Pray for the Wicked | ATEEZ

37.

The first week was the hardest.

Much like the first time he had left, I found myself sitting in front of the portal. Except this time, it was for days on end.

Numbly, I wrapped my arms around my legs and watched the veil between the two worlds flicker and dance between crumbling pillars of dark stone with detached emotion. The dust settled around me, undisturbed as it had been before I entered, and the longer I sat there, the more I felt like a part of it.

Like newly fallen snow, it would only swirl and levitate when I moved, except it was darker, filthy, and covered the rest of the ruins surrounding the portal like yet another veil pulled across the true history of Illenium.

It was almost ironic how close we were, how easily I could have come to him had I taken the leap through the archway.

It was almost tragic.

Looking down at my hands which had I had been clenching and unclenching for while, now healed again, I couldn't help but miss the way he would hold them.

Biting my lip as I tried to fight my tears, I couldn't help but miss the way his felt as they moved against mine. And, as I finally lost the battle and they poured down my cheeks in scalding hot trails of regret, I couldn't help but miss the way he would wipe them away.

I missed the son of Lilith to the point where it was almost unbearable, yet I knew he had done the right thing. He had made the right choice, the only choice that would keep both of us safe.

The obsidian archway stared back at me almost mockingly, like a single eye surrounding by night and with the stars themselves dancing back and forth within its pupil, reminding me again and again how we hadn't been able to find the Lunar Flame.

So I simply sat there, alone, desperately longing for something I realized, too late, I had gained.

〄

The second week was tolerable.

When I wasn't by the portal, I would wander endlessly around the corridors and hallways of the palace, glancing out the grand windows lining the walls through which that cursed sun would illuminate the cold marble beneath my feet.

Illenium seemed less beautiful with every look, and I knew it was our visit to the Fractured City that had made me realize just how stark a contrast such a pristinely perfect place posed to the horrors which were undoubtedly buried beneath it.

My feet, almost as if by their own accord, kept bringing me back to the library, and when I finally gave in and entered, not minding the angels lingering between the bookshelves or mountains of knowledge littering the aisles not the grey and mute librarians, I suddenly found myself at the place Hongjoong and I had hidden away.

I ran my hand across the back of one chairs when an idea came to me and, for the first time in days, a spark, a sense of determination, flickered to life within me followed by a memory of the night we shared our first sunset.

I remembered Hongjoong's question, followed by my own, and how he had refused to answer it.

"Was this what you were reading about earlier?"

"If not this then what were you reading about?"

The book.

I shook the image of him quickly averting his eyes, the sound of him clearing his throat which echoed in my ears like the ghost of the demon, and tried to remember what the cover had looked like.

A newfound sense of purpose lingered on the tip of my tongue as I snuck through aisles and aisles of books, eyes trailing across every gilded title and aged leather cover, searching until I could see the sun setting through the crystalized and colourful glass panes making up the walls around me before, at last, I found it.