“I have no idea who I am” and when Charlie tells him how he’s seen by others, Nick quickly puts it within the context of his relationship with Charlie. 🥺 God, we need season 4 so bad.
hi its me your local cerus enjoyer 🖤 may i request #5 and #2 from the “whump fun” section of that prompt list game for him?
Thanks for sending prompts! you know it's a good combo when I immediately know exactly what I'm gonna do with it
a spark of hope + revenge
cw: referenced abuse, blood, explicit gore
from this game ///// Penumbra Masterlist
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"Are you alright?"
It was a question Cerus hadn't heard since he was a very young boy, a question he hadn't expected to ever hear again, especially not in this coaldust-streaked hell.
He almost thought he'd dreamt it.
He'd been sick for days now, a fever burning away at his strength like fire on candlewick, and the tiresome, never-ending work had finally become too much for him. Only by some miracle had he made it out of the mountain before collapsing.
"Are you alright?"
The question came again, insisting on its own reality, and when Cerus managed to lift his head, he found himself staring into the bright eyes of a sandy-haired young man. He was half-crouched above him, an expression of concern on his face.
Concern. Didn't he know who he was standing over? Didn't he know better than to care?
When Cerus didn't answer, the man didn't shout at him, or try and beat a response out of him. Instead, he fully knelt.
"You don't look well. Please, let me help." He extended a hand, and Cerus watched it warily. Not that he'd be able to prevent it, should the hand decide to harm him.
"Why?" he asked.
"I am to assist the Healer. It will be my job to see to the well-being of the miners."
"It's not seventh day. The Healer isn't here," Cerus muttered, and the words felt like sand in his mouth, grating against his tongue and throat. Why was he even bothering to speak? Either this would end in pain or it wouldn't, and he certainly had no say in the outcome.
"I wanted to meet the people I'd be helping," the man said, breaking into a sunshiny grin. "My name is Yven."
"Cerus," he practically spat in return. If the man had been oblivious before, surely now he'd—
"A pleasure to meet you, Cerus. Shall we get you to a bed?"
Impossible.
"You… don't you know who I am?"
Puzzlement crossed Yven's face as he wrapped an arm around Cerus's torso. "You are a convict," he said. "And a former mage, judging by the marks you bear."
Standing proved difficult, even with assistance from Yven, and though it had been months since his shattered bones were mended, pain still spiked through his legs when he placed his weight on them. But right now, Cerus could ignore it. Right now, he was wholly preoccupied trying to figure out what to make of this young healer.
"You are right on both counts," he said, and mentally debated if he should say more, or leave it there. Letting Yven help him when he didn't know the full truth was cowardly, but Cerus was almost too tired to care. Misery was a constant, would now always be a constant. Why not let the younger man help him in his blissful ignorance? Why not allow himself some scrap of comfort, no matter how dishonorable it felt?
And so he said no more, leaning heavily on Yven as he guided him towards the Healer's barracks. The little building was empty when they stepped inside, another small thing to be grateful for. More time to rest in untruth.
Yven helped him into a bed, a real bed, and pulled a soft cotton blanket over him. It was nothing short of bliss. The thought of getting true sleep, of being allowed to hide here, unbothered, for even just a day was almost too much for Cerus to grasp.
He barely noticed when the healer stepped away to lock the door. The click of a lock—of shackles, of doors—was a daily occurrence, and Cerus couldn't find a reason to question it.
Yven returned to his bedside, setting a heavy-sounding bag on the floor beside him. The back of a cool hand pressed against Cerus's forehead, accompanied by a small 'hm'.
"You're burning up. I ought to get you some good hot broth from the kitchens." He sat on the floor. Cerus heard the sounds of metal hitting metal as he rummaged through his bag, and thought nothing of it. One by one, Yven withdrew things he couldn't see and set them on the floor beside the bed with muted thuds. Then he stood, a small pot of blue dye and a brush in his hands.
Mender's paint. A tool for apprentice or novice healers, or sometimes masters if they were taking on a particularly complex or life-threatening wound, it was used to draw runes on a patient's body to assist in concentration and lessen the magical load.
Once upon a time, when Cerus was a child naive enough to think he could master light magic without consequence, he'd practiced with the substance. Now he lay still as Yven dipped the brush into the pot and drew lines of blue over his torso.
Was he trying to quell the fever? Most healers dealt solely in wounds of the flesh, and while Cerus's flesh certainly wasn't unbloodied, Yven seemed more concerned with his illness. Perhaps the younger man thought closing half-healed wounds and mending cracked bone would ease the strain on his body. He certainly wouldn't be wrong, were that his intent, but the runes he was painting seemed far too intricate for simple work such as that.
Yven seemed to register the confusion on Cerus's face, and offered a small smile.
"You'll need strong bodily healing to survive," he offered, making one final curl with the brush before tucking it away.
To survive? The phrasing only brought on more confusion, steeped in a sense of unease that coiled inside him like a viper.
"After all, you've been sentenced to live, haven't you?"
As Yven said the words, panic shot through Cerus like darkness converging on a snuffed candle. Momentarily heedless of his weakened state, he sat up, eyes wide, only to be easily shoved back down by Yven.
"I know who you are. Of course I know who you are," the young healer hissed, leaning in close, one palm flat and heavy in the center of Cerus's chest. His heart pounded against it, blood rushing in his ears, head spinning.
"How could I forget the shadow that fell over my home? The unholy things that crawled from their graves and tore apart the living?" Yven's hand raked through his hair, grabbing a fistful and yanking his head back. "Your evil has stained all of Feyadel. No one will ever forget what you've done."
He knew that, he knew that, why had he expected this new healer's treatment to be anything other than this?
Yven suddenly pulled away, reaching for something on the floor, coming back with a knife.
Cerus was too shocked to even scream as the younger man plunged it into his stomach, right between two blue runes. The pain only reached him when Yven withdrew the blade, blood following the metal out of the wound. And with it came a numb sense of relief.
That it was finally over, that someone had at last had enough of seeing him continue to live and breathe. Cerus embraced the pain in his core, and willed his vision to darken, willed his body to shut down quickly…
But then Yven was covering the split flesh with his hand, chanting under his breath, eyes and runes glowing a cool blue, and Cerus felt the wound begin to close. Within minutes, the skin had sealed, leaving Cerus silently shaking with the memory of it.
He had little time to register what had just happened before Yven dug the blade in again, burying it to the hilt, pinning Cerus with his free hand as he dug a scarlet line from hip to hip. Cerus's scream didn't sound like much of a scream for long, rising in pitch and desperation until it sounded to his ears like something inhuman. A death keen of a dying beast, a shriek from an unholy demon.
Maybe that was all it really was.
It tapered off into a helpless cry as Yven slid a hand into the wound, and that weakened to shallow gasps as the healer began to dig around inside, fingers tangling through guts, brushing organs, tearing at the bits of tissue that held everything together.
He couldn't remember how to beg, or even scream. He couldn't remember how to breathe.
He convulsed as Yven squeezed and pulled at the parts of him that were never meant to see the light, the pain and deep feeling of intrusion, of wrongness drowning out everything else but the ripping, squirming hand.
The feeling eventually began to fade, and with it his consciousness; an icy numbness spreading through his body like frost, slowly reaching up to take away his senses. But by then, Yven's hand, gloved in scarlet, was hovering above his stomach, and the wound was closing.
Even with the healing, the residual pain left Cerus gasping and trembling, unable to form coherent thoughts or pleas. It felt like a den of snakes had burrowed into his gut and were set on eating their way through him.
The second healing looked to have drained Yven, and there was a tremor to the healer's hands as he washed away the blood. He didn't say another word to Cerus, not that it would've mattered if he had. He'd done what he'd come here to do, what so many others here itched to do.
Blood for blood. Pain for pain.
And as Cerus watched the young healer exit the barracks on shaky legs, the image hazy and distant, he found himself unable to blame him.
one of the things i love most about jung is how he tries to make sure seol never bottles up her feelings and opens up to him and her friends who care about her because of how his dad treated him the opposite and made him fear that the only way to survive was to put up a facade and hide how he was really feeling.
i think while he did try his best to not behave like his father, he did end up trying to manipulate seol the same way his dad did to him sometimes when they fought (which didn't work on her) which makes him more realistic. sometimes we exhibit our parents' toxic traits even though we desperately try not to be like them. but what i love is that he recognizes this and tries not to be what his dad was like to seol and that he felt so, so badly when she started becoming more twisted like him.
i just think if there's one thing i like about him is that he tries to be self aware in his relationship with seol and do his best to make her feel supported and loved. i wish we got to see him work on his relationships with other people in this way but sadly the manhwa ended right before that.
