Chapter Text
Prologue
“We’ve lost standard blocking spells!”
The agitated update echoed through the crumbling corridors of Musée de Laphine, home to the last of the four known runestones. The only one that remained, as of yet, untainted. It was a small mercy, Taehyung thought, that the fifth runestone had been lost to them all.
“Fuck,” Hoseok muttered harshly under his breath, layering the door to the administrative office they’d found refuge in with what wards still worked, as they waited for the last of their group to join them.
“I need to go back, don’t I?” Taehyung mumbled to himself, restlessly toying around with the jagged pendant on his neck. The realization gradually cemented itself in him as he watched the doors with bated breath, waiting.
It was the only answer.
“Come again?” Namjoon turned away from the door and towards him, not having heard him clearly.
“I need to go back, Joonie,” he repeated himself softly, clenching his other hand tightly to feel the blood-soaked hematite pearls resting on his palm dig into his skin. An image of its owner flashed before him. The final image of the man they’d just lost to a megalomaniac’s audacity. The last expression he ever saw gracing Jimin’s face.
Namjoon’s eyes widened at his declaration, straining the cut near his eyebrow. He winced as he saw fresh blood trickle down the side of the scholar’s face.
“Taehy-“
“No,” he shook his head stubbornly before Namjoon could argue against his decision. “No. I have to, Joon. You knew it the second Jinnie fell, just like I did. I shouldn’t have waited until Jungkook and Ji- until they-”
There was a gust of air before Yoongi slid into the dimly lit room, and Hoseok promptly locked it behind the four of them, interrupting their argument. Taehyung wondered just how long it would be before they lost the warding spells as well.
Time was rapidly running out on them.
“How many runes?” Yoongi asked the room at large quietly. It was a common enough question these days.
“At least two,” Namjoon offered back, just as quietly. Realistically, Taehyung knew it would have been anywhere between two and five if all the blocking spells Yoongi knew were obsolete. “We’re down to thirty-three, if that.”
“Which is why we need to pull the plug,” Taehyung gave Namjoon a pointed look.
“Yoon?”
“Pocket Universe, just like the other two,” Yoongi nodded grimly at Hoseok’s questioning glance, rubbing his own blood-stained hands against his trousers. “Pull the plug? What do you mean, pull the plug?”
“Taehyung wants to reset the clock,” Namjoon answered him through gritted teeth. “Even though we all know that calling the ritual risky is an understatement, at best.”
“Is now the time to have an argument about the perils of using chaos, Joon?” Hoseok looked at him incredulously.
“This isn’t about chaos!” Namjoon snapped back at him tersely. “We all know chaos doesn’t hurt him. But it’s a three-magik ritual, Hoba. That could kill him!”
“What’s the alternative?” Taehyung asked him quietly. “We’re as good as dead here anyway! We’ve already lost Jimin. Seokjin. Jungkook. Runes are vanishing by the day.”
“Putting aside my selfish desires entirely,” Yoongi backed him up, “Do we stand a chance in hell at fixing this, Namjoon-ah? It’s not a rune or three anymore. We’ve lost over half the language. Forty-something runes. Just gone. I don’t know that we can fix this.”
“We came here for the stone,” Hoseok sighed, suddenly looking very defeated. “We didn’t get it. We were all but ambushed. And now, we’ve lost- we’ve lost, and we don’t even have the one thing we need to fix this.”
“Not that it was a guarantee we could even do that,” Taehyung nodded emphatically. “The chances of replicating the runestone’s magic to recreate the language? We put it at less than ten percent. This ritual has a higher chance of success. And to give it our best shot, I need all the spiritual power I can get my hands on.”
The chaos magic that had lived within his spiritual essence, his esse, for over two decades now hummed in soft agreement.
“While you still have access to it,” Yoongi hummed thoughtfully.
“Tan agrees,” Taehyung patted his chest gently, acknowledging the wild magic before glancing at the three men who’d come to mean a lot to him over the last three years. And he couldn’t help but think of the three other men who were also on the list. The ones who hadn’t made it that far. “Please, Joon. I can’t…this can’t be how it all ends. You know it can’t.”
“Tae, this ritual…” Namjoon looked at him helplessly. “I know you’re not limited by the orthodoxy. I know you know more about chaos magic than I do. I know- this is beyond even what you’ve explored, Tae-ah. This is- the spiritual cost of this ritual alone could kill you. Invoking all three magiks together? The consequences could be unimaginable. And even if you did succeed, your esse will be…”
“If everything goes as planned, I’ll be shackled for a full year. My core will have time to recover,” he shook his head assuredly. “I accounted for this, remember?”
“Wait, what are you talking about?” Hoseok interjected, bemused. “Your esse’s in danger?”
“First I’m hearing about it,” Yoongi nodded in agreement.
“It’s impossible to avoid. This ritual, it will demand everything of my core. I’m lucky that the cost of Yeontan’s involvement is different. But that already costs me half my core on the regular. When I call upon light and dark magik to join chaos…,” Taehyung shook his head with a small grimace, “this spell is going to be the strongest war hammer you can find banging my esse head on. Doesn’t matter that I’ve been strengthening it for decades now; its integrity will weaken exponentially.”
“The ritual will fray his core,” Namjoon explained further. “Wear. Tear. Regress. We don’t know for sure, but it’ll take quite the hit. It may never heal fully for all I can guess.”
“What other choice do we have?” Taehyung was frustrated. “We’re running out of time, Joon.”
“In ways more than one,” Yoongi glanced at the warded door.
“I don’t know. I don’t!” Namjoon threw his hands in the air. “I just…you could end up dead, and it could be all for nothing! This ritual might not work, and I could lose you too, and-”
“One way or another, this is our last stand, Namjoon-ah,” Hoseok grimly interrupted him. “You saw the men we fought through. There will be twice as many on our way out, and our arsenal grows smaller by the second. Save Tae, yes, but we can’t rely on him and Yeontan forever. We either die fighting them, or we die attempting this ritual.”
“If this ritual is our eleventh-hour miracle? If it’s the only way we bring our family back together again?” Taehyung had never seen a smirk quite as dangerous or grim on Yoongi’s face before. “Then I’m all for it. Fuck it, Joon-ah. If we don’t go big now, we may never get to go home.”
“This is the only card we’ve got left to play,” Taehyung beseeched him one last time; because his mind was already made up. It had been made up for a while now. “I’m going to do this with or without you, but I’d really like for this to be a joint effort, Joon. All of the Silver Six, and me.”
“But we’re not all of-“
Taehyung unfurled his fingers, showing Namjoon the bracelet that rested within them, and with his free hand, he brought out two more similar-looking strings of hematite pearls, a Silver Six staple.
Everyone’s eyes widened at the sight.
“That’s,” Hoseok wavered. “That’s…”
“They made sure it was one of the last things they did,” Taehyung smiled wanly. He’d begun toying with this ritual months ago, after all. They all knew about it. They’d just never believed it could actually come to this. “All three of them. Made sure I’d have every ounce of their spiritual energy reserves available to me, if…well, if-“
“If they weren’t around to help,” Namjoon finished. “If what you had wasn’t enough.”
“Jungkook-ah was using the pearl necklace?” Yoongi considered the necklace and the two bracelets in Taehyung’s palms. The necklace had twice the pearls the bracelet did. He couldn’t help but chuckle forlornly. “Ever the charged-up battery our youngest was, huh?”
“He over-prepared in the best way he knew how,” he agreed with a wistful grin. They hadn’t come to Greca with the thought that they might need to resort to the ritual. But then again, they hadn’t expected to walk in on an ambush either.
“So you have forty fully charged pearls?” Namjoon asked him, eyes calculating as he spoke.
“And mine,” Yoongi shook his head, handing his own spiritual reserves over to Taehyung. “Plus his own ring.”
Hoseok followed suit, pulling a bracelet off his left wrist. “If this works, we won’t really need them anymore, will we? And if it doesn’t, we’re all probably dead anyway.”
“Show me the mechanics of the ritual once more,” he demanded abruptly. “Please. I know I’ve read it a million times, but just for my own peace of mind.”
Taehyung slipped out the paper he had hidden in his inner pocket even as Hoseok huffed at him. “Joon, it won’t be long before they catch up.”
“Hoba, I need this,” Namjoon all but begged him, snatching the paper out of Taehyung’s fingers. “If we are doing this, no room for error, right? Please.”
“I’ll redouble the door wards as best I can,” Hoseok sighed when Taehyung shook his head softly, discouraging further argument. “We’re going to need all the time we can get.”
“I’ll hel-“
“No,” Yoongi held him back, even as Hoseok waved him away. “You need all the energy you have left. Everything we can give you is filtered, Tae. It’ll be about eighty percent as potent as your own energy at best, and you know it.”
Taehyung couldn’t help but frown at Yoongi’s logic. He was right, of course. But it didn’t mean he had to like it.
“Are you ready to do this, Taehyung-ah?” Yoongi gave him a concerned look as the other two men got to work. Namjoon was pacing back and forth, muttering to himself as he went through Taehyung’s notes. Hoseok was by the doors.
He leaned forward to brush off debris from Taehyung’s hair gently. “It’s all the cement and plaster,” Yoongi shook his head with a small smile. “So? How are you feeling? I know it won’t be easy.”
“Do we have a real choice anymore?” He prevaricated with a small shrug.
“Perhaps not. But Tae, remember, it’s not all on you. Okay?” Yoongi reminded him, nudging his shoulder with an encouraging smile. “You’ll come to us the day you wake up in the past. And we’ll help you.”
“Yoon, the lot of you hated me back then,” Taehyung snorted at the suggestion. “I was an untrustworthy interloper amidst your blissfully happy polycule. And if things go right, not an hour from now, you’ll hate me again.”
“I never hated you.”
“You didn’t care for me, then. Same difference. It still took you guys over six months to stare at me with anything but wariness, distrust, or hostility.”
“You were Jimin’s tax write-off and Seok-ah’s security headache,” he huffed fondly. “And a convicted felon, to boot. What was I supposed to do? Offer you pie?”
“I mean, I wouldn’t have said no to pie.”
“I’ll keep that in mind for next time.” Yoongi grinned at him before shaking his head, as if he’d come to a decision. “And I expect you to remind me. That’s an order, Tae-ah. Because you are going to fix this. And we’re all going to be right by your side through it all. Maybe not in the way we’d hoped to be, but we’ll be there all the same. And you better let us do that much.” He gave Taehyung a curious glance. “What is your favorite pie, anyway? I realize I’ve known you three years now, and I’ve never asked once.”
And Taehyung couldn’t hold it against him. The last eighteen or so months of their life had been tumultuous, to say the least.
“You’d think it was strawberry, but it’s actually cherry, believe it or not.” Taehyung chuckled at his lover’s thin ploy to distract him. “I don’t know what I’m going to do if we succeed, honestly. But I will try. I was just a nobody, Yoon. A nobody who got entangled with a bunch of somebodies at the right time. And now…if I could send one of you in my place, it would probably go better. I’m hardly the best choice for this. You would believe Hoba. Or Joon. Not me.”
“Well, that’s just baloney talk,” Yoongi shot him down. “You’re the only one who can do this. So you’re the best choice. You’re the only choice.”
“He’s right, though,” Hoseok had come up behind them, sneaking an arm around his waist. He gave Taehyung an apologetic smile before leaning in to kiss him quickly but thoroughly, as he often did. “I won’t trust a word you say when you go back. I probably won’t even trust the air you breathe. And believe me, I’m sorry about that. But know this much, baby—eventually, I’ll come to love you and care for you very, very much. Just like I did the first time around.”
“My point,” Yoongi gave him a dirty look before refocusing on Taehyung, “is that you aren’t a nobody, Tae-ah. There is no us and you. There’s just us. All of us. We weren’t complete until you came to us.”
“It was meant to be,” Hoseok agreed. “And it will be, again. You’ll ensure it. I just know it.”
“And we’ll be better for it,” Yoongi echoed the sentiment.
“Sure,” Taehyung agreed blithely, going for sarcasm instead of focusing on the words that truly mattered. “I’ll just try to speed through the distrust and wariness only to tell you a fantastical tale you won’t believe even if I wasn’t an interloper amongst you all like I was three years ago. Where could I possibly go wrong?”
Because Taehyung knew that it was the one outcome he’d never be able to bring himself to manufacture artificially. Some things, he’d spent a long time convincing himself as he’d created the ritual with Yeontan, had to happen as the fates willed them to. Love was one of those things.
“Maybe wait until I trust you to leave and return to the manor grounds without me keeping record of it down to the minute,” Hoseok suggested dryly. “That only took, what? Three months?”
“A whole seven months, actually,” he snorted despite himself.
“You’ll find the right opportunity,” Yoongi assured him confidently. “You’ll know when it comes. You forget, Tae-ah. You’re walking in with an advantage.”
“You know us,” Hoseok agreed.
“I could still fuck it up, though,” he pointed out, suddenly somewhat trepidatious about the whole endeavor. He may have come up with this last-ditch effort of a plan, but Taehyung wasn’t the hero type. He loved them, sure, and they loved him too, he knew. But he wasn’t an illustrious member of the Silver Six. Not only was he an ex-convict, his methods were far too unorthodox for their world’s brand of heroism. “And if I do, I’ve just put us all on this same path all over again.”
“Then it’ll bring you right back to this scenario,” Hoseok pointed out, reaching out to massage his shoulder comfortingly. “And you can try again.”
“No!” Namjoon interjected in an alarmed tone before Taehyung could. “He can’t do this twice.”
“Why not?” Yoongi frowned at him, confused. “It’s a time loop, right? Serves to reason you can simply try again. Loop de loop.”
“My esse,” Taehyung reminded him quietly. “The strain. My spiritual quintessence and my conscience won’t be on a loop. We’ll remember everything.”
“Magic like this comes with a steep price,” Namjoon explained, setting down Taehyung’s notes on the ritual to unclasp his own energy reserves. “You can’t avoid paying it.”
“This spell, it’s theoretical. It’s untested. All I have is Tan’s assurance and my confidence to go off of. And everything I know about it says that my quintessence can’t do this twice,” Taehyung agreed with the scholar. “It might barely be able to do this once. The strain—it would and still could almost completely deplete my spiritual core…or kill me along the way.”
“He could probably eventually replete his esse, but it is very likely that it can never do a ritual like that ever again without shattering. We have one shot at this,” Namjoon nodded decisively, handing his spiritual reserves over to him. “One attempt at the ritual. One attempt at the loop. One attempt at fixing this mess.”
“One attempt at bringing them back,” Hoseok murmured.
“And it all rests on me, unfortunately,” Taehyung gave him a hollow smile. And all he had to do to bring them back was lose them all over again. Easy.
“Because you did something no warlock has ever managed to, in recorded history,” Namjoon pointed out sharply. “And you’re doing it again, today.”
“You’re making the impossible possible, Taehyung,” Yoongi gave him an encouraging smile. “You’ve got this, baby. You’re quite literally our last hope.”
“I’m not going to make it easy for you,” Namjoon sighed miserably. “The me from three years ago, I won’t tolerate anything to do with chaos magic or unorthodox methods. I never wanted you to meet him again, Tae-ah. I’ll be drowning in my dogma and Ra-”
“I know,” Taehyung interrupted him gently. “I know, Joonie. I’ll be starting from zero. Less than, even. I’ll have to win you over again.”
“Isn’t it great that you know what’ll work and what won’t?” Yoongi joked lightly.
“Use our distrust in the meanwhile,” Hoseok advised him. “Even if you can’t tell us, point us to the stones. Or egg us on. Do something. Anything. You can rile Namjoon into research, if nothing else.”
“Now let’s get moving.” Namjoon surveyed the room before picking out a gold trinket tray, carelessly dropping its contents on the desk. It was shaped like a lotus leaf and just about had the depth to hold the blood that would be required for the ritual. The sanitation spell was quick.
“Can we offer…” Yoongi trailed off as he lifted his palm.
“No,” Taehyung waved him off with an easy shrug. “It has to be me. I’m the traveler. My blood would be strongest.”
“Here you go, then,” Hoseok handed him his favorite split blade dagger by the handle.
He was almost taken aback by the sudden viciousness when Yoongi pulled him by his shirt to kiss him hard on the mouth. “Come back to me,” he commanded the younger desperately. “To us. Remember, I owe you a pie.”
“Cherry,” he nodded, willing away the tears that were prickling the corner of his eye at the thought of everything (and everyone) he was leaving behind with no guarantee that he’d regain them along the way. Tears weren’t part of the ritual. “I’ll remember.”
“Good.” Yoongi let him go just as abruptly.
“When you succeed, know that we owe you everything,” Hoseok nodded, pulling a pliant Yoongi against him. “For giving us a chance-“
“You would owe me nothing,” Taehyung shook his head fiercely. “If anything, I owe you guys this much. If Jimin hadn’t brought me home to you-”
“We’d have crossed paths anyway,” Namjoon interrupted him flatly, tugging at his wrist to begin clasping the many hematite pearls on his person. Skin contact was the easiest way to pull power from the reserves. “Hobi was right. We were always meant to meet, Tae-ah. Now, we’ve the blood and the energy. We aren’t missing anything, I think.”
Taehyung shook his head mutely before reconsidering. “Well, body, really. Don’t be surprised if my body doesn’t…well, if it’s a sacrifice. I don’t know what happens once I leave, I’ll be honest. To my body or to you guys.”
For all the work he’d put into creating the ritual, he was still uncertain if time was a single, linear line that he was disrupting or if it simply branched as a result of his actions.
“Either we fade, or we fight,” Namjoon shrugged simply, the ‘to death’ going unmentioned. “Shame we won’t get to compare notes, huh?”
Hoseok audibly snorted behind them.
“Wait, if your body is part of the ritual, why are you letting the blood?” Yoongi interjected with a look of confusion. “Doesn’t the conduit work better in you?”
“We aren’t going back to the basics for nothing with this spell. Blood isn’t just the original conduit, Yoon,” Taehyung glanced at the dagger in his hand, “it’s the best conduit there is. Warmer, the better. But for some unfathomable reason, it’s more powerful outside my body.”
Taehyung didn’t need external conduits for magic. He didn’t use spiritually infused weapons or wands. But for this ritual, it had been imperative. Freehand magic, he’d realized early on, would be nigh unreliable when he was calling upon the three magiks simultaneously. Well, in the most technical sense, he was communicating with chaos and with the light and dark magiks via their fellow magik, chaos. But Yeontan claimed spiritual energy offerings differently, as chaos was wont to. So for that part of the ritual, Taehyung had to reach out to the other two magiks directly. Blood had been the ideal conduit for that purpose.
“He’s channeling all the spiritual energy this ritual demands through blood,” Namjoon explained. “Except whatever chaos takes. But flesh and bone aren’t equipped to handle it like the esse or our blood is. His core is barely going to manage it. If he channels this much energy inside his body, he’ll literally explode before the ritual is complete.”
“Yeah, okay. Bloodletting it is,” Hoseok nodded, a little green around the gills at the thought of an explosion of bodily parts.
“Okay,” Taehyung breathed with a sense of finality, calling upon Yeontan silently.
“Good luck,” Namjoon breathed right next to him. “I’ll be passing my energy over to you as you complete the ritual. Everything I can spare.”
He turned to look at the scholar, and in a fit of impulse, he leaned forward to steal one last kiss from his lover before he became a stranger in his life once more.
“This will work, Namjoon,” he whispered fiercely. He cupped a hand around his neck, knocking their foreheads together. “It has to. I’ll bring them back to you. I promise.”
“To us. I know you will, Tae.” Namjoon gripped his waist tightly before pulling apart. “I know you will. You and Tan have never let us down when it mattered.”
“We don’t have long,” Yoongi warned urgently. “They’ll be breaking down those doors any minute now.”
“It shouldn't take me too long, I don’t think,” Taehyung gave the three men before him the brightest smile he could muster, gripping onto his mother’s pendant tightly before letting go and slashing his free wrist with Hoseok’s dagger. This ritual came with no runic spell, after all. It was all chaos. “Showtime, Tannie.”
“We’ll buy you all the time we can,” Hoseok promised him. “Good luck, Tae.”
The chaos within him responded eagerly, spinning in a burst of liveliness Taehyung hadn’t felt from his companion in a long time. As he began feeding the blood pooling in the tray with energy, it felt strange, he thought. While he could feel Namjoon’s steady input of energy, alongside what he was pulling from the many hematite pearls and his own obsidian ring, it was almost as if the magiks were thirsty, lapping up the energy quicker than he could supply it. It was almost as if he needed…
“More,” his voice came out strangled when he spoke, but he hoped Namjoon heard him anyway. “I need more.”
Not one to disappoint, the scholar immediately called out to the other two men in the room, his own practically barreling into Taehyung now. There was no question or hesitation in his decision. “Yoongi! Hoba! Forget the door. We need you here. Now.”
Even as he felt the two familiar if supercharged streams of spiritual energy join Namjoon’s not ten seconds later, it still didn’t feel like it was enough.
“Come on, Tannie,” he gritted out desperately, pulling from the deepest corners of his esse in ways he’d never attempted before, for one final, desperate shot. “Time for us to go back.”
All Taehyung would remember from that moment was an explosion of blinding white.
And then, nothing.
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