Title Speaking of the End (Small Text Ver.) ✅

Speaking of the End
CHAPTER 1 The sky has barely woken, the day Jungkook decides to brave the magick shop seven blocks from his apartment. Decades ago, after several pro-magick activist groups began vigorous campaigning for equity, the government sanctioned the emptied and abandoned iron and steel working facilities in the industrial portion of Mullae Dong for magickal use. It was a hollow move meant to ease tension amongst the population and everyone knew it, but that didn’t stop the neighborhood from booming. Trendy shops and kitschy cafés and crafters’ workshops stretch along the streets, all magickally owned, and what used to be a discarded piece of the city became a hive of wonderful, bright and shining energy nearly overnight. Jungkook misses when the neighborhood was silent and forgotten, nothing but a hazy memory or a blurb in a history book. But today is gray and homely, with snow dropping in thick sheets over the roads and walkways, and Jungkook is the only soul trudging through the powder. The world feels strangely silent and new like this, and Jungkook stops for a long moment under the awning of a bodega to watch the sky fall. Today is the day—today is the last day—and Jungkook raises his arms and feels a tremor build deep inside at the thought. His last day. Finally. With numb toes Jungkook forges ahead into the heart of the neighborhood, passing by an antique collector whose owner is a wyvern who specializes in object reading, a salon managed by druid stylists who always ask to braid seasonal flowers into Jungkook’s hair when he visits to pick up toiletries, and Jungkook’s accountant, a numerologist who doesn’t ask questions about Jungkook’s impossible account record. After that there are a few private residences, a couple tea parlors and brunch spots, and then, soft and unassuming, is his destination. The magick shop’s been here for as long as Jungkook can remember. Always witch-owned, always painted the same shade of muted green sea glass, always with a black
iron sign swinging quietly above the threshold, and always buzzing with this lush, meandering, intoxicating energy. Spellbound, Seoul’s most famous apothecarie. It feels like magick as much as it looks, and Jungkook takes a moment to run his hand over the sinuous curves of an iris blossom pressed into the stained glass of the display window. The colored garden shivers under his touch, and Jungkook smiles quietly as the flowers swirl and shake off the frost that's been building over the past several hours from the winter mix. The light behind the window brightens, and even with his thick gloves, Jungkook can feel the glass warm, just a pinprick of heat through leather. A deep tremor spreads through his bones and he shakes it off. The wooden door squeaks as he pushes through, and the bell overhead cheerfully chirps once and then goes still, announcing his arrival. There’s no entry, and the front room is cluttered but organized, filled with antique tables and shelves piled with tastefully displayed jewels and jars and crystals and stones and glass spheres and porcelain figures. The ceilings are high, but the wood of the floor and the beams overhead is dark and gnarly and makes the space feel smaller than it is. As Jungkook moves through the space, stepping around tidy collections of stacked books, the walls glimmer, catching the window and lamplight. Everywhere Jungkook glances there is flora in various states of growth. It’s a beautiful mess of a space that feels like magick, that feels like what Jungkook remembers he used to call home. “Welcome to Spellbound,” a voice drawls from somewhere deep within the space. “How can I help you?” Jungkook’s gaze jumps around the room. He feels a tad demented and probably looks it too, craning his head to peer over shelves and stepping over piles of pots and plants. “Over here.” Jungkook swivels. Straight ahead, tucked into the center of the room, is a massive half-moon desk carved with ornate, celestial imagery. Jungkook drifts forward, still searching for whoever spoke, and flinches when the equally huge book at the desk, which he now realizes is hovering a few inches off the tabletop, flips a few pages on its own. “Do you require assistance?” The book asks, and Jungkook flounders before realizing he can spot a mop of messy dark hair over the tips of the pages. Jungkook clutches his hands awkwardly in front of his stomach. “I need-” Jungkook’s voice creaks out of him, rusty with disuse. He clears it quietly. “I need to lift a curse.”
“Simple curse, composite curse, or a freely composed curse?” The person behind the book responds, brusque but with a gentle, measured tone that takes away some of the edge. They still haven’t lowered the book, and at Jungkook’s silence they sigh and ask, “How was the curse pressed upon you?” “Uh—” “Spitting? Evil eye? Verbal? Written? Object-bound?” “A person?” Jungkook says and the top of the worker’s head bobs. There’s a little piece that sticks out towards the back that moves in the opposite direction of all the others. “A caster, then,” the worker says, drawing Jungkook back in. “Ancestral?” “What?” “Were you born with it?” “No.” “Have you tried a spell reflection?” “A what?” The worker sighs again and drops the book. It lands with a thud across the wooden countertop, almost knocking over a glass jar of buttons, spare change and pens. Jungkook’s hand twitches, reaching to catch, but the worker snaps their fingers and the jar straightens back into place as if chastised. “Spell reversal,” the worker says, flicking their wrist so a thick velvet ribbon inch-worms across the tabletop and crawls into place between the pages of the book. “Sends the hex or curse back to the original caster. Pretty simple. We’ve got a kit... a kit for it.” It’s warm inside the store, and the worker is now looking at Jungkook, astonished. Heat creeps up the back of Jungkook’s neck at the intimate attention, but before his bones can crawl out of his body, the worker’s lips purse into a thin frown. “Well shit,” he says. “You’re cursed.” “Yes, I—Yes?” Jungkook looks down at his person, wondering what the worker sees to warrant such a reaction. “That’s why I’m here.” The worker has a witch’s mark, a green Chiron symbol beneath his left eye, not that Jungkook needed the proof the man was magick after the obvious maneuver from earlier. “Yes,” the witch says, “but I didn’t think you were serious. Most nixes think everything is a curse.”