Author's P.O.V

"No, you're going back," he sternly says, his animal gone back to its cage. He was the same brother you had known. The one you had grown up with. But his plump lips are set, forcing you to think that  the animal has only subsided, only took a rest before it dwells on an attack.

You flurry to look back, to the darkened depths, to the silhouette of dark water, and to the kindled house similar to yours; stood and made with familiarity. 

Jimin blinks, once, twice, and he shuts his eyes close. All at once, everything seems to stop and everything seems to move in a rapid pace. He lifts his eyelid, looking at you with orbs flaked with cobalt - his eyes seem to glow, lighting the starlit sky.

Before you could look reel your head to him, a pair of arms caught your arms. Unexpectedly, the grip was strong, and it pushes you back.

There was straight urgency in his voice, in his soul. He has a wish inside him. But you don't have a jot as to what it is. Though, you knew it was fervent.

You are pushed back, and your body seems like it has shut down. Your limbs are caught and soft against his body, your head slamming against his tout chest as you bow, looking at the darkened grass below - soft, rough, a myriad of eyes.

You let him take you, push you, prod at your heart. There was something hesitant in his action as he nears you to the edge of the bank, from the bulge in his veins - either from rage or reluctance - to his rising heartbeats, like stomps of horses' hooves. 

Your feet stagger backwards, failing to brake your momentum to a halt as he pushes farther. You could feel the harsh fury pulsing his heart, wavering his thoughts, speaking out esoteric words as you rub your head against his chest. Calming his breathing. Softening his limbs.

Right now, he's much more vexated than what you are supposed to be.

"Stop," you say, "Stop, please."

He stops abruptly, his hard breathing breaking the air. You do not know what happened to the others, that's not what's on your mind right now. His face is covered by your bowed head as you bury in him.

But then, his grip tightens to the harshest pull. Although, in this manner, you would've landed on his chest, but no, that's not what happened next.

Your head tilts back and your body tips too, towards the direction of the water. Then, there was little air to be caged in your lungs, you could almost smother from the hitch in your throat.

As you fell, you had expected the cold water would bite at your skin, freezing your otherwise strained lungs. But there was something soft and pelted that had caught you, the sweet and sharp smell stinging your nose.

Your eyes open and there was utter sunlight. You force yourself up, covering your eyes with your hand to protect what little sanity and vision you have left. Right now, the pulsing feeling behind your head subsides, pushed aside by the confusion.

When your senses had gone back to normal, the horror of what's in front of you double your confusion. 

Your house, same position, has now been crushed to nothing but dirt and debris, and from your line of sight, there was a hazy line of red tint scattered aimlessly like red birds flocking around your house.

The tangy smell of gunpowder and death mixes with the scent of the grass.

"What-," you couldn't speak, someone beat you to it. A certain woman, cloaked in black and rimmed with gold emerges from one of the trees.

"You still don't get it, do you?" she questions, her voice familiar at the edges, but when it came to the center something evil and tragic flowed.

"Who are you?" You flinch. A few seconds pass with her silence and then she tips her head back, letting the hood fall and pool behind her head. Her features were beautiful, so beautiful it doesn't seem to exist, doesn't seem to belong. She has small, rounded eyes, lips maroon, skin pale.

"You're not Y/N," she says like it was wisdom, a life advice to get you out of the gutter. She pushes close. And like a wraith, she moves smoothly. 

You step back, heart hammering at your chest at the possibilities of what she may do. From the distance, you notice that her orbs were rimmed with gold, shining all her parts with intensity so that when you look in them, the sun seem to seize her soul and body.

"Find yourself," a whisper, so low, so hung, yet it was enough for the hairs on your skin to rise like poles. The words grappled at your soul, speaking to it.

 She careens sideways, splaying her hand out to gesture to the forest you last had been. You remember now what had been the pulling behind your head - it was your brother, the dark atmosphere broken only by the light of the moon and the lamp in the hands of the others.

"Find yourself," now, it was the whisper of the wind, carried to cling unto your soul. You knew this place is not the place of your home. There was something off and unfamiliar about it. The scent of your parents did not cleave at the wind. And your heart did not move with its usual rhythm.

You push forward, stepping into the boundary between the forest and the grass, completely erasing the woman in your mind. You push back to the existence of your brother, sooner you see him standing where he stood before he pushed you, eyes dropping heavily at feelings pulling at his lids.

The others had gone, and there was only the lamp in his hand, a huge contrast to the dark atmosphere and feeling that come from him. His shoulders had drooped.

"Hey," you whisper awkwardly. Out of all words you could say, that word was the first to leave your mouth. Then the tugging feeling pieced together in the form of anger; he pushed you earlier, without any hesitance.

"You asshole!" you spew out, arms stretching to smack him in the head but he catches your arm, lamp dropping and smashing against the ground, his eyes widening. He eyes you with confusion, a question in his eyes.

"Why are you here?" his eyebrows stitch together, "I thought you went back."

You soften your limbs, realization striking you like lightning as the thought of what you will do came about once again. You look at him with urgency.

"Take me back, take me to the king," you say, finality in hush whim. You claw at his shirt, "Take me to the king."

But his eyes looked at you like a mad gazelle in a museum, caught in the moment of rage and insanity. "Why?" He asks.

"Just do it," you blink at him, taking in his reaction of confusion and shutting down.

He took you back, back to the darkened castle, without any words. You knew there were questions in his valley of thoughts, but he wishes to keep them to himself, especially at your sight.

As the car stops to the large foyer, you dive out of the car, running inside like the place is yours. Your heavy stomps rumble through the stones of the hallway, soon the walls were disappearing in your vision - only the swift colors that swirl about and tint the surface blur away.

You stop at the familiar door. The familiar archway. The familiar black tears that stray across the wood, making it seem like the door was weeping.

This is the only thing that'll help you. This is the only person that can help you. Ever since the encounter with the woman, something in you has caved in, has shattered. Like a precious glass case had erupted into a thousand pieces that jag, revealing a quaint little thing that inhabit your soul.

But you must understand it. You must know what it is to be able to connect with its power.

Without wasting any second, you burst into the room, into the familiarity of heavy darkness, into the pool of winter scent. A harsh breeze welcomes your existence as a tantalizing one sat by the familiar large desk.

His head is beamed to the door, as if there was expectancy of your arrival, of anyone's arrival. But you notice, with the light of the moon slashing through the windows behind him, his eyes were closed, dark abysses shut away from you.

But you also see a hum behind his orbs. He's awake. And from the certain tilt of his head you could see him aware, knowing, assertive.

"Came back too fast?" His lips move, his face angled quite away from you so that the moonlight rained on his features. Those lips. Those lips touched yours, caressed yours last night, and there was a tint that came under your skin, with it came the burn. Burning your body to the pits of hell.

Shuddering, you swallow your thoughts back. Locking it in one of your boxes, never to be opened again.

"I came to ask for your help," you say out loud. The prominence of your confidence surprised you. You were talking to the king himself, doing this could kill you. But your ministrations could render you a much worse torture.

He nods, letting you continue.

"I'm confused and bewildered," you say, leveling your tone according to his mood. You have never thought that this carefulness was much more worse than that of hiding from your parents after a mishap of their collections. "A woman came- I need to find myself," you blurt out.

Something in this situation was comical in a way. You stood in front of a prominent figure, asking for a strange plea - a small thing that seem to not exist. Why would you find yourself? because you felt like something has lost its way inside of you, something has broken off, and any time, it could die. 

You feel as if exploding. You feel stressed and panicky. You'd want a prick in your heart, in your lungs, to stabilize your body's functions.

And then his eyes shoot open, certainly trenchant against your gaze. It was loud and angry.

"Please help me find me- myself- anything that'll stop this feeling. I am confused and tired," your voice was frayed at the last words, ragged at the edges, filled with huskiness, yet it was a whisper, a lost song dredged up in the chaos of your wake.

There was a certain desperation in the notes of your song, and you sung with the most wicked melody.

In the body of the darkness, he stood. The desperate light seeking its way through the slits ceases as the body grows to a large size - an almost hallucination that made it seem he was taller than the window, taller than anything you could ever see.

"It's not my job to find out what you are," he hisses as he lumbers towards your existence, shadowing your body. "Find out yourself."

There was something fallen in his eyes, a wicked animal crawling out the edges of his otherwise pained eyes; corruption, yes, pure, dark, corruption. It stains his soul, runs through his marrows, and pulses his heart to an irregular beat.

He was no human, no fallen angel, nor is he the devil. He was an enigma, a creation of a lurking darkness, a masterpiece of wickedness.

He was a paradox, a dark paradox. And he watches you with eyes of seethe, eyes burning with patches of blooming fire, yet there existed something between the spaces without fire; an answer.

Cold air sweeps the skin at your back, pushing you towards his body. But before you could comprehend what happened next, the door slams at your face, and it hits you harder than anything else that you were shut out his room. The plea you ask of him dying at the air behind his doors.

Yet you weren't scared nor anxious, in fact, there was a smile burning behind your lips that you push to suppress. Because before you had been pushed out, the myriad of his emotions came about to pierce his features, showing all at once so that he was bare and open.

But there was a certain emotion that had stood out the most, a golden thing that floated against the tides of the black sea; comprehension and appreciation, yet it was something much, much more, something powerful that had the knots in your stomach loosen itself.

He understood your song, a music you so hardly buried in your soul. And you knew, pleas did not go unheard inside the room of the Dark Paradox.

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[A/N]

UNEDITED.

It's the second-hand embarrassment for me.

I'm sorry for the late update, things are tight in my country right now. I hope y'all are safe, it's a constant and fervent prayer I have for all of you.