Sacrifice || ENHYPEN FF

𝕭𝖆𝖈𝖐𝖘𝖙𝖔𝖗𝖞

~finally a backstory. help i struggled witht this ch so much~

~let me admit this, the layout and structure for this ch is absolutely disastrous, so please bear with me (like it keeps going back and forth in the timeline)~

-Start of Backstory-

Darkness.

Not the night, not the storm. A different kind — the kind that coils around memory and refuses to fade.

Seorin remembers it well.

She remembers the silk. She remembers the jewels pressed into her palms by gentle hands, the way her mother would coo, "My precious jewel, my true princess. The crown belongs to you, and you alone."

And she believed it.

How could she not? Every whim was indulged, every tantrum answered with gifts. Her reflection was her constant companion — polished mirrors showing her the face of royalty, the blood of kings in her veins. She was taught to bow to no one, to look down upon the world as it should have looked up to her.

But the throne... the throne never bent to her.

She sees it again, as if through the eyes of the child she was: the grand hall alive with voices, the King's deep tone carrying like thunder. Not calling her name. Never her name. Instead, seven boys — dirty, ragged things from the streets — stand before him. Strangers who had nothing, yet somehow everything was given to them.

His smile is what breaks her. The smile he never spared for her mother, never spared for her. A smile for them.

Her fingers dig into her skirts in the memory. The satin crumples. Commoners. Bastards. Rats draped in silk.

She had tried, once, to speak to them. To see what made them worthy of her father's gaze. They looked at her with wide eyes, timid but kind, offering laughter, small gifts, clumsy attempts at brotherhood. She crushed them beneath her words, each kindness met with scorn.

"You will never be real princes." she hissed at them. "Not while I breathe. The crown is mine. You are only playing dress-up in my palace."

She delighted in their silence. In the flicker of doubt across their faces. In the way their laughter faltered when she reminded them who she was, and who they were not.

Still, they tried. Again and again, extending hands she refused to take, words she refused to hear. Until even their kindness turned cold, their distance a wall she herself had built.

And through it all, the King's eyes never turned to her.

Her lips curl at the memory, though her child-self had not smiled then. The sting had been too sharp. The jealousy too bitter.

She was the daughter of the King. She was the rightful heir. She had been told from the moment she could speak that power was hers, that destiny bent to her blood.

So why — why — did the world dare to deny her?

~~~~~~~

Seorin remembers another day.

Her body weak, her cheeks flushed with fever. Even then she despised the vulnerability. Silk sheets clung to her skin, and the chamber stank of bitter herbs. She hated being seen like this — fragile, human, pitiful.

The door creaked. A boy entered. Small, dark-haired, eyes wide with hesitant kindness.
"Dear sister." Jay said softly, carrying a tray of steaming broth with both hands. "I brought you food. Please, have some. You'll be well soon."