Chapter Text
A death in springtime is never a good sign.
The small hanok in the forest looks as though it’s been dressed for a wedding, not a funeral. White silk banners, neat rows of white chrysanthemums—everything painfully immaculate.
But the air inside is so heavy with incense that even the breeze refuses to come in. The smoke sits thick and low, coiling around the mourners, bathing everything and everyone in a thin layer of rot beneath the sweetness.
There’s something almost wrong about dying now, when the earth is trying its best to start over. When buds push through soil, and the birds return to sing their songs after the long winter.
Death in spring feels like a mockery.
Seokjin kneels stiffly on his cushion near the back of the room, the hem of his hanbok brushing against the cool lacquered floor.
His knees ache already, and the smoke has begun to sting the corners of his eyes, but he keeps his face perfectly neutral. Hands folded loosely in his lap, expression arranged into something between respectful acknowledgment and mild boredom.
From where he sits, the room stretches like a fever dream: white on white, punctuated only by the faint glint of copper candleholders and the dull gleam of ceremonial bowls. The body lies in the centre beneath layers of silk, completely still, almost artfully posed. Around it, the coven members bow and weep, clutching at each other’s sleeves.
Seokjin watches them for a long moment and wonders if he’s the only one who notices how performative all of this feels.
He’s attended enough funerals to know what genuine mourning looks like—messy and uncontainable. This isn’t that. This is almost painfully choreographed.
Just an act.
He’s about to look away when something catches his attention among the endless white blooms. Hidden in the sea of chrysanthemums, almost swallowed by their heavy petals, a single white mugunghwa peeks through, almost shyly.
His heart gives a small, private jolt.
Ah. So that’s how it is.
He almost smiles, catches himself in time.
Composure—always. The last thing he needs is anyone noticing that he’s noticed.
A voice at his side breaks through his thoughts. “Didn’t think I’d see you here, hyung.”
Seokjin doesn’t startle but rolls his eyes before turning his head just enough to catch the sage beside him out of the corner of his eye.
“Oh?” he murmurs. “And why wouldn’t I be here, Namjoon-ah?”
The younger man’s lips curve knowingly as he leans closer to whisper.
“Plenty of reasons. You don’t belong to this coven, for one.”
Seokjin hums, noncommittal. “I’m just paying my respects.”
“Sure, let’s call it that.” The sage chuckles folding his arms, and turns back to face the front.
They fall silent again, the sound of the chant rising and falling around them like waves.
Death, Seokjin muses, has never particularly moved him.
It isn’t that he’s callous—it’s just that after a few hundred years of watching powerful beings crumble into dust, sentimentality just doesn’t feel as intense anymore.
Witches aren’t meant to die easily anyway. They stretch across centuries, bending around time like stubborn weeds. And when one of them finally does fall, it feels less like a tragedy and more like a crack in the order of things, a reminder that even eternity has weak spots.
This one, though—this death—feels different.
When a coven head who’s lived for centuries and shown no sign of decay simply doesn’t wake up one morning—well. That’s not ordinary.
It’s curious. And concerning.
“Have they chosen a successor yet?” Namjoon asks under his breath, eyes tracking the movement of a white-robed witch entering from the far end of the hall, carrying a deep bronze bowl with a live flame flickering in it. The fire casts brief, restless glows across the mourners’ faces, making them look less human by the second.
“No,” Seokjin murmurs. “They’ll drag it out for a year, at least.”
“Of course,” Namjoon huffs under his breath. “Can’t rush indoctrination.”
He earns an elbow to the ribs for that.
The Coven of Light—Seokjin still can’t say the name without it leaving a bad taste on his tongue. They’ve spent the last few centuries convincing themselves that isolation is purity, that cutting themselves off from every other branch of witchcraft somehow makes them closer to their so-called divine.
They’ve built this entire identity on denial: no practical magic of any kind is permitted. Just endless prayer and self-flagellation, disguised as enlightenment.
Seokjin almost laughed when the letter appeared in his mail drawer. Would have ignored the invitation to the funeral altogether if curiosity hadn’t been stronger than pride.
Now, watching their ritual unfold, he wonders if that had been a mistake.
At the front, the lead mourner lifts the bronze bowl high, voice trembling with practiced reverence.
“Lee Yoona, our beloved leader, our mother not through birth but through the rightful path. We mourn you, we ache for you, we—”
Seokjin tunes the rest out, gaze drifting back to the mugunghwa. He can’t help thinking about how specific that spell is—how personal the choice in flower.
How it will refuse to bloom unless the magic comes from genuine intent.
Mugunghwa. The simplest of flowers. A symbol of resilience.
The air shifts. A collective inhale moves through the crowd. The bronze bowl tips forward and the flame pours out like liquid light.
“You become one with the Light today!”
“No darkness remains!” The coven echoes in unison.
The fire catches neatly, spreading over the shrouded body without smoke or sound. Three witches throw themselves upon the pyre, robes flaring as the magic swells around them. Gasps and shocked murmurs ripple from the mourners—Seokjin merely pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Ground grave soil and powdered obsidian,” he mutters. “Amateurs.” A cheap trick they most likely got from a random goblin.
Namjoon’s shoulders shake with quiet laughter beside him.
When it’s over, the body is gone, reduced to a mound of grey ash. The coven falls upon it like the devout at a relic, pressing their fingers into the ashes, marking their foreheads, smearing the grief into their skin.
The performance is nearing its end.
“Let’s go before they start eating the ashes,” Namjoon murmurs, rising to his feet.
Seokjin nods faintly, also getting up to escape—only to stop when a small figure steps into his path.
A girl, barely into her teens, hood drawn low, skin pale and translucent as candle wax. She looks up at him with glassy eyes and an expression so vacant—it almost makes Seokjin look away from how familiar it looks.
“Renowned shopkeeper,” she says softly, voice flat and strangely formal. “Will you not stay for the mourning meal?”
Seokjin glances past her, to the front of the room where the ashes are being gathered into an ornate urn by trembling hands. The three witches who handled the body are still crying, streaks of soot running down their faces.
There it is again—the wreath with the mugunghwa. A second bloom now unfurls beside the first.
A spell he created centuries ago. One he only ever taught to a single witch.
A witch who’s probably elbows-deep in garden soil right now, coaxing herbs to life behind the shop. A witch who once had that same vacant look.
Seokjin smiles faintly.
“I’m afraid I can’t,” he says finally, keeping his tone mild. “I have matters waiting elsewhere.”
Important matters, like burning these clothes and washing this stench out of his hair.
The girl blinks twice, nods, and drifts away into the white-clad crowd. Seokjin watches her disappear into the crowd before turning on his heel and stepping through the open doors into the cool spring air.
Namjoon waits by the steps, gaze distant as he looks towards the half-barren treeline. The pipe he always carries is balanced delicately between his fingers and the faint ribbon of silver smoke rising from it smells cleaner than the entire coven combined.
“I thought I was gonna have to bail you out.”
Seokjin hums, brushing imaginary dust from his sleeve. “I thought you stopped smoking.”
Namjoon laughs quietly, already hopping down the steps.
“Habits die hard. Walk and talk?”
“Walk and talk.” Seokjin sighs and falls into step with the sage.
They walk without speaking for a long time.
The further they move from the hanok, the lighter the air becomes—less cloying incense, more forest. The wind finds its way back to them at last, cool and damp with the scent of thawing earth. Underfoot, the ground is soft, soaked from snowmelt, giving slightly with every step. Seokjin can almost feel the weight of the ceremony sloughing off his shoulders, replaced by the gentler hum of the living woods.
“So,” he says eventually, once the coven is far enough behind them, “tell me. What of the werewolf?”
Beside him, Namjoon hums around the mouthpiece of his pipe thoughtfully before exhaling a slow tendril of smoke that curls into the sparse canopy of trees above them.
“I think I’m wearing him down.”
That think does nothing to inspire confidence. Seokjin cuts him a side glance, unimpressed.
“Why is it taking so long?”
Namjoon only chuckles quietly. He slows his pace, stopping altogether by a crooked oak. “He’s stubborn,” he says finally, dragging his fingertips along the dark grain of the trunk. “And proud.”
He turns back toward Seokjin, pipe balanced neatly between his fingers. “He’ll come around. I have my methods.”
That earns him a soft snort. “As long as they work. We need him.”
They start walking again, unhurried. The path winds gently downhill, the moss growing thicker, the air tasting greener.
The forest beneath their feet is waking from its winter slumber—alive in a way that feels almost tangible, a quiet thrumming just below the soil. Power stirs in the roots, wild and unkempt, older than the useless coven foolish enough to claim dominion over it.
He glances sideways at the sage, eyes lingering on his bare feet, half-covered in dirt and patches of early moss.
Sages. Immortal hippies. For all their wisdom, they never quite outgrow the performance of asceticism. He can already picture the state of Namjoon’s floors, streaked with mud.
He’s still halfway through that thought when the sage breaks the silence again, voice lower this time, a little hesitant.
“How’s Jimin?”
The question stills him mid-step.
“What about Jimin?”
“How’s he holding up?”
Ah. The death.
Seokjin resumes walking before he answers. “He’s fine.”
The answer lands too quickly, too flat. Behind him, Namjoon clicks his tongue against his teeth.
“Is he really? Hyung, you know what they did to him—”
“He’s fine.” Sharper this time, enough to cut the sentence short.
He could tell him, if he wanted.
He could talk about the way the shop had gone quiet the morning the news arrived, how even the plants in the shop seemed to sense something foul in the air—stems drooping, petals curling. He could tell him how Jimin had stood behind the counter, expression unreadable except for the faint tremor in his hands, the soft catch in his throat when he’d finally asked who it was.
He could describe the hours after, the silence so thick it had felt like a pressure against the chest, and then the strange, breathless calm that had followed—like something uncoiling at last, releasing its grip once the young witch came to terms that a monster from his past simply no longer existed.
But those things don’t belong to him.
If Namjoon wants to know, he can haul his ass down from his mountain and ask Jimin himself.
“Really,” Seokjin says, for finality this time. “Everything’s fine.”
Namjoon doesn’t push further. They keep walking, the rhythm of their footsteps syncing again.
The forest opens ahead into a clearing, the sunlight pale and fractured through the branches. In the centre, the light bends unnaturally, rippling faintly like heat over stone.
Seokjin exhales through his nose, the first hint of relief slipping through. “Thank fuck. Portal’s still open.”
He’s been craving the familiar scent of his own space—the warmth of candlewax, the low hum of the wards, the little random noises the shop made. A bath. A meal. Maybe even an episode of that ridiculous mortal show Jimin keeps binging into the early hours of the morning.
Anything to wash this day from his mind.
“Before you go,” Namjoon says suddenly, hand disappearing into the sleeve of his robe. He produces a small envelope, the wax seal dark and plain. “From Yoongi.”
Seokjin takes it, turns it over in his hands. “He really needs to learn how to use Kakao chat. I’ve told him it’s more efficient.”
Namjoon smiles faintly around his pipe. “He says it’s safer.”
“Of course he does.”
“Apparently,” the sage adds, tapping out the last of the ash from the pipe-bowl, “the Bureau’s stirring.”
Seokjin’s head snaps toward him. “The Bureau?”
Namjoon nods, gaze flicking toward the letter now tucked into Seokjin’s sleeve. “Read it later. Too many ears on the wind.”
Seokjin frowns but lets it go. The sage is right. You never know who’s listening or watching these days.
He presses his lips together and offers a single, wordless nod.
They reach the clearing’s edge, where the air begins to shimmer. The portal stands open between two gnarled roots, its surface rippling faintly like water caught in sunlight.
“Hyung.”
Seokjin turns, finding Namjoon watching him with that same quiet seriousness that never seems to leave his face.
“I keep asking,” the sage says, rubbing the back of his neck, “but… are you sure this is going to work?”
They’ve known each other for what—a hundred years? More? And still he finds a way to question him.
“The cards don’t lie, Namjoon-ah.”
The sage hesitates. “But—”
“My cards don’t lie.”
That’s the end of it. Namjoon exhales slowly, shoulders easing, the edge of a smile tugging at his mouth.
“Then I trust you.”
Before Seokjin can reply, the man’s form shimmers at the edges, breaking apart like mist in sunlight until there’s nothing left but a faint scent of burnt leaves and a pair of muddy footprints in the moss.
Seokjin blinks at the empty space, sighs through his nose.
“Fucking sages,” he mutters. “Always with the theatrics.”
He adjusts his robe, steps closer to the warped light, and tips backward into the waiting shimmer. The forest folds inward with a sound like a breath being drawn, and the cursed place finally blurs away.
⋆˚₊ 𖤓☽˚.⋆
The world steadies around Seokjin with a rush of warmth and a soft crack of displaced air.
He blinks rapidly, and the dim light of the shop comes back into focus—the familiar rows of glass jars, the lazy tilt of the ceiling fan, the faint shimmer of protective wards humming through the air.
Evening has already settled outside. Through the windows, the sky has gone a bruised blue, and rain clouds are gathering low above the shop. It will rain hard tonight, better make sure the windows are closed.
Home. Finally.
He exhales and stretches his shoulders, but the jump through the portal still leaves a static sting along his skin, a reminder that he really needs to fix the damn thing—maybe add a stabilizing rune, or a time anchor. It’s been lagging more and more lately, and the last thing he needs is to come out of it with half his limbs in another dimension.
He’s still considering when a quiet sound pulls his attention forward: the soft, steady rhythm of someone breathing.
He looks toward the counter and finds his apprentice slumped across it, fast asleep.
Jimin’s silver hair is a wreck—clumped from sweat, sticking up in odd directions, catching the candlelight in pale streaks. His cheek is smooshed flat against a stack of half-written notes, one arm dangling off the counter, the other tucked beneath his chin. His hands are caked in dried soil.
Seokjin just stands there for a moment, looking at him.
It’s ridiculous, really, how fond he’s become of this little disaster.
Four years ago, he had been sworn off apprentices entirely for over a century—too much trouble, too many chances of getting stabbed in the back. Yet here he is, watching one sleep-drool on expensive enchanted parchment, and his first thought is that the kid needs a haircut.
He breathes out through his nose. He’s going to get a neck cramp like that.
Then the smell of his clothes wafts up to his nose—thick, stale incense from that ghastly coven, clinging to his hanbok like a damn curse.
He grimaces. Absolutely not.
Within seconds he’s peeling off the outer layer of silk, then the under-robe, muttering curses under his breath. When he’s done, he’s left standing in nothing but boxers and socks, hair sticking to his forehead, glaring at the heap of fabric.
He snaps his fingers once, and the fireplace flares obediently to life. With a theatrical flick of his wrist, he tosses the offending garments into the flames. They catch instantly, burning blue at the edges.
The sudden burst of light stirs movement behind the counter.
Jimin groans, voice thick with sleep, and lifts his head slowly—eyes half-lidded, hair sticking up worse than ever. He blinks blearily toward the fire, then toward Seokjin.
“Why the fuck are you almost naked?” he rasps.
Seokjin raises a hand and flashes him a peace sign, cocking his hip to the side. “Laundry day.”
Jimin stares at him for a beat, unimpressed, then drags a dirt-smeared hand down his face. The smear doubles across his cheek.
“You reek of that place,” he mutters, wrinkling his nose and pushing himself upright.
Seokjin hums, entirely unbothered and pads closer to the counter to peer down at the mess of papers, eyes scanning Jimin’s scribbles.
“You missed a stroke here,” he murmurs, reaching over to correct a symbol with one finger.
Jimin glares back weakly.
“I was testing the alignment, geez.”
“Mhm.”
He can’t help the fond smile that tugs at his lips. Jimin’s grumpiness is almost comforting—proof that whatever shadow the day cast over them hasn’t settled too deeply.
As the younger witch begins tidying, Seokjin leans on the counter, chin propped in his palm, watching him move about the shelves—the neat efficiency, the way he mutters ingredients under his breath like a chant. Dirt flakes from his hands as he gathers dried herbs and bottles, setting them down on the counter with soft clinks.
They talk idly about the funeral as Jimin works. Nothing heavy, nothing detailed. Just observations—too much white, too many dramatics, too much noise. Jimin snorts in agreement, reaching for the last bundle of chamomile.
“Did anyone…” he hesitates, eyes still on the herbs. “Did anyone ask about me?”
Seokjin stills.
Four years. Four years since he’d taken the boy in, ripped the rot from his mind and taught him to live his truth, to wield magic as intended. Four years of watching him rebuild piece by piece.
And still, sometimes, the past slips out like an old wound reopening.
“No,” Seokjin answers quietly.
Jimin’s jaw tightens, but he doesn’t look up. Just nods once mutely, avoiding looking the older witch in the eye.
The silence stretches thin as he grinds the herbs together, movements careful and gentle. But the faint tremor in his hands tells Seokjin more than words ever could.
When the mixture is done, Jimin slides the mortar across the counter without a word.
Seokjin takes it, inhales deeply. The scent melts the tension from his shoulders almost instantly—chamomile for calm, a trace of clove for his aching joints, lemon balm to cleanse, and a whisper of osmanthus—stocked straight from the tree outside of the shop.
Home, bottled in scent.
He smirks faintly. “Wah, Jimin. I taught you well.”
Jimin only hums, busying himself with rearranging jars that don’t even need rearranging, the tips of his red ears betraying how he really feels.
“I’ll go take a bath,” Seokjin says, gentling his tone. “You start dinner.”
That earns him a flat, unimpressed look over one shoulder.
He clicks his tongue. “Fine. I’ll take a bath, you open the wine, and I’ll make dinner. Deal? Then we can watch that terrible show of yours.”
Jimin’s mouth twitches. “Really?”
“I’m a witch of my word, Jimin-ah. What’s it called again? Love Land?”
“Love Island,” Jimin corrects, but he’s fully grinning now, cheeks bunched up and eyes slanted into those signature crescent moons.
“Yah, such a brat.” Seokjin grumbles, but there’s no heat behind it. Jimin has never inspired anything but fondness in his person—it’s kind of scary.
Satisfied, the older witch pats the counter twice and starts toward the stairs. Halfway up, he pauses, frowning.
Something gnaws at the back of his mind—a small, crucial detail he’s forgotten.
Then it hits him.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he mutters.
He burned Yoongi’s fucking letter.