Crimson Verse chapter 3

"The Days Blur Like Dust"

Jungkook POV

I don’t know how many days it’s been.

It could be a week.

It could be months.

Or maybe just a long, unending day. The Blood Moon never sets, and there is no sun to rise, so time here doesn’t pass the way it should.

There’s only the hourglass.

A tall, spiraling thing in the middle of the servant’s hall.

When the sand runs out, someone flips it. That’s how we count shifts.

I work six to eight hours inside the palace—carrying trays, wine, scrolls, fixing candles, tidying carpets I’ll never afford.

Then I get four to five hours of “rest.” Then it all begins again.

I eat when they call for food. Sleep when I find time. It's a rhythm without music.

An echo without a voice.

It’s all a messed-up situation.

But there are small things I’ve carved out for myself. Like the harp.

I started practicing again. It felt… easy. Like I’d done it a thousand times before, even though I never touched a harp in my life back home.

My fingers move like they remember things my mind never learned.

The music pours out of me. I don’t know if it’s mine or Elian’s—or maybe we’ve blended somehow.

Maybe I’m not just in his body. Maybe I’ve become him.

The castle is huge. Bigger than I remembered from the book. It breathes.

It shifts.

There are doors that weren’t there the day before. Walls that seem to listen.

I walk when I’m off duty, just to stay sane.

And I’ve found hidden things.

Passages behind tapestries.

Spiral staircases that disappear into fog.

Rooms that open only when you speak the right word—or step in the right rhythm.

My favorite discovery is the garden.

You’d never find it unless you knew where to look. Past the kitchen’s cold cellar, through a crack in a mirror that hums with enchantment, and down a stairway that isn’t always there.

It opens into a courtyard that the Blood Moon barely touches.

A garden, half wild, half tended by magic. Ivy climbs marble columns, and flowers bloom in strange colors.

In one corner sits an open-air library—half-rotted scrolls, heavy spellbooks, forgotten poetry.

I don’t think anyone knows it’s there.

I’ve never seen another soul inside it.

It’s mine. My hideout.

I practice the harp there. Sleep under the whispering trees when I’m too exhausted to make it to my bunk.

Some nights I just lie on the cool stone bench and watch the sky bleed.

When I feel too much like Jungkook and too little like Elian, I go there to breathe.

I’ve met dozens of people in the palace. Nobles.

Guards. Cooks. Ghosts, maybe. Some speak to me. Most don’t.

But not him. Not yet.

Not the Moon King.

I know he’s here.

I feel his magic in the stones.

I hear his voice in my dreams.

But he hasn’t appeared.

And part of me hopes he never will.

After an eight-hour shift of palace duty—clearing silver trays, dodging noble tempers, and nearly dropping a pitcher of blackroot wine on someone’s velvet boots—I was finally dismissed.