𝟏𝟔𝟎𝟏 | 𝐅𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐞

- ♦♦♦ -

Seonghwa was seated on the edge of a stone that made the stairstep into a hanok. Where he had been sitting since people started retreating from their gathering in the assembly place. He did not feel cold even if gentle snowflakes descended down from the dark skies and coated his cloak and hanbok in a thin layer that did not melt. Seonghwa's eyes were directed at the stick plunged down into the frozen ground. And the exhausted body stubbornly fighting against the forces making it stay.

Arms and legs still kicked around even if it had been hours since the snow had been coloured red. Yunho was not giving up.

His fingers had clawed deep lines into the snow; digging his own grave as he had been moving himself in circles with the stick penetrating through his chest and deep into the ground. Yunho should not have been able to move with a wooden piece through his heart and yet again, the warrior was showing him how stubborn he was about keeping his life and not leaving his corpse to rot.

It fascinated Seonghwa.

His eyes shifted under the cloak as he let them move to the pile of still-laying bodies that the villagers hadn't decided what to do with yet. Supposedly Yunho's family he was caught red-handed killing. Seonghwa could, to some extent, understand how shaken everyone must be. A blood-thirsty monster was not something you encountered every day.

Although, that was far from one of Seonghwa's current worries. He did not care about the dead. He did not care about the ones who feared for their lives. If it wasn't like Seonghwa didn't want to he would have let Yunho kill this entire village - and even more. Kill and drink and murder until he had enough blood to satisfy his feral urges for weeks.

But Seonghwa craved a place he knew he could be safe from those murderous witch-hunters who wanted a world with no evil to roam the darkness. And that would be one of Seonghwa's utter worries.

A pair of sharp eyes passed his figure there sat on the edge of the stairstep and Seonghwa shifted his sight down onto his hands clutching the sewing around the edges of his woven cloak. He must not stir any unnecessary attention. Seonghwa could feel the deep rumbles vibrating in his chest.

The cool wind brushed against his lips exposed to the faint light and the man stepping up to him halted for a second to observe him.

"Mister..?" the voice sounded unsure of its own trail but slowly gained its confidence when Seonghwa leaned his head back and gazed up at him. Seonghwa noted the weapons hanging by the man's side, "You should fare home. There is nothing left to see here."

Seonghwa was silent, his eyes keeping their trace on the young soul in front of him. It didn't seem to scare him. The man arched a brow.

"Ill feelings have strained a thread around my heart, sir. This beast has awaken resent in me incommensurable with anything else," Seonghwa raised to stand as he reached a hand out to pull at the man's arm in a desperate manner, "I seek revenge for the brutal and unjust murder of my lover!" He inhaled shakily, "Please tell me how- sir, my life will never be the same ever again."

The man pressed his lips into a thin line and Seonghwa knew he succeeded when the hands pressing around the grip of the sword trembled from courses of emotions. A heartbeat raced in his chest. "Go home boy. There is nothing you can do here," the man then said, giving Seonghwa a sad look.

Seonghwa shook his head and pleaded, "It has to suffer! I want to see it die- let me, let me kill it!!"

"It cannot be killed that easily. You must understand the forces of this monster are of all evilness. A mere boy like yourself cannot take revenge with the desires you have in mind. Watch it from here, if you really bother, but nothing else can be done than wait for it to drain from all its blood." The man patted his shoulder sympathetically and told him that he wished him the better in the future.

Seonghwa's eyes twinkled red when the hunter turned on his heels and left him alone in the darkness.

"Sir!" he shouted, feeling poised. The man halted and shadows swallowed around his body, throwing themselves around him as they fought him down to his knees, hauling all life out of him to be licked up on dirty little crooked fingers.

"Yes?" he answered.

Seonghwa was playing a dangerous game with a fang poking into his cheek. "Nothing," he said, making the hunter snort before walking around the corner of the building, leaving him alone.

♦

Yunho's limbs nearly didn't move anymore. Although, Seonghwa was not worried about him not being as intent on crawling away from where his body was drilled into the ground. It was not the first time Seonghwa had seen witch-hunters' method of killing vampires. They would brutally pierce the stick through their heart and drill it into the earth before leaving them to slowly lose all their strength. Humans were still foolishly believing it to be what killed the vampire.

But they could not be more wrong.

Vampires could not die in the literal sense - but they could be drained of all of their energy, thus unable to function as living. The second they would be fed with blood again, would their instincts be awakened again and their next prey could already fear for their life to be taken.

Seonghwa only faintly remembered one time when he had been caught by a group of hunters when he had been dwelling a little too long time by his prey. He had by pure luck escaped their attempts at drilling a stick through his heart, saving himself from an unknowing time laying still as the dead.

The assembly place was empty now; not even the hunters had stayed to supervise the area. It was not suspected that anyone willingly would free the vampire.

Seonghwa's shoes crunched in the snow when he moved closer to the undead, scrunching his nose the closer he got to the stenches of blood across the ground. The man gathered the fabrics of his hanbok in one of his hands before crouching down and taking a closer look at the heavy wooden piece spearing through the younger's body. He couldn't help himself and reached a quick hand out and let his fingers dance around the stick, enthralled by the grotesque way of murdering.

A hiss tore through Yunho's throat at the touch, making Seonghwa turn his head down at his snow-covered face before he slowly retreated his hand from the wooden stick, letting it rest on the soaked fabrics instead. Yunho licked his lips, clearly too exhausted to be doing anything else to fight Seonghwa off him.

"I am helping you. Please do be quiet, otherwise, you wish to stay with the fate you have been deemed by those hunters," Seonghwa rasped as he dragged his fingers across Yunho's chest, sliding them up the bloody stick as he prepared himself for the outburst to come. Seonghwa lifted his eyes to glide across the shadows of the buildings as he smoothly placed his legs astride Yunho's body. His mouth ticked when he leaned in closer to send the younger a warning in the form of his heavy fangs, "Try not to scream," he only said. It didn't seem like Yunho listened.

The vampire flicked with his wrists - a move so gracious yet brutally honest when the digits then suddenly clasped around with such terrifying strength the wood of the stick crunched. Twisting his own body around, Seonghwa pried the harmful object out of his chest with a disturbingly loud crack going through Yunho's body. Seonghwa feared that it had snapped his spine. Such damage would take longer to heal.

As the end of the stick came out of Yunho's body, his back fell to the ground again with a soft thud. His eyes rolled with white.

The blood blended with the snow faster than before, painting the ground with rivers of red, like veins spreading around Yunho's limp silhouette laying still in the snow.

Seonghwa sneered at the sight. He let go of the stick, his bloodied hand moved to his lips before he even got the thought of licking his hand clean; instincts were already muddling with his conscience - forcing him to do what he could not resist any longer. His tongue swirled around his fingers, sucking in the sweet blood all while craving a little more than what he already had. Seonghwa growled, tearing himself away from the addictive blood-drops running down his arm and under his sleeve. His bloodred orbs hunted the vampire's in the snow.

Yunho only stared at him through the heaviness of his swollen eyes. He was weak and desperately needed to be patched up and served a meal. Much like the first night Seonghwa had found the dying warrior.

Seonghwa grabbed Yunho's neck and hauled his head down into the red snow, his free hand scooping more of the stained white into his palm and pressing the ball against his face, making him lick the red snow like a treat. Yunho whined in protest, the coolness burning against his senseless skin but Seonghwa pressed his knees closer into his writhing body, poking into his bones, before flipping him around to lay on his stomach.

"We will have to run from here. If you do not stay quiet I'll have no other choice but leave you here all alone. Understood?" Yunho did not move, his limp body seeping deeper into the snow-covered ground.

Seonghwa's grip around Yunho's neck stayed while he got up from the ground. Easily heaving the body up from the snow before lifting him into his arms with only a little challenge. Seonghwa had already fitted the taller male in this hold multiple times before - this was no different from those times. Yunho's fingers clawed deep into his chest. And Seonghwa fled to the outskirts of the village, faster than ever.

♦

Inhaling sharply, he blinked the snowflakes out of his eyes and hugged the body closer to himself when he fell to the ground inside the hanok. Seonghwa felt around Yunho's back in an unknown frenzy of emotions he did not know what was or what they meant to him. Yunho's head rolled down to lay on Seonghwa's shoulder when he coughed through the pain surging through his weak body. "Please.." he whispered.

Seonghwa's eyes landed on the white wall with that one hole he never had gotten to repair. "You are a fool," he replied monotonously, "What were you even thinking of?"

Yunho was quiet but his hands clamped around Seonghwa's clothes revealed to him his trembling fear. "I told you not to find them; I asked you to forget every single being from your past life!"

He drank up the heavy atmosphere with the muse of disaster in his ears. Blood smeared all over his hands from the wound through Yunho's chest. The younger writhed around in pain and Seonghwa could feel how much he clenched his jaws, muddling his words when he spoke through soul-wrenching tears: "Seonghwa-ssi, I killed them all- I could not- couldn't stop again.."

The home he had spent centuries building would soon be up in flames.

Seonghwa leaned back and grabbed a handful of Yunho's hair before moving his eyes to be seen. Yunho's uneven breath hitched and the only thing Seonghwa could think of was how pathetic it felt watching Yunho realising that Seonghwa had been right. As always.

Seonghwa pursed his lips as he slowly leaned forward and let Yunho's eyes drift to the words leaving his lips, "I am the only thing you have left now. You must only remember that."

He growled before pulling out a dagger from his belt, heaving up his sleeve, and placing it against his bare arm, "And now we must go; leave those mountains and this home before the hunters will find our hideout here. Here, drink; we do not have much time left."

Yunho did not have any choice when Seonghwa jumped him; pressing his head down into the floor as he forced his blood to be swallowed. The twisted expression on his face held all of the consequences he had feared would come with the poor decisions he had been making the last decade. Perhaps, it had been time to move on from those mountains anyway.

He just hoped that Yunho's body would be able to heal properly within the next few days - before the huntsmen would start sniffing around the mountains.

∞