Du Guk stood at the rooftop's edge, the wind pulling at his coat like a restless ghost. The city sprawled below—indifferent, glittering, alive. He didn't belong here. Not really. But Nor Ah had changed that.
He could still feel her hands on him. Still smell the lavender ink on her skin, the wine and heat of her breath. Her touch hadn't just marked him—it had remembered him.
And that terrified him.
The tattoo pulsed on his skin now, faint but alive. A fragment of her soul embedded in his flesh. When her needle pierced him, it hadn't been ink alone that bound them. It had been blood. Magic. Something older.
He didn't know if she'd meant to do it.
Didn't matter.
The bond had formed.
And the sleeping part of him—the part he'd worked so hard to bury—had opened its eyes.
He unbuttoned his shirt and peeled it back. The lines she'd inked across his chest shimmered faintly, echoing the runes on her collarbone. But beneath them, his old marks pulsed: the bloodlines of his ancestors. The glyphs of shadow, of thirst, of exile.
Half-vampire. Half-shadowblood. And cursed from both ends.
"Of all people," he muttered, dragging a hand down his face. "Why her?"
She was a mystery that didn't know she was one. A power sealed in human flesh. And now, because he'd kissed her—because he couldn't not—the bond had deepened. If he touched her again… claimed her fully…
He didn't know if he'd survive it.
Worse—he didn't know if she would.
A soft rustle broke his thoughts.
He turned fast, instinct humming through his blood.
"Easy, tiger," came a familiar voice.
Lys emerged from the shadows behind the rooftop stairwell, her boots clacking against the metal grate.
"You've been following me," Du Guk said flatly.
"Not hard," she shrugged. "You leave a pretty trail. Thought I'd check in before you turn your little obsession into a full-blown apocalypse."
He glared at her. "She's not an obsession."
"She's not just human, either." Lys leaned on the ledge beside him. "The Council's watching. You knew that when you touched her."
"I didn't mean to bind her."
"But you did," Lys said. "And now it's unraveling everything."
Du Guk didn't respond. His eyes drifted to the moon. It was bright tonight—too bright. The sky felt stretched, raw. Like something was pressing against the veil between worlds.
"She inked me like she'd done it before," he murmured. "Symbols I haven't seen in centuries. Glyphs of sealing. Blood-anchors. Memory runes."
Lys arched a brow. "You think she's a reincarnated blood priestess or something?"
"I think," he said slowly, "she's something worse."
Lys fell silent.
They both knew what that could mean. There were stories—ancient, whispered among the Old Bloodlines—about those born with the ability to awaken power through flesh. Not through rituals or curses, but through touch. Through pleasure. Through pain.
Inkbinders, they were called.
The most feared kind of Seer.
Because they didn't just see the future—they wrote it into people.
And Nor Ah had just written something into him.
"You're going back to her, aren't you?" Lys asked.
Du Guk didn't answer.
Lys sighed. "Then at least be honest with yourself. If you take her again—if you kiss her, fuck her—the bond completes. There's no undoing it after that. You'll be hers."
His throat tightened. "That's the part I'm afraid of."
Lys tilted her head, her eyes narrowing. "Because you think she'll own you?"
"No." His voice was soft now. "Because I think… she already does."
They stood in silence for a long moment, the city buzzing beneath them.
Finally, Lys stepped back. "Then you'd better prepare her. Because if the Council finds out who she really is—what she's capable of—there won't be a rooftop in this city safe enough to hide you both."
Du Guk nodded absently.
But in truth, he already knew.
The moment Nor Ah touched him, something ancient stirred. Something long buried in the depths of his blood—and deeper still in hers.
He had no choice now.
He would have to go back.
Not just to warn her.
But to protect her from what she didn't yet know she was.
And to face the inevitable truth.
That the girl he couldn't stay away from... was the one who had the power to unravel everything.