The demons in his head keep asking him for answers that he does not know. Drilling themselves deeper and deeper under his skin for every passing second until he could draw them with blood on the mouldy, moist walls. How have you ended up here? Do you not see where your wrongdoings take you? They may be the reason for your most loved one's suffering... They are.

What would your father say - praise you for your misconduct or laugh at you for the absent pity he feels for his own hurt pride on his name. Your mother would forsake you. And Wooyoung?

What about dearest Wooyoung..

Yeosang is bending his head down against the ground as his fingers tremble with every effort he puts into raising his heavy body. His stomach clenches around emptiness, and yet, his insides force the pressure to happen; spit and foam and strings of sticky blood trailing from the opening of his dry, dry mouth. He shakes and sweats and in the heat of the moment, it instantly feels like his heart clenches tighter.

What if Wooyoung saw him now? - what if he saw him like this.

A raw sob flees his throat and soon all the emotions spill like they are drizzling acid rain. Everything they touch melts under their will, sizzling and burning until trails on his face feel even more numb. It has been like this ever since he woke up; the shadows digging deeper into his hiding secrets and forcing them all out until he is nothing but hollow bones and pale skin. Yeosang has never felt more dead when his shaking arms collapse under his weight and he kisses the ground, nor crushed or defeated, but just with his tears draining into the once-blooming ground. No flower shall see the light when he dies empty with a distant yearning, looming in his mind. When he can feel the last teardrop escape the crookedness of all evil.

There is no wonder behind any query as everything finally settles into a stoic close when feeling defeated. Yeosang has lost all the battles.

It is absurdly humouring him. The corners of his mouth are pulled into inane guises like a passing silhouette of a madman's shadow. It makes him want to burst out in laughter of loud waves of sarcasm as he scorns his pitiful self in the aftermath of life where he lies. Hurt and forgotten, defeated in every possible way. Yeosang chokes. His whole life has been a miserable thread of measure along cutting ends of thorns from roses, where beauty always has stretched the length for him not to reach it into his hand. His hold, clutching around thin air as he struggles with his footwork to keep him from faltering. Fights erupt mindly as he has fought against blood and tears, harshly breathing fire in his lungs as he has seen death in the eyes. And for what reason, he asks himself. For only dying at the feet of his hard work.

The roses have withered and he has crashed to the ground, failing his father's belief; that to bring him hither would be the true source of clearance. But he was wrong, everyone is wrong. Yeosang cannot be saved - not when his stay has shown him how beliefs cast cruelness into the minds of those who believe them. The boy is not insane, he is not a wretch or miscreant, and he will never be a devil. But he feels pain and ardour and emotions fairly like any other wight put in this world, and that alone must be enough for any to concur that he is the same. Be it he loves another man which makes him seem like a monster in people's eyes, but he knows himself, that a body can only be a body, and solely the variety spirit of one's soul shall be the determinant to fondness and trust.

And Yeosang's innermost has chosen Jongho.

_____

"LET GO OF ME!! I SAID OFF WITH YOUR BLOODY HANDS! I walk by myself."

The sudden shouting has his ears dully peek in the direction of the rumbling sounds. Yeosang's face is pushing against the ground, but his eternal cramping corpse hinders him in lifting it to seek the yelling. It makes no difference for him either way.

But still, he listens to the raised voices as they drift further and further away again. They seem critical, arguing one matter there should have concerned any person who might notice - but Yeosang's conscious mind has left him to deal with pain in blindness.

Muffled screams collide against the cells' iron bars and it has the whole dungeon tremble just as much with agony as he has done for the time being here. Something slams into his own cell and the hues of a lit torch spread around the filthy place. The smell of fresh blood pricks against his nostrils and forces his being to try to open his eyes, despite the way a fierce stinging sensation throbs underneath the dry adhesive mass of his eyelid, going all through his skull.

Yeosang knows that he is seeing things when the first thing he sights is how the growing fire licks up against the back of a man who is pressed against his cell. Burnt flesh reeks everywhere and when passing his eyes to see straight forward, he sees how much the man is shaking on his legs. A liquid trickles down along the cold iron and founds puddles by his feet. The boy's drained eyes find their way up again at the same time the convict screams his lungs out with the timbre of torture. A sword pierces through the man's chest, writhing around as he arches his body in protest to the brutality, and Yeosang can only expect him to fall lifeless down to the floor in the next passing moment. But he does not.

Dazed, he turns his head slowly further to the side, moving his stuttering orbs to find the surfacing of the distressed male, drifting over the thick fabric put in his mouth and pearls of sweat. The sight has goosebumps breaking all over his skin like he is bitten by thousands of pests.

Yeosang sees his own reflection in Jongho's eyes.

But it is as if his brain cannot comprehend the knowledge he sees, and it has him stalling with a swollen stare at the man for the time that flows. If he had not been so far from the present, he would have believed the husky voice to be true, that the man was the most real he had seen for days: "..Yeosang..?"

The sudden contraction of pain plunges all into his marrow when the sword in the man's chest is pulled out again and a dagger jabs into his neck where it steadily works its way across his throat and cleanly cuts it in halves. Barely the only thing keeping his head attached to his body is his sturdy spine and the gravity pressing his head down against his chest. Jongho's eyes disappear from his sight as his screams drown in rapids of blood. A rough hand comes into the boy's weak view, fingers digging into the wound as voices grow as background noises. They rip his half detached head back, and how he wishes he never had seen what vision the movement caused.

Blood spurts forward onto the ground from the high pressure as ends of cut veins fall out of the skin in a gory mess, painting lines down the rest of his neck with strings of nerved skin and flesh sliding out of the beheaded body. The horror that grows in him is beyond anything perceptible close to anything existing in this world. And Jongho is still alive when they do all this, eyes rapidly blinking tears away as they shift to white and red and dark, scared. The boy wants to scream until his lungs collapse and darkness creeps in them. Lumps of meat fall down in front of Yeosang while the eager fingers dig more suffocatingly as if searching for anything important, dragging a slick sound on the tight walls. But Yeosang knows that they do seek nothing; this is only pure entertainment. Suddenly the fingers grasp the esophagus and roughly pull at the bloody thing before urging it down into his halved trachea, and Yeosang snaps his eyes close at that.

His limbs have started trembling again, skin sizzling with cold sweat. Telling himself that this can only be an egregious nightmare that this cellar has coerced upon him should have eased his mind a bit. But the paint of blood on the inside of his eye is not one to disappear as easily as it is to tell a lie.

The clinking sound of heavy keys and iron heavily reveals that his cell is opened and the heavy body thumps down beside him in a squelching manner. Yeosang wants nothing more - he wants one of the cruel knights to make an end to his suffering. His head feels heavy when he accepts his defeat and prays for any to hear his smallest words of mercy.

When the cell never closes, his skin tingles with anticipation and for a moment he wonders if he ever opened his mouth to speak. Hanging by his side as they drip with the blood of a sinner, his dry eyes struggle to see high boots and leather trousers crouching down in front of him. He watches his face, stained and still revolted like last time he came here. The boy sneers with an ironic curl on his lips, "Are you coming here to finally kill me? Have I not suffered enough after seeing your brutality behead the body of my guidance counselor?"

Seonghwa does not exchange his countenance for anything when he retorts with words that Yeosang never has thought he would hear at this point, "You are fatoos to still call him that when evinces has told me of how you two have peccaverunt as lovers do." Yeosang's body temperature dips to the one of ice and frozen snow. Someone has seen him being with Jongho.

The knight's lips raise, "Oh boy, that had you never expected. But let me teach you something," he leans even more forward until a cross exposes from under his shirt, voice only dusting the air, "I have my eyes everywhere. You cannot lie to me."

The back of Yeosang's throat creates the thrills of a deep growl that he has no mastery of.

"Your kind spreads only, and will never be healed even if our Dominus should forgive you. Listen to yourself - how an untamed beast's threat pushes out of you like you never have been human before. Perhaps you never were, that side of yours must have been deceased from your day of birth. You shall live on the verge of decay for the rest of your days. Even death is a favour in your place, and you are far from blessed," Seonghwa bites sharply with words there shall haunt him. "Now that your sight has returned, you see what happens with knights who tradent their own faith to the order. Percase you seek the same treatment?" the man raises himself from the ground and Yeosang recognizes the clinging sound of a sword being pulled from its sheath.

Agony whizzes from the impact of the boot's snout pushing him around to lay on his back. The boy barely notices how the knight slits his throat with his blade, "Now perceive that you are the reason for his miseries. You have smitten him with illness, peccator."

When the cell is smacked close Yeosang lays still and listens to the footsteps fading along the shaft as his thoughts whirl deeper into a void of darkness. He will never forgive him for this. Never.

Blood does not run from his wound and somehow the presence on his left side makes him push the last energy he has left out into the cells of his body and roll around on his stomach again. A groan leaves his mouth and he shuts his eyes tightly while the strike with his shoulder and hip against the floor subsides. Figuring out his arms are not bound on his back anymore, Yeosang heavily wiggles closer to the other man in the darkness as his dry eyes start stinging. A choke pulls by itself in his throat and it tears at his soul when he sees how the man's head lays beside a pile of rotten limbs and skulls. One single thought ties him; that it just as well could have been him.

Yeosang's face is drawn in a distressed demeanour, he cries when his shaking hands reach to sink into the cool and sticky mass of the insides of the opened throat, pulling at the velvet smooth touch of flesh, feeling how the substance slides against his palms and in between his digits. All until he believes the contort has been sorted. Over his chapped lips, he whispers words of sorrow when the urge to taste the liquids bewilders his mind. Yeosang gently works Jongho's head back in place, chest contracting as he cries harder when locking gazes with the knight's bloodshot eyes.

"Oh my, oh my goodness."

The knight's body lays unmoving on his back and the boy keeps his chest up by his elbows as he takes the other around his cheeks, softly brushing his dirty thumbs along Jongho's skin. His bottom lip wobbles when he speaks, "..Jongho, I-I," he stutters, "So sorry, so sorry."

He wants to tell him how much he adores him, what would happen if he was not with him, and that he loves him more than what his heart can carry. That Jongho is his everything. But nothing comes across his tongue when his gaze falls into the knight's tear-filled one. Their hands are threaded together, and Yeosang pours his feelings into the way he so daintily kisses Jongho.

"I am your knight, remember?"

How he loves him.

Yearning takes his cold hand and brings it into the other's dead one.

⚔︎