Chapter 85 || BOUND AND TORN BY PROPHECIES
The Storm Beneath Wings
The chamber was sealed.
Ancient stone walls glistened with quiet condensation as if
the room itself held its breath, waiting. Curtains of enchanted silk shimmered
in the dim golden glow of the floating orbs, now drawn to conceal the sacred
space from even moonlight. Silence had never felt heavier. Not a silence of
absence, but of reverence—like the breathless hush before a storm breaks.
Taehyung stood at the threshold.
His hand lingered on the final latch, as if his fingers
needed to memorize its weight, its finality. Behind him, the world roared with
expectation. Beyond the stone corridors, the council whispered demands and
traditions and the cries of a dwindling future. But none of that mattered now.
Not when he turned and found her—Mili—lying weakly against the curve of the
chamber’s nest.
She looked so fragile, so faded, a flicker of silver flame
barely holding to breath. But her gaze was clear. Ancient. Ready.
"Are you certain?" His voice trembled like wind
straining against its own edge.
She nodded once. "Shift."
The command was quiet, but in it held aeons of trust.
Taehyung’s dragon form erupted not with fury but grace.
Scales like darkened starlight stretched over a body that was carved by
lightning and sorrow. He was enormous, regal, and terrifying—a beast that had
known too much pain to roar with arrogance. Wings furled, he stepped closer to
her.
Mili shimmered not with strength, but with memory. With
loss. With the echoes of Jungkook glowing faintly through her veins.
When their bodies met, it was not a collision—it was a
convergence.
The world outside shattered into rain.
Lightning veined the sky above as the storm began, summoned
not by magic but emotion. Thunder became the unspoken song of their joining. A
keening rhythm too deep for ears, too sacred for mortal tongues. The wind
mourned, the rain praised, and the mountains bowed.
Their touch was not one of flesh, but of essence.
Their scales grazed like ripples meeting in a sacred lake,
where time did not pass but pooled in eternal circles. Where pain did not
strike, but hummed beneath the surface like a harp with frayed strings. Taehyung's
breath trembled against Mili’s, each exhale laced with the memory of a kiss
never given, of a goodbye never granted.
He wrapped her in his wings, sheltering her as though the
wind might steal what little time remained.
In that embrace, the mate mark embedded within Mili began to
pulse—Jungkook’s mark, dull and faded but still tethered to him like a song
unfinished. It shimmered like veins of fire across her chest, glowing once more
with life as Taehyung’s magic and longing poured into her.
A great circle of light unfurled around them.
Magic stirred.
It was not the fire of lust, nor the burn of power. It was
something older. A magic born of sacrifice. Of grief. Of promises made beneath
dying stars. Their souls did not fuse—they mourned together, cried together,
and wrapped around each other in quiet understanding.
The bond was formed not through passion but through pain.
And somewhere deep beneath the chamber, something responded.
Eggs.
Thousands of them.
Long dormant, they stirred. Cracks formed like silver
lightning across ivory shells. As though the ache of their joining had awoken
life itself. A history rewritten. An impossibility made manifest. In every egg,
Jungkook’s sacrifice echoed like a lullaby.
Taehyung, towering and trembling, lowered his head to
Mili’s.
His voice, though formed of dragon’s breath, sounded like a
prayer. "I will never forget this. I will never forget you."
Mili did not answer with words. Her eyes, glowing faintly
with Jungkook’s soul, held the reflection of a man she had loved from afar. And
now, held in sorrow. As dawn neared, the thunder quieted. The last eggs stilled
in their cradles of magic, warm and breathing, alive.
In the chamber, they did not move.
They simply breathed.
Two dragons, bound by a soul halved by fate and stitched by
sacrifice. Wrapped in each other’s wings beneath the silence after the storm.
And outside, the world had changed.
A future had been born.
But inside, time stood still—for one more moment, for one
more breath of the one he had lost. And would never stop loving.
Just like that, he lost Mili as well.
Her breath faded the moment their magic completed its sacred
purpose. She died there, in his arms, her body falling still with the last echo
of Jungkook flickering through her. Taehyung did not look at her face. He
refused to see that empty stillness in her eyes. Instead, he clutched her
tightly against his massive body, tears pouring freely from his closed eyes,
shaking with the unbearable truth.
He held her like his very life depended on her breath.
Cuddled against her soulless form in his own dragon shape,
he refused to let go. Refused to acknowledge what the universe had once again
stolen from him. He didn’t care what was happening to his body, didn’t notice
the trembling of his limbs, didn’t move when the blue glowing egg—perfect and
radiant—rolled beside them onto the makeshift nest.
He didn’t care.
He just wept.
He wept with his eyes shut so tightly he saw stars behind
the lids. He wept until the sorrow was carved into the stone, into the air,
into the very rain beyond the chamber. His soul fractured further, shattered by
loss—first Jungkook, then his last living echo, his last warmth, Mili.
He didn’t want to live anymore.
He wished to die. To vanish. To be born again in another
world, one untouched by crowns, prophecy, and war. Where he could be with him.
Just him. No council, no evil, no guardian bond, no prince hood. Only them.
Together, forever.
But even that peace was denied to him.
Because he could feel it now—the curse.
The ancient punishment for tearing apart the veil between
dimensions. A curse that had waited patiently, crouched like a shadow in the
corner of his soul. And now, it rose. Seeping into his veins. Claiming him.
He welcomed it.
If it meant forgetting this pain, forgetting
everything—forgetting him—then let it consume him. Let it take him. Let it
erase even the memory of his name.
Because what was a prince without his purpose? What was a
mate without his beloved?
What was Taehyung without him?
Nothing.
.
.
.
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