You never saw him. But he saw you.

Every evening at dusk, as the last light bled through the clouds and you wandered into the graveyard with your notebook and your questions, Heeseung was already there—waiting in the hush between tombstones and trees. Silent. Still. Watching.

You shouldn’t have been walking those paths alone. The townspeople whispered stories, old ones, half-forgotten and tangled in moss and fear. But you didn’t believe in ghosts, or curses, or the way the air changed when you crossed that rusted gate.

And you certainly didn’t believe in monsters.

Not yet.

Heeseung didn’t know your name at first. Only the shape of you—your scarf like a flag in the wind, your steps light but certain, your breath visible in the cold. You were just another human girl then. Curious. Unafraid. Temporary.

But he kept returning. And so did you.

Soon, the scent of you began to haunt him. It was more than blood. That he could resist. Had resisted, for over a century. No, what stirred in him now was something else. Something worse. A longing he had buried with the man he used to be.

You didn’t know it, but he saved you more than once. When the fledgling followed your footsteps into the trees, Heeseung tore him apart beneath the roots. When the thing from the marsh crept too close, he gave it his wrist and led it away. He always made sure you were safe.

You never noticed the shadows moving in your favor. Never realized how death recoiled from you.

You just kept coming back.

Again and again, you found yourself drawn to the oldest grave in the cemetery—his grave.

Heeseung Vale Died 1873

You knelt once, gloves off, and brushed frost from the carved letters with your bare hands. Whispered the name like it meant something. Like it called to you.

It did.

And for one dangerous heartbeat, he nearly stepped into the light.

But he didn’t. He couldn’t.

Because the thing inside him wasn’t love. Not really. It was hunger in velvet disguise. It was centuries of silence cracking open at the sound of your voice.

And if he took one step closer, he wouldn’t stop.

He’d tear the sky down to have you. He’d ruin you.

And you… you were still untouched by the dark. Still warm. Still human.

So he stayed in the shadows, fingers curled into the stone, heart filled with a grief that didn’t have a name.

Even monsters, he told himself again, must learn to want without taking.

And even he, especially he, must never touch what he could not bear to destroy.