The Blood of Fate ✧ min yoongi ✓

𝐓 𝐄 𝐍

CHAPTER 10| LONG LIVE THE FALSE GOD

"I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't any, than to live my life as if there isn't a God and die to find out there is."
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MIN YOONGI

The atmosphere in the palace was chilly and dreary, and it was completely silent. I can't help but have the impression that spirits are just hanging out here. The hallways and even the empty, dark spaces had a constricting feeling about them. I noticed blood marks on the tiles beneath my feet that had been there for many years when I looked down. When I was a kid, this site used to terrify the hell out of me. But knowing that I now utilize this room for my own alone is actually very comical. After all, this was once the house I grew up in. Just a cemetery of eerie recollections now.

Like always, I stare at the flickering flames in the firepit while holding my cup of blood in my hand. The fire always seemed to comfort me in some manner. Possibly the warmth it provided? The illumination as it was the only Light I saw in many dark places? It amazes me of how something so peaceful can cause such havoc. In any case, it is the only touch I have left now.

My mind was preoccupied with memories of the past, when everything was ideal. I was a very happy youngster then, and I was pretty interactive, unlike now. Being by me was awful. I've always been afraid of unexpected stillness. A happy family was mine. Always feeling warm from my parents' touch. Maybe that explains why I have a strange affinity towards flames. However, having a contented family was reason enough to believe that nothing could make life any worse. At least, that's what I assumed.

~

Yoongi's father, Lord Hwan of House Min, was a man whose every breath, every step, was dictated by his unwavering devotion to the gods. He lived for their service, his every action fueled by the belief that his family's very existence was bound to uphold their divine will. To the outside world, he was a paragon of strength and wisdom, revered by all for his faith and the clarity of purpose with which he guided his people. But behind the stoic façade, beneath the layers of reverence, a profound, unspoken sorrow festered—a sorrow Yoongi could never understand as a child, yet one that weighed heavily on his father's heart, unseen by the world.

At home, Lord Hwan was a stranger—a distant figure, locked in an unspoken grief that seemed to leak into every corner of their house. His prayers, once steady and certain, grew longer, more desperate as the years wore on. He would kneel before the gods in the silence of the night, his heart torn between devotion and doubt, seeking answers to the suffering he could not stop, to the tragedies that ravaged his family. Yoongi felt it too—the unspoken words, the invisible barrier that separated his parents, the silent chasm between his father and mother that no one dared address. Lord Hwan never spoke of it, but Yoongi could feel it in the air—like the oppressive weight of a thunderstorm before it broke, hanging over their home, suffocating everything in its wake.

Yoongi had watched his father's faith crumble slowly, piece by piece, through years of unimaginable loss. Despite his devotion, despite the sacrifices he had made, Lord Hwan could not shield them from the cruelty of the world. His prayers, once filled with quiet hope, began to falter under the weight of despair. The gods seemed deaf to his pleas. Yoongi had witnessed the shift in his father's eyes—once full of clarity and purpose, now shadowed with doubt, as if the divine had forsaken them. What was once a gentle yearning for the gods' favor had transformed into a dark, gnawing desperation. Yoongi began to realize that his father's faith was no longer a commitment—it was a desperate attempt to make sense of a world that was too cruel to understand, a futile coping mechanism for a soul shattered by the weight of suffering.