Bloodroot and Hunger

The old ruins were swallowing them.

Once, this had been a castle—ornate, gilded, teeming with men who worshipped the sun and cursed the night. Now it was hollowed out, bones of marble poking through overgrown ivy, the scent of bloodroot curling through every cracked corridor.

Kook pushed open the rusted door to what used to be a throne room. The moonlight trickled in like spilled milk, pale and spoiled. He crossed the shattered floor without hesitation, boot heels smearing through old ash. His fingers brushed over a fresco half-covered in rot—depicting a war between angels and beasts. The angels were losing.

Behind him, Tae entered soundlessly, his cloak dragging like smoke.

“This place remembers,” Tae murmured, eyes tracing the broken crown still resting atop the throne. “Do you?”

Kook didn’t answer.

He stood in the center of the room and closed his eyes. The air was heavy with old echoes—screams, hymns, moans.

“This is where we were betrayed,” Tae whispered, circling him slowly. “You on your knees. Me with my hands soaked in your blood.”

Kook’s jaw flexed.

He hated how true it felt. How familiar the cracks in the stone were. How easily his skin remembered the bite of cold iron manacles.

“We said we’d end it here,” Tae continued, voice low and reverent. “Together.”

“That was another life,” Kook spat.

Tae stopped behind him.

“Was it?”

In the silence that followed, the air changed. Something unseen shifted. The candles in the hall flared without flame.

Tae stepped closer.

“You still dream of it, don’t you?” he murmured, voice brushing the back of Kook’s neck. “Me beneath you. Blood on your tongue. My name between your teeth.”

Kook turned slowly, fury coiling behind his ribs like a serpent ready to strike. “You think this is seduction?”

“No,” Tae said. “This is truth.”

He raised a hand and pressed two fingers to the center of Kook’s chest. The contact was light—barely a whisper—but Kook staggered back as if struck.

A vision crashed into him—uninvited, intimate, overwhelming.

The past.

A hundred years ago. This very throne room.

Tae chained to the steps. Kook walking toward him, blade in hand, eyes gold with betrayal.

“Say my name,” Tae whispered in that memory. “Say it before you end me.”

Kook had said it. Not as a warrior. Not as a king.

But as a lover.

“Taehyung.”

And then—steel through heart. A kill that never held.

Kook gasped, the vision tearing away like skin.

His fists clenched. “Stop invading my head.”

Tae smiled, dark and sweet. “You never locked the door.”

The temperature dropped. Snow began falling indoors.

Kook stepped forward, grabbing Tae’s collar. “Do you want me to kill you again?”

“I want you to try.”

Their mouths collided.

The kiss was savage. Teeth clashed. Blood mixed. It wasn’t romance. It was recollection. Proof they were still alive. Still cursed. Still each other’s only rival worth bleeding for.

Kook shoved Tae against the wall, lips dragging down his throat, biting. Marking. Reminding.

Tae moaned, low and desperate, the sound threading through the ruins like a warning.

He gasped against Kook’s lips, “You think you’re in control?”

“I’m not thinking,” Kook growled. “I’m remembering.”

And with a single movement, he spun Tae around, lips brushing his ear.

“You broke me once.”

“I’m still breaking you,” Tae whispered.

“You’ll regret it.”

“I already do.”

Their bodies tangled in shadow, desperate, divine, dangerous.

But somewhere—beneath the marble, under centuries of dust and betrayal—something listened.

Something fed.