bsky post here | twitter thread here | ao3 link here

sope centric ot7 | 3.9k | songfic, magic/fantasy, witches, spirits

—

This story was inspired by A Soul with No King by AURORA

—

Call my name.

Hoseok looks up from the mystic guide he’s spent most of the day reading and frowns at the sudden whisper of voices that swirl around him before they disappear as quickly as they came. They’re familiar, and yet he struggles to place where he’s heard them before.

When he lets out a few threads of his own magic, there’s nothing there — no residual lines for him to trace.

It doesn’t help that deep inside of him, something stirs. The part of him that he’s locked away and successfully ignored for most of his lifetime, now shifts noticeably.

He wastes no time to drive it back, using his magic to reinforce the runes he had in place for good measure, and prepares to turn back to the mystic guide on the table in front of him. Further up the table is a long black staff, fading magic glinting off it. A client brought it to him, hoping to commission him for some enchantment when they’d apparently found it while clearing out an old relative’s house.

Staffs as magic weapons are rare in this time; Hoseok is used to working with more flashy guns, bows, and swords, even a few scythes. He’d initially been excited to see and work with such a unique weapon. That excitement quickly faded when it took him much longer than usual to identify the magic that the former owner of the staff used. He’d spent a few days going through the various mystic guides that filled his shelves, the magic he detected in the staff unfamiliar and barely responsive to his armament magic.

Immense relief echoed through him when he finally narrowed what he sensed down to a rare type of fire magic, only to bring him back to where he started when he then realized that it held traces of dark magic. A number of questions surfaced as the relief turned to dread, and that was the first time he felt anything from what he’d locked deep within. One sleepless night had him tempted to send the staff back to his client, and he’d hurried down from his bedroom to his workshop to wrap the staff up and prepare to summon the client the next day.

But Hoseok eventually decided to keep trying. He’s never failed before, and he didn’t intend to start with this staff.

Now, a quiet sigh escapes as his gaze glides past the mystic guide he’s been poring over to rest on the staff where it lies. He unconsciously lets tendrils of his own magic swirl between his fingers, tracing the dips and grooves in the staff with his eyes.

Normally, once he’s determined the magic that has been in any weapon, he cleanses it of any lingering magic. Instead, he’s spent the past few days going through his mystic guides over and over, including the one in front of him, to see if there is a way to cleanse the staff. The longer he reads, the more the answer he’s been avoiding remains true: it will be impossible to cleanse the staff without dark magic.

Hoseok sits up and drops his gaze back to the mystic guide while calling his magic back into his fingers with a deep sigh. Before he can actually start reading though, heat blooms on his left arm and fingers, his attention is once again pulled away to the snake tattoo etched into his skin.

It shimmers in a beautiful carnelian red, gradually rising from his skin before it solidifies into a solid snake that curls up to cover the pages in front of him with a nearly imperceptible hiss. Hoseok hears it though, in tune with his familiar who echoes it in the back of his mind as well.

“Yoongi-hyung,” Hoseok huffs, reaching out to gently stroke the snake’s nose.

The low disdainful hiss in the back of his mind, followed by the flick of a forked tongue against his finger, is the only response he gets.