(POV: Ji-hoon)
The warehouse didn't just hold the dark; it felt as though it manufactured it.
Kim Ye-jun stood in the centre of the void, his presence a heavy anchor that made the air feel thick and difficult to displace. He didn't look like a killer. He looked like an aristocrat who had long ago traded his soul for the burden of order. His suit was charcoal, perfectly pressed, a sharp contrast to the grime of the industrial district. He was the "Ghost," the one who truly owned the night, and right now, his eyes were as cold as the Siberian winter.
The heavy metal door groaned shut behind the vampire from the courtyard.
"Sit," Ye-jun said.
The command was quiet, but it carried the weight of a mountain. In the center of the empty floor sat a single wooden chair, illuminated by a flickering bulb that hissed with a low, electric anxiety. The smell of the room was unsettling, a mix of ancient iron, stagnant water, and the faint, sweet rot of things that had died in the shadows.
I sat my knees shook so violently the chair legs rattled against the concrete.
Yang Dae-ho, Ye-jun's right hand, stood in the corner. He was a mountain of a man, his shadow stretching long across the wall, his arms folded over a chest that looked like it was carved from stone. He didn't speak; he was the silence that enforced the Boss's words.
"Tell me what happened," Ye-jun said, circling the chair like a shark in shallow water. "And do not lie. I can taste the salt of a lie before it even leaves your tongue."
My voice was a broken rasp. I told them everything, the turning of Hae-in without permission, the hunger I couldn't bridge, and the moment the hunters closed in.
"I… I shifted," I whispered, my head hanging low. "But only for a second. Just a second after they killed her. I turned back immediately. No one saw."
"A second is all it takes for a hunter to map your marrow," Ye-jun replied, his voice dropping an octave. "You know the rules, Ji-hoon. We exist because we follow these rules. By shifting, you became flesh. You gave them a scent. A liability."
Ye-jun leaned in, resting his hands on the armrests of the chair, trapping me. "You brought the plague to our doorstep. And I do not allow infection."
Ye-jun pulled a long, obsidian-black knife from his inner pocket. He didn't strike. He simply held the hilt out. My hand moved involuntarily, my fingers locking around the blade through Ye-jun's compulsion.
The warehouse floor was cold, but the knife in my hand was colder. My muscles were no longer my own. Every time I tried to drop the obsidian blade, my fingers tightened until the bone creaked. Kim Ye-jun had looked at me with eyes that had seen five centuries of failure, and in that silver gaze, my free will had simply evaporated.
"Stab," he had said. And so I stabbed.
The first ten were for the rules I had broken. By the fiftieth, I had lost count. Vampire blood doesn't spray; it leaks, thick, dark, and smelling of old iron. I could feel my strength draining into the concrete. We don't heal like the stories say. Every wound I carved into my own flesh stayed open, weeping, the edges raw and burning.
I watched the office door close behind Ye-jun. I was alone with my penance, the rhythmic thud-squelch of the blade the only clock I had left.
(POV SHIFT: Kim Ye-jun)
The office door shut with a muffled click, but it couldn't drown out the sound.
Thud. Squelch. Gasp.
The rhythm was metronomic. It was the sound of a boy learning that the night has no mercy for the sentimental. I walked to the window, my reflection in the glass looking back at me with eyes that were older than the city outside.
"Are you recording, Dae-won?" I didn't turn around. I didn't need to see him to know he was flinching.
"Yes, Boss," Lee Dae-won replied. The youngest of my circle was barely a century old, and his voice was thin, vibrating with a frequency of repressed trauma. "Every rotation of the blade. It's… it's brutal, even for you."
I poured a measure of aged blood into a crystal glass. The walls of the office seemed to turn translucent, the furniture losing its friction. I had to focus on the cold rim of the glass just to stay solid.
"Brutality is a tool, Dae-won," I said, my voice sounding like it was coming from a long corridor. "If I do not use it, the hunters will. And they do not stop at the skin."
I sat behind the desk. Yang Dae-ho, my right hand, stood by the door, a mountain of silent muscle.
"Tell the story again," I commanded. "Remind yourself why we are currently murdering a member of our own family."
Dae-won's gaze drifted to the monitors. "One hundred years ago," he began. "In my village. I fed from the woman I loved. She knew what I was. She wasn't afraid. I thought love was a shield."
He paused, the rhythmic, wet thud of the knife hitting meat in the next room punctuating his words like a morbid metronome.
"She went to the market," Dae-won whispered, his eyes unfocused, fixed on a century-old horror. "A simple mistake. She hadn't covered the marks on her neck properly, and a hunter, one of the Kang lineage spotted the twin scars. He didn't draw a blade then. He was patient. He followed her from the shadows, trailing her scent until she led him straight into the heart of our village. They didn't just come for me,Ye-jun. They came for everyone."
Dae-won's hands clenched into white-knuckled fists on the desk.
"They took her first. They tortured her for three days, using silver and fire to try and force a name, any name, of every vampire in the province. When her silence wouldn't break, they gathered the rest. They locked the granary doors with every living soul from the village inside. They didn't grant them the mercy of the flame yet. No, they moved through the crowd first, slaughtering them one by one, slicing their heads off with clinical precision to ensure no 'quickened' blood remained.
They saved my beloved for the very last. They made her watch the pile of heads grow until the soil was black with the blood of her neighbors. And if that butchery wasn't enough, they set the entire village to the torch. They turned a living community into a pyre, ensuring that not even a trace of our existence, or our love, remained in the ash."
Dae-won's hands shook on the desk. "They beheaded every human to check for 'quickened' blood. They turned the valley into a pyre. That is the enemy we face. The Kang family, they don't want justice. They want erasure."
I set my glass down. The liquid inside didn't ripple; I was too far gone into the "Ghost" state to disturb it. "If I let Ji-hoon live, the hunters who saw him shift, will find every person he has ever touched. They will find the humans we protect. They will burn Seoul to find us."
We waited. In the warehouse, Ji-hoon's healing was failing. His blood loss was making him slower, the wounds more ragged.
When we returned to the floor, the area around the chair was a lake of dark fluid. Ji-hoon was a ruin.
"Stop," I said.
The compulsion broke. The knife hit the floor with a wet clang.
"I'm sorry," he wheezed. "Ye-jun… please… I'll disappear."
I stood over him, my expression devoid of pity. "A hunter doesn't forget a scent, Ji-hoon. You can't disappear from a bloodhound that knows the taste of your soul."
I picked up the knife and pressed it into his hand. I leaned down, my cold breath ghosting over his ear. "Finish it."
With a final, shuddering breath, Ji-hoon drove the blade into his own throat. The silence that followed was absolute.
I turned to Dae-ho. "Clean the floor. I have a meeting in an hour."
The warehouse was a tomb, and I was its architect.
I left Yang Dae-ho to manage the silence and the fresh lake of blood on the concrete. Stepping out into the industrial district, the air felt thin, as if the world were made of paper. My hand passed through the car door handle on the first attempt a flickering of my existence that made my jaw tighten. I had to force my will into my fingers just to grip the metal.
I needed the noise. I needed the weight of the living to stay solid.
Hongdae at midnight is a fever dream of neon and bass. It is the heart of Seoul's pulse, a place where everyone is looking for a way to forget they are small. I moved through the crowds in the narrow streets, my black coat cutting through the sea of oversized hoodies and bright hair. I looked like every other wealthy heir out for a late-night thrill, but beneath the silk, I was ancient and hollow. The smell of the city charred pork from street vendors, the ozone of the subway, and the cheap perfume of thousands vibrated through me, but I felt none of it.
I found a bar tucked away in a side street, a place where the music was loud enough to drown out the sound of a heart breaking.
I didn't look for someone special. I never did. I looked for a "holiday" a human who was loud, messy, and temporary. I found her near the bar, nursing a drink she couldn't afford. She was "cheap" in the way I preferred: bright makeup that didn't quite hide her exhaustion, a dress that was too tight and too short, and eyes that were looking for anyone who looked like they had money to burn.
She didn't know me. I didn't know her name. We didn't speak more than five words before I led her toward the alleyway behind the bar.
The bricks were cold and damp against my back as she pressed herself into me. She was frantic, her hands roaming over my chest, her breath smelling of strawberry vape and cheap gin. I tilted her head back, my fingers tangling in her bleached hair. I wasn't looking for love; I was looking for the friction of life. I wanted to feel the heat of her pulse against my lips, a temporary tether to the world of the breathing.
I was about to lean into her neck, about to let the hunger bridge the gap between my fangs and her jugular, when the world suddenly snapped.
The "Ghost" in me didn't just flicker; it slammed into reality.
The air became heavy, thick with the scent of charcoal and roasted meat. The sound of the bass from the bar next door became a physical thud against my ribs. Gravity returned with a violence that made my teeth ache. I could suddenly feel the grit of the pavement beneath my shoes. I could feel the individual fibers of the girl's dress against my palms.
I pulled back from her, my eyes snapping toward the exit of the barbecue restaurant across the alley.
A woman stood there, leaning against the doorframe as she took a breath of the cool night air.
She was a vision of effortless, modern Seoul. She was dressed in baggy, high-fashion streetwear, an oversized black blazer that seemed to swallow her frame, paired with wide-leg trousers and heavy-soled boots. Her hair was a striking strawberry-blonde, falling in soft waves that caught the violet neon of the alley. She looked like she had just stepped out of a magazine, but there was a groundedness to her that felt like a punch to my gut.
She wasn't looking at the city. She was looking at me.
Her green eyes, vivid and sharp were locked onto mine. She didn't look away with the usual human bashfulness. She didn't flinch. Instead, her face was a mask of cold, piercing annoyance. She watched us with her arms crossed, her presence acting like a physical anchor, pinning me to the earth.
The girl against me tried to pull me back, her hands wandering under my coat, oblivious to the fact that the man she was holding had just become a mountain. I didn't move. I kept my gaze locked on the woman in the baggy clothes. I felt a smirk pull at my lips, a mask for the sudden, terrifying stability I felt.
"Hey," I said, my voice dropping into that smooth, dangerous register that usually sent humans running. I took a slow breath, tasting the barbecue smoke that clung to her clothes even from across the alley. "Would you like to join us? I'm sure she wouldn't mind."
I looked down at the girl in my arms, who was giggling now, her eyes glazed and eager. I looked back at the stranger, my smirk widening.
I expected her to turn and walk away. I expected her to be disgusted.
Instead, annoyance seemed to sharpen into a cold resolve. She didn't leave. She pushed off the doorframe and took a step toward me, then another, her boots clicking with a steady, grounding rhythm on the damp pavement. She was stepping out of the light and into my shadow, her eyes burning with a fire that felt older than the street we stood on.
And for the first time in five hundred years, I felt the "Ghost" inside me go perfectly still.