standing in a field of flowers. That’s the first thing she notices, the first thing that tells her that something is off here. Flowers don’t grow like this in EXO Planet.

The flowers are a multitude of colors, reds and pinks and yellows and blues, and so normal that it surprises Hyemi. They sway against her knees, the breeze soft and the sunlight warm against her skin. The sky is still strange, a pinkish yellow, and the sun appears to be a pale white, one she’s never seen before. Hyemi wonders how awful it must be to live under a sky that always changes, leaving nothing constant to look up at and anchor one back to reality.

“You’re right.” A soft, familiar voice speaks from beside her and she turns, her eyes wide.

“Luhan?”

Luhan just smiles tightly, like the attempt pains him. He looks tired, his eyes bloodshot and his skin pale and hollow. “This is a dream of yours. Or mine, I guess. I brought you here as soon as you slipped into unconsciousness.”

Hyemi’s eyes widen at his words, “Um, I’m not supposed to be unconscious.”

“Really?” Luhan seems to mull over her words, eyes screwed up in thought, even while Hyemi panics at the fact that she’s unconscious which could only mean that she’s in danger, along with Sehun and Baekhyun. “Then I won’t hold you for too long.”

“Where are you?”

“I don’t know. North somewhere?” Luhan’s expression morphs into one of hopelessness, the twinkle in his eyes dimming. “I’ve been wandering this flower field in my mind for so long, I’ve lost track of the days. I’m trying to keep…him out.”

Hyemi peers at their surroundings, at the field of flowers that seem to spread out into the horizon for eternity. And at the very edge of horizon, where sky meets flowers, she sees dark clouds, surrounding Luhan’s haven of flowers. A shiver runs down her spine and to the very tip of her toes. “We’ll get you out.” Hyemi reassures him, cutting through the tension forming in the silence, her eyes locked on the horizon. “I promise.”

“Come quickly.” Luhan murmurs, his eyes drifting over the horizon, “I can only hold him off for so long.”

Hyemi nods, determination flooding her thoughts. “I don’t think Yeonma’s going to have time for you right now. He’s too busy building his army.”

Hyemi doesn’t expect Luhan’s languid eyes to snap to the side, locking on her face. She doesn’t expect the confused look he gives her. Her eyes flicker back to the horizon and she sees the darkness coming closer and closer and closer, like an ocean wave, swallowing the field of flowers whole and coating the world around them in black.

(It’s not a cloud of darkness, however. It’s watching the flowers in the horizon wilt at a horrific speed, the wave of darkening, burnt, dead flowers inching closer at a steady pace, as if using Yeonma’s name left him with in a vengeful wrath.)

“Yeonma isn’t the one you need to be worried about.” Luhan’s voice is distant, his eyes wide as saucers as he turns in a slow circle, watching the wave of flowers zip towards them, converging in the center, where Luhan and Hyemi stand.

Luhan’s voice echoes, like he’s speaking through a grocery store overhead speaker. Impending doom flies at them from all sides, but Luhan remains calm. Instead of saying clean up on aisle twelve in that perfectly unaffected grocery-store-employee-tone she expects, he speaks urgently, tone strangely lethargic still.

“Yeonma is the least of your worries, Hyemi, Yeonma is just—”

~.~.~.~.~

“Glad you could join us, poppet.” A sultry smooth voice snickers, so suddenly that Hyemi doesn’t even both trying to decipher Luhan’s words, struggling to return to full consciousness.

Hyemi groggily opens her eyes, her head pounding. There’s warmth trickling down the side of her face she really hopes isn’t blood. She blinks rapidly, blurry vision focusing on her dim surroundings.

It’s too dark to see where the voice came from, but when she tries to surge upwards onto her feet, she’s jerked back by metal encasing her wrists. Hyemi struggles, pulling on her hands, twisting and turning her wrists, her feet outstretched in front of her as if she can somehow slide out of her restraints.

But then tendrils of what Hyemi can only describe as cold fingers curl around her left ankle, tickling the bare skin where her jeans were pushed up and she screams, kicking at the freezing hand.

“Leave her alone.” Baekhyun’s voice drifts through the darkness, loud and clear and directly to her right. His voice is low, angry, and her heart jumps because he’s alive. She isn’t alone.

There’s a cackle coming from somewhere in front of her, where her feet are, before the grip loosens on her ankle and she pulls her feet up to her chest, her eyes darting around the space in front of her, hoping that her eyes will somehow adjust. She scoots back into the wall she seems to be chained to.

Her heart is pumping in her chest and she can’t breathe and she keeps scooting further into the wall, the restraints on her wrist slicing at her skin, until she feels something soft and prickly tickle at her cheek.

She swallows down the scream, because the thing that grabbed her ankle, the thing living in the dark is still cackling maniacally and she’s terrified. She moves to the right, tilting away from the furry substance and she only ends up with more of it tickling at her neck. She tries to shrug it away, tears springing at her eyes because she has no ing idea what she’s touching and it’s dark and she’s always hated the dark. The fur falls back against the wall behind them, followed by the softest of thuds, before she feels what she swears is skin against her shoulder, the weight of it heavy. When she turns her head to the left, she feels soft puffs of breath against her cheek and she prays that whatever—whoever—is leaning against her is unconscious, her whole body quivering with newly found fear, because she has no ing idea what she’s dealing with.

Her breathing is loud and she swears her heartbeat is louder and that’s when the cackling abruptly stops, like someone had cut off the person’s air supply.

“Don’t you ing da—.” Baekhyun’s loud echo of a shout gets cut off by a loud slam and the sound of him gasping for air, before everything goes dead silent again. His voice, the sound of his assault, sounds like it’s coming from all sides now, the darkness so disorientating that her sense of hearing starts to confuse her.

“Where are you going, poppet?” The sultry voice turns ice cold, the trickle of amused warmth she had heard earlier disappearing from his voice almost immediately. She curls further into the body slumped against her side, deeming the voice more dangerous than whoever is unconscious beside her, and she tries and fails to hide her ragged breathing. The tenor in the voice grows deeper, louder, and when he shouts she flinches, her head knocking against the wall lightly. “I asked where you were going, poppet!” His shout seems to shake the atmosphere, his cold voice echoing and crashing down on her from all sides. “You can’t escape the dark, baby girl.”

The sultry undertone to his voice is what terrifies her the most and her hands shake and pull against her restraints, even as the person-thing-whatever-it-is curls both hands around her ankles and tugs her so hard that she ends up sprawled out on the floor, the person snickering as he pulls at her ankles, the restraints slicing her wrists, warm blood trickling down her forearm. The body that had been leaning against her collapses against her chest and only then does she realize that the strangled sobs are coming out of her own mouth.

“Ah, poppet, no need to worry. Sit tight while I straighten out our little second moon bastard first.” The owner of the voice releases its hold on her ankles and she pulls her knees up, despite the fact that she’s still stuck sprawled out on her back, arms twisted at a strange angle and a body pinning her to the ground, tears leaking down the side of her face as she stares into the dark silence, breathing ragged.

She hears muffled sounds, choking sounds, floating through the darkness and she realizes that they have Baekhyun gagged.

She squeezes her eyes shut, but she’s still forced to listen, her fingers curling into fists as she listens to the sound of him hacking out a cough, a pained groan intertwined somewhere in there.

“Let them go.” He gasps out, voice raspy.

“Why should I do that?”

“Be—because I’m the one you’re angry with. They have nothing to do with this.” Baekhyun sounds resigned.

A harsh sound of skin slapping against skin echoes in her ears and Hyemi’s fingers curl around the chains digging into her wrists when Baekhyun grunts in pain. “They have everything to do with this.” The voice is sharp, quivering with cold rage. “Perhaps, you don’t deserve this. You’re just a child, a bastard caught in adult affairs, but someone has to pay for your father’s deeds, yes?”

“But they don’t.” Baekhyun murmurs, a hint of desperation in his tone, “Let them go. Please.”

Hyemi’s heart twists at the defeat in Baekhyun’s tone, even as she tries to understand what’s going on. There’s a pressure in her chest building, as if the fear and confusion is morphing into something else, cultivating deep inside of her. “No.” The voice is harsh as a whip, the sound of the barely suppressed growl running down her spine. “They will die with you.” There’s a pause before he adds, “I’ll save you for last. Shall we consider this a parting gift from your favorite uncle, Bastard?”

Hyemi blinks rapidly. Uncle? Before she can fully comprehend what she just heard, she’s yanked up into a sitting position by the hair, her neck straining because of the outstretched angle. “Let us start with this one.”

The minute the cold fingers are on her neck, slithering along her skin, she explodes from within, tendrils of heat running out from her center. The fear makes her blood boil, her skin tingling, and her head buzzes, her vision spotting black. Unlike the time after the Oracle, in the hallway with Baekhyun, she feels more fear than anger, and that seems to fuel her, her breathing growing loud and ragged, quickening to match the speed of her rapid heartbeat.

She’s yanked up by her hair and she screams, her voice echoing all around her and a burst of energy breaks free, though she still feels that same warmth from before, like a ball of energy shattering within her, and she squeezes her eyes shut, her back sliding up the floor as she tries to get away. She just wants this to stop. She wants Baekhyun and Sehun and Jongdae back and she wants this person with the horrible voice to stop touching her.

“Don’t touch me.” Her scream cracks halfway through, morphing into a horrified sob, her voice piercing through the silent darkness, and heat crawls up her neck, radiating from her body.

The grip on her hair disappears and she’s able to move her hands; they’re no longer restrained.

Slowly, she opens her eyes and it’s not dark anymore; the bracelet on her wrist, the one Baekhyun had given her what feels like a lifetime ago, when he first reappeared, glows so brightly that she can see her surroundings.

The body leaning beside, the one that had been pinning her down earlier, is an unconscious Sehun and her eyes widen.

Baekhyun sits to her right, lip bleeding and face scratched up, his eyes watching her and his hands free. His restraints seem like they’ve been melted off, a pile of ash at his side and when she looks down, she’s sees the same thing beside her.

And when she looks up, just at the edge of the bubble of light her bracelet makes, is a horrifying monster of a thing clinging to the ceiling, electric blue eyes glowing in the dim light. It hisses at her, but it can’t seem to get close, as if the light from her bracelet is warding it off.

Her eyes flicker downwards, closer to the walls, where the light doesn’t hit, and there are more of them, with dark limbs, all curving out in sharp angles, like a giant human-shaped spider, their blue eyes glowing in the dark, piercing through her.

They’re surrounded by these spider-like, four legged monsters, faces overcast in the shadows created by the light from her bracelet. They’re surrounded.

Their bodies, however, can’t penetrate the barrier of light, she deduces when she notices the way they scurry further up the walls and ceilings, hissing silently, claws scraping across the walls, the sound grating.

But their faces can.

She tenses when one of them jerks its head forward, shadow withdrawing from its face as its tongue lolls to one side, the hissing sound still soft and ever-present, sending chills up and down her spine. She stares at its face, mesmerized by the beauty of it.

She doesn’t think she’s seen a face so beautiful before, with sharp cheekbones and perfect skin and sultry lips, luscious hair pinned up into an elaborate updo, emphasizing its regal features. They all look like that, a mix of smooth, blemish-less skin colors, from deep dark brown to porcelain white to pastel pink to forest green, electric blue eyes highlighted by the white paint smeared around their eyes, lashes so long that they seem to curl and sway, brushing against the white paint in a way that coats the lashes unevenly with white. She thinks it’s terrifying, really, to see such beauty on their faces when everything else is the stuff of nightmares, elbows jutting out at odd angles and long nails digging into the walls as they crawl along on all fours, hissing and growling in a language she doesn’t understand.

She’s trembling even as she slowly sits up, her eyes focusing on one of the faces located front and center, his unwavering unnaturally blue eyes filled with a familiar fire, while the rest of his features seem the smallest bit familiar in a way she really doesn’t want to think about.

Uncle.

The word echoes in her head until her head is ready to burst.

She can’t help but look over at Baekhyun, then, watching as he appraises her with steady, unreadable eyes before he looks away, breaking their eye contact first, almost pointedly, frown tugging at his pink lips.

Then the one in the center jerks forward, his entire face doused with light, neck stretching while he keeps the rest of body out of the light cast by her bracelet, and he smiles cruelly, all teeth and gums and unbridled menace. His eyes slowly shift to the side as he tilts his head, surveying Baekhyun, chiseled cheekbones casting long shadows over his face, hiding his expressions well. “You did not tell me this girl was also a child of light. I would have played with her a bit longer.” He pauses before he bites out, “It would have been my honor to tear her limb from limb, Bastard.”

Baekhyun’s jaw ticks, tightening under the soft glow of Hyemi’s bracelet’s light, before she notices his eyes flicker, the dark parts flickering into white, matching the whites around his pupil. His image flickers before her, disappearing and reappearing, like a distortion of his image, and his glare is burning as he stares at his…uncle.

Then his uncle’s face begins to burn, steaming like an ant does when it’s put under a magnifying glass in the sun. The half-scream, half-hiss that leaves his mouth is inhumanly high, the pitch grating at her eardrums as he jerks his head back out of the soft light of Hyemi’s bracelet, recoiling into the darkness, a growl echoing from his mouth along with his friends, reverberating all around the room.

“We’re leaving.” Baekhyun grits out.

“You ing bastard.” His uncle screams, the sound so loud and sudden that it makes Hyemi jump, the urge to hide washing over her. His voice brings fear to her heart and she doesn’t know how he does it, how there’s something in his tone that just automatically brings chills down her spine, the darkness he’s utterly engulfed in so apparent that Hyemi can’t even look the man—thing—in the eye without wanting to cower away. “You ing…your father ruined my sister and you will pay for that with your head. You will pay.”

And there it is again, she thinks, the idea that children are meant to pay for their parent’s deeds. Her eyes drift over to Baekhyun and he looks so incredibly tense, his jaw clenched, but his eyes…they’re filled with ancient sadness, the kind she can’t figure out, not when she doesn’t have the whole story. She vows she’ll hear the whole story, that they’ll get out of here and she’ll hear it all.

“It was nice seeing you, Uncle. I'd love to continue this during dinner, sometime.” Baekhyun says sarcastically, earning a chorus of growls from all around of them. He looks at Hyemi, for a second too long, before he steps towards her, one step, two steps three steps, his eyes drifting down to Sehun’s unconscious form beside her feet. She watches his sad eyes soften, determination clouding them.

 Baekhyun ignores his uncle, he ignores the hisses of the others, the soft calls of traitor and you will die, and Hyemi wonders if she’s feeling the pain for him, because her skin is crawling and she’s staring at his uncle, doused in shadows, as he talks, biting out cold sharp words that Baekhyun ignores.

(Or at least pretends to. Hyemi sees the way his back tenses before he gently pushes a hand through Sehun’s hair and carefully hauls him up.)

“No matter how much you try to ignore it, you’ll always be a child of the dark.” His uncle speaks in an ominous tone, his voice all-encompassing. “The light given to you by the second moon is nothing compared to what you were born with. Fight it all you want, look like your damned father all you want, but you are your mother’s son. My sister could walk in the light, just like you, and she thought she could run. She couldn’t. It was her birthright, like it is yours. You can’t stop it.”

And then he laughs, even as Baekhyun half-drags Sehun behind him, his fingers gripping the back of Hyemi’s shirt, pushing her ahead of him. Their light bubble, Hyemi notices, is beginning to shrink, an age old tiredness sinking into her bones, but she forces herself to focus, to keep her strength so they can get out of the darkness intact. The laughter becomes a chorus of it, the others joining in, and Hyemi walks faster, her fingers curling around Baekhyun’s forearm, tugging on his sleeve.

“You can’t run away.”

Hyemi fiddles with the doorknob, the light bubble around her dwindling even further, until she can feel those things breathing down her neck, cackling in her ears. But they can’t touch her. They can’t touch them and she clings to that fact, franticly pulling at the door.

“I am not worried about taking your head just yet. You’ll be bring me your head on your own, anyway, won’t you, my sweet bastard nephew?” The question hovers, manifests in the silence.

“Break it.” Baekhyun murmurs, his voice strained, thick with emotions that instantly make her whirl on her heels to look at him, her eyes wide because Baekhyun never shows emotion like this, not when she’s also afraid and in pain. He’s supposed to be the strong one and the vulnerability in his next sentence makes her heart twist. “Please, break the door.”

In the flickering soft glow of light, she sees his eyes sparkle, wet with tears, though it never spills. Her heart pumps in her chest and she wants to kill everyone around her, she wants to kill the things breathing down her neck, waiting for her light to die so they can tear them apart.

A rush of adrenaline shoots through her blood, then, and the light from her bracelet bursts, no longer dwindling as it pushes outwards, the sound of sizzling meeting her ears as those things scream and scream and scream. The whole house is doused in light, every corner, every nook and cranny and she feels pressure at her side, like there’s someone there, in the house that she needs to find.

Jongdae.

So she doesn’t even hesitate as she wraps a hand around the doorknob, watching as the doorknob disintegrates into ash, the door swinging open. Baekhyun steps out first, Sehun in tow, and collapses on the dirt road. He looks over his shoulder and Hyemi shakes her head, “Get out of here. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Hye—”

She spins on her heels, the anger inside of her fueling the light emanating from her bracelet, and she ignores the hisses and sizzling skin and the words of stupid girl.

“You’ll run out of power soon.” Baekhyun’s uncle whispers and her fists clench all over again and she finds deep satisfaction in the way he hears Baekhyun’s uncle cry out in pain, the light from her bracelet and the broken door burning him. She smiles and she knows it’s a horrible, cruel smile. But she can’t stop it.

These people—things—deserve it, she decides.

So she scales the bottom floor of the house and there’s something awfully familiar about the layout, even when she finds the windows, heavily draped and boarded up so not even a peep of sunshine can enter the house.

She yanks the heavy curtains off the walls, ignoring the almost human-like screams as she throws them to the side, and she places both her palms flat against the surface of the boards covering the window. She watches them disintegrate before her eyes, sunlight streaming into the room.

She does this for every window she finds. There are wall-to-wall windows in the old rundown dining room and the dust glows, sparkling under the rays of sunshine.

(She does this until she runs these creatures into a corner in the hall, huddled over each other, some of their spider-like limbs falling out of the darkness just enough to have them burn, shriveling up as they scream and sob. They look almost pitiful and her anger falters for a moment, before it engulfs her again, when she’s the cuts lining her wrist, blood smearing all up her arms and along her palms, making her see red.)

“Where is he?” She says, her voice echoing in the silence. Her shadow looms over them and they seem so small then. “Where’s the one who shoots lightning?”

“Your light is dwindling and then I’ll tear you apart, stupid girl.” The damn uncle says with a dark sort of vengeance.

Anger blinds her and her cheeks pull upwards, into the cruelest smile yet, all teeth and no humor.

She steps forward, purposely dousing just one of them in her bracelet’s light (though it is beginning to dwindle again), and watches with unwavering eyes and anger in her blood as they burn alive in her light.

“Stop, stop stopstopstopstop—”

Maybe the screams become too real, then, too human-like, or maybe the anger isn’t quite as substantial as it was a minute ago, or maybe it’s because the smell of flesh burning is so awfully horrid, but whatever it is makes Hyemi step away so quickly that she nearly trips over herself, her eyes widening when she sees the very real bloodied stump she left in her wake, still crying and screaming for her to stop.

“Oh, my God.” Hyemi chokes on her words, her voice echoing in the silence.

“Hy—Hyemi?”

She turns and Jongdae is clinging to a shelf, sunlight bringing out the soft colors in his dark hair, matted with blood she knows is his, his face pale and one of his eyes swollen shut. He’s keeled over, bleeding, unable to stand without support, but there’s something in his good eye, something firm, that has her fingers curling and her heart pumping, the light from her bracelet extinguishing immediately as she nearly collapses, leaning against a wall.

“The Death God was right.” Baekhyun’s uncle is angry, his voice trembling with rage and something akin to fear, “You’re a monster that will only bring destruction on us.”

(Hyemi absentmindedly thinks about the irony of it all. She thinks these people are monsters and they think the same of her. So who’s really the monster here?)

Hyemi stumbles as she steps away from the huddle of creatures, especially the one whose voice is soft, begging, as it cries in pain, nothing but a scorched stump of thing, still alive despite everything.

She reaches Jongdae, helps him lean on her, and she starts to pull him away.

Jongdae stops her and she watches while Jongdae steps close and points at the bloodied stump of a thing, her doing, a white hot glow of electricity gathering at his fingertip.

(Jongdae finishes what she started with sadness in his eyes, before another please falls out of its mouth.)

~.~.~.~.~

She blacks out the minute she steps off the porch of the house, the power gone and her strength taken with it.

~.~.~.~.~

She dreams of black, but she still wakes up trembling.

She wakes up trembling and gasping for air and she remembers what she did to those people and the accusation of monster fills her head from the minute she regains consciousness.

“I’m sorry.” She says, her eyes focused on Baekhyun, where he sits a good foot away from her, just watching her try to regain her breath.

“Why are you sorry?” He asks, tilting his head.

“I need you.” She cries out and she doesn’t care how desperate she sounds. She doesn’t care that she’s breaking her code, that she has to choke the stubborn need to not relent down as she tries to breathe, her eyes flickering over Baekhyun’s frame, the way his jaw tenses and the way his eyes darken, as if her words brought about something else in his head, something that makes him look at her with a raw sort of want. “You were right. I need you.”

He stares at her and she thinks his gaze, the darkness in it as he stares into her eyes, the way his tongue flicks out, running down his full bottom lip, will be the end of her. But she’s so desperate. Desperate for someone to tell her that it’s going to be okay. That’s she not a monster.

Baekhyun sits up on his knees and slowly crawls towards her, the rough grass beneath them flickering in her vision from stone gray to dead brown grass, as if whatever he’s thinking is sending him into his own mind into frenzy as well. She thinks he’ll kiss her and he does dip down his head, hovering close but never touch, his dark eyes locking her in place. Something in his eyes makes her tremble, butterflies tumbling at the pit of her stomach, and she can’t help but let out a soft, ragged breath.

He looks at her, examines her expression, before he speaks, voice soft and smooth. “Do you want me to tell you that everything will be okay?”

He watches as she nods jerkily and he smiles then, indulgently, his nose centimeters from hers. He reaches up and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, fingers cold against her skin. “It won’t be. Nothing will be okay.” He sighs and his breath tickles her skin, warm against the coldness of his finger. “I was born from a family of monsters.” He twirls her hair in his finger and she thinks the coldness of his skin is unnatural. “You are becoming a monster.”

Her breathing hitches and he smiles, warmly, softly, trailing fingers drawing circles around her neck. “You need me. I need you. We’re both some kind of variation of a monster. A perfect match.”

He leans down and she watches as his face contorts, his beautiful face twisting into something dangerous and terrible and monstrous. “Stop.” She murmurs.

Baekhyun grins cruelly. “You should have seen yourself. You looked worse than me.”

And then he presses his lips to hers, the strength of it bruising, and she squeezes her eyes shut, repeating to herself that this has to be a vision.

Baekhyun would never look at her so cruelly.

He digs his fingers into and she waits for that moment where she'll wake up screaming again.

 a/n: I've decided that this last half of salt skin might take longer than I originally thought so the chapter count will be much longer! My semester still isn't over yet but I've been stress-relief writing so here's this!!

for some reason i'm very iffy on this chapter. it seems confusing to me and idk why??? so pls leave any constructive criticism or anything that seems weird so i can look over that pls! thank you!!

Remember to leave a review below telling me all your thoughts and theories, I love reading them omg, and I love you all a lot <3333

xoxo