Chimin had been the first inside the great Library of Mirth. It was a cavern of dust and shadows, with rows upon rows of shelves and chairs and tables that USED to be breathtaking in a good way.

But now, everything looked petrified--as if it had been turned to stone and covered in a layer of dust.

But Chimin wasn't going to tell the others that. Not before their descent into the mountain.

Namjoon came second, struggling a touch with the rope at the end--but Chimin breathed a sigh of relief when his old friend managed to make his way onto his feet.

Then last came Seokjin--grumbling in their earpieces all the while, until he planted his feet firmly between Joon and Chim in the dusty darkness. Kim Seokjin could only see by the dim light of his mask for a moment, as he looked around in the cave, but it didn't take the doctor long to assess what had been burning in the back of Namjoon's suspicious mind the whole time they'd been helping Jin with his descent.

Jin exclaimed, "This place is utterly worthless."

He made no qualms about it. Jin strode right up to one of the bookshelves and tried to pluck at the corner of a petrified volume. The edge merely crumbled into dust between his fingertips.

"Worthless. We've come on a completely pointless wild goose chase."

Jin lifted a suspicious finger and walked straight into Park Chimin, that fingertip digging into the chest of his deviously smirking blonde comrade.

"What is the meaning of this, Chimin?!"

Jin's threatening voice echoed like an eruption in the heart of the mountain, quaking all around them. Joon could feel Jin's anger ripple through his skin.

Chimin didn't offer an answer. He merely threw back his head and let loose a quiet, chilling laugh.

Jin's hands found their way around Chimin's collar, and the good doctor pulled Chimin's smiling face roughly towards his own as he growled in a low voice, all of his typical good humor lost: "I'm not going to ask you again. What the hell are we doing here, Park Chimin, if there isn't even a fucking library anymore?"

"Do you know why they call it the Library of Mirth?" Chimin offered up a question in place of an answer.

Jin roughly shoved Chimin away from him and snapped, "No."

Chimin started to circle slyly around where Jin and Joon now stood. He noticed that while Jin stood with his fists raised and ready, Kim Namjoon seemed to stand as limp as a corpse. Perhaps he already knows.

Joon spoke up, putting a hand on Jin's shoulder as he would have in the time before--to steady his friend. To comfort him. Then Joon said in a hard voice, "It belonged to the Satoor Ai House of Mirth. But their House... is all dead."

"Very good, Joonie boy. Very good." Chimin stopped circling the two young men. He now stood next to a large bookshelf, and one of his hands reached out to stroke the hard spine of a nameless black volume made of rock and dust. "And do you know how they all died?"

"No," Joon answered with bitterness in his mouth. "But why do I feel like you're about to tell us?"

"Oh, don't be so boring, Joonie. It takes all the fun out of this." Chimin sighed. "The Satoor Ai of the House of Mirth, as the text goes, 'sold their souls to the darkness--became shadows, whisked away.' So tell me. How do you make a shadow out of a Satoor Ai?"

Joon growled, "I don't know. Tell me."

Chimin beamed his bright smile through the darkness, a smile cast eerily in the light of his mask. "The truth is, the House of Mirth wanted even greater supernatural power and strength than they already possessed. They wanted immortality. And the Devil himself makes for some... persuading promises." Chimin shrugged. "Or so I hear."

Joon's body still stood limp and lazily, but there was subtle a twitch in his left fingers that Jin recognized. Kim Seokjin looked between his two old friends-turned-something else, and he realized that whatever was about to happen had nothing to do with him.

This was about Chimin.

This was about revenge.

A warmth spread in Kim Seokjin's gut at this realization. Half of him found the warmth satisfying, and the other half of him found it repulsive. And in that moment, Jin wasn't sure if he was going to do the right thing.

Chimin's sickeningly warm voice went on, "But people don't know that... the House of Mirth DID get what it wanted. They DID find immortality. Just... not in the way that they expected."

There was a hiss of whispering all around the three young men inside of that cavernous hall.

People? Jin looked curiously at Joon.

"Spirits," Joon whispered back.

They weren't alone.

Chimin spoke to the seeing darkness: "We've come to make a deal with the devil. To trade spirit-for-spirit in this sacred hall."

Joon snarled, "I thought Satoor Ai were made out of tombs. You can't just change a man into a spirit out of nowhere like that, it's impossible."

Chimin leaned back and laughed, and the sound was swallowed up this time in the growing chorus of whispers. They sounded almost like bats chattering in the dark. He clarified, "Why do you think the Library looks the way that it does? It was thrown up in flames by the House of Reed--another extinct Satoor Ai name--a long, long time ago. This isn't just a library. It's a house of the dead."

Then, the curved figure of a woman walked towards them from out of the darkness. Her footsteps made no sound.

It was Quin, and she was laughing with deep satisfaction as she spoke, "Park Chimin, you sly, sly dog... so careful with your tongue. Are you sure today is the day you wish to part with your flesh and blood?"

"Kim Namjoon once was bone of my bone, but then everything changed. The day he killed my hope... the day Lilith's whole people were slain. He is but a tool, not a man. He is no longer worth a name. If it requires flesh of my flesh--then kill him, and let a Spirit of your great House instead come and remain."

"Ahhh, Chiminie. That's not how this game works," was the strange woman-spirit's weighty reply.

Quin looked earnestly towards Kim Namjoon. She walked towards him and brushed the sweaty white hairs from his clammy forehead, as her brown eyes bore straight through him like a prophet seeing visions of a man's whole life. "You are a man of true love and friendship... a man saved by repentance. Kim Namjoon, the darkness will not swallow you."

He swallowed but said nothing. The cool touch of her hand to his skin had sent Joon's whole body rippling with goosebumps. Somehow, this woman made him feel like the young boy he used to be before his training. Before leadership. Before hard things.

Quin shifted her gaze from Kim Namjoon... to Kim Seokjin.

The good doctor shied away from her, not trusting something in her aura or her touch to get close to him, his face tinged with slight disgust under his sticky black hair. His large lips were puckered in a sour expression.

Quin chuckled. "A man who is as he seems is a great, rare gift indeed."

Jin sassed under his breath, "If that was a jab at my sense of humor, then it wasn't very funny."

The dark eyes of Quin only smiled at his jab before adding in a soft, though not delicate voice, "Kim Seokjin, you are not a sword or dagger. You are a helmet and breastplate."

The hell is that supposed to mean? I've had enough of this crazy shadow lady and her unsolicited attacks to my manhood already...

Then she shifted away from Jin and walked right up to where Park Chimin where he stood next to an old, petrified bookshelf. The crisp-eyed young man's golden hair looked unusually limp.

Chimin looked up at her in confusion as she reached out her tan hands to gently cup his face. He flinched away from her hands, but that didn't stop her.

Then Quin's voice came out warm and worried... like a mother. "Oh, Chiminie. Poor, poor Chiminie."

When her tan hands cupped around his peachy skin, Chimin let out a gasp. His sharp eyes became locked with hers and their gazes held steady as she only kept saying, "Poor Chiminie."

Then something happened which no one expected. Park Chimin let out a great sob and flung his arms around the shadowy woman. His fingers dug into her cool back as he heaved into her chest, his cries like screams shaking the pit of the mountain.

Joon and Jin looked at each other.

Jin mouthed, "What the actual hell?"

Joon shrugged his shoulders dramatically, his mouth twisted into an innocent frown.

Chimin was a mirror shattering. When he pulled out of his gasps and his grief to look back up at Quin's face, for a miraculous moment there lingered no evil there. Only grief clear as crystal tears.

Quin wiped at Chimin's cheeks with her thumbs. "Poor, Chiminie. You thought you were bringing your friend Joon here into a trap. But it turns out... you ended up springing it yourself."

One of Quin's hands slid down Chimin's neck and tightened around his throat.

Jin reached for the blaster on his hip.

Joon plucked a Geji shortsword from his lower leg.

The three young men braced for impact.