Gukyun

Chapter 16: Don't go into the light. Stay in the dark. Stay with me.

"Maybe you will open his palm?" a boy of about ten, standing next to an adult omega, shifts from foot to foot.

"No," the man, exhausted after a long journey, says tiredly and sinks to the floor. "Whatever is gripped in his hand, he holds on to it with all the strength. Let this be his bridge to reality, clinging to it, he will return to this world."

Yoongi is doing well. There is no cold, no fear, no pain. He lies in the arms of his alpha on soft pillows in their bedroom and listens to stories of his hikes. Yoongi slumbers listening to his favorite voice warms himself in his arms and smiles at the baby crawling along the bed next to them. He has his father's eyes, the same black and deep, the same stubborn character and love for weapons, which Guuk now hides in the corners so that the child does not cut himself. Yoongi had never felt happier; he had never achieved that level of peace.

"Don't be afraid of the dark, don't run from it, don't go into the light," Guuk strokes his hair. "Stay with me."

Yoongi smiles bewilderedly at the alpha's words, but the smile hardens into a painful mask on his face when suddenly the windows swing open with a loud bang, letting in a howling cold wind that blows out all the lights and covers their bedroom walls with ice. Yoongi immediately reaches out for the baby, Guuk, but the bed is empty. He calls them, rummages in the bed in the pitch darkness, but there is nothing apart from the terrible howl of the wind that dominates the bedroom and the curtains scattering like the wings of a monster from the underworld. Yoongi is distracted by the sharp pain in his hand, brings it up to his face, but still can't see anything. The pain is such as if a dagger passes right in the middle of the palm as if he is again in Miras lying on the floor of his late groom's house under the Devil, who has nailed him to the floor with a blade. Yoongi doesn't want to go back to that past, he screams away, rubs his palm to stop hurting, and gets dirty on the sticky thick liquid that wraps around his wrist and spreads down his arm. Something falls to the floor, hits the rock, and Yoongi wakes up with wide eyes.

"Dad!" the boy screaming runs out of the house and runs up to the omega digging in a small garden. "He opened his eyes!"

The man, immediately throwing the knife with which he dug the ground, runs after the boy into the house. Opening his eyes, Yoongi stares first at the cracked clay ceiling. This is not the ceiling of his bedroom. It seems to the omega that he slept for a month, there is a fog in his head, his eyelids filled with lead can hardly be kept open, everything is floating before his eyes, it is hard to move. He tries to remember what happened and how he got here, but all that he remembers is a dagger flashing in the hands of his killer. Yoongi is definitely alive because the place where he woke up does not look like hell or heaven, which the elders tell about and which are described in the manuscripts. He lies on a wooden bunk against the wall, covered with a quilt. The room has another similar bunk, a low table, clearly assembled by a self-taught carpenter and littered with flasks, an oil lamp, and only one door, and it seems to lead into the courtyard. Hearing footsteps outside, Yoongi moves his hand convulsively in search of some weapon, but cries out in pain in his shoulder and only now notices that his chest and shoulder are bandaged.

"You can't move so sharply," the short omega of about thirty-five runs into the room and, kneeling next to the bed, examines the bandage. The omega has dark skin, large honey-colored eyes, and long white hair that is pinned up at the back of his head. Yoongi admires his slender fingers as he checks to see if the bleeding has started, and glances at the boy walking in the corner.

"Who are you?" Yoongi himself is terrified of his shriveled voice. "Where I am?"

"I'm Shui," the man covers him with a blanket, "And this is my son Tai. I'll tell you everything, but first, you drink my raspberry tea. You have lost a lot of blood and it will be good for you."