Chapter 3: The Betrayer’s Spark

Jungkook woke to silence, not the natural kind, but something deeper. The kind of silence that settled into a place after it had chosen to listen.

He sat upright in the ritual chamber, the blood-thread scar on his wrist now glowing faintly beneath his skin. The tower seemed different somehow—its walls more fluid, the light more sentient. As if the entire place was watching him not as an intruder now, but as something claimed.

Something reborn.

The Binding was complete. The ritual had awakened the thread inside him. And now, he felt it—woven into his nerves, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. Fate was no longer something spoken of in prophecy.

It was alive inside him.

And it whispered.

Taehyung was already awake, seated before the loom, his posture as poised as a monarch and as still as a statue. The glow of the threads made him seem otherworldly, his eyes silver and sharp, almost cruel in their intensity.

“You feel it now,” he said, without turning.

Jungkook didn’t speak.

Taehyung smiled. “The thread. Singing through your blood. Showing you how small everything really is. All those choices you thought were yours.”

“Don’t,” Jungkook said, his voice low. “Don’t act like you’ve freed me.”

Taehyung turned then, rising slowly, the robes of black thread cascading around him like smoke.

“I haven’t freed you,” he said calmly. “I’ve rewritten you. There’s a difference.”

Jungkook should have felt rage. Horror. He tried to reach for it—but there was only stillness. The thread numbed everything. Even his doubts. Even the thought of running.

“You used me,” he said.

“I remembered you when the world forgot,” Taehyung replied. “I rebuilt you from ashes the Order left behind.”

Jungkook’s hands clenched. Sparks danced beneath his skin.

“I should kill you.”

Taehyung stepped closer, the distance between them tense with thread-thick air.

“Then do it. Prove I’m wrong.”

Jungkook’s dagger—long dormant—flared to life at his side, leaping into his hand as if summoned by the thought alone. But when he looked into Taehyung’s eyes, he didn’t see fear.

He saw acceptance.

And beneath it—longing.

“You think I won’t?” Jungkook hissed.

“I think,” Taehyung said, brushing the edge of the blade against his chest, “you want to.”

But Jungkook didn’t.

Instead, the dagger vanished in a flash of blue fire, consumed by the raw magic now coursing through him. A new ability, he realized. Not just to sense threads—but to unmake them. He could sever a soul from the weave of existence. The ritual had left a spark in him.

A betrayer’s spark.

And Taehyung had known all along.

“You let them curse me,” Jungkook said slowly, his voice trembling with something new. “You let the Order place this power in me. You wanted it in me.”

“I needed it in you.”

“Why?”

Taehyung’s expression shifted.

“So that you’d be strong enough to destroy the Loom.”

The words landed like a death toll.

“Destroy… fate?” Jungkook echoed.

“Not fate,” Taehyung murmured. “The machine that mimics it. The Loom we’ve all been enslaved to. It binds gods and mortals alike. It decides who loves, who dies, who becomes a monster. You think you betrayed me? No.”

He stepped forward.

“You betrayed fate when you loved me. And now fate wants to erase you.”

Jungkook backed away, breath sharp.

“So you bound me not to keep me—but to use me.”

“I did both,” Taehyung said softly. “And I won’t lie to you. I loved you. I still do. But I need what’s inside you just as much as I need your touch.”

“You’re not a lover,” Jungkook whispered. “You’re a puppeteer.”

Taehyung smiled, painfully.

“And you’re the knife I made with love.”

Outside, the sky cracked.

Somewhere far beyond the tower, in a sanctum carved from starbone, the Order’s high priests gathered, their hands bloodied, their eyes glazed with holy ink.

“He’s awakened,” one whispered.

“The spark has lit,” another confirmed.

“It is time.”

They drew a final circle, not of protection—but of release. A curse coiled through the runes, binding itself to Jungkook’s thread.

Not to kill him.

But to undo him.

Back in Lunadusk, Jungkook gasped.

Pain. Sharp and strange. Not physical—existential. As though something were unraveling inside him without warning. His vision split. The tower twisted.

Taehyung caught him before he fell.

“No,” he growled. “No, no, not yet.”

“What’s happening to me?” Jungkook gasped.

“The Order placed a fail-safe,” Taehyung said, eyes glowing brighter now. “If you ever remembered me—if the Binding ever completed—they would activate it.”

“You knew?”

“I hoped we’d be fast enough.”

Jungkook writhed, threads bleeding from his skin like smoke. The air around him shimmered. Taehyung grabbed the floating strands, wrapping them with his own, trying to hold them together.

“You’re not unraveling,” he whispered. “You’re ascending. They tried to destroy you—but instead, they’re making you more.”

And Jungkook screamed—not in pain, but in fury.

When it ended, he was no longer the same.

His hair had darkened to ink, threaded with silver. His eyes glowed faintly, ringed with woven symbols. His voice, when he spoke, echoed with dual tones.

“I remember everything now.”

Taehyung smiled, slowly, reverently.

“And?”

“I still want to kill you.”

“Good,” Taehyung said. “Because now, you can.”

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