It is nine in the evening when I return to the apartment, my skin still humming with the restless electricity of a hunt I didn't finish.
Early spring in Seoul is undecided. The cold has thinned but it hasn't left. The pavement is damp from the afternoon thaw, concrete holding a faint, muddy trace of soil and dust. Between the residential towers, the trees are skeletal, their buds clenched tight against the dark like tiny, frozen fists.
The lobby doors slide open. I step into the warmth, met by the cloying scent of polished tile and stale air freshener. Above, the lights are aggressive, too bright for the hour, reflecting off the marble floor in clinical, jagged lines. At the desk, the security guard looks up, his eyes pausing on me for a fraction of a second longer than they should.
"Good evening," he says automatically.
"Evening," I reply, my voice sounding hollow in the quiet lobby.
I don't wait for the lift. I can feel the weight of the night pressing against the glass behind me, a phantom pressure on my spine. My footsteps cross the marble with a sharp, echoing rhythm. I am solid. I am here. And I am increasingly certain I am being watched.
The elevator carries me upward, the mirrored walls reflecting a face that looks younger than its years and older than its soul. The corridor on our floor is silent. I turn the lock, the click sounding like a gunshot in the hallway.
"Hae in."
Silence. The apartment holds the familiar scents of detergent and clean air, but beneath it, the metallic note of warmed blood from yesterday lingers near the kitchen. The bedroom is a hollow square. The bathroom is empty.
"Hae in."
Nothing. My pulse, that steady, artificial drum, starts to quicken. New vampires are storms looking for a place to break; hunger doesn't arrive as a request, it rises as a command. I told myself she was steady. I lied to myself because I didn't want to be the only one looking over my shoulder.
I head back down hastily, finding myself back in the bright lobby. The courtyard is a maze of low circle garden lights and swaying young trees. Breath leaves my mouth in a pale, ragged cloud. I close my eyes and reach out, not with my ears, but with the raw, jagged edges of my consciousness.
The city's noise, the distant hum of the Han River traffic, the rhythmic chirp of a pedestrian signal, fades into a dull static. In its place, a physical weight slams into the space beneath my ribs. It isn't my own.
It is hers.
It hits me in waves: the staggering, hollow ache of a stomach turned inside out, followed instantly by the thick, honeyed heat of a feast. It is an intoxicating, sluggish throb, the feeling of being famished and overfilled all at once. My own throat tightens in sympathy, tasting the phantom copper of her indulgence.
The Boss had always spoken of this with a chilling, detached sort of gravity. He told us he was connected to us in a way that defied physics, a tether woven into the marrow, a bond that every vampire carries to the human they have broken and remade. He called it a burden. Standing there in the cold Seoul wind, feeling the ghost of her kill pulsing through my own blood, I realize this is the tether he meant. This is the knot that refuses to be untied.
Then, the scream.
It's fractured, carried across the blocks by the wind. I don't think. I run.
I cut through the shadows of the parking structures and the empty playgrounds. I am a blur of kinetic energy the city isn't supposed to see. By the time I reach the construction site, the smell hits me like a physical blow. Blood. Fresh. Thick enough to taste on the air.
Five bodies are scattered across the excavated earth like discarded dolls. Throats opened. Lives drained into the damp soil. In the center, Hae in kneels in the mud, her lips stained a visceral crimson, her eyes blown wide with the hollow ecstasy of the feed.
"You came," she whispers, her voice detached, drifting from somewhere far away.
"You fed too much," I rasp, gripping her wrist. She is heavy, her movements sluggish from the excess. "We have to go. Now."
"I don't hear anything," she murmurs.
"I do."
The footsteps aren't human. They are measured. Rhythmic. The sound of something that doesn't need to run because it already owns the space you're standing in. We scramble toward the gap in the fence, gravel shifting beneath my boots and Hae in's bare feet. We cut between the narrow pedestrian paths, my heart hammering against my ribs. Behind us, the sound sharpens. It's closing the distance with terrifying, predatory grace.
I look back into the mouth of the alley. There is no one there. No silhouette. No shadow. Just the sound of boots hitting pavement and the terrifying feeling of displaced air.
Something… Someone… is right behind us.
Vampires.
The realization settles like a layer of frost over my skin. Then, a second set of footfalls joins the first, moving in a synchronized, lethal staccato. Two of them. Their strides are perfectly matched, deliberate and heavy with intent.
Someone from our circle has caught the scent of the slaughter. Or perhaps a traveler, drawn by the raw, humid tang of five opened throats, has decided to investigate the disturbance. Either way, the carnage in the dirt will not go ignored. Five drained husks are a loud enough siren to wake the city's hidden predators.
"We're being followed," I say, my voice barely a notch above the wind.
Hae in blinks, her gaze still filmy, still half drowned in the high of the feed. "By what?"
"Our own kind."
I watch her expression shift, the dull softness of her indulgence splintering into a jagged, cold unease.
"Keep moving," I command, my hand tightening on her wrist. "Do not slow down."
If they are from the local houses, they will demand an explanation I don't have. They will want a justification for this mess, and there is no logic that satisfies the hunger of the Law.
Behind us, the footsteps gain. They aren't running with the frantic energy of a chase; they are closing the gap with the terrifying patience of a foregone conclusion. I veer off the main path, cutting through a vein of deep shadow between two residential towers, desperate to stay out of the reach of the streetlamps.
"Can you run?" I ask, my eyes scanning the darkness ahead.
She nods once. "Yes."
But her pulse betrays the lie. It beats with a sickening, steady calm, the heavy, rhythmic throb of a heart that is too full of someone else's life. She is still floating in the warmth of what she has taken, too heavy to be fast.
Behind us, the impact of a boot hits the pavement with a sharp, resonant crack. Then, something else reaches me, a scent that cuts through the copper haze of the kill.
Blood.
But it isn't the chaotic, metallic spray of an accident. It is concentrated. Potent. It is being carried forward through the night like a deliberate signal, a chemical lighthouse in the dark. My stride shortens by half a step. Something is wrong.
It is purer than human blood, devoid of the scent of adrenaline, cortisol, or the common impurities of life. It is an alchemical distillation designed to be more addictive than the source itself. It doesn't just hit the nose; the taste lingers as the smell travels through the throat, honeyed iron and ancient, cold stone. It is a siren song written in a laboratory, meant to trigger the lizard brain of a predator and lead it straight into a cage.
My assumption that we were being hunted by our own kind fractures.
"They are not ours," I say, the words tasting like ash.
Hae in looks at me, the filmy indulgence in her eyes sharpening into a jagged, hungry confusion. "Then what…"
"Hae in. Did anyone run?"
Her expression falters, the first cracks of reality breaking through her high. "What do you mean?"
"The bodies back there. Did anyone escape the initial strike?"
"One tried," she whispers, her voice small. "I thought he would collapse. I thought the wound was too deep."
"He didn't."
A flicker of raw unease crosses her face, mirroring the cold stone in my stomach. "I was feeding. I didn't see him leave the circle."
"How long ago?"
She hesitates, searching the blurred memories of her feast. "Thirty minutes, maybe. He was the first I fed on."
Thirty minutes.
Enough time to make the call. Enough time to report the incident and have unwanted ears listening in.
Behind us, the footsteps shift. They aren't closing recklessly anymore; they are herding us, moving with a tactical geometry that narrows our world to a single, dark exit.
"They are hunters," I say quietly.
The word settles with a different kind of gravity than vampire ever could. It carries the weight of silver, of ultraviolet, of extinction. Hae in's breathing hitches. "I can smell it," she whispers, her nostrils flaring.
"Yes."
"It's stronger now. It's… beautiful."
The wind shifts, and the scent intensifies until it is a physical pressure against the back of my throat. This isn't hunger in the usual way; this is engineered. It makes human blood smell like dishwater in comparison. It is so potent it feels like a physical hand reaching into my chest, dragging my heart toward the source.
"They make it impossible to ignore," I say, my own fangs aching in response to the chemical lure.
Her fingers tighten around my wrist, her grip bruising. "It feels… different. It feels like a promise."
"It's a hook," I warn. "It is meant to feel like a promise."
We move faster, our feet a frantic blur against the pavement. But beneath the panic, I feel her pulse shift again. It isn't the frantic thud of fear; it is the rhythmic, dangerous thrum of curiosity. She is leaning into the scent, being charmed by her own executioners. In this world, curiosity is a faster killer than any blade.
The scent of the hunters' bait thickens until it isn't a smell, it's a physical weight in the lungs. Hae in's pace falters. Her rhythm, once driven by the frantic need to survive, now stutters.
"I can taste it," she whispers, her voice sounding like crumbling dry earth.
"You aren't tasting anything," I growl, grabbing her arm. "You're being pulled. It's a hook, Hae in. Look at me."
Her fingers loosen around mine, sliding away like water. Behind us, the footsteps of the hunters slow. They don't slow because they're tired; they slow because the trap has already snapped shut. They are just collectors now, coming to pick up the harvest.
"Hae in." I step in front of her, forcing her to see me.
For a heartbeat, she is present. I see the girl I tried to save: the confusion, the sudden, sharp bloom of shame, and a flicker of the terror she should have felt an hour ago. Then the wind shifts. The chemical siren song of the hunters' blood sharpens, slicing through her last shred of reason. Her pupils swallow the iris entirely.
"I want it," she says.
"You don't. It's death, Hae in."
"I do." The word is quiet. Final.
She moves before I can tighten my grip, a blur of desperate hunger running straight toward the light. Toward the first hunter. He steps into the circle of a streetlamp, calm and immovable. He doesn't reach for a weapon; he doesn't need to. Two more figures emerge from the shadows of the adjacent buildings, moving with the synchronized grace of a clockwork mechanism. They don't shout. They don't threaten.
She reaches the first hunter, drawn to the heat of his engineered blood like a moth to a blowtorch. For one breath, she stands before him, her face tilted up in a daze of adoration.
The blade moves once. Precise. Clinical.
Her body remains upright for a fraction of a second longer than physics should allow, a standing monument to a mistake. Then, she collapses into the dirt.
The thread between us, the tether I had foolishly woven, goes silent. It isn't stretched or cut; it simply ceases to exist. The world thins. The sound of the city flattens into a dull, grey hum.
The hunters shift their gaze to me.
Retreat is not cowardice; it is the only logic left. I turn and run. I am fast, a streak of desperate shadow, but they are close. Too close. I pull my phone as I sprint, the screen a blinding white in the dark. It connects on the second ring.
"Hunters," I rasp, my lungs burning. "Three of them."
A pause. The silence on the other end is heavier than the wind. "Are you alone?"
"Yes."
"I turned her," I add, the confession tasting like bile.
The silence deepens, turning into something cold and judgmental. "You did not have approval."
"No."
"Location."
"Approaching the main road, near the apartment."
"I will be there in five minutes."
The line cuts. Moments later, a set of headlights approaches from the north, slowing with a practiced, inconspicuous drift. The passenger door swings open as the car rolls beside the concrete divider. I throw myself inside.
The engine hums as we merge into the flow of neon and evening traffic. The city slides past the window, closed storefronts, idling buses, people living lives that have nothing to do with the war in the shadows.
"Did they see you shift?" the driver asks. His hands are tight on the wheel, his knuckles white.
"Yes. Right after they killed her. Right before me."
He steadies himself. "That is not good." The words carry no comfort. It is a ledger entry. A closed case.
"I can leave," I say, watching the blur of the industrial district approach. "I can disappear."
He doesn't look at me. "The Boss already knows."
The words land like stones in a well.
"How?"
"He always knows."
We turn off the main road. The air changes here; the smell of spring and damp soil is replaced by the suffocating scent of oil, rusted iron, and ancient dust. The car stops before a warehouse at the edge of the block, its metal doors scarred and grey.
The engine cuts. The silence that follows is absolute.
I step out. The concrete beneath my shoes feels solid. Too solid. The warehouse door is already open, spilling a thin, sickly light across the floor. Before I even cross the threshold, the atmosphere shifts. It isn't a sound. It isn't a sight. It is a presence.
The air within the walls grows heavy, the atmospheric pressure rising until my ears pop. Gravity seems to increase, pulling at my shoulders, demanding a kneeling position I'm not yet ready to give. My breath hitches.
He is here.
The Unseen. The Ghost. The one who truly owns the night.
I step inside. The heavy door groans shut behind me, sealing the world away.