Chapter 2: The Ritual Wounds

The threads had stopped spinning.

In the heart of Lunadusk Tower, the loom stood dormant for the first time in a century. Its threads, normally alive with movement and magic, now hung in the air like veins cut mid-flow. The tower held its breath, as though afraid to witness what came next.

Across from the loom, Jungkook stared at his own trembling hands.

“I shouldn’t be here,” he whispered.

“You never truly left,” Taehyung replied.

The silver-eyed Threadweaver stood barefoot upon the ancient ritual circle etched into the blackstone floor. Around him, hundreds of glowing strands hovered—some vibrating, others pulsing like living nerves. A few threads had begun to reach toward Jungkook, as if they remembered him. As if they wanted him.

He flinched when they brushed against his skin.

“I feel like I’m being unraveled,” he said.

“You are,” Taehyung murmured, stepping closer. “But only to be rewoven.”

They stood within the Loom Chamber—a place not just of magic, but of memory. The stones here held echoes, and as Jungkook walked, he heard them. Footsteps layered over his own. Laughter. Breathless promises.

“I love you,” a younger voice said in the dark.

His voice. Saying it to Taehyung, years ago.

He turned sharply. “That was me?”

Taehyung gave him a slow, nodding smile. “It was always you.”

“But I don’t… feel like that person anymore.”

Taehyung’s gaze sharpened. “Then let me bind you to him again.”

Jungkook should have run.

The Order had warned him of this. They said Threadweavers didn’t seduce with beauty or lies—but with memory. With longing. They could twist what you missed into something holy.

And yet, he stepped into the circle.

The moment he did, the air thickened. Taehyung raised his hand, and a blood-thread snapped from his wrist, slashing open Jungkook’s palm. The pain was sharp but not cruel—ritualistic.

“Binding is not a spell,” Taehyung whispered. “It’s a truth spoken in blood.”

He sliced his own palm, the silver of his blood shimmering unnaturally, as if alive.

The two wounds met in a single clasp of hands.

Light flared—deep red, like dusk devouring the sun.

Jungkook gasped. The world dropped away.

He fell—not in body, but in soul.

Fell into memories he hadn’t made. Lifetimes where he and Taehyung danced through kingdoms as lovers, enemies, gods. Fell into voices, into pain, into pleasure so ancient it blurred into agony.

He saw himself stabbing Taehyung.

He saw himself kissing him under thunder.

He saw Taehyung weeping in a burned orchard, alone, clutching a thread woven into the shape of Jungkook’s name.

It was too much.

He screamed.

Outside the ritual circle, the threads writhed in ecstasy.

The Loom responded, accepting the shared pain as sacrifice. Its dead spin resumed—only slower. Hungrier.

Taehyung’s face twisted with both triumph and restraint. His hands trembled, but he held tight.

“You’re remembering,” he whispered, voice thick with something close to desperation.

Jungkook’s knees buckled. He collapsed forward, head pressed against Taehyung’s chest. Sweat poured down his neck. The burn of the Binding Thread scorched through his spine.

“I don’t… understand what we were,” he gasped. “Why did I betray you?”

Taehyung’s voice darkened.

“Because fate always demands a wound.”

He lifted Jungkook’s face gently with a blood-slicked hand.

“And love is just the prettiest place to put one.”

Later, after the ritual ended, they lay in the center of the loom’s glow, bodies heavy with magic and exhaustion. Their wrists bore twin scars now—silver-thread etched like tattoos, pulsing faintly.

“You said you didn’t force this,” Jungkook murmured, eyes half-lidded.

“I didn’t,” Taehyung replied.

“You guided me to it.”

“I reminded you.”

Jungkook turned toward him, and in the shifting glow of the loom, his gaze sharpened.

“You’re obsessed with me.”

Taehyung smiled, unapologetic.

“I am.”

“And if I try to leave?”

“I won’t stop you,” Taehyung said, “but the thread might.”

He reached out, trailing his fingers down Jungkook’s bare shoulder. A faint thread connected them, visible now only in moonlight. It vibrated in response to his touch.

“You were never mine because I wanted you to be,” Taehyung murmured. “You were mine because the universe couldn’t bear you being anyone else’s.”

That night, while Taehyung slept, Jungkook stood at the tower’s edge, staring at the forest below.

The Binding had changed him.

He could feel the world differently now. The threads of people moving beyond the tower. The hum of fate, pulsing through air like invisible current. It thrilled him… and terrified him.

His palm still throbbed from the ritual.

And deep in his chest, something pulsed like a second heartbeat.

He wasn’t just Moonbound.

He was being rewritten.

“Taehyung,” he whispered, watching the stars. “What have you done to me?”

Far behind him, in the stillness of the loom chamber, a silver thread moved on its own, weaving his name into something darker.

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