Chapter 1
Jungkook
*They say stories are escapes—safe worlds you can fold yourself into, like a blanket against the storm. For me, they were the only place I could breathe.*
Jungkook
I wasn’t anyone special. Not the kind of boy people wrote stories about.
Jungkook
I worked at a bookstore by day, sorted used paperbacks by night, and filled every empty hour with stories that made my heart hurt in beautiful ways.
Jungkook
I liked broken characters. I liked tragic endings. I liked villains who loved too much.
Jungkook
So when I found that book—untitled, crimson-leathered, humming with something I couldn’t name—I knew I was in trouble.
Jungkook
It came in a cardboard box full of forgotten things: old fantasy, water-damaged romances, a half-burned horror paperback.
Jungkook
And at the bottom, this book—pristine, though it had no publisher, no author, no barcode.
Jungkook
I took it home. I opened it.
Jungkook
The first line was enough to steal my breath:
"In the land of Elarion, night never truly ends..."
Jungkook
I devoured it in a single night. Then again.
Jungkook
Then again. The world it described was cruel, and dark, and rich with sorrow.
Jungkook
But it was alive—its pain pulsed with a strange beauty. I wanted to stay there, even if it killed me.
Jungkook
The Moon King was the villain of the tale—but to me, he was more. A lonely god.
Jungkook
A man forged from heartbreak and obsession.
Jungkook
He didn’t love gently. He loved like ruin. And I pitied him, even as he cursed the world.
Jungkook
And then there was Serenya.
Jungkook
I admired her but never connected. Kael was a tragic hero—but he didn’t move me the way the King did.
Jungkook
I don’t like happy ending books.
Jungkook
Serenya became the curse.
Jungkook
But even then, I felt like the story wasn’t finished.
Jungkook
Like there was something missing. Or someone.
Jungkook
It sounds insane, I know. But the more I read it, the more I felt it—like the book knew me.
Jungkook
Like it was waiting for something.
Jungkook
It was a casual day. I came home tired, the kind of tired that soaks into your bones, but despite the exhaustion, something itched under my skin.
Jungkook
I needed to read it again. The weather outside only deepened the mood—the sky was grey, wind rustling like whispers through the trees, the smell of rain already hanging in the air.
Jungkook
It was the perfect night for that book. The one that matched the ache I couldn't name.
Jungkook
And then came the night it bled.
Rain hammered the windows.
My room was lit only by my reading lamp.
I flipped open the book for the hundredth time, and that’s when I saw it—the ink was wet.
The words shifted beneath my fingers.
Crimson seeped from the parchment, curling around my hands like smoke. I tried to drop it, but it clung to me—alive, sentient, hungry.
Jungkook
What the hells happening
I thought I was dreaming. Or going mad.
But then the sigil on the cover began to glow.
And the wind outside howled like something ancient and wrong. And I heard it—faint, as if from another world:
That wasn’t my name. But it echoed in my bones.
Jungkook
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
I didn’t fall. I was taken.
And just before the darkness swallowed me whole, I heard a voice I had only read on paper, now warm in my ear:
???
“You were never just a reader.”
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