I woke up on the sofa, the 100-inch screen still glowing with a "Game Over" screen. The room was dim, lit only by the blue hue of the television and the distant, flickering lights of the city.
The first thing I noticed wasn't the silence. It was the weight.
Han Jeo hadn't moved. He was still sitting exactly where he had been, my head resting on his shoulder. He looked like a statue carved from moonlight. His eyes were closed, his long lashes casting shadows on his cheekbones. He looked peaceful—which was the scariest thing about him.
"Jeo?" I whispered, my voice sounding too loud in the empty penthouse.
He didn't move. He was in that deep, trance-like sleep that only happened when I was near him. I reached out, my fingers hovering over his cold cheek. For a second, I forgot he was a monster. I forgot he had kidnapped me. I just saw a man who had been tired for two hundred years.
I carefully sat up, trying not to wake him. My body felt better than it ever had—rested, warm, and clear-headed. But as I stood up to find a glass of water, the "noise" didn't stay away.
It wasn't the static I was used to. It was a low, rhythmic thumping. Like a heartbeat, but too slow. Thump... Thump... It was coming from the private elevator.
"Kim?" I called out, walking toward the foyer. "Is that you?"
The elevator display stayed dark. The thumping didn't stop. It was coming from the stairs. No one used the stairs on the 50th floor. My breath hitched in my throat. The air in the penthouse, which had felt like silk only an hour ago, suddenly felt like ice water.
Run, my instincts screamed. Wake him up.
I turned back toward the sofa, but the living room felt miles away. The shadows in the corners of the room were stretching, growing longer and darker, as if they were reaching for me.
Han Jeo was drowning in the first beautiful dream he'd had in two centuries. In the dream, he wasn't a Pureblood or a superstar.
He was just a man standing in a forest of white birch trees, and the air was full of the scent of cold rain and ozone. Taeyul was there, laughing—that loud, human laugh that had finally broken through Jeo's armor.
But the forest was dying.
The white trees were turning black, rotting from the roots up. The laughter was replaced by a high-pitched, piercing whistle.
Jeo's eyes snapped open. The crimson in his irises didn't just flicker; it exploded, burning with a lethal, defensive fire. He didn't see Taeyul on the sofa. He saw the empty space where the boy had been.
"Taeyul!" Jeo's voice wasn't a purr or a tease anymore. It was a roar that shattered the crystal glasses on the dining table.
He moved. He didn't run; he turned into a blur of obsidian and rage. He reached the foyer just as the heavy, reinforced steel door to the stairwell began to groan. Something was on the other side. Something that didn't have a heartbeat.
"Manager Kim!" Jeo barked, but for the first time, his shadow didn't answer.
The hallway was filled with a thick, black mist that smelled of wet earth and ancient decay. And there, standing in the center of the mist, was Taeyul. He was frozen, his eyes wide with a terror that went beyond the physical.
Facing him was a figure that shouldn't have existed. It was tall, draped in rags that looked like they were made of human hair, its face hidden behind a mask of bleached bone. It didn't breathe. It just existed.
"The Sanctuary," the creature rasped, the sound vibrating in Taeyul's very bones. "The soul that sings in the silence. We have waited a millennium to pluck you."
"Get. Away. From. Him."
Jeo stood between them in a heartbeat. He didn't use a weapon. He didn't need one. His fangs were fully extended, his claws ripping through the fabric of his sweatshirt as his body prepared for a slaughter. The "Vogue" god was gone. Only the Pureblood remained.
I couldn't move. My muscles felt like they had been turned to stone. The creature behind the bone mask reached out a hand—a long, grey thing with too many joints.
"Jeo, wait!" I screamed as he lunged.
The clash was silent. There was no sound of impact, only a shockwave of cold energy that threw me backward against the wall. I watched, horrified, as Han Jeo—the man who moved like lightning—was caught mid-air by the creature's mist.
"The Pureblood is old," the creature whispered, its mask tilting toward Jeo. "But we are the Abyss. You cannot fight the end of the world, Han Jeo."
Jeo snarled, his eyes glowing so bright they left trails in the air. "I will burn the Abyss to the ground before I let you touch what is mine!"
But even as he spoke, more shadows began to crawl out of the vents, the floor, and the ceiling. They weren't interested in Jeo. They were circling me.
One of the shadows leaned in close to my ear. It didn't have a mouth, but I heard its voice clearly—the same voice from my nightmares.
"Don't fight it, Taeyul," it whispered. "He can't protect you from what you already are."
The shadow touched my forehead, and the world didn't go silent. It went black.
The last thing I saw was Han Jeo screaming my name, his hand reaching out to me, his fingers inches away from mine before the floor beneath me seemed to turn into a bottomless ocean of ink.
When the lights in the penthouse finally flickered back on, the room was a wreck.
The 100-inch TV was shattered, the silk sofa was shredded, and the smell of air was thick enough to choke on.
Han Jeo stood in the center of the ruins, his hands bleeding, his chest heaving with a frantic, broken breath. He looked at the spot where Taeyul had been standing.
There was nothing left but a single, oil-stained fried chicken box and a small, gold-leafed folder.
Manager Kim stumbled into the room, his suit torn, blood trickling down his temple.
"Sire... they're gone. The Elders... they took him to the Below."
Jeo didn't scream this time. He didn't growl.
He slowly looked up, and for the first time in two hundred years, there was no hazel in his eyes. There was only the endless, murderous red of a Pureblood who had lost his soul.
"Kim," Jeo said, his voice a dead, flat whisper that chilled the air more than the mist ever could. "Wake up the others. We're going to war."