The touch of the demon's hand was ice-cold, yet where his skin met Mok's, a searing heat erupted. It wasn't the heat of a fire; it was the heat of a brand.
Mok tried to pull away, his modern mind screaming danger, but his body refused to move. The crimson eyes of the creature held him captive, acting as a bridge between the "now" and the "then."
"Your name..." Mok wheezed, the air in the cave turning thick as honey. "The villagers... they called you a monster."
The demon's lips curled into a bittersweet smile. "I have been many things to many people, Mok. A god, a curse, a nightmare. But to you," he leaned in, his white hair brushing against Mok's forehead, "I was simply Kael."
As Kael whispered the name, the cave walls began to dissolve. The smell of the damp earth and blue lilies vanished, replaced by the scent of jasmine and burning incense. The ground beneath Mok shifted from cold stone to polished dark wood.
_Five Hundred Years Prior_
Mok didn't just see the past; he was there.
He was no longer Mok, the stressed project manager in a cheap suit. He was Myn,
a young scholar-monk living in the very valley his company now sought to destroy. The "Emerald Valley" wasn't a resort site; it was a sacred sanctuary.
In this memory, the sun was setting, painting the sky in bruises of purple and gold. Myn was sitting by a stream, washing the ink from his brushes. He heard a splash—not of a fish, but of something heavy.
Struggling through the reeds, he found a man. Or what looked like a man.
Kael, back then, didn't have white hair. It was raven black, soaked in blood. He had been hunted by "Witch-Eaters"—mercenaries who used dark talismans to track supernatural beings. Kael's side was torn open, revealing not just flesh, but a shimmering, dark energy that pulsed like a dying coal.
"Don't touch me," the Kael of the past had hissed, his eyes flickering between human brown and demonic red. "I will rot your soul just by looking at you."
But Myn, stubborn and kind to a fault, hadn't listened. He had reached out—exactly as the demon was reaching out now in the cave—and pressed a hand to the wound.
_The Pact of the Moon_
The vision shifted rapidly, like pages of a book caught in a gale.
Mok saw months of secret meetings. He saw Myn hiding Kael in the very cave where he now stood. He saw them talking for hours about things the villagers would never understand—the way the stars sounded when they sang, the loneliness of immortality, and the fragility of human life.
"Why do you stay?" Kael had asked Myn in the memory. They were sitting under a full moon, the same moon that was currently shining above the cave. "You are a creature of light. I am a shadow that has learned to walk."
"Because shadows cannot exist without light," Myn had replied, his voice a perfect echo of Mok's own. "And I would rather be in the dark with you than in the sun without you."
Then came the tragedy.
The village elders had found out. They didn't see a scholar and a lonely spirit; they saw a "corrupted human" and a "beast." They used witchcraft—the same ancient, jagged magic that Mok's team had encountered earlier that week—to trap Kael.
They forced Myn to choose: denounce the demon and live, or be bound to him in death.
Mok felt the phantom pain of a blade across his chest. He felt Myn's final breath as he slumped against Kael, his blood staining the demon's black robes. He heard Kael's scream—a sound that tore the sky apart and turned his hair white in a single night of grief.
"I will wait," Kael had roared as the elders sealed the cave with a curse. "I will wait until the stars align and your soul finds its way back to this earth. I will wait until you recognize the heart you left behind."
The Awakening
The vision snapped.
Mok gasped, his lungs burning as he returned to the present. He was back in the cave, shivering on the floor. Kael was still there, his hand still resting on Mok's cheek, his expression one of agonizing hope.
"You remember," Kael stated. It wasn't a question.
Mok looked at his own hands. They were trembling. He looked at the demon—the monster the villagers feared, the 'legend' his company wanted to pave over with concrete.
"I remember the jasmine," Mok whispered, his voice cracking. "And I remember... the way you looked at the moon."
Kael's red eyes softened, a single tear—thick and dark—rolling down his pale face. "Five hundred years, Myn. I have watched this forest grow and die. I have watched your village turn into a city. I have watched them come to scar this land again and again. But I didn't care about the land. I only cared that you were out there, somewhere, not knowing who you were."
Mok stood up, his legs shaky. The corporate world felt like a dream now, and this nightmare felt like the only truth. But a sudden realization hit him.
"The witchcraft," Mok said, remembering the attacks on his team. "The village elders... they still know, don't they? They aren't trying to protect the forest from us. They're trying to keep you in here. Or keep me out."
Kael's face hardened, the demonic shadow behind him flickering against the cave walls. "They know the bloodline. The descendants of those who killed you still guard the seal. And they realize that if we are reunited, the curse that keeps me trapped here will break."
Outside, a low, rhythmic drumming began to echo from the direction of the village. The hunt had begun.