Noor stepped into the balcony with the grace of a woman who had already accepted death's hands upon her.
She looked up.
The moon hung above her—tranquil, luminous, heartless.
And she smiled.
A soft, sorrow-slick curve of the lips, in mocking reverence to a life she could no longer carry. Blood bubbled up, uninvited. Her chest convulsed, and she coughed violently, crimson spilling from her lips like poetry too bitter to recite.
It dripped onto the marble—thick, vivid, final.
She wiped it from her mouth with the back of her trembling hand, breathing like the dead do in dreams. Yet her gaze never left the moon.
"It's still beautiful," she whispered, voice raw, nearly gone. "Even now… even as it has watched me over a thousand times."
Another cough seized her. Blood again. Her knees wavered. And still, the smile held.
The wind stilled.
A silence fell______.
From the stillness, they came.
Shadows— born from her. They spilled from her spine, her ribs, her throat—oozing out like regret made flesh. Long, sinuous tendrils of ink and ash, whispering secrets she had buried long ago. They slithered across her arms, her neck, coiling like lovers, like leeches.
They circled her.
"You've held yourself together so well," a voice purred from the dark. It didn't echo. It inhabited."But I can smell it now… the fracture… the rot beneath the porcelain."
Her breathing grew shallow. Another drip of blood painted her chin like war paint. She could barely stand.
"So quiet. So noble," the voice sneered, shifting into something almost human. "But they don't know, do they?"
The shadows tightened. They pulsed with mockery.
"All those centuries," the voice grew crueler, "You think bleeding in silence makes you holy?"
Noor's head bowed. Her fingers clenched the balcony railing. Her body trembled.
"And now, finally... you're breaking. Not with rage, not with thunder. Quietly. Pathetically. Tell me, Noor—are you a saint? Or just a girl who loved the moon more than she ever loved herself?"
And then—
Her eyes opened.
They glowed—gold. Blazing. Like twin suns buried in the sockets of a dying goddess. No warmth. Only truth.
The shadows hissed. Recoiled.
"Oh…" the voice faltered now, voice thinning into a whisper. "You remember."
A terrible, choking shriek as though every unspoken name it carried burned at once. The air itself warped.
And Noor—her body finally giving in—collapsed.
Her knees hit the marble.
The moonlight flickered.
She began to fall—
And that's when he appeared.
The shadows lunged, wailing like centuries mourning at once—starved, desperate, clawing to pull her into their cold marrow—
And then the world held its breath.
A single step echoed across eternity. Lightless. Weightless.
He emerged.
Tall. Too tall for any ordinary man. Skin the color of moon-pale porcelain, unmarred, untouched by time. Hair—white, endless, luminous—flowed like silk dipped in starlight. It cascaded down his back, caught in the wind like unraveling threads of fate.
And his eyes—like dying stars—red, deep, unblinking—burning not with fury, but with memory.
Red Rubies.
Not crimson with rage, but wine-dark, aching, bleeding with something unspeakably human. They shimmered beneath lashes thick and shimmery as shinning stars in night's end. But the moment they looked upon Noor—
They softened.
He reached her just as she fell, he caught her.
The shadows screamed again—.
He merely looked up.
And they burned.
Their wretched cries split the night air before they dispersed into mist, devoured by the weight of something far older than fear.
Only the sound of her shallow breathing remained, and the soft rustle of his robes as he knelt with her cradled against his chest.
Then, with fingers like snow carved into flesh, he reached into the folds of his white garment—and pulled forth a spider lily. Red. Blooming.
He placed it gently beside her heart.
It bloomed wider.
"Now," he whispered, voice carved from moonlight and mourning, "it is your time… to fulfill the end of the bargain, my King."
A single tear slipped from the corner of his eye and landed on her cheek.
It shimmered like silver dew and vanished into her skin.
He bowed his head—.
The air shifted.
Her breath rasped like torn silk. Her lips parted, bloodied, trembling.
But there—held in arms too gentle for the cruelty of the world—she remembered.
And it began.
First a whisper, like the wind confessing to the trees:
"From the moment our eyes met… my soul knew yours."
She wasn't sure It sounded like a prayer offered from the dying who'd burned through lifetimes just to kneel one more time before him.
"Knew it as one knows the stars, though they burn a thousand lifetimes away."
She coughed. Blood kissed her teeth, but her smile remained.
"I have searched for you—in dreams, in echoes… in the hollow ache of a heart too long untethered."
Her fingers reached upward, brushing against the silk of his white robe. Her body trembled. Her eyes, once obsidian, now blazed gold like a dying sun clawing its way back through the night.
"I have died a hundred deaths waiting."
Her gaze met his, and in it, the madness of eternity pooled like ink.
"Yet I would perish a hundred more… if only to stand here, one breath closer to you."
The wind stilled.
The moon paused.
And the man—this god, this curse, this eternal—he watched her with eyes that knew both creation and grief.
"Fear has gripped my hands," she confessed, her voice a shattered hymn. "Doubt whispered poison into my ears. But before you… all shadows flee."
The spider lily pulsed, glowing red at her heart.
She laughed, quiet and cracked. The kind of laugh only those who have suffered beyond comprehension can offer—half mad, half divine.
"If love is ruin," she said, "then let me be undone."
"Let me break. Let me burn. But let me remember you."
Her body arched slightly, pain writhing through her ribs like thorns. She choked on breath, but pressed on.
"Time," she murmured bitterly, "is a cruel thief. It steals moments we were meant to have. But…"
Her eyes fluttered closed. A tear traced down her temple.
"… it has also brought you back to me. And for that… I forgive it."
Silence fell again. Not empty—but dense, sacred, unbearable.
Her voice turned softer now, as if speaking directly to his soul:
"I have loved you beyond reason. Beyond time. Beyond what this fragile body can bear."
"A thousand years have passed…"
She placed her hand gently on his chest—where no heartbeat echoed. Still, she smiled.
"…and still—my heart kneels at your feet."
She exhaled, not with peace, but with the resignation .
The spider lily bloomed wider—its petals touching the edge of her wound as if trying to stitch the cosmos back together.
He didn't speak.
But his tear glimmered again. And this time—it fell into her mouth.
Her lips moved once more, barely audible:
"If I vanish, will you still remember me beneath the moon?"
"If I am unmade, will your hands still search for mine across the void?"
He held her as though she were the only truth he'd ever touched, and in some broken way...
Her hand, weak and trembling, rose and brushed against his cheek. Her lips parted—not with poetry, not with confession—but with the quietest thread of a name, frayed and holy.
"...Kang."
His heart dipped, slowed. Slowed again. As though her voice had peeled his very soul itself.
"...Kang." The name passed her lips like a vow she'd kept hidden across lifetimes.And the moment it touched the air—he shattered.
A silence cracked inside his chest. Not soundless, but the kind that rends time itself.
She smiled with her last breath. And then—she went still.And somewhere, far beyond stars or gods—the god of memory… wept.
Sanlang stirred with a groan, the early light slicing through the curtains like an unwelcome guest. He reached instinctively to his side—empty. Cold.
His hand gripped nothing but sheets.No Noor.
His eyes snapped open. The stillness of the penthouse made his skin crawl. The silence wasn't peaceful—it was threatening. The chaos of last night still clung to him like smoke: her voice, the shadows, the blood on her lips.
He sat up, breath hitching.
Sanlang (hoarse, to himself):"Noor?"
Nothing.
He rose, barefoot, shirtless, the tension in his shoulders betraying the panic simmering beneath his calm. He moved through the living space—every corner immaculate, but lifeless without her. Then—
A sound.
The clink of porcelain.
He turned.
There she was, standing in the kitchen in nothing but his shirt from last night. Sleeves rolled, collar hanging slightly off one shoulder, her bare legs kissed by the morning light. She was pouring tea with quiet focus, oblivious to the storm behind her.
Sanlang was in front of her before she could breathe.
His hand slid around her waist, pulling her back flush against him. Noor gasped softly, one hand still holding the teacup, the other bracing herself on the edge of the counter.
Sanlang (voice low, wicked)"Forget the tea. I'm thirsty for something else."
His lips found her neck—slow, unhurried, then firm. He kissed her just beneath her ear, where her pulse fluttered like a frightened bird. Noor shivered, her breath hitching as he nipped at her skin with dangerous tenderness.
Noor (softly)"S-Sanlang… the tea'll spill…"
He turned her around with a fluid motion. Her back pressed against the cold marble of the counter. She looked up at him with wide eyes, her lips parted, her cheeks stained pink with the kind of shyness that only made him want her more.
Sanlang:"You're trembling."
Noor (barely audible):"I'm not used to this…"
Sanlang (gaze burning):"You'll get used to me."
He leaned down, brushing his nose against hers before kissing her—. One hand tangled in her hair, the other slid along her thigh, hitching it up gently against his waist. The shirt she wore, his shirt, rode higher, leaving almost nothing between them.
Sanlang (whispering against her lips):"You're always so sweet in the morning... soft, warm, like you were made for my hands. But this—this is cruel."
He kissed down her jaw, her neck, his tongue flicking against the curve of her collarbone.
Sanlang (teasing):"You walk around wearing my shirt, looking like sin before sunrise… and you expect me to behave?"
Noor (eyes fluttering shut):"I… I just wanted to make ...tea…"
Sanlang:"I'd rather taste you."
He dropped to his knees, trailing kisses along her thigh, worshipping every inch, then rose again in one smooth motion, pinning her arms gently above her head, his body caging hers.
Sanlang (voice husky):"Tell me to stop."
He kissed her again, slower this time, like he was savoring the ache of waiting.
His hand moved under the hem of the shirt, fingertips brushing the curve of her hip.
Sanlang (smiling against her lips):"I could spend the whole morning right here… until you forget how to stand."
Noor (barely audible):"Sanlang…"
Sanlang (voice a velvet growl):"Say my name again."
Her lips trembled as he leaned in close, brushing her ear with his mouth.
Just as his hand slid higher, as the tension rose to something unbearable—
A loud knock echoed from the front door.
They both froze.
Sanlang groaned, forehead falling against hers, eyes shut tight with restraint.
Sanlang (gritting his teeth):"They're lucky I don't burn this whole building down."
Noor giggled despite herself—soft, breathless, still trembling.
Sanlang (dark smile):"Oh, I had exactly what I wanted. I just didn't finish yet."