#it's aimed at one specific person in my life haha but i'll probably share the full thing once it's done

[nettlestingsoup]

just finished a 3k action scene thanks to ateez’s new song, so as a celebration i’m posting an excerpt of the witch mafia au, which i don’t think i’ve done on here before? suprising, given it’s now over 30k in length and i love posting pieces of my writing, but i’ve been trying to keep this one quite close to my chest so i don’t fall into the trap of ‘i’ve told people about it so now i don’t have to write it’.

but it’s nice to work on it again after such a long time away, so i’m giving in.

cw for mentions of violence and death, because this is still a mafia au even if it’s magic, and i am choosing not to pull my punches too much with that.

The cobbles twist beneath Felix’s feet, and he’s forced to turn just in time to see Hyunjin holding the stranger up by his throat, the air around his face twisted with heat-haze as the structure of his neck just… collapses beneath the burn of Hyunjin’s hand. The corpse falls to the cobblestones as they settle and still without his magic to move them, displaced dust lifting from the ground in fading clouds around the body; and for the briefest moment of quiet, Hyunjin meets Felix’s eyes.

The world moves in slow motion between them. Soot rises and swirls in the heat of Hyunjin’s skin, dark eyes lit golden and red by the embers rising from his mouth as he exhales; his hair has come loose from its tie and it drifts around his head in the breeze created by the flames that still lick at his fingers, wreathed around his bare arms like a lover’s caress. He is beautiful, and terrible, and something beyond human.

Putting entropy in the hands of mortal men… it doesn’t make us gods, Chan had told Felix once, and back then he’d believed it. Back then he’d understood that men with magic in their blood were still men, and could never be anything more, no matter how hard they tried.

Looking at Hyunjin now, Felix isn’t so sure.