The air in the room felt torn open.
Even after the Rose Messengers left, the black petals scattered on the floor hadn’t fully faded, still faintly pulsing like some ill omen that refused to die.
Silent was still holding my arm. His fingertips were so cold they shook.
I knew he wasn’t afraid of me.
He was afraid that— because of one question from me— there’d be no turning back for him.
“Hanna…”
He finally spoke, his voice hoarse in a way no human throat should sound.
“Don’t ask that question again.”
I drew in a long breath. My heart pounded like the Mark had wrapped its hand around it.
“Silent.”
I lifted my head to look at him, my chest burning where the Rosemark lay.
“If… what the Rose said is true…”
“If you and I… really share blood…”
Silent’s pupils trembled.
He looked shattered.
I stared into his eyes. There was everything in them— fear, retreat, guilt, escape, tenderness, pain.
And yet I suddenly felt very calm. As if something that had slept for a thousand years inside me was finally waking.
I took his hand.
“Silent, I don’t care about bloodlines.”
He froze.
My voice echoed strangely clear in that run-down room:
“Remember this—”
I stepped toward him, one step at a time. The Mark burned like it was going to split open.
“When mountains grind to dust, and heaven and earth as one— only then would I dare part from you.”
His breath halted.
He looked at me like I was someone standing up against destiny itself.
There was no pleading in my eyes. No tears. No urge to run.
Only— a choice.
“If you are my blood,” I said softly, “I still choose you.”
Silent opened his mouth, but no words came out.
His throat bobbed. Red flared in his eyes like someone had struck a match in them.
“Hanna…”
He grabbed me, his voice breaking like a man on the verge of tears.
“Do you even know what you’re saying…?”
I suddenly laughed.
Not in mockery. In grief.
“Silent, can you really say you’re not afraid?”
I asked him.
He stared at me—hard.
And in that moment, I saw him—
the man on the battlefield in my past life, kneeling in a sea of roses, crying himself into madness.
He tried to push me away.
“This is the Mark. It’s steering you,” he said hoarsely. “This isn’t your own heart.”
I shook my head.
“I’m lucid.”
“I’m very lucid.”
Right then, a sudden cold wind rushed past the window.
I looked up— and saw something growing on the sill.
A plant.
White, translucent berries, like tears that had crystallized.
It was— mistletoe.
Silent’s pupils constricted to the limit.
“…The Rose is testing you,” he whispered.
Mistletoe doesn’t grow indoors. It doesn’t belong to the normal world.
It’s something fate drops into your life.
I reached out and touched the berries.
They were cold, clear— like condensed parasitic energy made alive.
As the branches of mistletoe extended toward me, I suddenly understood—
This was a symbol.
Mistletoe clings to trees, steals nourishment, and in the end, kills its host.
Silent stared at me, pleading in his eyes.
“Don’t touch it.”
I didn’t listen.
I lifted my hand. The shadow of the mistletoe fell across my palm.
“Silent, do you know what mistletoe is?” I asked quietly.
“It lives by parasitizing the tree; and in the end, it kills it.”
I looked up at him.
“Just like you and me.”
He went stiff all over.
For the first time, genuine pleading pain appeared in his gaze.
I said the words that had been pressing on my heart:
“If you live, I live. If you die… I die with you.”
Silent’s hands clamped down on my shoulders.
“Don’t say things like that…”
He was almost snarling.
“You have no idea what price you’ll pay!”
Something frozen inside me began to melt.
“Silent.”
I spoke his name softly, as if placing my life in his hands.
His shoulders shook hard— the kind of trembling you get when you’ve pushed yourself to the very limit.
But I still heard it—
the sound of a crack finally breaking.
I raised my hands, held his face, and pressed my forehead to his. The Mark in my chest pounded like it was going to explode.
“I choose you.”
Just three words.
But they hacked straight through a thousand years of frozen fate.
Silent finally broke.
It was like something inside him was ripped apart— all that control, all that fear, all those lines he refused to cross—
collapsed in an instant.
He pulled me into his arms.
It wasn’t a hug.
It was the way someone grabs the last breath of air when they’re drowning.
“…Hanna…”
His voice was like a shattered gale.
“You can’t choose me… The Rose will never—”
“I’m not asking the Rose.”
I looked up at him, straight into those blood-red eyes.
“I’m only asking my own heart.”
His breathing went wild.
The shadow of the mistletoe swayed over us, as if fate itself were watching— mocking, or blessing.
Once again, I said:
“Silent, I choose you.”
The next second—
everything he’d been holding back crashed over us like a breaking storm.
He kissed me.
It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t tentative.
It was a kiss fuelled by hunger that had waited a thousand years, endured a thousand years, and burned a thousand years in silence.
In that moment, I wrapped my arms around him, gave myself entirely to a decision I could never undo—
our kiss beneath the mistletoe, an oath of parasitic love and shared doom.
The mistletoe swayed softly in the wind, as if whispering:
—Host and parasite. —Life and death. —Fate and sin. —Love and ruin.
Under its witness, our lips met for the first time.
And I knew—
this kiss was rebellion against destiny. And a declaration of war on the world.
Just then— the shadows in the room moved.
The three Rose Messengers appeared again.
But this time…
they looked different.
The first—
draped in a bone-white cloak etched with floral sigils, a collarbone carved with roses hanging at his chest.
The second—
too tall to be human, with shadowed limbs beneath his robe, like spider legs— or tree roots.
The third—
the smallest, shorter than the others, a pair of glowing eyes in black mist, like a child— or an old man.
Silent instantly stepped in front of me.
“Back. Hanna—”
I clutched the back of his shirt.
The three Messengers spoke as one:
“The Rose has seen the truth.”
I froze.
Silent’s muscles went rigid.
Their voices cut like blades:
“The Silent One and the girl bearing the Rosemark…
—do not share blood.”
My heart thudded hard.
It was as if someone had yanked the spine out of Silent’s body.
The second sentence fell heavier:
“The one whose blood truly echoes with the girl bearing the Mark… is someone else.”
Cold crept up my back.
Silent lowered his head, like a man waiting for execution.
I lifted mine, my voice trembling:
“Then… whose blood… truly binds to mine?”
The threefold shadows of the Messengers twisted around the room, circling us like ancient judges.
Their gaze fell on the mistletoe rooted on the windowsill— that symbol of fate.
Wind slid in through cracks in the world. The white fruit quivered, casting a weak, deadly glow.
The smallest Messenger, with the oldest voice, spoke:
“The Rose has used the mistletoe as a mirror.”
His voice sounded like vines forcing their way through stone.
“It clings to his life, follows him like a shadow. Your destinies are entangled— thus it presents as ‘blood.’”
I stared, stunned.
Silent, too, seemed nailed in place.
The Messenger raised a long, bone-white finger, pointing at the mistletoe.
“It mimics the host’s pulse… and the parasite’s heartbeat.”
The tall Messenger continued:
“In the rhythm of Fate— the two cannot be told apart.”
In other words—
The “blood reaction” between me and Silent was created by the mistletoe.
The mistletoe parasitizes Silent. My Mark parasitizes destiny.
The Rose had deliberately knotted the three of us together—
creating a false illusion of shared blood.
Silent spoke in a low voice:
“…So you were wrong.”
The empty hollows of the Messengers trembled faintly.
“We are not wrong.
—The Rose wanted you to be wrong.”
The room dropped a degree.
Pain stabbed through my chest again— not in the Mark. In my actual heart.
So it wasn’t a coincidence. Not a mistake.
It was all arranged.
The moment the mistletoe appeared, I thought it was a symbol the world had given me.
It wasn’t.
It was a trap.
The final words fell like a knife:
“With false blood… She tests true hearts.”
I sucked in a sharp breath.
Silent’s whole body seemed to break in silence. His shoulders shook imperceptibly.
He’d never been afraid of the idea of blood ties.
He was afraid that I would abandon him because of it.
I knew that.
And I hadn’t.
I lifted my head, letting my fingertips trace his cheek.
“Silent.”
I called his name softly.
His gaze was pulled back to me. Red glimmered faintly in his eyes again.
Then—
I repeated the words already carved into our fate:
“I don’t care about bloodlines.”
His breath caught.
I stepped forward, letting the mistletoe’s shadow fall across the Mark on my chest.
“When mountains grind to dust, and heaven and earth as one—
only then would I dare part from you.”
Silent’s expression shattered.
Like a thousand-year ice sheet cracking wide open.
I knew what that promise meant to him.
It meant:
I choose him. I’m willing to stake my fate on him. I am willing to be the mistletoe— to cling to him until the very end.
The Messengers turned to me in unison.
One of them spoke quietly:
“Since the choice is made…
the trial enters its next layer.”
My heart pounded so hard it hurt.
Next layer?
What does that mean?
At that moment, a flood of silver moonlight poured in from beyond a rift.
It wasn’t normal moonlight— it was too cold, like it came from some older world far beyond this sky.
The Messengers proclaimed as one:
“The one whose blood truly echoes with the girl of the Rosemark—
step forth.”
The moonlight cut the darkness, falling upon a lone silhouette.
Silver hair. Blue eyes. Pointed ears.
The shadow of the dark night in his blood.
The one I thought would always keep his distance from us—
Seitheil stood in the light.
Silent whirled around, his voice erupting like a beast’s roar:
“Seitheil! Don’t you—”
But Seitheil only looked at me.
And in that look there was no triumph, no satisfaction—
only something buried in his bones:
a fate he could no longer avoid.
He stepped out of the light and walked toward us.
The Messengers bowed their heads.
“Last blood of the Dark Night royal line—
elder brother to the girl bearing the Rosemark.”
Silent froze, as if struck by lightning, staggering half a step back.
The breath left my lungs.
Seitheil stopped before me and spoke softly—
not like a lover, not like a stranger.
But like—
“…Little sister.”
The world went silent.
Even the mistletoe stopped moving.
Silent’s face looked torn open. In his eyes I saw—
pain, fury, fracture, guilt… and loss.
I knew he wanted to rush over in that moment.
And I knew he couldn’t.
Because fate had drawn its line around the three of us.
The shadow of the mistletoe fell between us— host, parasite, and the true bloodline.
And I knew—
this tangled knot of blood and fate was only just beginning.
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and then Add to home screen.