Immortal Desire || SanHwa / Seonghwa x San

14. White Eyes Again

There it was again. That buzzing sound.

The little firefly was fluttering around his ears again, waking him up to another empty night. His eyelashes peeled open, thick and sticky with blood and sweat.

Only when his eyes focused on the blinking light of the bug did it finally move off to the other side of his cell.

He squeezed his eyes shut again before opening with slightly clearer vision, to watch as the firefly hovered lazy circles over the heap opposite him.

Only a few metres away from him, he could barely make out the by now almost fleshless body, the smell long gone and stained yellow bones peeking out from sodden clothes.

It fluttered around what was left. A mound of wet fabrics and a rotten skeleton.

He could barely remember when he last saw skin and colour on it.

They had once. Been alive. Staring at him with white eyes, speaking rushed and desperate. Remembered how tall they stood, remembered the shivers spawling across his skin from the foreign language reaching his ears.

He couldn't remember what they said. Didn't remember how they died. Just pain.

He did remember the smell. Rotting flesh is something hard to forget, especially when it's etched into your own clothes. He remembered watching the mice picking at him, he could even see a small hole in a protruding bone, where he actually remembered the sound of bone crunching.

That heaping pile of death had been lying there for years with him. He had been thrown into this very place with them. By them? Who knows.

Certainly not him. How could he after all these years.

He blinked the cold from his dry eyes. The firefly had since moved from the heap and now returned to fluttering towards the dungeon entrance. Something it had been doing repeatedly these past few nights.

He almost wanted to try and move. To try and stand and see why. To see if years had weakened the cell door enough to break through. Maybe he could escape.

But then what? What would he return to? Was the world a paradise or just as horrible as he had left it?

He didn't even want to know anymore.

Maybe a few years ago he might have had the willpower to move.

But tonight, he will remain. He will not try to move. As with any other night, he will sleep again until the firefly deems it time to wake.

____________________________

Jongho was grumbling under his breath as they marched into the palace. He had become irritable the moment his body left San's. His pace was quick and it was clear he wanted this to be over as soon as possible.

The entire (very short) walk here he had made sure to give Seonghwa a piece of his mind. Jongho had almost backhanded him upon the look of the uninterested dazed out expression he had at Jongho's reprimands.

It took alot to keep Jongho's inhibitions under control, and his current coping mechanism was speed walking up the mountain of stairs at a painful speed.

Neither Mingi nor Seonghwa dared to complain, they would take what help they were given and keep their mouths shut.

It was only when they waltzed into the empty throne room where King Jimin stood on the stairs that they straightened their backs and slowed their pace. The curious gaze of Jimin followed their movements as they approached.

As they came to a stop in front of the man, Mingi took a deep breath before kindly addressing him.

"Your majesty, I-"

"Move your throne, we need to break the wall."

Jimin stared at Jongho, shock sprawled on his chiselled face. Both Mingi and Seonghwa turned their heads at the same time to stare at their brother.

"Jongho-"

"Now! Please!" At the yell they all startled and jumped into action. Seonghwa pulled Jimin aside for a brief moment to explain what they were doing, as four other human guards came to haul the extremely heavy stone throne away from the wall and down the steps.

They struggled, and it went nowhere until Jongho got fed up and did it almost entirely by himself, pushing the metal stone with inhumane force, as the other four weakly held onto it for participation points.

Once the throne was away from the wall, they all stared at the haphazard job of sealing a dungeon.

The back wall of the throne room was a beautiful soft blue painted on smooth grey stone. There was a gorgeous golden yellow mosaic around the edges of where the throne would sit.

But in the thrones absence....was a bunch of random stones shoved into what was a hole for a door.

It was ugly.

A half-assed job at hiding something.
Yeosangs blueprints were becoming less revolutionary the more they all stared at it.

"Uh...your majesty? Who sealed the thing up?" Mingi asked slowly, eyeing the holes. Jongho had scrunched up his nose at the somewhat foul smell coming from between the cracks.

"I'm not sure. I actually don't remember ever sealing it. Or ordering it to be sealed..." Jimin was frowning. The man's confusing had them all stare perplexed at the situation.

"It was sealed from the inside." Jongho voiced after a short moment of silence.

"What? How do you know?" Seonghwa watched Jongho as the man approached the wreck.

They watched as the entire stonework fell apart and crybled down the staircase of the dungeons at a single push against the stones with barely any force at all from Jongho.

"If I had pushed from the inside, it would've held up. The seal had to have been made from behind." Jongho peered down into the dark staircase, squinting.

"Do you see anything?" Seonghwa asked.

Jongho said nothing, but rather raised his head as a small firefly fluttered out from the darkness. It flew infront of Jongho's face, before buzzing its way towards Seonghwa, where it settled on the sleeve of his jacket and flashed its little light.

All four men looked at each other, before staring into the dungeons abyss.