Dying Soul || Chenji

Sequel to The Diary I Kept

The air in the cramped dorm room had grown heavy, thick with the scent of fading life and the sterile cold of a vampire without a tether. Zhong Chenle was a dying Childe-a fractured soul left adrift ever since he had executed his Sire on the very night of his embrace. For years, Chenle had managed to hold the rot at bay, but his time had finally run out.

Beside him stood Park Jisung, his roommate and best friend, a man whose silence was often louder than words. Their bond had always been a jagged thing, a blurred line between platonic devotion and something far more possessive and unstable. They drifted in the gray space of "almost," never quite finding their footing.

But when the truth of Chenle's condition finally bled out into the open, the ambiguity vanished. To save a Childe whose lineage was severed, there was only one grim mercy left: Jisung would have to step into the void and claim Chenle as his own.

The choice was a jagged edge: Jisung could embrace him, binding their souls together forever, or he could stand by and watch his only constant wither into nothingness. And the clock was ticking.