✔Sacrifice || ENHYPEN FF

𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 144

~yoohooo~

-Start of Chapter 144-

It is a beautiful day.

The kind of morning poets spent their lives trying to describe—
soft sunlight brushing over the land, a gentle breeze gliding across budding flowers, birds singing as if the world had never tasted sorrow.

But beauty feels... mocking.

Too bright.
Too peaceful.
Too wrong.

Because Sunghoon sits in the middle of all that light, looking like a man carved out of shadow.

He is alone beneath the pavilion roof, elbows resting on his knees, head bowed low.
His face holds nothing—no anger, no tears, no life.
Just that chilling, empty stillness of someone who had forgotten how to feel.

Between his fingers he turns a thin gold ring—
his  engagement ring.
The matching one to Y/N's own delicate band with the moonstone set at its centre.

He traces the faint lunar engraving inside the band with his thumb.
Slow.
Mechanical.
As if this tiny piece of gold is the only thing anchoring him to the earth.

The sunlight catches on the ring, throwing soft flashes of gold over his hands.
In another life, it would've looked beautiful.
Now it looks like the universe mocking him.

He draws a quiet breath—shaky, thin—and let it out even shakier.

The others keep their distance.
They move through the courtyard softly, afraid to disturb the air around him, afraid he might crack if someone speaks his name too loudly.

No one knows what to say.

What comfort could possibly reach a man who had lost the one thing tethering him to hope?

He doesn't look up.
Doesn't move.

He just keeps rolling the ring—
over,
and over,
and over—
as if stopping means accepting the truth.

As if letting it go means letting her go.

But he cannot.

~~~~~~~

The stone corridors of the TXT royal castle are cold even in summer, carved deep beneath centuries of power. Torches hiss along the walls, throwing long, trembling shadows as Heeseung and Jungwon descend the final stair of the dungeon.

The guards step aside instantly.

Everyone knows why they are here.

Heeseung's jaw works silently as they approached the iron gate—

the same gate they had been walking for years
The same one that had become a ritual of frustration, fury, and unanswered questions.

Chains clink softly in the darkness.

Seorin hangs from them—wrists bound high above her head, ankles shackled, dried blood stains the floor beneath her. Her once pristine white garments are now gray, torn, and stiff with grime. Her hair falls in tangled curtains around her gaunt face.