Chimin stuttered through choked gasps, "W-what... what do you mean?"

"I mean... that I cannot take the spirit of a man who will not speak to me. But you, Chiminie?" Quin smiled sympathetically. "You've been speaking to the darkness for a long... long... time."

Quin leaned into Chimin as if she were going to kiss him.

But--

"GHAAAA!"

A Mysterium-electric shortsword rippled with white light through the darkness. Joon tore ahead without a second thought and carved his electric Geji shortsword right through Quin.

He carved her shadowy image completely in half.

"YOU CAN'T HAVE HIM."

Quin's upper body floated detached from her lower half a moment. Long enough for her to whisper, "You're too late."

Then her whole form flickered and disappeared as if a puff of smoke.

Joon gave an energized cry into the darkness.

Silence.

The spirits were quiet now.

Kim Namjoon turned the Mysterium-electric blade towards Park Chimin and held it up to the man's neck, pining Chimin against the ancient bookshelf. The magical light and energy cast deep shadows and stark light rippling across Chimin's features, making him look half-monster and half-man.

"What are you?" Joon snarled.

Chimin's eyes flickered in disbelief. "I-I'm your friend, Joon. It's me. It's Chiminie."

Joon shoved Chimin's body harder into the side of that bookcase. "This game of chess with our lives is getting old, Chim. I for one am OVER IT."

Chimin looked suddenly like a small child, eyes wide and blue and brimming with tears.

"Are you going to kill me, Joon?" Chimin's voice was oh so small.

Joon snapped back, "Do you think that I should?"

Chim whispered quickly, "Yes."

Joon gripped his Geji blade a little tighter and swallowed. He was tense with fear and hesitation as he took in the sad, terrifying sight of a truly broken man. A man with many faces.

A masquerade master.

"You know I love you, Chiminie. Don't you?"

Park Chimin blinked innocently up at Joon for a moment. "I do."

There was a gasp and the clank of metal onto hard floor.

Joon stumbled backward from pinning Chimin to the bookcase and his two hands gripped tightly at his gut... where a small blade had been driven in quiet and deep.

Joon's Geji blade lay cast aside on the floor, and Park Chimin was still looking at Kim Namjoon through innocent eyes.

Chimin's hands were now red with blood: Namjoon's blood.

Joon's knees gave way and he fell onto the floor.

Jin didn't even think; he rushed to the aide of his old friend and wrapped an arm around Joon's side to hold him steady.

Joon groaned, "Poison." Then he lifted a shaky, bloodied hand and extended it in Chimin's direction. But his body slumped over and Joon rolled onto the floor. His eyes were growing cloudy and distant as whatever drug the blade had been laced with began pounding it's way through his veins.

Chimin stared down at Joon. The mysterious young man's face was like a mirror--clear, revealing nothing and reflecting everything.

As Joon groaned and gasped, one of Kim Seokjin's hands found itself wrapped around the hilt of that Geji shortsword that had fallen to the ground.

Chimin whispered, his voice numb with shock, "He can still make a deal. He can still live, only..."

Jin lunged to his feet. The blade he yanked from the floor instantly pulsated with pink waves of energy as he drove his whole force straight for Park Chimin.

The broken man with the limp golden hair only watched in numb confusion as the blade drove through him, and the pink energy rippled beneath his skin and through his heart.

His blue eyes were blank for a moment, his mouth gaping open in shock as he stared at Kim Seokjin.

Jin whispered, "It was for your own good, Chiminie. I'm sorry." Then he twisted the blade sharply to intensify the damage. He didn't want Chim to die slowly. He didn't want it to hurt.

Chim's hands wrapped around the blade jutting out of his gut and he choked on the words, "I know. I'm... sorry."

Then Park Chimin's body slumped lifelessly to the dark dusty floor of that giant Library-Tomb. Jin yanked the Geji blade from Chimin's gut, his body still rippling with adrenaline that was keeping the ocean of grief at bay.

Joon choked.

"You idiot, you're gonna make it." Jin dropped the Geji blade and fell to his knees as he pulled Joon's head up into his lap. The good doctor started gently smacking at Joon's cheeks to try and keep his focus. Jin ignored the spatters of Chimin's blood on his hands that were sticking to Joon's skin as he did so. "Now, look at me. I have dozens of antivenoms to choose from in the shuttle, and so many more stored up in my brain that I could make. Don't panic, Joon." He brushed at Joon's sweaty brow with his palm. "Don't panic, I can help you. ...You absolute idiot of a man."

As Joon groaned in response, a set of gleaming brown eyes peered clearly at the two young men through the darkness.

Quin's voice returned one more time, warm and welcoming. Somehow, this time her voice didn't feel quite so chilling to Joon's skin as she said, "Kim Namjoon, you still have your spirit to give. But only just."

Jin grumbled, "Now wait one holy minute there, mistress of the fucking night. He ain't making no deals with the devil to-DAY. Not to-DAY. Now SCRAM, before I go get my holy water to sprinkle all over your haunted ass."

But Quin was not deterred. She cooed, "You can give your body a second chance, Kim Namjoon."

Jin whispered in his ear, "Don't do it, Joon! Don't trust Chim in this, remember! Don't trust this crazy spirit lady!"

Kim Namjoon gasped through what he could feel were about to be his final breaths. He shifted his eyes towards the gaping, empty expression of a lifeless Park Chimin. Then he looked up at Kim Seokjin's eyes of brotherly sorrow and fierce love.

But that mystical pair of floating brown eyes lingering somewhere just beyond the darkness.

Joon opened his mouth and forced out the words: "I will trade bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. Please take my spirit... and give me a second chance."

The final image of Kim Namjoon's waking memory was the image of a tan woman in silken clothes with long, dark hair spilling down around him as she leaned her womanly face down and her cold lips pressed against his own.