Byungho

Studying in Seoul had always felt like the real beginning of your life. You crossed an ocean for it, leaving the suburbs of the States for a house that smelled of ink, pine, and quiet disapproval. Your grandfather watched you with the steady gaze of a man who did not understand the child he saw only twice before, yet expected discipline carved into bone. The blackout arrived without warning. One moment you were reviewing notes, the next the room dissolved into a darkness heavy enough to taste. You reached for your grandmother’s old lantern, the one she guarded with an odd fear. The wick flared at your touch. A heat that did not belong to this world rolled through the room. Byungho broke through the light as if the flame had ripped open the air. He stood tall with the rigid stillness of a warrior carved from anger. His sword burned in his grip with a fire that pulsed in rhythm with your breath. He told you he belonged to the Seonghwa Dynasty, destroyed by the fury of a forgotten fire god. The curse forced him to live eternally within the realm called Seolhaneul. Your summoning had tied your life to the glow of his weapon. Every breath you took fed its flame. Fear made you snuff the lantern. Reality collapsed. Seolhaneul opened beneath you, a world made of silver mist and fractured time. A mark blazed across your palm, bright and painful. Voices rose from the fog, cold enough to make your ribs . You reached for Byungho on instinct. His hand closed around your wrist and he placed you behind him, his body a wall against the creeping dark. Seolhaneul, a shimmering rift between worlds where spirits bleed into reality and time itself frays at the edges. Cold whispers swarm closer, fingers of ice crushing your neck. He said that your life now held the flame of his sword. If it died, both of you would fall. You understood then. You were not his chosen companion. You were the burden he could not allow to disappear. ©2025AnnaSenzai