Honor and Glory | ATEEZ

057

"A prince?!" Wooyoung exclaimed again after I had finished explaining, telling the others and the generals about what I knew, about what San had told me.

His crimson eyes were ablaze with fear and humiliation which made me furrow my brows in confusion.

"How come I always end up getting on the nerves of every royal in this kingdom?" he sighed, holding his head in his hands as he tugged at the strands of pink hair in frustration.

"Is this true?" Hongjoong asked, turning to Taeyong who was still standing quietly at the end of the table.

He looked uncomfortably back and forth between us before taking a step back and keeping his eyes trained on the floor

"I'm so, so, sorry," the man in black said, bowing deeply at me without even trying to make eye contact, knowing that mine would probably be overflowing with sadness and anger.

I slumped back in my chair, numb with shocks and a deep sense of dread that gnawed at the back of my head.

"This is so much bigger than we could have ever imagined," Seongwha breathed, looking just as shocked as I felt.

Yunho put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, though it didn't look like he was doing much better himself.

"Does that mean that Daios has been planning the end of the world for the last two centuries?" Jongho asked.

"Considering The Santua Prophecy, the fall of Kankara, and the storm that came out of nowhere, rolling over the hills and valleys of the entire kingdom, covering Avalon as it just kept growing in size and strength?"

I already knew the answer to his question.

And so did everyone else, but they stayed quiet.

But the silence was telling enough.

The tent fell completely silent as realization dawned on us, and I cursed myself for being so naive as to think that I could have stopped the fates themselves with nothing more than courage and eight gemstones.

"He's like nothing I've ever seen before," Taeyong said, his voice suddenly quieter, timider than before.

"An unnatural mix of elements. The only one of his kind. The power he holds- it's divine, not something we can simply defeat. Elementals won't stand a chance against him."

"I hit him a couple of times, though," I mumbled, feeling the need to point it out despite the fact that it didn't change the situation.

"He let you, y/n," Taeyong breathed, and my heart sank even further as the words slipped past his lips.

"That's absurd!" Yunho and Jongho both exclaimed,d getting up from their chairs in frustration as they turned to the man in black with their strikingly blue eyes.

"This can't be the end," Jeongguk said.-

"There must be something, anything, that we can do. There has to be," Yunho said.

Taeyong shook his head and sighed heavily, "Only another divinity would be able to do that."

"Like a god?" Mingi asked, looking so desperate that, for a moment, I was almost convinced that he truly believed in the possibility of the words that had just slipped past his lips.