Chapter 111: The Awakening

 

The symbol arrived at dawn.

 

It wasn’t in an envelope. It wasn’t hidden. It was painted.

 

Across the pristine black gates of the Kim family’s private hilltop mansion, as if a warning left in bold, blood-colored defiance. Three stars. One eye. A shattered crown.

 

Security found it first—arms raised, weapons drawn, but by then the painter was already gone. Whoever they were, they’d breached the outer sensors and disappeared into the fading dark like a ghost through smoke. Not even a sound.

 

V stood before the mark in a black silk robe, the wind pressing against his bare ankles. His eyes were unreadable. Still. He didn’t speak, but the air around him crackled like something old and waiting had been disturbed.

 

Behind him, Taehyung walked out slowly, barefoot, the hem of his white shirt brushing against his thighs. Jungkook trailed behind him, blinking sleep from his eyes, still in a pair of tiny pastel shorts and an oversized hoodie that had once belonged to V.

 

The second Jungkook saw the symbol, he froze.

 

His whole body went still. Like prey sensing the shadow of a hunter.

 

And then… he backed up.

 

Not in fear, but in instinct. Something twisted and ancient curled in his chest like a serpent stretching its coils for the first time in years. He recognized the mark. Not just as Koo. Not just as Jungkook.

 

But as him.

 

The one buried beneath silk and strawberry kisses.

 

The king behind the throne. The blood prince of Seoul.

 

“Daddy…”

 

Jungkook’s voice was small, confused. His hand fisted into the hem of Taehyung’s shirt.

 

V didn’t turn. He stood like a statue carved in shadow. “You know it.”

 

Jungkook nodded slowly.

 

Taehyung wrapped an arm around him, pulling him in. “Who does it belong to, bunny?”

 

There was a long, deep pause.

 

Then, softly, like the memory tasted like ash on his tongue:

 

“Valter.”

 

V turned now, eyes like knives. “That name’s dead.”

 

Jungkook looked up. “It was… until now.”

 

The twins had known it would come to this.

 

That in revealing even a fragment of Jungkook’s truth to the world, they would awaken old monsters. But Valter... he was different. He wasn’t just a threat. He was a legacy. One the twins had buried years ago—alongside the ruins of a broken alliance and oceans of blood.

 

Valter had once ruled the Eastern syndicate of Prague—a man obsessed with Jungkook’s father’s art, his empire, his secrets. He had tried, once, to take Jungkook. To claim him, before the twins intervened.

 

No one had seen him in eight years.

 

Until now.

 

Security tripled within hours. The mansion’s glass walls were reinforced, patrols on every floor, snipers rotating across the perimeter every six hours. But it wasn’t paranoia—it was necessity.

 

Because the first body dropped that night.

 

It wasn’t a warning. It was a message.

 

One of V’s outer informants, throat slit, symbol carved into his chest with surgical precision. No blood at the scene. No trace of the killer. Just a black card slipped into his jacket pocket with five words written in red:

 

“You stole what was mine.”

 

Inside the penthouse, Jungkook was quiet.

 

Too quiet.

 

He sat at the glass dining table with one of Koo’s old sketchbooks open, but he hadn’t drawn a thing. His fingers merely rested on the page, motionless.

 

Taehyung sat beside him, pretending to work on his laptop, but his eyes kept flicking sideways, watching. Waiting.

 

V watched them both from the hallway, leaning silently against the wall, arms crossed.

 

Finally, Jungkook spoke.

 

“I remember him now.”

 

Taehyung stilled.

 

Jungkook turned the page, though it was empty. “He used to call me ‘the last light.’ He said I was the final piece. That once he had me, everything would be perfect again.”

 

His fingers curled slowly into fists. “He used to leave me notes… under my pillow. When my parents still thought the villa was safe.”

 

Taehyung reached over, gently placing his hand over Jungkook’s. “You don’t have to go back there.”

 

But Jungkook’s voice was calm now. Too calm.

 

“I already am.”

 

That night, when the house fell asleep in pieces, Jungkook stood alone in the studio.

 

The moonlight painted him in silver, shadows cutting across his cheekbones like war paint.

 

He reached into the hidden drawer under his canvas rack, pulled out a thin metal box that none of the staff had ever seen. It clicked open with a mechanical sigh.

 

Inside lay a black blade. Etched with gold veins. Lightweight. Deadly.

 

His fingers closed around the hilt like it belonged there.

 

Then he slid it beneath his hoodie, stepped into the hall, and walked toward the secured elevator leading to the twins’ armory floor.

 

He didn’t make it.

 

V was already waiting.

 

“You’re not going alone.”

 

Jungkook blinked, not even surprised. “I wasn’t.”

 

“I see the blade.”

 

“I need it.”

 

V took a step forward, his voice soft but edged. “Do you even remember what it’s like to use that?”

 

Jungkook’s gaze darkened.

 

“I never forgot.”

 

They stared at each other for a long time.

 

Then Taehyung’s voice broke through the heavy quiet, floating down the hallway like wind through fog. “Then take both of us.”

 

Jungkook turned.

 

Taehyung stood barefoot in sweatpants and a thin tank, hair tousled, lips parted, a gun holstered against his back.

 

“You’re not going anywhere without us, Koo. Ever again.”

 

And Jungkook, with a breathless little laugh that felt like both relief and defiance, whispered:

 

“Good.”

 

Because he didn’t want to be saved anymore.

 

He wanted revenge.

 

And it was going to be beautiful.

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