The First Night Hunt
1680 Words
Written By:
Authoress Racheal❤️
*Chapter 5: 🔥🔥The First Night Hunt🔥🔥
****{Joseon Palace, Inner Gardens, Dusk}****
The sun bled out behind the palace walls, and with it, the last of the safety.
Seo-yeon hated dusk. It was the hour when light and shadow argued, and her shadow always won. It stretched long and restless across the stone, pulling at her ankles like a child begging to be let out.
“Stay close,” Tae-wook said. He didn’t look at her when he said it. His eyes were on the gardens, on the dark spaces between the plum trees. Sword drawn, shoulders tight.
He didn’t like this either. Good. Fear kept you sharp.
They moved in silence. Two guards followed ten paces behind, torches flickering. The king had given them permission to hunt, but not to disturb the court. So they worked in the dark, like ghosts chasing a ghost.
The air was wrong. Too still. Even the crickets had gone quiet.
Seo-yeon felt it first in her chest. A cold that had nothing to do with the night. The kind of cold that lived in graves. Her shadow pressed tighter against her legs, trembling.
“It’s here,” she whispered.
Tae-wook didn’t ask how she knew. He just nodded and shifted his stance.
The torches dipped. One went out.
“Wind,” one guard said, voice too high. “Just wind.”
But there was no wind.
From the darkness between the trees came a sound. Wet. Ripping. Like cloth tearing in slow motion. Like skin pulling away from muscle.
One of the guards made a choked sound and stepped back. His torch fell.
The second guard didn’t scream. He just stood there, staring at something Seo-yeon couldn’t see yet. His eyes went wide, then empty. His shadow detached from his feet and rose, writhing, as if trying to run.
It didn’t get far.
A shape stepped out of the dark. Faceless. Limbs too many, too long. Where its mouth should be, a void that drank light. And from that void came the sound again. That wet, ripping sound.
The guard’s shadow tore in half.
He collapsed without a sound.
Seo-yeon’s breath caught. She’d seen death before. But this was different. This was unmaking.
“Back!” Tae-wook shouted, shoving her behind him.
He moved fast, sword flashing. The blade passed through the Wraith’s arm, and the thing shrieked. The sound wasn’t human. It was the sound of a thousand whispers dragged over broken glass. It clawed at the inside of your skull.
Seo-yeon dropped to her knees. Her shadow was already crawling up her arm, eager and terrified at once. She let it come.
Pain bloomed behind her eyes. The cost of calling it in the light.
The shadow wrapped around her forearm, forming a blade. It pulsed, hungry.
The Wraith turned on her.
It remembered her.
It lunged.
Tae-wook intercepted, catching its wrist with his blade. The metal screamed against something that wasn’t metal. Sparks flew, blue and wrong.
“Run!” he yelled at the remaining guard. “Get the alarm!”
The guard didn’t move. He was staring at Seo-yeon’s shadow-arm, at the way the darkness clung to her skin like it belonged there.
“Now!” Tae-wook roared.
The guard ran.
Seo-yeon pushed herself up. Her legs shook. Every second the shadow was out, it felt like someone was scraping her memories with a dull knife. She could feel her childhood slipping, fraying at the edges.
She raised her shadow-blade.
The Wraith hissed and surged forward.
Time slowed.
She saw it all: the way Tae-wook’s jaw clenched, the way his eyes flicked to her for half a second before he attacked, the way the Wraith’s void-face tilted like it was smiling.
She struck.
The shadow-blade met the Wraith’s chest.
It didn’t cut flesh. There was no flesh.
It cut something deeper.
The Wraith shrieked again, louder this time. The gardens shook. Plum blossoms fell from the trees in a silent, white rain.
And then it dissolved into smoke, retreating back into the dark.
Silence fell.
Seo-yeon collapsed to her knees, the shadow-blade dissolving back into her. Cold sweat soaked her hanbok. Her head felt empty, like someone had scooped out a piece of her and left a hole.
Tae-wook was at her side in an instant. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head. Couldn’t speak.
He looked past her, at the dead guard. At the empty space where his shadow should be. His jaw tightened.
“Four now,” he muttered. “Four men.”
Seo-yeon forced herself to look up. “It’s getting bolder. It attacked us directly this time.”
“Because you hurt it,” Tae-wook said. “You can wound it.”
She didn’t answer. She was staring at her hand. The skin was pale, almost translucent. A vein near her thumb had turned black, like ink under the skin.
Tae-wook saw it too.
“What did it take?” he asked quietly.
Seo-yeon swallowed. “The taste of peaches. My mother used to give me peaches in summer.”
His expression darkened. “That’s the cost?”
She nodded. “It gets worse the longer I fight. If I keep this up, I’ll forget her face.”
Tae-wook said nothing for a long moment. Then he took off his outer robe and draped it over her shoulders. It was warm. Too warm. Like he’d been holding it against his chest to keep it from getting cold.
“You won’t fight alone,” he said. “Not anymore.”
Seo-yeon looked up at him, surprised.
He avoided her eyes. “Don’t get sentimental. You die, the Wraith kills more men. That’s all.”
She almost believed him.
Almost.
****{An Hour Later, Palace Archives}****
The archives were the oldest part of the palace. Stone walls, no windows, air thick with dust and the smell of old paper.
Seo-yeon sat at a low table, a single lantern casting long shadows across the floor. Her shadow stayed close, subdued after the fight. Even it was tired.
Tae-wook stood by the door, watching her.
“You said your mother studied the Wraiths,” he said. “Where?”
Seo-yeon ran her fingers over the table. “Here. The forbidden section. Before they burned it.”
“They didn’t burn everything.”
She looked up, surprised. “What do you mean?”
Tae-wook stepped forward and pulled a stone loose from the wall behind him. Behind it was a small alcove. Inside, a box of wood, untouched by fire.
Seo-yeon’s breath caught. “How did you—”
“I look for things people try to hide,” he said. “It’s my job.”
He set the box on the table and opened it.
Inside were scrolls. Old, brittle, written in her mother’s hand.
Seo-yeon’s hands shook as she picked one up. The ink was faded, but she could still read it.
_“The Veil Wraiths are not of this world. They are what remains when a soul is denied death. They hunger for shadows because shadows are the last piece of a soul that remains after the body dies.”_
Her throat tightened.
Tae-wook leaned over her shoulder to read. His presence was warm, solid. Too close.
“Keep reading,” he said.
She did.
_“They can be hurt by shadows that remember. A shadow that remembers its owner, that refuses to forget, can become a blade. But the cost is high. Every strike takes a piece of the owner. First the senses. Then the memories. Then the self.”_
Seo-yeon closed her eyes.
So that was it. Every time she fought, she paid. And one day, there would be nothing left to pay with.
“Your mother knew,” Tae-wook said. “She knew what it would do to you.”
“She thought it was the only way to stop them,” Seo-yeon whispered. “She thought if I could control it, I could protect people.”
“And you can,” Tae-wook said.
Seo-yeon looked up at him. “At what cost?”
He didn’t answer right away.
Then he said, “I’ll make sure you don’t have to pay it alone.”
Before she could respond, the lantern flickered.
The temperature dropped.
Seo-yeon’s shadow hissed and retreated under the table.
Tae-wook’s hand went to his sword.
From the darkness behind the shelves, something stepped forward.
Faceless. Wrong.
The Wraith had followed them.
Seo-yeon stood, pushing the scrolls aside. “It can’t be here. The archives are warded.”
“The wards are old,” Tae-wook said. “And it’s hungry.”
The Wraith moved fast. Too fast.
It lunged for Seo-yeon, and she barely had time to throw herself to the side. The scrolls scattered, pages tearing.
Tae-wook met it head-on, sword flashing. The blade bit, and the Wraith screamed.
Seo-yeon scrambled to her feet, reaching for her shadow.
It wouldn’t come.
She’d used too much already. Her body was empty, drained.
The Wraith backhanded Tae-wook across the room. He hit the wall with a crack that made Seo-yeon’s stomach drop.
“Tae-wook!”
He didn’t move.
The Wraith turned on her, void-face lowering.
Seo-yeon had no weapon. No shadow.
She had nothing left but herself.
She thought of her mother. Of the taste of peaches. Of the way Tae-wook had draped his robe over her shoulders without being asked.
She thought of the one thing the Wraith couldn’t take.
She stepped forward.
“If you want me,” she said, voice shaking but clear, “come and take me.”
The Wraith hesitated.
And then the door burst open.
Guards flooded the room, torches blazing.
The Wraith shrieked and dissolved into smoke, retreating into the walls.
Seo-yeon collapsed, breathing hard.
Tae-wook pushed himself up, blood at the corner of his mouth. He looked at her, really looked at her, and for the first time, she saw something in his eyes that wasn’t suspicion.
It was fear.
Not of her.
For her.
- Writer
