Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter 12

“What do you mean we’ve lost the first rune?” Taehyung dearly hoped this was an ill-advised prank, and that Yoongi was, in fact, lying to them right then. “We’re still in March. It’s still only March.”

They were supposed to have more time.

“I was running the monitoring tests earlier today when I happened upon it.” Jungkook volunteered the information glumly. “I think I caught it as it happened because I redid the spell with the rune ᛍ╵ twice. It worked the first time, but it didn’t the second. I called Namjoon immediately.”

They were supposed to have more fucking time. 

“He yelled so loudly we were all there in seconds,” Hoseok added to that dryly.

‘ᛍ╵ wasn’t the first rune we lost last time, was it?’ He confirmed with Yeontan mentally before he spoke.

“We lost ᚴ first. Not ᛍ╵,” he said out loud. “We lost it in June. In late June. It’s too early.”

“I triple-checked when Guk told me.” Namjoon shook his head apologetically. “We really have lost it, Tae.”

‘Fuck.’

“I mean,” Seokjin reasoned, “they are perhaps some of the runes we use least. Makes sense he went for one of them.” 

“And ᚴ is not etched onto Grimes’ runestone,” the scholar pointed out. “We know that much for certain.”

“Because it’s etched onto ours,” Taehyung remembered belatedly. “Right. So he couldn’t have stuck to the script anyway.” 

“If we weren’t monitoring the runes, we would have never found out this soon,” Jimin nodded with a sigh. “Damn it, Thebes chose a good day to ruin.”

“Oh, yeah.” Hoseok’s eyes lit up ever so slightly. “How’d it go with the release? Any hiccups?”

“Exactly as we expected it to,” the aristocrat shook his head in the negative. “No surprises on our end. Small mercies, I suppose.” 

Taehyung showed off his bare wrist with a wry smile. “I’m officially a free man. Talk about timing, huh?”

“Could have waited a week or so longer, I say,” Namjoon snorted at that, referring to his personal estimate before he was willing to give Taehyung’s esse a clean bill of health.

He shook his head at the comment. “Eh. It’s alright. I’ve never been quite that lucky. This itself was probably pushing my luck.”

Taehyung idly wondered if being allergic to good fortune was an actual phenomenon and if he simply had the privilege of being unfortunate enough to have to bear the brunt of it. 

“We did actually get some bubbly to celebrate your first night as a free man again, VV, but I reckon we’re going to start the afternoon with something stronger, aren’t we?” Seokjin sighed, already having given in to the idea as they trekked towards the living room.

“Probably,” Jimin agreed, eager to keep them on track. “How quickly do we reckon Thebes will begin messing with the other runes now that he’s begun?”

A strong drink, Taehyung could admit, however, was very welcome at that moment.

“He was cautious at the beginning,” Hoseok offered thoughtfully. “Going by Tae’s list.”

“He was testing things out. This is a test.” Namjoon nodded with a surety that came of the years he’d spent around the man. “He must be feeling assured enough in the work he’s put in to mess with an actual runestone.”

“He only had his hands on two runestones at this time back then,” Taehyung shared with the group. “The one at The Conservatory and the one in Greca are too public to mess with right now. Once the ‘State’ seized the one at The Conservatory, that made it forty-six or forty-seven runes under his purview. He had erased almost all of them towards the end, yes, but really, in the first year or so, we lost less than fifteen runes. Twelve, I think, was the number between the two stones he had on hand.” 

“Thereabouts as per your journal,” Hoseok confirmed. “That’s still an average of one a month.”

“But he won’t target the commonly used ones anytime soon,” Yoongi pointed out. “It’s too noticeable, and he won’t want to cripple himself yet. He relies on runic too. And he can only mess with fifteen runes at the moment. Or sixteen; I don’t actually know what the contents of Grimes’ stone are. But he can’t erase all of them in quick succession.”

“I’m just worried about the timeline moving up in general.” Taehyung gave Seokjin a grateful smile when a glass of whisky appeared in front of him. “And the fact that he only has this one stone. A desperate Rayleigh Thebes isn’t exactly a rational Rayleigh Thebes, and he already lost once, when we beat him to Auria.”

“He does not enjoy losing,” Jungkook grimaced at that. “Or failing. I certainly know that much.”

Rayleigh Thebes, as best Taehyung knew, had been part of the committee that had scouted Jungkook out as a potential prodigy in his younger years. He had also been a part of the ultimately futile efforts made at The Conservatory to help the younger warrior with his inability to cast freehand. 

He took a long sip of his whisky.

“We know he’s been desperate for a while, though,” Seokjin pointed out. “Teardrop is all the proof we need. There’s a reason we planned to go back there at some point. It feels like every other week, we hear stories of curse breakers coming back from there injured, even if Rayleigh probably has them under a binding NDA. Their friends and relatives talk. Heck, the locals talk. Did you hear about Lila?”

Taehyung furrowed his eyebrows at the largely unfamiliar name.

“Lila Snicket? I haven’t actually seen or heard much from her since the solstice galas.” Jimin tapped his chin thoughtfully. “She went to Teardrop too?”

“Came back with a spinal injury,” Yoongi nodded grimly. “Currently paralyzed from the waist down. Surgery to fix that is going to be expensive. She’s been talking to healers around town, my folks included.”

He processed the news with a frown. Rayleigh Thebes and Teardrop Island in the same sentence only ever seemed to herald dreadful things.

Taehyung did not know enough about spinal injuries to confidently offer his help; he had only read up on it casually. He would, he knew, need to be taught the nuances to be able to do anything, and that was far beyond Namjoon’s level-three capabilities. For something like this, he’d need the guidance of a practicing healer, and there was no practicing healer he currently trusted with the knowledge of Yeontan, not even Yoongi’s family. It was the only reason he did not know enough, despite what had happened to Hoseok in the other timeline. 

“And Rayleigh’s not footing that bill, I take it.” Hoseok guessed dryly.

“Probably not,” Jimin agreed. “But Lila charges handsomely. She’s a shark. If Rayleigh is as desperate as we presume, she probably feathered her nest with what she charged him.” 

“It has to be another stone, right?” Yoongi wondered out loud. “At Teardrop? Surely nothing else would have him so desperate to get past those wards.”

“Seems very likely,” Hoseok nodded. “What did we actually figure out about that place, anyway?”

“That it’s been under the inheritance seal for seventeen years or so, now,” Namjoon offered with a snort. “But also that it’s been around for a long time, even before that happened. Didn’t the owner of the inn we stayed at in Turiven say that the town was founded by a one-time master of Teardrop Island?”

“Linney,” Jungkook recalled her name. “Linney Ripley. She said the town would not exist today without their patronage in the early years. But she was also talking about history as old as The Code, if not older.”

“Much older. Turiven is almost four hundred and fifty years old. Then again, her grandmother did also insist that dragons used to roost in Teardrop once upon a time,” Jimin added with a shrug. “More than one local told me that story in Turiven. I think it’s a popular folktale, that one. Teardrop Island is just a part of their folklore at this point, really.” 

“I mean,” Taehyung didn’t find the prospect of dragons all too unrealistic, “that side of Agura does technically face the Islands of Nyr, so it’s very possible that a dragon once did come to Teardrop.” 

The Forest Islands of Nyr was an archipelago of twelve large islands, a good hundred or so miles off the coast of Turiven and Agura as a whole. These islands were also known as No-Man’s-Land because no known country was allowed to claim jurisdiction over them—a convention that had predated The Code, and one that had been reaffirmed in the text of The Code, when it had come into existence.

And thus, there was almost no publicly recorded information on the Forest Islands of Nyr. Unlike the preserved isles of Greca (which were, in size, comparable to a mere fraction of the Islands of Nyr), no human being was allowed to step foot into Nyr. They were not even allowed to go within fifty miles of the atoll. Wards existed to prevent that, although Taehyung wasn’t entirely sure who was responsible for maintaining said wards. Even aerial and satellite imagery had been unable to pick up more than the vague shapes of the twelve islands that made up the archipelago. The place was a true mystery. A mystery, Taehyung thought sometimes, that remained better off unsolved.

There was only one thing people knew of the islands: The Nyr archipelago was the last true natural habitat that remained populated by wild beasts and wild beasts alone. Wild magical beasts. 

That a dragon had flown a hundred miles off course at some point in time wasn’t entirely a far-fetched prospect. A hundred miles probably meant nothing to a dragon, and besides, the beasts weren’t contained by the wards; they were protected by them.

“There’s very little formally recorded about the island.” Namjoon shook his head with an unhappy sigh. “I couldn’t find anything of note before they thought it cursed. The Conservatory’s regulated collection was as unhelpful as its open collections. If the seal hadn’t gone up and confounded people, Teardrop would have probably remained under the radar like it had up until then, sharing its secrets with the locals of Turiven and no one else.”

“So how does Rayleigh know about it at all, and why does he want to get through those wards?” Hoseok questioned. “I don’t see anything being of interest to him if it doesn’t have to do with the runestones. At least, right now. But how does he even know there’s a runestone there if it has been sealed for this long?” 

“He did say he knew the heir,” Yoongi shrugged simply. “Obviously he was lying about that, but the inspiration must have come from somewhere, surely.”

“Maybe he did know the heir or an heir,” Seokjin picked up on the elemental’s thought process. “At some point.”

“I think the history is secondary.” Taehyung shook his head slightly. “Perhaps even tertiary, for the moment. Clearly there’s something he wants in Teardrop. It’s probably a runestone. We know that. How he knows what he knows is not quite as important as the more pressing matter at hand. Is he going to stop trying before someone gets killed in the process?”

“Tae—“

“You almost died, Namjoon,” he stressed, gesticulating harshly as he spoke, “and he’s still continuing to send one curse breaker after another to attempt what the Silver Six failed at doing. And they are all no doubt under a magically binding NDA that doesn’t let them sue him, let alone make any of this public. We only know what we know because of the whispers around them. Knowing what I know of Thebes, I don’t think he plans to stop.”

“He won’t,” Yoongi concurred without hesitation. “If he did in the other timeline, he probably only did because he had an extra stone to play with. It satiated him, however temporarily.”

“And it gave him options,” Jimin nodded in easy understanding.

“If I thought I could change enough of the runic language so it plays by my tune, I’d imagine I could overwrite the old spells with my new songs,” Namjoon mused out loud cheerlessly. “And if I could consider it an option—“

“An opportunistic man like Rayleigh Thebes is way ahead of you,” Hoseok finished his sentence with a snort.

“Way ahead,” Namjoon agreed.

“Wouldn’t put it past him to be so brazen,” Taehyung agreed a tad impatiently. “But that’s not the immediate point either. The seal. The seal is the immediate point. We can’t keep letting people get hurt when we know that’s what is happening. There’s only so long before something irreparable happens. I may play well with Chaos, but even I can’t bring someone back from the dead.” 

“We can’t exactly alter the barrier either,” Hoseok pointed out, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. “It’s a seal, right? There’s only so much we can do about a seal. So what exactly is it that you want to do?”

“Huh?” Jungkook whipped his head to look at Taehyung first, and before he knew it, the whole room was looking at him expectantly.

“People are going to continue to get hurt,” he repeated forcefully, uncaring of the eyes on him. “With every rune that stops working, the risk only increases, and we know it. If Rayleigh doesn’t stop sending them, and if he doesn’t stop erasing the runes, someone is going to find themselves in a bad spot sooner than later. I refuse to have that on my conscience.” 

They needed to do something. He needed to do something. Especially now that he finally could, again.

“We may not be bound by stringent non-disclosures, but we would only be inviting more of their attention and ire if we made a public fuss over his discreet activities,” Jimin pointed out reasonably. “You explicitly didn’t want that either, Tae.” 

“Misdirection.” Seokjin exhaled softly when he came to the conclusion. “You want to go there and put up a trick ward, don’t you? Like the kind you used to throw people off your trail when you wanted to lie low.” 

“Something like that maybe.” Taehyung latched on to the idea, even as his mind was racing to find solutions. It was a good suggestion. “That could just work, Jiji.”

“Trick ward?” A bemused Jungkook asked at the same time. 

“A fake ward—” Taehyung began explaining.

“They weren’t really fake,” Seokjin objected immediately. “They were still half-decent wards, even back in the day. They were just the kind that were noticeable, so what needed to remain unnoticed stayed unnoticed. A distraction, if you will.”

“At eleven or twelve?” Namjoon demanded incredulously. “Really?”

“I mean, they were silly little tricks, really,” Taehyung shrugged simply while trying to picture a ward warding another ward in his head. It wasn’t impossible, he concluded with a satisfied nod. “Wards that went shrill if you got too close or pricked you like a mosquito if you touched it. Irritations that would keep someone from examining it too closely without hesitation. But they also made people think I was hiding something behind those wards, if I had people following my movements at all. So I liked to use them as decoys more often than not.”

“Surely a curse breaker could break a ward like that, though.” Hoseok phrased it like a statement, but the question was more than implicit.

“I am not twelve anymore, you know.” He rolled his eyes at the warrior. “I can create more complex wards. Layered wards. Wards that are meant to confuse. Chaos can do that better than runic ever could in that regard. I’m not limited by language.” 

“You are also barely fully healed up,” Namjoon frowned at him pointedly. “Barely."

Taehyung bristled, and immediately raised a challenging eyebrow at the comment. “One week. That is what you said, right?”

“You spent almost a year healing that esse of yours, only to immediately put it through its paces again? Tae—“

“Yeontan doesn’t use my spiritual energy the way the other magiks do,” he argued. “I won’t be depleting my available spiritual energy or overwhelming my core to do this. The only reason I scorched my core back when I healed you was because it was already in tatters. It was too weak to handle the intensity of pure chaos magic coursing through it. That’s not the case anymore.”

“You need to work up to big, Taehyung-ah,” Namjoon countered without hesitation. “You can’t just jump straight to the top. Your core hasn’t had to do that for some months now, so it’s not used to it yet.”

“You still haven’t quite worked up to doing big things,” Hoseok shrugged, throwing his support behind the healer. “Big spells, or whatever it is you call what you do with Yeontan.” 

“I just say spell,” he offered easily at that, even though he knew it was a digression, “even if that’s not what it really is, unless you reckon what I communicate to him is technically just a spell I’ll never use again. Honestly, it’s just simpler to say spell.”

“Yes, well, the last big spell you cast was on this lug of a guy over here, and it hurt you.” Yoongi huffed impatiently. “The last actual spell you cast was the one you used to make your bed this morning.” 

“VV—“ 

“I—“

“Okay, so we’re all jumping the gun a little here,” Jimin interjected before Seokjin could offer his opinion and Taehyung could defend his. “Not only do we not know what Taehyung wants to do exactly, but he hasn’t even studied the inheritance seal to know exactly what he could do. It’s not like we’re all jumping in the car and heading down to Turiven today. We need to stock up on our gear, for one. We’re getting our hands on all the lodestones we can, at bare minimum. Either way, nothing is happening in the coming hours.” 

“But we are going to go there at some point,” Jungkook shook his head. “We were always planning on going there at some point. This just pushes things up the timeline.” 

“Yes,” Jimin drew his words out, “so we can compromise. To create a ward of any kind, Taehyung needs to see the seal with his own eyes. To cast the ward, he needs to work up to the bigger spells. And creating a ward takes… how long exactly?”

He looked at Taehyung expectantly.

“Depends.” He considered the question, marginally pacified now that he didn’t have to fight to make this happen, if nothing else. They’d stumbled upon a big enough pothole to deal with as it was. “I’ve built contained, finite wards in a few days before, but if we’re looking for something bigger and with more open ends, which we probably will be, a few weeks, maybe? It really depends on the terrain and the scope.”

“So say we take a few days to plan this trip to Turiven. And we take a few weeks to create this ward after,” he pointed at Taehyung before turning to the three men who had raised objections, “and we take a few days to test the ward out to our satisfaction. That means you get at least a month to ensure Taehyung works up to casting big spells. That’s three weeks after you expect to grant him a clean bill of health, yes, Joon?”

“It’s still too soon,” Namjoon shook his head unhappily.

“It’s better three weeks after than one week before,” Seokjin offered his two qlin with a shrug. “He’s going to do this one way or another, knowing Tae. Especially now that there’s precious little to stop him from doing it.” 

“I’ve stood back and let enough people die in my time,” Taehyung explained his reasons as briefly and as earnestly as he could. “And this… I know I can’t walk up to a hospital and offer my services. I do. I know I can’t go to Lila Snicket and offer my help personally. But if I can make it so these people don’t have to end up in a hospital at all? Then I’m going to do it. This much at least, I can do without risking Yeontan or myself.”

“Turiven is a quiet place. But we remain discreet,” Hoseok sighed eventually, giving in. “If we are going to do this, we do this right. We ensure no one we don’t trust connects you or us to this decoy ward we erect. Ideally, we make sure no one is able to spot that it’s a decoy at all.”

“Can do,” he agreed immediately. “And we can cast all the confusion spells we want to ensure complete privacy every time we’re on the cliff.” 

“And we’re going to add daily spars to our workout regimen so you can get some proper casting in.” 

“Hey, you know I’ve been looking forward to it.”

Hoseok’s answering smirk was faint, but no less genuine for it.

“I’m also going to have to insist against it if your esse can’t handle the strain as you work your way up the scale of casting,” Namjoon laid down a condition of his own. “I agree we shouldn’t let people walk into an undefeatable trap like the inheritance seal, but I don’t want you hurting your esse a third time to ensure it. Twice is already two too many times.”

“Taehyung is not going to be that reckless. Not now, when the war to save the runes is practically at our doorstep,” Seokjin spoke up for him, before giving him a piercing look. “Right, VV?”

He jerked his head in a nod. “Right.”

“But I will say this,” the potioneer grinned at his lovers once he got the confirmation he was looking for, “I can’t wait to see your faces when you truly understand what Yeontan and Taehyung can do when they aren’t dealing with a handicapped core.”

●⧔☯︎⧕●

They’d salvaged their celebratory plans for Taehyung’s release by going out for dinner. There was, after all, little they could do with any immediacy, and Taehyung’s twice-earned freedom was an important milestone to mark, more than one of them had insisted when they’d exhausted the topics of the runes, the seal, and Thebes for the day.

But it hadn’t stayed neutral. Not entirely. By the time they’d returned to the manor, they’d all but confirmed their lodgings with Linney Ripley for the first of the two trips they would take to Turiven—the one where Taehyung would get to examine the seal—which meant they had decided on the tentative dates.

Their calendars had been rearranged so they would be able to go up to the town in exactly one week and two days, after Namjoon would grant the chaos user his clean bill of health but before the first televised appearance Taehyung and Jimin were scheduled to make on a national morning news show.

The healer sighed, resigned to the inevitability, as he rooted through his desk to find the bottle of good whiskey he had hidden in his third drawer, feeling the need for a nightcap.

Namjoon didn’t like the plan. He doubted it was a secret to anyone in the manor that he wasn’t a fan. It was not so much that he wanted his fellow curse breakers to get hurt so much as the fact that he didn’t want Taehyung to get hurt. Again.

Namjoon had seen a few injured esses in his time. It was part and parcel of getting your healer certifications. None of them, however, had come close to the state he’d found Taehyung’s esse in all those months ago. And that had been an esse that had already healed some, even after the deterioration it had suffered when the chaos user had healed the healer himself. Sometimes, he wondered what he would have seen if he had examined Taehyung’s core the day he’d walked into the manor, all those months ago. Other times, he was glad he had not—he wasn’t sure the sight wouldn’t have knocked him sideways.

It was safe to say that Namjoon’s horror had morphed into a protectiveness he couldn’t quite explain in words as he’d watched Taehyung’s tattered spiritual core heal with the aid of their spiritual power and Yeontan’s spiritual power. He’d known that he was witnessing a medical miracle that would probably never recur in his lifetime—something professional healers would have wanted to hail as astonishing and groundbreaking in the same breath if they might have managed to see past the heresy of it at all. And he knew Taehyung probably understood the limits of his core and Chaos better than Namjoon did at this point in time. He knew going back to Turiven at some point had been the plan. In theory, he knew it all.

And yet, for all that he rationally was aware of the facts, that strange protective feeling that had sunk into him—as he’d watched the younger diligently give into a mundanity that wasn’t meant for magic users in general (there was a reason it was considered punishment), let alone a magic user who housed magik itself in his being—refused to let reason win. 

He’d just about poured himself a measure, disquieted by the restlessness he could not seem to control, when a freshly showered Hoseok popped his head into the room. 

“Bathroom’s free for you.” 

“I’ll get to it in a bit.” Namjoon quietly shook his head at the news. 

“What’s wrong?” The warrior’s gaze narrowed in on the glass in front of him. 

It was rare that Namjoon indulged in a nightcap alone and in his study—especially when dinner had not been a particularly dry affair. This whole day, truly, had been anything but dry, making his nightcap all the more unusual.

“Wha—nothing, Hoba. I’ll head out in a bit.”

Hoseok snorted at his answer. “Want to try that again?”

“It’s nothing rational,” Namjoon offered, but he knew his smile wasn’t convincing in the slightest. 

“That is honestly more worrying, babe, and you know it is. Is this about Turiven?”

The spellworker sighed at the question.

“Or is this about Taehyung?”

He snapped his head up to look at Hoseok at the knowing question. 

“Ouch,” the warrior grinned sympathetically. “I could hear the crick in your neck from here.”

Namjoon opted to prevaricate, however briefly. “Want a drink?”

“Do you want to talk about this?”

“Would you leave me be?”

“Sure,” Hoseok shrugged easily. “If that’s what you really want. But I won’t be the only one to pick up on the knots you’re tying yourself up in, and you know it.”

“I’m not—“

“You absolutely are.” 

“Drink or no drink, Hoba?”

“I’ll take the drink. It does look expensive, so it must be good.” He watched the other man amble into his study unhurriedly. 

“And I’ll take the conversation, I suppose.” Namjoon sighed as he pulled out another glass to fill. “Since I’m apparently going to have to sooner or later.”

“So, why does Taehyung have you drinking quality whisky in your study?”

“I wish I knew,” he huffed at the direct question. Hoseok wasted no time if he could help it. “Really, Seok, I wish I knew. I just— He’s barely just getting back to a hundred percent, and getting this far this soon was not easy by any means. Now he wants to put that newly healed core through its paces? We both know it’s going to have to be a big one, whatever this ward of his ends up being. And knowing Taehyung, he’ll add his own chaotic flavor to it, so our ability to help will be limited, and I just—I don’t want him to get hurt again.”

“He won’t,” Hoseok replied simply, before reasoning further. “For one, we won’t let that happen. Two, he has a literal magik watching out for him, and after everything I’ve seen, I am relatively certain Yeontan cares for him greatly. And three, he’s not entirely reckless, you know? Taehyung may have the worrying tendency to put us ahead of him—and we’ll train that out of him yet—but that is exactly why we can trust him to be careful. Whatever this mess with Thebes is going to look like? He won’t let us face it without him. You know it as well as I do.”

“Seok—“

Hoseok spoke over him, not yet done saying his piece.

“But none of that means he doesn’t have some regrets of his own from how things happened in the other timeline. Regrets that don’t have to do with us.”

“What other regrets does he have?” Namjoon asked, immediately curious as to what the warrior knew that he did not. “I thought we…”

“I mean, his motivations almost entirely seem to involve us in some form,” Hoseok agreed without hesitation, “but he is his own person too, Joon-ah. And we owe it to him to let him be that person, don’t we? This is the first time he’s insisted on doing something about a matter that doesn’t affect the six of us in any way.”

The spellworker’s eyes widened at the statement. Because it rang true. This was the first time Taehyung’s agenda had put others before them. At least, on such a scale.

“I mean, we could argue he did not quite have the means before now, but nevertheless—“ Hoseok shrugged lightly, “this is a choice. A conscious choice made by a capable man. And he’s not being brash with how he goes about it. That’s a win in my book.”

“All the same, everything just feels risky. Don’t you feel it? I don’t—I don’t think I know how to prepare for what might come.” Namjoon sighed softly as he finally pieced the puzzle together and understood the source of his discomposure. “That seal is dangerous. We already know that. Last time, it took a chaos user to fix the consequences of messing with the seal, and we don’t have a backup chaos user to tend to Taehyung should something similar happen again. And worse, we don’t know how to back Taehyung up so it doesn’t get to that point.  We’ve never had to worry about any of this because Taehyung has been safe, for the most part. He’s been here, giving us the home-field advantage. Whether we like it or not, outside the life he’s lived in Park Manor, he’s an unknown to us, Seok, at least in this sense. Taehyung and Yeontan and what they can do and how they tend to do it and how much they can handle—we don’t know anything about any of that! And I include Jinnie here too. He’s not that young kid Jin knew anymore. We don’t know where he might falter, where he might need the support, or how he approaches such things outside of all the theory we’ve discussed. We just—they’ve been a two-man team for so long, we haven’t had the time to learn anything, and as we stand, we can’t—he just spent a year recovering from two assaults on his core. One to give us a second chance and another to save my life. We can’t just—”

“We can trust him,” Hoseok interrupted him plainly. “Can’t we?”

“What?” Namjoon furrowed his brows at the question. “Yeah, of course we can trust him. That’s not what this is about. I don’t distrust Taehyung, or Yeontan, for that matter. I just want him unhurt.”

“The lives we lead have never been without risk, Joon.” Hoseok reached forward to caress his cheek gently. “We’ve always known that, haven’t we? Why should it be any different with Taehyung? Do you think he’s not capa—“

“No!” He interrupted sharply. “Don’t put words in my mouth, Seok.” 

“Then tell me why you’re holding him to a different standard when you and I both know that Taehyung has waded through far more perilous waters than we have.”

“It is precisely because he has done that that I worry!” Namjoon burst out. “Taehyung likes to say he’s an unlucky person, but Hoba, lesser men wouldn’t have survived the things he has recovered from. He’s probably the luckiest man I know in that regard. One year of convalescence is a long time for anyone, but for a man who traveled through the very fabric of space and time? It’s a miracle that it only took him a year to heal. It’s a miracle that he survived what he did and managed to heal at all. He can’t risk—I don’t think I can watch him go through something like that again.”

“Taehyung was never going to sit back and let us deal with the hits.”

“I know that,” Namjoon sighed, slumping into his chair. “I do. I just—I wish we had more time. It’s all happening so quickly. Too quickly. He barely just regained his freedom, and he’s days away from a clean bill of health, and a whole new host of issues have already presented themselves for his concern. He’s not a machine, Hoba. He—he has his limits too. And I don’t know what they are. Not yet.”

“He may be no machine, but he is a man on a mission,” Hoseok snorted softly. “You weren’t going to be able to shield him anymore than he was going to be able to shield us. He’s part of the team now, babe. We may not know him inside-out just quite yet, but we’ll learn. And in the meantime, we trust that he knows to speak up when he needs to. I agree with Jinnie’s assessment. Now is not when he would choose recklessness over caution. Not when runes have started vanishing again. He’ll do his part.” 

“And we’ll have to learn the scope of ours on the fly.”

“We’ll do a great job of it too,” the warrior grinned lightly. “We may not know everything, but he’s not a stranger to us. He hasn’t been in a long time. We’ll have his back, Joon; don’t you worry about it. We’ll ensure he gets to enjoy that newly returned good health of his for a bit longer yet if it’s the only thing we do.”

“You sound so certain of it.” He whispered the words with a sigh.

“Because I feel that certain of it,” Hoseok answered without hesitation, leaning forward to pull him up in a gentle insistence. “On paper or off it, the seven of us together? We’re a force to be reckoned with. Now, let’s get you into that shower, shall we? It’s been a long day. I’m sure you’ll feel better about all this after you wash it off as well, and if you don’t… Well, I do have some ideas I’m willing to pull out of my metaphorical back pocket to ensure it.” 

Namjoon didn’t fight him. He didn’t think he had the capacity to. But as Hoseok ushered him towards the showers, he could not help but feel a little envious of the assuredness the warrior carried within him in this matter—a certitude that seemed to evade the scholar’s grasp no matter how hard he tried to reach for it. 

Namjoon was an overthinker, yes. He would be the first to admit to the fault. But for all the fault you could levy on his tendencies, his spirals had never left him feeling unduly, irrationally trepidatious. Not until one time-traveling chaos-user named Kim Taehyung had entered his life. He could not deny he was well past happenstance now. He could no longer repudiate the pattern being drawn in front of his very eyes. At least, not to himself.

●⧔☯︎⧕●

Time, Jungkook thought, could be a very odd thing to experience sometimes. And this was without accounting for Taehyung’s literal jump through time, a feat that was truly singular. The latter half of his most recent November and the December that followed had all but flown by, and it had only softened to a light jog after a rather explosive start to the new year. But the relaxed pace had barely lasted two months before things had descended into what felt like the beginning of a new storm. No matter what happened, he suspected they were in for quite the ride ahead of them. 

That was perhaps why he was suddenly feeling more appreciative of the few short months of peace and quiet they’d been granted before this storm had finally landed on their doorstep. Because they truly had been more untroubled than he’d given them credit for, and they’d marked remarkable progress on so many fronts.

Getting back on track after the revelation of the true nature of Taehyung’s relationship with the other versions of them, he sometimes felt, was nothing short of commendable. Because it had been news that had thrown them all for a loop in one way or another, even their resident chaos user. And yet, once they’d found their equilibrium again, it had seemed to take a backseat to the lives they led in the present. For all intents and purposes, the mountain, for it was a mountain, seemed to have taken on the appearance of a molehill. 

That did not, however, detract from the fact that Taehyung simply fit in with the six of them. If the past few months had shown Jungkook anything at all, it was that. Taehyung, timeline be damned, had a natural place by their side, and should there ever come a day when he said his farewells, Jungkook was certain he wouldn’t be the only one to feel his absence keenly. Perhaps, he thought sometimes, in whichever way, shape, or form they came to be, they were always meant to be seven. The notion simply felt incontrovertible in a way he could not fully explain. 

For all the ways they’d grown and changed over the last few months, however, the most significant one to Jungkook personally was, without question, the leaps and bounds he’d made with freehand casting. He was nowhere close to his peers; he knew that. It would be a while longer yet before he’d feel comfortable without a wand, if at all, but he had intentionally managed to cast without a conduit more than once! That was an eventuality that had seemed improbable to him not one full year ago, and here he was, making more progress in these short months than he had in over a decade. And while he was thankful to his loved ones for their support, and Namjoon in particular for his efforts along the way, he knew much of his gratitude would lie at Taehyung’s feet for a long time to come.

But they were past the peace and quiet and slow yet steady progress now. The nine or so days between Taehyung’s freedom and their trip to Turiven had made that point decisively clear. There was a tangible tension in the air now, in Park Manor and outside the safety of their home. It was one that the seven of them could not seem to escape. 

It was evident in how the non-negotiables in his freehand casting practice had expanded to include basic defensive spells alongside the summoning spell (he was fairly certain he would be able to summon his wand in his sleep any day now, which only left looking Taehyung viciously satisfied). It was evident in how Taehyung and Hoseok (and Yoongi, every other time) had taken to intense sparring sessions twice every day. It was evident in how Namjoon felt the need to examine and fuss over Taehyung’s esse after each session. It was evident in Seokjin’s decision to overstock their potions cabinet with every remedial potion he could think of while he could still brew them. It was evident in how Jungkook and Hoseok meticulously inventoried their gear, powering up what they could this far in advance for similar reasons. It was evident in the long hours Jimin spent pouring over the plans for the high-profile press tour they’d have to embark on upon their return from Turiven, and evident in the longer hours still their spellworkers and craftsmen dedicated to studying the runestone—with an urgency that was palpable to them and them alone. 

A storm was coming for them all, but only the seven of them seemed to know to expect it.

Turiven, unlike the warrior’s personal and recent experience with time, had not changed all too much at all in the four or so months since they’d last been there. Turiven, Jungkook thought privately as he drove them down the small town’s main street, simply did not adhere to the fast-paced turnover that the more urban centers in Agura had adapted to. The most significant addition to their town center in the last decade had probably been the large sporting goods store that had cropped up to accommodate visiting hikers and adventurers. He had no doubt it had only come to be because Turiven’s economy almost entirely depended on their tourists.

“This is a charming little place, isn’t it?” Taehyung commented from where he was sitting, in the passenger seat next to him. They’d all ceded the spot to the chaos user, who had admitted to never actually having traveled through this particular corner of Agura in person, so he could enjoy the views that were more familiar to them than to him. “They’ve really resisted the more banal modernities, at least aesthetically.” 

He wasn’t wrong. Turiven was a town stuck in time, in the nicest way possible. It wasn’t a place people moved to so much as it was an ideal weekend hotspot, nestled in a valley of green amidst the mountains that left one spoilt for choice with an abundance of hiking trails to pick and choose from. The town was also a mere twenty-minute drive away from the shoreline, giving people access to quiet, relaxing beaches just as it did sprawling, mountainous forests.

The town itself housed a population of less than ten thousand and was practically built around its main street. For the most part, Turiven retained its old-world architecture. There were no towering buildings or structures encased in glass slabs in this town. It did not sacrifice its pavements for larger roads or cover up its cobbled streets with cement and tar. It did not sacrifice its warmth for a vista of uniformly lifeless, cold hues. None of this, however, meant that Turiven was lacking in modern comforts—the town did, after all, have a tourist population to woo. Ultimately, Turiven was simply not a place that sacrificed its character and integrity to keep up with cosmopolitan trends and politics, and that, Jungkook thought, only added to its charm.

From his previous visit to the place, the warrior knew that Turiven’s town center boasted exactly two inns, an access road that led to a luxury wellness retreat, four restaurants, two pubs, two supermarkets, one department store, one bakery, and one sporting goods store. While he was certain those weren’t the only commercial enterprises in town, they were certainly the most notable commercial enterprises in town. That fact had not changed in the last four months either.

“They’ve done a good job of it too,” Jimin answered Taehyung from the middle row, where he was sitting between Namjoon and Hoseok. Yoongi was napping on Seokjin’s shoulder in the very back—he’d been behind the wheel for the first half of their trip up. “We really should come here just to check out the hiking trails or enjoy the beach sometime. I understand there’s this one trail that leads to a beautiful waterfall.” 

“They do say third time’s the charm,” Hoseok offered dryly. “Maybe after we return and successfully ward the cliff, we could get out our hiking gear and destress.”

“Here’s hoping we’re successful enough that we can consider it as an option at all,” Seokjin snorted lowly from behind them as they neared their destination.

Ripley’s, the family-owned inn they had opted for last time, was on the very end of the street, almost bordering the woodlands. They’d picked it then because it was closer to the roads that would take them up to the cliffs, and they’d picked it again this time because Linney had been a friendly and accommodating host whose family had a long history in Turiven. It also helped that one of the four restaurants on main street was attached to the inn, which made early morning breakfasts a no-fuss affair. 

The innkeeper herself was outside, perusing through her phone while she presumably took a quick break, when Jungkook turned into the inn’s small parking lot. In contrast to Turiven’s trends, Linney Ripley, for all that she was a stalwart resident of Turiven, did not comply with the town’s old-world charm. At least, not entirely. In substance, she was very much a Turiven local. She was warm as a person, she had no airs or pretenses, and she had a tranquility about her that one could simply not find in bigger, busier cities. She was someone whose word was her bond; you could trust her. At the same time, she wasn’t isolated in Turiven necessarily (it wasn’t all that surprising; Jungkook estimated she was no older than Seokjin). Her hair was styled in a sharp, long bob with deliberate, honeyed highlights that felt out of place in a small town like this one. Her clothes, while still practical, simply looked different on her because she was meticulous about them—she knew what styles suited her, and she made the effort to get them tailored for her person. She enjoyed wearing more accessories than most in the area did, and her nails were always neatly manicured. Even the footwear she opted for—pragmatic workman’s boots—rarely sported scuff marks and was well taken care of. Linney Ripley carried herself like one would in the city, expecting to be judged with every step they took and wanting to reach their destination with their head held high. Sometimes, he wondered just what her (likely) storied history looked like for it to have brought such urban tendencies into her small-town life.

Linney Ripley also had a sharp memory, it seemed, for she recognized them on sight.

“You lot made good time,” she greeted them with a welcoming smile as they exited the car one after the other, tucking her phone away in the process. “Lunch service begins in half an hour. Our famous onion pie is on the menu today.”

“We try,” Jungkook nodded back at her. “And I look forward to tasting it.” 

“How’ve you been, Linney?” Seokjin acknowledged her genially.

“Busy,” she shook her head simply. “A lot of your peers have been passing through town recently, you know.”

“We’ve heard,” Jimin grimaced at the comment. 

“I sure hope you aren’t here for a redo. I’m glad you’re all doing better,” she echoed the expression on his face, nodding to Namjoon as she spoke, “but it won’t end well this time either. Teardrop isn’t cursed. At least, not in the way you lot think it is. She’s just…waiting.”

Linney had been witness to their hasty exit from Turiven last time. He suddenly wasn’t surprised in the least that she remembered it or them as well as she did. 

“We are here to help ensure she can wait in peace,” Taehyung piped in with an earnest smile. “I promise.” 

Linney’s eyebrows went up at the comment, as did Jungkook’s. That was, he thought, the opposite of discreet. Then again, part of the plan had been to quiz some locals on the history of the island, and the Ripleys were as local (and trustworthy) as they got.

“You’re new, aren’t you?” She deduced as she took him in. It was, Jungkook knew, an evaluation in every sense of the word. “You weren’t here last time.”

“A different kind of expert,” the chaos user nodded vaguely, before one of the others could intervene. “Hopefully the kind Teardrop needs. I’m Ta— Oh!”

Jungkook followed Taehyung’s gaze to his feet, only to find a feline creature insistently rubbing against him. 

“Oh! Looks like Nebby’s decided to make an appearance today,” Linney chuckled at the sight, her expression turning fond. “It’s been a while. She doesn’t show herself to visitors all too often either. They do say it’s a good omen if she takes to you, though.”

They had not seen this Nebby on their previous visit to Turiven, nor had she come up in conversation.

“I’ve some bacon with your name on it, bud,” she let the feline know, even though it paid her absolutely no attention right at the moment. “Don’t leave without saying goodbye!”

“Nebby?” Namjoon asked, bemused by Linney’s familiarity, as they all watched Taehyung kneel down to pet the creature that had functionally demanded his whole attention.

And Jungkook could see where the question came from. Nebby was no regular cat. If anything, she was built more like a lithe fox except for her undeniably feline facial features, fur coat, and long, bushy tail. Her plush, misty grey fur coat morphed into a striking white as it neared her paws. And as she arched up to meet Taehyung’s gaze, he could also see a striking white spot on her underbelly. 

“An homage to her unusual Nebelung coat, we think,” Linney answered the spellworker. “We were not the ones who named her. But caits like her are usually a much darker black in color. Darker than night, the old stories used to say.”  

“Cait? Like a cait síth?” Taehyung looked up at that curiously. 

“Cait Síth, Cahtshee, Cat Sidhe, Cait Palug.” Linney rambled the names. “Different regions have different names for these creatures.” 

“She’s a magical beast, isn’t she?” The young warrior voiced his conclusions out loud softly, while Yoongi carefully inched closer to Taehyung and the creature. The elemental did have a fondness for cats in general, so it was a predictable enough reaction from him. “I remember learning about Cait Palugs. They can teleport, right?”

“So they say,” Namjoon agreed with him, and Linney nodded in the back. “But we’re only allowed to passively observe living magical beasts unless we’re resettling them in a more natural habitat or treating injuries, so we only know what we’ve seen.”

“They’re clever little creatures, these cats,” Linney added. “They’re also vicious if they’re in a protective mood. Those claws are no joke when they’re unsheathed. And they live for a long time. Why, Nebby here is at least twenty years old.”

“She’s from Teardrop?” Taehyung hazarded the guess while Nebby was busy gauging Yoongi’s tentative approach.

“I—yes, actually,” the innkeeper blinked at the question, surprised. 

“How—“

“You mentioned dragons in Teardrop,” the chaos user interrupted Jimin easily. “Figured it made sense that the island housed some wild beasts still, especially if it’s been isolated for the past two decades.”

“Well, Nebby here’s still the most domesticated wild creature you’ll ever meet. She usually stays on the island, you’re right. We don’t know if she has a whole family there now,” Linney laughed fondly. “Knowing her, I’m sure she does. But she likes to prowl around town from time to time all the same. Our little guardian angel, truly.” 

“She can just walk through the wards?” Namjoon asked curiously. In the back, Nebby had finally allowed Yoongi to pet her, and Hoseok was busy taking pictures of the two men and the cat, while Jimin was contemplating mimicking Yoongi’s actions.

Inheritance wards were, theoretically, only meant to ward against other human beings, so it did make sense that it didn’t block the cait síth. But then again, it was just as possible that the feline was simply teleporting past the wards, and that had Jungkook wondering if they’d just completely ignored teleportation as an option. Surely there was at least one teleportal on the island. It was, he also conceded, equally possible that wards would fry them mid-teleportation because they were still human beings trying to cross the barrier.

“We don’t actually know how she does it, nor do we monitor her comings and goings,” the innkeeper shrugged simply. “We just welcome her when she shows up. I told you, she’s considered a good omen in this town. She hasn’t been around for a bit, actually, so this is a pleasant surprise. My nan will be glad to see her.”  

“We’ll take her for the good omen she is, then,” Seokjin agreed with a firm nod.

“You and me both,” Linney agreed. “Come on in, then. I’ll get you checked-in so you can freshen up before lunch is served. Are you planning on going up to the cliffs today?”

“To get a cursory look, at least. I’ve never been before,” Taehyung nodded as he stood. Nebby had finally tired of their attentions and slunk back to her apparently preferred, shadowy corners before Jimin could decide if he wanted to try approaching her. “All things going well, we plan to return tomorrow too.” 

“We will do our very best to be safe,” Seokjin preempted Linney’s words of caution. 

Jungkook shook his head in agreement. “None of us want to relive what happened last time, believe me.” 

“Well, you know what you’re doing better than I do,” she gave in without argument. “I can only hope that you succeed. I do tire of seeing curse breaker after curse breaker drive into this town curious and leave with nothing but regrets for keepsakes.” 

●⧔☯︎⧕●

Their plans for the afternoon had them splitting up in three directions. Hoseok had helped put those plans together, and he still wasn’t sure if splitting up was the best of ideas. 

That was probably why the biggest group would be one comprised of the two craftsmen and the two spellworkers—they would be heading up to the cliffs to give Taehyung an opportunity to examine the terrain before they came back the next day to examine the seal itself (with all their safeguards in place). Although their time in Turiven would always be colored by their previous visit, the most (and perhaps only) deadly part of the area was the approach to the island.

In the meantime, Jungkook and Jimin would head over to the sporting goods store—where they’d been able to have their lodestones delivered ahead of their arrival—to collect said stones. Given the substantial quantity of their order, the place they typically ordered it from had given them the option of delivery to Park Manor on the day of their departure or delivery to the sporting goods store in Turiven on that same afternoon. To delay their departure for a delivery had seemed inefficient, to say the least.

Seokjin had decided to track Linney’s grandmother, Esther, down for a conversation. Esther was one of the oldest living residents in town. If there was anyone at all who knew stories of the island and its history, it was probably her, and if there was anyone who could get it out of her, it was probably Seokjin.

And once they reconvened, they would head out to one of the other restaurants or pubs on the main street together, to finger the pulse and hopefully get some local gossip on, among other things, Rayleigh’s machinations in the area.

“No messing with the seal today,” Seokjin wagged his finger at Taehyung (primarily) and Namjoon (secondarily) while they waited for Yoongi to return with the keys to Linney’s spare minivan—the car they’d leased for their afternoon plans up the mountains. Jimin and Jungkook had already left to go collect their lodestones when the store had confirmed delivery of the same. “I mean it, VV. I know you get tempted by the most confounding things sometimes, but no going near the actual magic ward that aims to hurt people until we have you surrounded by—“

“Every lodestone you saw fit to purchase?” Taehyung interrupted him dryly. “I will be cautious, Jiji. I’m not going to be reckless just because I’ve got Nebby’s blessing, I promise.” 

Hoseok snorted at the chaos user’s response. The Cat Sidhe had definitely been an unexpected sight. He wasn’t quite sure what the feline’s blessings were worth, but if all seven of them left Turiven unhurt, he would be content in assigning that fortune to the cat’s favor.

“We will be careful, Jin-ah,” he spoke up. From the corner of his eye, he spotted Yoongi walking up to them, a pair of keys dangling in his hands. “After last time, there’s no way we won’t be.” 

“Absolutely learned my lesson,” Namjoon nodded with a wry grin. “More than learned it, actually. We go there, we take the sights in, and we return. As planned.” 

“And we pinpoint what I want to dig into tomorrow,” Taehyung piped in with an obliging nod before backtracking at the downturn of Seokjin’s lips. “Not by messing with the ward. I’ll feel the ambient energy either way. Or well, Tannie will.” 

“I promise we’ll come back with both of our curious-minded spell workers in hand and unharmed,” Hoseok reassured the potioneer. “Right, Yoon?”

“Hoseok and I are going up there to ensure it,” the elemental, who’d reached them, nodded. “It’s practically the only reason we’re going.” 

“Just so long as you remember to keep yourselves safe as well,” Seokjin snorted at that. “Just—try to save the impulsions for tomorrow, when we can put up actual safeguards.”

“My plan as well as yours,” Hoseok nodded easily. 

Sometimes, Hoseok wished this had not been the big change-up from the other timeline. He wished Teardrop had, once again, remained in the past, unaffected by Rayleigh’s schemes and thus, been of no consequence to them. But it hadn’t, and it wasn’t, so here they were. 

For all that he didn’t like being back here, he could understand how the news of continued injuries had provoked Taehyung into action. He had, after all, heard a first-hand account of the younger’s helplessness in the past and how much he regretted that. And regrets like that, well, regrets like that could linger and spiral. Now was not the time for Taehyung to spiral. If anything, it was the worst time for something like that to occur. 

Ultimately, on paper, this seemed to be an easy win. It meant their peers would remain unharmed by Rayleigh’s machinations, it meant their conscience would be in the clear, and it meant Taehyung wouldn’t be plagued by self-condemnation.

Nevertheless, Hoseok knew he would have felt the need to back Taehyung up—unadvised choices or not. He had meant it when he’d told the chaos user that as far as he was concerned, their best chance at winning this was facing it together. They had been a team once before, in a time Hoseok did not experience, and they were a team once again, in his present that he did. Taehyung had backed them up throughout it all and more than once. It was high time they returned the favor. It was high time Hoseok stopped resting on his predecessor’s laurels and earned some of his own in this regard.

“I’m not going up there to fall into trouble, Jiji.” Taehyung shook his head once again. 

“And if he inadvertently falls in headfirst anyway, we’ll be there to pull him out,” Hoseok shrugged simply. Assuredly.

“Your reassurances aren’t very reassuring sometimes,” Seokjin snorted with a huff. 

“But they’re earnest,” Namjoon nudged him gently. “If it helps you any, there’s only so long before twilight comes upon us, and that is our cue to depart, if we haven’t already. We don’t have all too long to get into trouble at all, really.”

“Let’s not jinx it,” Yoongi muttered under his breath before nodding to the rented vehicle. “Well then, shall we?”

●⧔☯︎⧕●

Seokjin silently watched the dark green minivan disappear into the mountains as he worried his lip without abandon. He couldn’t seem to help it. For all that he knew returning to this place was inevitable, he wasn’t necessarily thrilled with the idea. Teardrop had only ever brought his family suffering in every timeline known to him, which were only two, yes, but a hundred percent success rate was still a hundred percent success rate. He doubted even a magical beast’s blessing could overcome that, even if Taehyung was no longer impeded by his injuries.

He could only hope that Namjoon’s words rang true. He could only hope that the shorter timeframe meant fewer chances for trouble. At least on their first day in the area.

“You okay there, hon?” Linney popped her head out of the detached apartment—situated behind the inn but with an entryway that opened into the parking lot—that had served as the Ripley family home for almost a century, with a questioning look. 

“Yeah,” Seokjin smiled at her weakly. “For the moment, anyway.” 

She didn’t seem to believe him.

“They’ll be alright, you know.” She stepped out of her home with a kind, sympathetic look and closed the door behind her. “Nebby will take care of them.” 

“You seem to have a lot of trust in a cat.”

“A magical beast of a cat,” she corrected him with a smile. “Told ya, she’s got a reputation around this town. I like to think she looks out for those of us she favors, when she’s around anyway. I got lost in these forests as a kid one time, you know? It really was terrible timing on my part too. I was eight or nine; I went out exploring too late in the day, got caught in a storm, lost any sense of direction I had, and I wasn’t exactly dressed for the weather to boot. She was the one who found me and teleported me right to this very doorstep. I do believe my parents gave her the best cut of meat they had on hand in thanks. They’d been in the middle of organizing tracking parties, calling in every favor they could. We’ve fed her every time we’ve crossed paths with her since. Practically a family tradition now, that. She likes your boy. She’ll keep an eye on him; I’m certain of it.”

“I suppose I’m going to have to do my best to trust you on that, Linney.” He shook his head ruefully, unwilling to argue over boons this Nebelung had granted her and her family but equally reluctant to rest all his worries over boons it may or may not have granted Taehyung and thus, them. “Would be nice to have luck on our side this time.”

“Is that why you didn’t go with?” Linney wondered out loud. “Bad memories from your last trip up?”

If only that had been enough to keep them all away.

“No, we’ll all be going up there tomorrow. When the real work begins.” Seokjin took his chance. He had stayed back for a reason, after all. “I was actually hoping to speak with your grandmother. I don’t suppose you reckon she’d be up for surprise visitors?”

Esther Ripley was ninety-three years old, and she’d practically spent all ninety-three years in Turiven, save the occasional short vacation out of town. She was, Seokjin thought, the truest definition of a local. If Teardrop’s history was but an oral record, there was no better source to hear it from. 

“She likes to watch the telly in the lobby while she knits and I go over accounts ‘round this time,” Linney had let him know. “You can approach her, but be warned, she loves to talk if you give her the opportunity.” 

They found her on a rocking chair by the fireplace in the lobby, hands idly knitting a scarf while her focus was on the soap opera playing on the television, as Linney had predicted. Her silvery-white hair was unmissable against the darker shadows of the room. She was still dressed warmly in a full-sleeved dress and wooly surcoat for all that spring was functionally upon them, but Seokjin supposed that was a consequence of age. She did not, however, look fragile by any means.

‘Good luck,” Linney mouthed at him as they parted, she towards the reception and he towards the fireplace.

“Mrs. Ripley?” He made his approach slowly but obviously, so she wouldn’t be startled (as was only polite). 

“Hmm?” She looked away from the television and zeroed in on him much faster than he’d expected of a ninety-three-year-old. “Yes, dear?”

“I’m Kim Seokjin.”

“Esther Ripley,” she nodded in turn. “Take it that means something to you?”

“That you’re one of the best people to approach if I’m curious about the town’s history.” He took a tentative seat on the settee closest to the rocking chair. “Could I impose upon you for a few minutes?”

That had her giving him a disbelieving look. “I may be old, but I’m not senile, you know? I’ve seen your face on the telly. You’re one of them curse breakers. I’ve seen your lot passing through town recently, poking your nose where you shouldn’t and getting what you deserve for it.”

“My interests concern Teardrop Island,” he admitted readily, unwilling to argue with her either. “But I understand the town’s history is intertwined with the island.” 

“Nothing I tell you is going to help you bring that barrier down,” Esther interrupted him with a firmness he had not quite foreseen. “Saem did what he did with a purpose. With good reason, even if I may not be privy to the actual details.” 

Saem? Now that was a name they hadn’t come across yet. But he felt it more important to convince her of their intentions first.

“I assure you, Mrs. Ripley, we aren’t looking to bring that barrier down by force.” He shook his head earnestly. “But we both know that someone is. We are just here to try to understand why.”

“They did say they’re here to try to put an end to people messing with the place and getting injured,” Linney chimed in from across the room, where she’d settled herself behind the reception desk, in an attempt to help him out. “Got a new expert and everything. One that Nebby likes.” 

Thankfully, the lobby was pretty much empty but for their presence. Hinting at their true motivations to Linney and Esther was a low-level risk they’d agreed upon beforehand. Announcing it to the town at large, however…

“Nebby was here?” Esther croaked in surprise. “It’s been a while.”

“Didn’t stay very long, though.” Linney nodded. “Not even long enough for me to give her some of that smoked bacon we have at home.”

“Must’ve been on quite the mission then, huh? Good for her.” The elderly woman chuckled fondly. The Ripleys certainly seemed to have a soft spot for the cat, and Linney’s story made it clear why. “She really approves of them?”

“The new guy, certainly,” her granddaughter agreed. “What was his name again?”

“Taehyung,” Seokjin supplied dutifully. “Kim Taehyung.”

Esther hummed thoughtfully before coming to a decision. She set her knitting needles down, giving him her full attention. “What is it you want to know, young man?”

And if this was the consequence of Nebby’s favor cast upon them, well then, Seokjin was more than happy to accept it.

“Anything you’re willing to share, really.” He scratched his neck sheepishly. “We tried looking into it, but there’s very little about Teardrop Island that’s not about this so-called curse. I do believe that was intentional.”

“Quite,” Ester agreed readily. “Neither the island nor its residents have really been public figures very often, and I do think that has been by design. Even when they sponsored the development of this town, they weren’t quite doing it to cement a patrician status. The name Turiven has no bearing on their legacy.”

“But who were they? What did they do? And why did they feel the need to rely on an inheritance seal of all things?”

“You know about the seal?” Esther’s eyebrows shot up, intrigued by the revelation. 

“Taehyung put the pieces together after our first visit,” he offered.

That was, Seokjin decided, technically true. Their first visit just so happened to have occurred in another timeline. 

“Clever boy,” Esther nodded approvingly. “I do think my answers might only disappoint, however. Even with us, they rarely overshared, so some of what I know is by mere inference.”

“Anything you know is more than what I know, so I’ll take it, Mrs. Ripley.” 

She tapped her chin, carefully considering her words before she began speaking.

“Teardrop Island has always been in Turiven’s periphery. In many ways, it was always a part of the town, for all that it is not. All the locals knew the family that resided there fairly well, even though they were very private. There’s a castle on that island, you know? Some of us were lucky enough to work there and be bound to secrecy about it, but in general, they were regular patrons of the town. So we’d all see them about, even if we all couldn’t go to the island itself.”

Seokjin’s eyes went wide at that. “Teardrop Island is home to a castle?”

They’d expected a structure or two of some kind, but a castle had certainly not been on the list. Seokjin had a worrying feeling that this was going to be bigger than they could have ever anticipated.

“Yes,” Esther’s smile was nostalgic. “I have been fortunate enough to lay my eyes on it when I was younger. It is quite the sight. They were wealthy, although they flaunted no titles or status. They are wealthy, I suppose, even if that estate is missing its current master. I couldn’t quite tell you how or why, though. All I know is that the island was their true legacy, and it was one that they protected fiercely. I only knew his parents as much as the rest of the town did, in passing, but I knew Saem quite well. A decade or so younger than me, he was, but he was a good egg. Had a sensible head on him until the world broke him. Terrible, really, what happened to him in the later years, but for much of my life, he was master of Teardrop Island.”

“Oh?”

All of this was news to him.

“The island was always thought to be named for its shape,” she shook her head ruefully, “but with the tragedies it has endured in recent times… I sometimes wonder if that island itself is in mourning or if I’m simply reading into the name differently these days.” 

He didn’t need to quell his curiosities any longer, the potioneer decided then. What Seokjin needed was answers.

“What happened to Saem and his family, Mrs. Ripley?”

●⧔☯︎⧕●

“Now, this is a view.” 

The drive up to the cliffs had not even taken them thirty minutes. Yoongi locked the car with a press of a button before he turned towards Taehyung’s low whistle. Somewhere behind them, Hoseok and Namjoon were busy putting up temporary privacy wards so they could move around without untimely interruptions. 

“Yeah,” he agreed easily, walking up to the chaos user. “It is, isn’t it? There’s just something about gazing into an endless horizon. It’s humbling, really.”

“And it’s never quite the same from a beach as it is from a cliff.” Taehyung nodded as he came to a stop by his side. 

“It’s the difference in vantage, I’d say.” 

“Perhaps, but a cliff view outstrips a beach view with ease.” 

“You know what?” Yoongi hummed, taking in the sight that had enamored the other. “I might just have to agree with you there.”

“That’s Teardrop?” Taehyung’s gaze had moved westward, where they could technically see the viaduct leading to the island, but all they could see of the island itself was the greenery that covered its eastern borders. When the sun caught it in its rays, proof of a barrier shimmered ever so slightly if you were sharp enough to spot it. “This seal is thrumming with power.”

“Yep,” Yoongi nodded, before pointing to a spot near the entrance to the viaduct. Although evidence of the incident no longer remained, he would never forget it. “That’s where Namjoon…” 

“Ah.” The chaos user’s eyes sobered in understanding. 

“We’re here to back you up,” the elemental felt the urgent need to remind him all of a sudden. “Don’t forget that, Tae. We’re here to help. So ask for it if you even think you may need it. I know we can’t do what you can do, but we aren’t entirely useless either.”

“I know.” Taehyung grinned at him lightly. “You, most of all, are anything but useless here. If anything, this is advantageous terrain for you.”

He was right. If he wanted to, Yoongi could cause some serious damage from where he stood. That was…

“As long as I steer clear of the seal so there’s no accidental backlash. But seriously, Tae—“

“If I need help, I’ll make it known.” 

“You better, or else I’m going to be very unhappy with you,” he warned him gruffly. “I don’t—we don’t need to walk away from here having lived through another tragedy.”

“Third time’s the charm, right?” Taehyung’s attempt at reassuring him was valiant, if nothing else. “We’ll be fine, Yoongi. I promise you we will.” 

“You really feel confident enough to guarantee as much?” Yoongi’s eyebrows went up in mild surprise. Taehyung was usually the worrier when risk entered the picture. He wondered if this confidence was due to the fact he was no longer held back by his esse or his shackle (Hoseok hadn’t been the only one who’d been laid out flat on the mat on a near-daily basis in the last week; Yoongi had lost his share of spars too), because the primary risk-taker in this situation was Taehyung, or if it was caused by something else entirely.

“This place doesn’t really feel nefarious,” he explained further, before the elemental could clarify. “If anything, it feels sort of welcoming. Yeontan’s certainly familiar with the area. Comfortable here, even. I wonder if it has to do with the proximity to Nyr or with the fact that some magical beasts do tend to end up frequenting this place still.” 

Yoongi didn’t quite know what that meant for them, but the mention of Nyr brought up an interesting point.

“The Forest Islands of Nyr, you mean?” 

That did make sense, if only barely. That archipelago was still a hundred-some miles away, but it was closer from here than it was from Park Manor. Magical beasts were creatures of chaos, and the magik’s presence was perhaps most concentrated in these islands. But that had him wondering…

“Yeontan must have recognized Nebby, then? Wait, did the cat recognize Yeontan in you?”

“Yes to the first. No idea about the other thing. Chaos resides in all of the creatures it claims in some way or the other,” Taehyung agreed. “But that doesn’t mean Yeontan will communicate with other creatures for me or about me. Tannie isn’t a messenger or a translator.”

“No,” Yoongi chuckled at the image. It felt wrong to reduce a magik to an envoy. “I don’t suppose a magik would do that. Unless it’s to deal with other magiks.”

“Even then, it is a rare exception. Three-magik spells are… I could have never cast one without Tannie’s assurance,” the time traveler shrugged lightly. “Truly exceptional moments, those are, and they demand an exceptional cost.”

“Which we’ll aim to never have to resort to again,” he nodded firmly. 

“Speaking of Chaos and beasts, though,” Taehyung chuckled suddenly, pointing towards something, “it seems like our new feline friend managed to slip past the wards Hoseok and Namjoon are putting up.” 

The elemental followed his hand, and sure enough, the Nebelung cait was slinking behind a boulder, some feet away from them.

“Huh. Well, I suppose if she’s a good omen, too many sightings of her can’t exactly be a bad thing, right?” 

“All the signs,” Taehyung rested a reassuring arm on his shoulder as he spoke, “certainly look promising.”

Yoongi only hoped they would be able to keep the promises they seemed to be intent on conveying, over and over again.

●⧔☯︎⧕●

The sporting goods store was built to look and feel indulgently spacious. The entrance was fashioned after an atrium, with escalators and elevators present by the entrance to help customers access all four floors (basement included). The roof, three stories high from where they stood, sported a large stained-glass skylight, and the soft glow of the sun rays it let through made for a beautiful image against the plain walls left for that very purpose. It was clear that this place was made to attract and impress the tourists it was built to cater to.

“I think pickup is that way,” Jimin pointed straight as he consulted the large map of the store by the elevators. “All the way in the back.” 

“We did bring a Pocket Universe, right?” Jungkook checked before they went any further. Lodestones were not light by any means, and the Pocket Universe was one of those inventions that deserved every qlin it earned its creators. 

“I’m pretty certain Hoseok said they came in one.” Jimin hooked Jungkook’s arm through his own, leaning against him as he directed them through the store. “We bought enough to merit it, I say. But if not, buying another Pocket Universe pouch is hardly an issue. I’m sure this store has a bevy of options.”

“Like we don’t have enough strewn around the manor already,” he snorted softly, but he let it be. Pocket Universes were just one of those things. If it was in your economic bandwidth, you’d inevitably keep collecting them whether you wanted to or not.

The ground floor seemed to be dedicated to hiking gear. They made their way past the sturdy boots, the moisture-wicking jackets, the lighter-than-air rucksacks, the never-ending water bottles, fire starters, basic potions kits, and some multi-tools before the billing area came into view. 

“The corner-most one,” Jungkook pointed to the counter that had a clear ‘Pick-up Counter’ sign up. 

“It’s empty,” Jimin grinned, pleased. 

The whole store, to be fair, seemed to be light on foot traffic that day.

“It is a weekday,” he reasoned. 

“All the better for us, I say.” 

They had to ring a bell to grab someone’s attention when they reached the counters. 

“Be there in one second!” A voice yelled out, and about a minute later, a man came into view. He seemed to be in his forties, if Jungkook had to guess, with a dusty brown mop of hair and a thick mustache, but he kept no beard. He was most likely the supervisor or manager for the day, if the badge on his chest was any indication. “You here for the lodestones?”

He snorted at their surprised looks. “I’m John. I was the one who called you,” he explained briefly. “Gotta say, thirty-four lodestones is quite the haul for anyone, though. Certainly a first for this store.”

“Just being overcautious,” Jimin shrugged easily, pulling out one of his many digital token cards to pay the store for their services.

“Hasn’t helped anyone else,” John snorted at his response. “Don’t see how you’re going to be any different.”

“Been doing pickup service for lodestones frequently, have you?” Jungkook asked lightly. 

“And a bunch of other stuff too,” he agreed as he processed the payment rendered. They had not needed to wait for any other purchases themselves, but the warrior could see how that might be likely with some of their peers. “We seem to have become a hotspot for a whole new crowd of folks of late.” 

“So we’ve heard,” Jimin agreed neutrally. 

“You lot started the trend,” John huffed at that in disbelief. “You’re not exactly unrecognizable, even up here in Turiven. We do get the news, you know. The Silver Six, aren’t ya? Your boy came here with that old coot once, then the whole lot of you came, and then, a procession followed. We’ve had more curse breakers digging their nose ‘round this town than ever. You’d think there would at least be a curse to break, for all the effort you’re putting in.”

Jungkook shared a glance of surprise with Jimin at his outburst. 

“Oh, come off it.” He rolled his eyes at the duo. “Dare I say you know it as well as we do. You are supposed to be the foremost experts in this field, aren’t you?” 

“We aren’t all-knowing,” Jimin countered weakly. 

“Right. That’s why you’re amassing yourselves a literal stockpile of lodestones.”

“I take it you aren’t a fan of the additional business income then?” Jungkook asked him curiously. Most businesses he knew of would be. 

“Not when I see those same customers of mine slink our of town barely holding on to their lives more often than not,” John scoffed at the question. “I didn’t take this job to arm people so they can walk to their potential demise with a false sense of security, lad, and yet, for the past few months, it feels like I’ve been doing exactly that. Heck, I’m doing it right now.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Jimin pointed out reasonably. 

“If only life were that simple. I don’t get to make that choice.” He made an unhappy face. “And upper management isn’t inclined to side with my pesky morals, I’ve come to realize. But a man’s got to feed his family and all that, so here we are.” 

“Ah.” 

“I’ll go get you your parcel, then, shall I?”

John made another face before turning back in the direction he’d appeared from. 

“Does everyone in Turiven know the seal is a seal?” Jungkook questioned out loud when he’d disappeared behind the door.

“If they do, they really keep their secrets close to their heart,” Jimin agreed. “Most people would have sold this one to the highest bidder they could find. But, and this was more interesting to me, he just called Rayleigh Thebes an old coot. That was quite the description.” 

“You think Rayleigh Thebes did something to earn his ire?”

John, as it turned out, was very efficient in his job.

“Rayleigh Thebes has no friends in Turiven,” the store employee snorted, having returned quickly enough to catch the last of their conversation at least, as he came their way with a pouch in hand. The stones did come in a Pocket Universe. “At least, not anymore.” 

“No?”

“No. He did it to himself, really.” He passed the pouch over to them. “Thirty-four lodestones. You’re welcome to check for yourselves before you leave. In fact, I encourage it.” 

Jungkook grabbed the pouch to do exactly that while Jimin tried to interrogate the man further. Tried being the key word.

“What did he do?”

“He did not know to leave well alone.” John shook his head simply. “And neither do you lot, apparently. Can’t say I’m all that surprised he was at the start of this whole thing. Don’t say you weren’t warned when things end badly. Again.” 

Did everyone know of the outcome of their last trip to Turiven as well? 

“We—“

“Are known for doing the near-impossible,” he finished with a roll of his eyes. “I know. Again, you aren’t exactly obscure people. But you will fail this time.”

“I am sorry you believe we brought this procession to your doorstep, John,” Jimin offered finally, having concluded that they were not going to endear themselves to the man anytime soon. “But we didn’t start this, or at least, we didn’t mean to.” 

“That procession would have come along with or without our involvement,” Jungkook agreed, nodding to Jimin to confirm that all lodestones were accounted for. They were good to go. He leveled the store employee with an even look before they left. “We didn’t start this, but I hope you will come to see in due time that we came back here to finish it.”

And as they left the store, Jungkook could only hope dearly that they (or more accurately, Taehyung) succeeded in their endeavors—if only so that the reassurances they made to people like John or Linney weren’t all rendered hollow in retrospect.

●⧔☯︎⧕●

“As private as it gets,” Hoseok nodded sharply, once he examined the temporary wards they’d put up. “At least for the next couple hours.” 

“The cait made it in, though,” Yoongi called out, stepping away from Taehyung, who seemed enraptured by the vistas in front of them. 

“Nebby?” Hoseok’s eyebrows went up. “She followed us here?”

“Saw her by those bushes,” Yoongi pointed helpfully. 

Seeing that none of the attention was on him, Namjoon stepped away to look around the cliff. 

He wasn’t exactly certain how coming back here had him feeling, but unease was certainly a part of that smorgasbord of emotions. He knew that much. 

This was Namjoon’s third time on this cursed cliff. 

The first time, it had been a cursory visit with Rayleigh Thebes himself. The two of them had walked around the area as Thebes had spoken about the curse. He had, Namjoon had only realized much later on, carefully shied away from speaking about the island itself, except to claim it was cursed. The curse was, after all, the object of their interest, and stuck by the entrance to the viaduct as they were, Namjoon hadn’t thought to wonder too much about the island itself, not back then.

The second time he had come to the cliff, he’d come there with the full force of his team. He’d come there for reasons similar to their present visit—to study the spell and the terrain so something could be done about it. And if not for Taehyung, the second time he’d come here, he would have likely been the seal’s first casualty. He looked at the area they’d marked as the boundary around the ward the last time around. He couldn’t even remember where he had been standing when he’d been cursed by the seal. To date, he could remember nothing of that day after he’d leaned in closer to examine the ward directly.

This third time on this cliff, he wasn’t here for himself. He wasn’t here because he wanted to be here, and he was certainly not here because he felt compelled to unravel the mystery the ward presented him with. Because it wasn’t a mystery, not anymore. And while the magic was extraordinary, both in scale and power, studying it any further wasn’t worth risking their lives. Namjoon liked to think he knew what risks were worth the gamble. His chosen profession practically demanded it of him. And to interrupt a seal that was carrying out the very purpose it was designed for was not worth the risk. Certainly not when that purpose was neither malicious nor aimless.

This third time, he was here for Taehyung and for Taehyung alone, as selfish as that probably was. The secrets of Teardrop Island were as inaccessible to Rayleigh Thebes as they were to Kim Namjoon for as long as the heir chose to avoid their inheritance. The ideal way forward would have been to leave it be and focus on getting his mentor to slip up in conversation. If the locals of Turiven had no secrets to share with them, it would likely still remain their only path forward, realigning this timeline back with its older counterpart ever so slightly.

But Taehyung had chosen the noble option, something Namjoon didn’t think he would have had the wherewithal to do after his previous experience on that cliff. And Hoseok had been right, all those nights ago. Taehyung didn’t ask for very much without reason. So he had to believe that whatever his reasons were, whatever the regrets he was trying to overwrite or atone for were, they were worth the emotions Namjoon was at war with. 

He turned back towards the boundaries they had marked and spotted Taehyung a little too close to it for his own comfort.

He knew Taehyung wasn’t inexperienced, but he couldn’t seem to help himself, his baseless fears coming to the fore again.

“Tae-ah!” He called out, swiftly altering his motions to reach the chaos user. “You’re too close.”

“There’s a foot or so between me and the seal,” Taehyung reassured him immediately, whether because he had been privately alerted to Namjoon’s recent irrationalities or because he could read it on the scholar’s face. “I can feel the energy. Can’t you?”

“The problem,” Namjoon huffed as he came to a stop near him, “is that the energy can feel you too. And if it thinks you are hostile—”

He was interrupted bluntly. 

“Does this barrier feel oppressive to you?”

Namjoon furrowed his brows. “How do you mean? It’s a protective barrier, ultimately. So it feels protective. Hostile if you agitate it, though.”

“I feel it thrumming.” Taehyung shook his head slightly. “I have felt it thrumming since the moment it entered my radar. It feels—it feels like a heartbeat, Joon, like it has a pulse.”

“No.” His brows furrowed harder at the description. “That’s not—that’s new.”

“To me too,” the chaos user agreed with him. “I’ve seen seals in action before. Smaller seals, sure, but I’ve seen them in action nonetheless. They’re usually a little overwhelming, and they feel like a warning because they’re keeping you out. This is not—this doesn’t feel like that.”

“It is exactly like that to me,” he countered without hesitation. 

They barely had to look at each other before they came to the same conclusion, and quite honestly, if that was what having an academic partner was like on the regular, Namjoon was coming to find out that he could finally understand why his peers put the effort they did into finding their ideal collaborator.

“Yoongi!”

“Seok!”

Both craftsmen turned their way in unison. 

“What?” Hoseok called back from across the cliff, where they seemed to be inspecting the bushes for what Namjoon could only guess was the cat sidhe slinking around the boulders behind Taehyung.

“Come here a second, will you? We want you to check on something for us.”

●⧔☯︎⧕●

“It is strange, isn’t it?” Jimin remarked lightly as they made the short drive back to Ripley’s. “To be an antagonist in someone else’s story.” 

Jimin was used to animosity in certain specific circles of his life. He was used to it in Tarlton. Envy was never in short supply there, and if you were the object of someone’s envy, it wasn’t long before you became adversarial in their eyes. He was used to it on the negotiating table when they (on some occasions) sold their creations as the Silver Six, where the best man walked away with the better deal. He was grateful he didn’t have to get used to it in corporate boardrooms. Although his family estate had its fingers in many pies, he had representatives to deal with such matters and no obligation to be directly, personally involved.

But Jimin wasn’t quite used to animosity from the general public. No, the Silver Six were generally beloved in the streets, if they were recognized at all. This—this was new. This wasn’t a possibility he’d even considered when putting their public appearances together for the month that would follow.

“He doesn’t know what we know,” Jungkook pointed out evenly. 

“No one but the seven of us knows what we know,” he pointed out dryly. 

“Besides,” the younger continued, undeterred, “we aren’t really antagonists, I don’t think. We’re more like pests in his eyes. Thebes, though…”

“You’ve got to wonder what he did to earn the ire of a whole town,” Jimin finished the thought for him as they neared the inn. “Maybe Linney has some answers for us.”

“If the whole town knows why, the Ripleys definitely know why,” Jungkook agreed with him as he parked the car in its spot. “We just have to see if they’re willing to enlighten us.”

They found the Ripleys in the reception area, along with their very own Seokjin. Linney seemed to be getting work done by the receiving desk, while her grandmother—Esther, if Jimin recalled right—seemed to be holding court with the potioneer.

Whatever Linney’s grandmother had to say to him seemed to have their boyfriend intrigued. He was on his haunches, leaning forward towards her even though he didn’t have to, to hear her speak.

Their arrival, however, seemed to interrupt Esther’s flow. 

“You’re back!” Linney graced them with a welcoming smile when she caught sight of their return.

“We didn’t have all too much to do, truly,” Jimin shrugged easily. “It was just a simple pickup.” 

“Your boys, aren’t they?” They heard Esther asking behind them. 

“Two of six,” Seokjin agreed easily, as they moved to join him.

“Six?” Esther sounded briefly perplexed but resolved her confusion quickly enough—certainly quicker than Jimin himself did. “Ah, right. Taehyung. Of course.” 

Of course! 

“This is Jungkook,” he introduced as the younger man reached him first. Jimin joined them not seconds later. “And this is Jimin.” 

“The Earl?” Her eyebrow went up curiously. 

“On paper,” Jimin agreed mildly. “It’s a pleasure, Mrs. Ripley.”

“Well, can’t say we’ve played host to lords and ladies all too much in recent decades,” she snorted softly, nodding at him. “Or at all, truly, until now.”

“Saem’s family wasn’t one for parties, I gather?” Seokjin asked her.

And that, Jimin noted, was a new name.

“I told you their patrician tendencies were near absent, did I not?” Esther tutted at him lightly. 

“Who is Saem?” Jungkook asked the question for them both as they took their seats by their boyfriend.

“The last known master of Teardrop Island,” Seokjin supplied. “Mrs. Ripley here was just going to tell me about him. Pickup go alright?”

“For the most part,” Jimin waved it off with an implicit promise to talk about it later. If Seokjin’s earlier interest had been any indication, he had a feeling this Saem’s story took precedence. “Please, Mrs. Ripley, do continue. We won’t interrupt any further.” 

“As I was telling Seokjin here,” she gestured to said man, “Teardrop Island and the family that lived there, Saem’s family, were besieged by a series of tragedies before that seal went up. They were good people who were dealt a terrible hand.”

Esther shook her head as a fleeting expression of sorrow passed her face. 

“I would say it began with Kira, his wife. They met in the Corvan highlands. It was love at first sight, Saem always said. Kira wasn’t from this part of the world, but she loved him enough to move all this way nevertheless. And they did have twelve wonderful years together, for whatever it was worth. They were a delight to be around too. Them and, a few years later, their daughter, Nara.”

Her smile dimmed as she continued speaking. 

“And then Kira fell ill. It was a malady that our best healers couldn’t treat at the time, although I do believe a cure has been found since. Not long after, his parents passed too. In a short span of two years, they went from a joyous family of five to a somber duo. Saem and his eight-year-old daughter were the only two left. They kept to themselves and the island for the most part after that. Saem withdrew into himself a little. Of what little we saw of Nara, I can only say that the sparkle in her eye had all but vanished. But this was, what? Almost half a century ago? Something like that.”

“It must have been a painful time,” Jimin murmured softly. 

“It was,” Esther acknowledged. “But things got better as time passed. They often do. Nara grew up to be a bright, young woman, and Saem urged her to go see the world, much like he had at her age. And see the world Nara did! Years she spent globetrotting, and every time we saw her in between her trips, more of that sparkle slowly returned to her eyes. And eventually, just like her father did once, she met someone. By the time she agreed to marry the man—Song Jae, his name was—it felt like light and life had returned to that family once again. Jae was exactly the kind of man she needed you see, the kind who understood her family’s devotion to Teardrop and accommodated it. He was good for her.”

“They were just good together and good for each other,” Linney chimed in with a fond smile. “No one who saw them together could argue otherwise. As a child, I always hoped I’d find someone for myself the same way she did.” 

“You actually have to leave Turiven once in a while to accomplish that,” Esther snarked at her granddaughter. “Dare I say you’ve exhausted all your options in this town?” 

“Nan,” she shook her head warningly, so Jimin concluded it was a topic they rehashed often. “Not now.”

“Right,” the elder woman rolled her eyes in a huff before turning back to them. “So, things seemed to be on the up and up for them. Happy family. Healthy child. Even Saem was doing much better at that point. They were visiting the town more often. Nebby had become a fixture in their lives even before the kid had been born, and subsequently, in ours. Their kid was this energetic little tyke who got along with everyone, once he was old enough to do more than babble. After a long time, it felt like things were simply good and that they would continue being good for the island and its devoted little family. They had earned that much.”

Esther sighed heavily. Linney, seemingly done with her work or having decided it less important, crept across the room to sit by her grandmother’s other side. She leaned forward to lend her a reassuring hand.

“As if right on cue, tragedy struck them once again. This time, it came in threes. First, Saem was diagnosed with an incurable malady of the blood. They were pursuing all medical advancements available in the area, but he told me he knew he didn’t have long left. He was fine with it. His daughter was happy and settled in this world. He had met his grandson. Saem was ready to meet Kira again. And then the worst possible thing happened. Nara and Jae lost their son.” 

“No!” Jungkook hissed in dismay under his breath. Jimin quietly lent his own reassuring hand the younger’s way.

“He was a child. Barely six or so. The story was that he was playing by a cliff’s edge right as the windstorm came upon us. Lost to the seas, they said, but Nara and Jae refused to admit lost meant lost. They looked for him everywhere they could. And as the weeks passed, they grew as frantic as they did stubborn. I rather thought the grief had them a little delusional at the time.” Esther sounded rueful. “But I didn’t think it would kill them. It shouldn’t have killed them. An unfortunately fatal collision, the authorities said. The truck driver was lucky to survive, they said. But they were not reckless, Nara and Jae, and their vehicle was top-of-the-line in its time. Even back then, it should have been enough to keep them alive, and yet, there Saem was, presiding over his family’s funeral when it should have been the other way around.”

“I can see why you look at the island’s moniker differently these days,” Seokjin spoke gently. “This all sounds truly horrific, and to happen successively…” 

“Saem didn’t take it well,” she agreed. “The only faint silver lining to the whole thing was the fact that Nara and Jae hadn’t, in fact, been delusional in their grief. They kept to some of the old ways in Teardrop, you see, and lineal lifelines was one such tradition they kept alive.” 

“Lineal lifelines?” Jungkook asked, bemused.

Even Jimin had to reach into his knowledge bank to recall what lineal lifelines were, so out of fashion as they were.

“It’s a spell that connects your life force to an external object,” he explained out loud. “Traditionally, it’s an orb that glows faintly for as long as you live. It was popular back when treachery was as common as it could be because it was how you kept track of your family.”

“It can’t do much more than tell you if the person is alive or dead,” Esther nodded, “which makes it subpar to all the electronic trackers and seeker spells we have around these days. But it told Saem his grandson was alive. Unfortunately, he only had so much time to track him down.”

“Saem died before he could find his grandson,” Seokjin concluded soberly. “Truly, a terrible fate.”

“Quite so,” Esther agreed. “And he trusted near no one in his final days. Saem was convinced his daughter and her husband had been set up. I’m almost certain it was this paranoia that had him resorting to the inheritance seal, but he’d stopped talking to me too, by then. His illness got the better of him eventually, and the seal went up some seventeen years ago now. We’ve all been waiting for his grandson to return ever since. And he’s taken his own time in doing so, hasn’t he?”

“I do sometimes wonder how he grew up,” Linney sighed softly. “He was a sweet kid. Played a lot with Ron and Pen, my younger siblings, when they came into town. I used to babysit them, you know? That was my first ever job.”

“Little Taetae,” Esther acknowledged with a small, fond sigh of her own. “No wonder we saw Nebby in town today. That Nebelung used to follow him around everywhere, like she was his own personal bodyguard.”

“Nan?” Linney looked at her, mystified by the odd comment.

The three of them picked up on the name. 

“Taetae?” Seokjin repeated, the quiver well-hidden from anyone who didn’t know him well enough.

“Song Tae,” Linney confirmed for them. “That was his name.”

“I mean,” Esther disputed, “they used Song Tae because it helped keep his profile quiet. Jae, rather unfortunately, had some friends in high places. It was his only real fault. Using Tae’s real name would have invited one too many questions they didn’t want to have to answer, Saem said. But he was Kim Nara’s heir before he was Song Jae’s heir, and after his parents passed, he was Kim Saem’s heir. Either way, their legacy and the island took precedence, as it inevitably does with the Kims. He was always meant to be Teardrop’s heir.”

Some of the pieces simply fit too well together to not consider the option. Lost at sea. Washed up on the shores. The age. The name. The family name. The cait that took to him on sight.

“What was his name, Mrs. Ripley?” Jimin asked her carefully, desperately, for all that he wasn’t sure what the answer he was desperate to hear was.

“Why, you know that already, don’t you?” Confusion clouded Esther’s eyes. “You brought him here with you, after all.”

“Nan?” Linney interjected once more with a questioning look. “What do—

“Keep up, dear girl,” she chided her granddaughter impatiently. “You said you met him earlier, didn’t you? You said Kim Taehy—“

A sudden shockwave rocked them all into an abrupt silence, but Jimin’s mind was racing. 

“What on earth was that?” Linney stood up to go peer out the windows. “We weren’t due any earthquakes, I don’t think.”

Esther’s expression settled into one that Jimin could only dub as satisfied.

He turned to glance at Seokjin and Jungkook, who were reaching the same conclusions he was if the grim looks were anything to go by.

Seokjin spoke first, and in doing so, he all but read Jimin’s mind. “We need to go to the cliffs. Right now.” 

●⧔☯︎⧕●

“I just don’t feel it, Tae-ah.” Yoongi shook his head in the negative for the third time. “I just feel a wall.”

Taehyung frowned at his answer. That was not what he wanted to hear, not when the seal was pulsing, loudly and steadily, less than two feet away from them.

“A wall that is intent on keeping us out,” Hoseok agreed with a sigh. “Sorry, Tae.”

“Three against one,” Namjoon pointed out lightly. “It’s not us, Tae.”

‘Is it you?’ He asked Yeontan when he realized that asking the others to check a fourth time would offer him nothing different. ‘Is this the work of Chaos? Is that why it’s different to me?’

Yeontan’s answer was also a resounding no.

‘What do you mean ‘no’?’ He argued with the magik, even though Taehyung rationally knew inheritance seals were a product of dark magic, not chaos magic. ‘You are the only anomaly here.’

Chaos was the only new element they were introducing to this equation.

Yeontan once again disagreed with him.

‘Tannie,’ he rebutted desperately, ‘you are—'

The cait síth chose to come forward and insistently rub against his shins right then. He half-wondered if she was able to feel his frustrated mood and if this was her attempt at soothing him. If so, he couldn’t deny that she was perceptive, and that it was sweet of her to try.

“Nebby,” he sighed, crouching down to give the creature the attention it demanded. “Now’s not really a great time. Can you give me a few minutes to figure this out?”

“Can you have your conversations out loud so we can all help figure this out?” Yoongi asked him lightly. 

Taehyung whipped his head up at the question. 

“We know when you are actively talking to Yeontan in your head these days,” Hoseok let him know pleasantly. “You have an expressive face, even when you spar.”

He noted that revelation to deal with it another time.

Nebby butted her head against his palm when his hand stayed still for too long, gently reminding him to continue with his petting. He gave in to her wishes as he spoke to the others.

“I was just trying to see if Yeontan was why this barrier feels different to me.”

“Inheritance seals are dark magic, not chaos magic,” Namjoon negated the idea instantly, just like the logical corner of his brain had.

“I know, Joon,” he sighed, somewhat irked by the fact at this point. “But I was just trying to eliminate the possibilities. The three of you feel nothing different. The most obvious thing that I can bring to this equation that you can’t is Tannie. But Yeontan says this isn’t a matter for Chaos. And without Chaos, my being here is the same as you being here.”

Yeontan chose then to interject, seemingly in complete disagreement with that statement. 

‘Tan?’ He frowned inwardly, letting his hand fall off Nebby’s fur as he made to stand.

“Taehyung?” Hoseok prompted him pointedly. 

“Tannie says—“ He broke off to frown once again. “What exactly are you saying, Tan? How is my being here of any note? You and I both know that’s not possible.”

He felt the cait síth butt her head against his leg before she began making her way to the barrier.

“Yeontan thinks you being here means something?” Namjoon’s eyebrows went up as he questioned Taehyung. 

“I think that’s what Chaos means to imply. I’m still not sure.” He was still waiting for Yeontan to respond.

Nebby, in the meantime, made an impatient meowing sound, and they all turned her way in unison. She seemed to be giving him an expectant look.

“We can’t join you across the barrier, Neb,” he let her know, shaking his head apologetically. “It’s dangerous for us. But we’ll be back here tomorrow! So I’ll see you then, okay?”

“We’ll bring you treats and everything,” Yoongi added cajolingly, even though he made no move to approach her this time. “A whole feast. I hear you like meat.” 

Taehyung reached forward to pet her one last time in farewell. For whatever reason, the cait had really taken to him, and while he had never really kept pets growing up, he’d always gotten along well enough with his fellow strays in the Heights. 

And perhaps it was because she’d been so friendly with him that he didn’t quite anticipate it from her, but Nebby, they all learned then, could be as quick as lightning if she wished it.

Before they could process what had happened, the cait síth had sunk her teeth into his jacket. And then, she yanked at him with all the force she could muster in her tiny, powerful, magical body.

Cait síths, as it so happened, were also much stronger than their forms would have one think likely. 

Taehyung went tumbling towards the seal, and he instinctively brought his free hand up to brace himself for an incoming fall. Everyone seemed to react just a millisecond too late.

He felt a hand try and fail to grab at the back of his jacket.

“Taehyung!”

“Tae!”

“Tae-ah!”

The seal shimmered almost violently when his hand made contact with it. 

Later on, Taehyung would recall the moment as one blinding explosion of color and pure energy. 

And then…

●⧔☯︎⧕●