Love In A Sinking Realm ⊰BTS⊱ Steampunk

CHAPTER 10 ➣ Mine City Part 1

⊰🎩⊱ Author's Note ⊰🎩⊱

Please forgive me for this long delay. But life had other plans for me. Thank you for baring with me 💜

◦◦◦─╌⊰ ⚜ ⊱⧐ ♛ ⧏⊰ ⚜ ⊱╌─◦◦◦

The ghastly wails of mutilated men begged for help to a deaf sky. Ash rained down upon a carpet of burnt debris. Fire rose from the city and breathed clouds of black fumes that tainted the sky, like spilled ink on a patch of paper.

"Y/N...!" Gasped Taehyung, "Are you alright?"

"I think so..."

The young couple, buried under dirt, helped each other stand, dusting off the layer of ash covering their clothes and hair, fortunate to be wearing the oxygen mask Y/N was carrying, or the hot smoke would've roasted their lungs.

Suddenly, a hand yanked Y/N's ankle, making her lose her balance and fall on all fours. She turned and her eyes bulged open. McRayan wheezed, his abdomen doused in blood, crawling towards them.

"H-help...," he whimpered, coughing out blood.

The girl turned towards him and pulled him closer. She tore a piece of her shirt and wiped the blood from his face. The man shifted closer and laid his head on her legs, with strangely docile movements.

"We've got to go," said Taehyung from next to her.

"Wait we've got to help him," cried Y/N.

"Y/N, it's over, he's dying...," he insisted, putting a hand on her shoulder.

Tears built up while gazing at his life rapidly abandoning his body. She couldn't take her eyes off him, suddenly so vulnerable, surrendering everything he was, his pride, his strength, his adulthood, his experiences, like a defenseless child, all for a few moments of comfort in the arms of a stranger, that probably felt like the embrace of a mother, sister, or lover, he never had.

But something more sparked in his bereft grey eyes, mirroring the polluted sky. Those emerald eyes of hers, drowning in tears...Yes...It must be her...

"You...," he gasped.

"Don't speak," she wept, desperately cleaning the blood flowing down from his mouth.

He panted, his eyes widening with revelation, "Y-You're her...".

She stopped her every motion, her devastation turning into shock.

She swallowed greedily.

"You're the...princess...princess Selenya...?" he inhaled sharply and reached his hand for her face, darkness falling around him.

She shook her head, now sobbing.

"P-please...," he convulsed, opening his mouth wide, struggling to inhale, "H-help us---"

In his last moments, a single tear escaped his hardened eye, washing away a line of his purple war paint. His sight became hollow, his expression empty. Life and soul departing his body, muscles relaxing, letting go of everything tangible.

"Oh, gods...," Y/N hiccuped tragically, pressing her palm over her mask, "Sir...McRayan...," she called out, knowing it was too late.

McRayan lay dead in her arms, and she was petrified, unable to push his body off of her. Both by shock and compassion.

"Gods...," she grimaced at the unbearable pain squeezing her heart, trying to close his eyelids, but her hands trembled uncontrollably. "Gods, Tae, please...", she beseeched, holding the wave of hysteria threatening to take over the last bits of rationality left in her grieving mind.