Banished Divinity: Learning to be Human

Fast forward to Yuna standing in the Director's office, her face still burning from her father's slap.

In front of everyone. In front of Sera. In front of her parents who looked at her with pity.

The humiliation was unbearable. The rejection from Jaehyun was worse. His words echoed in her mind: "I am not interested in you. I never was."

She had given him everything. She had smiled when she wanted to scream. She had agreed when she wanted to argue. She had made herself small and accommodating and everything she thought he wanted.

She wasn't trying to win Jaehyun's heart anymore. She was trying to prove she deserved one.

And he had chosen Sera anyway.

She ran home.

---

The house was cold, silent, empty. Her father had said nothing on the drive back—just gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckled hands and stared straight ahead.

The moment they arrived, he disappeared into his study, closing the door behind him with a soft click that felt louder than a slam.

Her mother didn't even bother with pretence. She swept past Yuna without a word, already on her phone, her voice bright and brittle as she launched into whatever conversation would distract her from the evening's events. Probably calling her social circle to gossip about what had happened, or perhaps just to listen to whatever gossip her circle had collected for the day. It didn't matter. Yuna was invisible to her either way.

Junho was nowhere to be found—off spending their father's money like he owned it, living the high life while the rest of the family crumbled around him.

---

Yuna did the only thing she was good at when she was home: she locked herself in her room.

She sank to the floor, her back pressed against the door—the same door that had never once been opened by someone who truly cared. Her legs gave out beneath her, and she sat there, her body crumpled, her chest heaving with sobs she couldn't control.

The wrapper pulsed in her hand.

Warm.

Alive.

Hungry.

She stared at it through tear-blurred eyes. The pearlescent paper shimmered, the colours shifted like oil floating on water.. It had been waiting for this moment. It had been patient.

Just like her.

She opened it.

The contents spilled into her palm—something pale and glowing, like captured moonlight that had been left to rot. It smelled of honey and ash. Of sweetness and decay. Of things that promised comfort and delivered ruin.

Her hands trembled.

She forced herself to look at the mirror.

The girl staring back at her was a stranger. A ghost. Someone who had spent so long trying to be enough that she no longer knew who she was.

The girl in the mirror was so tired.

Tired of fighting for scraps of attention.

Tired of pretending she didn't feel the emptiness.

Tired of being invisible.

Yuna looked at herself one last time. Really looked. At the dark circles under her eyes. At the hollow cheeks. At the girl who had been beaten down so many times she had forgotten what it felt like to stand up straight.

She raised the contents to her lips.

"If you are so powerful," she whispered, her voice cracking like thin ice, "Then do it. Get rid of her. Take everything I have. Take everything I am."

A pause.

"And I am yours."

She consumed it.

It tasted like honey and ash and something else—something that burned going down. It spread through her chest like liquid fire, and for a moment, she felt nothing.

Then everything.

And somewhere, deep inside her, a voice that was not her own whispered:

Finally.

---

Her body convulsed. Her vision went white. She heard screaming—was it her? Was it someone else? She couldn't tell. The sound seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, bouncing off the walls of her skull like a trapped bird beating its wings against a cage.

When she opened her eyes, she was still in her room.

But she wasn't alone.

Something was inside her.

At first, the voice was soft. Almost gentle. It curled around her like a warm blanket on a cold night, whispering soothing things in the darkness.

You were right to be angry.

You were right to be hurt.

You deserved so much more than they gave you.

It promised her everything she had ever wanted. Jaehyun's love. A life where she mattered. A world where no one would ever look through her again.

So she listened.

She trusted it.

And slowly, minute by minute, she stopped recognizing herself.

The voice grew louder. The anger grew hotter. The promises grew darker. It wasn't comforting her anymore—it was consuming her. But by then, she was too tired to fight.

And what felt like hours later, she looked in the mirror and realized she no longer knew who was looking back at her.

Her reflection smiled at her—a wide, hungry smile that was not her own.

The brown in her irises was bleeding black, spreading outward like ink dropped into water. Her pupils stretched into thin white slits—like cracks in a frozen lake that had never been human. The smile widened, too wide, impossibly wide, until it seemed to stretch beyond the edges of her face.

Something ancient and hungry and wrong was looking back at her.

She tried to scream.

No sound came out.

And then—a knock at the door.

"Yuna?" Her father's voice. "Yuna, open the door. Please. What is happening?”

Her hand moved without her permission.

The door swung open.

He didn't scream.

He didn't stumble backward. He didn't raise his hands to ward off a demon.

He just... looked at her. Really looked at her. For the first time in years, he saw her.

And then he dropped to his knees.

His face crumpled. His shoulders shook. Tears streamed down his face—the face of a man who had built empires, who had controlled everything, who had never allowed himself to be weak.

"Yunie...I'm sorry," he whispered. His voice cracked like old wood. "I'm sorry... what has happen to you?."

His shoulders heaved.

"Talk to me, Yunie... please”

Yunie.

That name. She hadn't heard it in years. Something inside her—something she thought had died long ago—ached.

Her mouth opened.

"Dad..."

The word came out thin and broken, like a thread about to snap.

"Dad, I—"

Stop. The voice was no longer gentle.

You don't have to speak anymore.

I'll speak for you.

It's too late for him to know how much pain you've gone through.

Only I stayed when everyone else looked away.

Let me make the pain disappear.

Yuna wanted to run to her father and collapse into his arms and tell him everything—the loneliness, the emptiness, the desperate hunger for love that had never been filled.

But her body wouldn't move.

Her mouth wouldn't form the words.

And then she heard her own voice say, flat and hollow:

"It's too late now. What is done... is done."

The words didn't sound like hers.

They sounded like a death sentence.

Yuna walked past him, down the hallway. The lights flickered as she passed. The pictures on the walls rattled. The temperature dropped until her breath misted in the air like ghostly whispers.

Her mother stood at the main door, which was wide open. She was smiling. That same bright, empty smile that Yuna had always thought was love.

Before Yuna ran out, she heard her mother say, "Silly child."

The door slammed behind her.

And then she was gone.

---

Epilogue: The deal has just begun.

Cassian stood at the window of his private chambers, looking out at the city below. The lights of Cheonghwa City twinkled like scattered diamonds, oblivious to the darkness that lurked in their midst.

His door opened. A woman entered—tall, elegant, with short hair and tanned skin.

"It's done," she said.

Cassian didn't turn. "She consumed it?"

"All of it. She didn't even hesitate."

"Good." He smiled—a slow, satisfied smile. "She'll serve well."

The woman—Yuna's mother—crossed the room to stand beside him. "You promised me wealth. Power. Protection."

"And you shall have it." He placed a hand on her shoulder, his dark brown eyes gleaming. "You already have. Look at yourself. Look at what you've become. You're no longer a tired housewife, desperate for attention. You're a queen."

She smiled—a real smile, finally. "I always knew she was weak. Too soft. Too needy. That's why I never bothered with her."

"And now?" Cassian asked. "Do you feel anything? Remorse? Guilt?"

She laughed—bright, tinkling, hollow. "Not a thing. She was never really my daughter anyway. Just a transaction. Just a means to an end."

Cassian nodded. "Then we understand each other."

She stepped closer, her fingers trailing lightly across his chest. "Since we understand each other," she purred, her voice dropping to something low and inviting, " Perhaps we should discuss the rest of our arrangement... privately.?"

Cassian's smile widened—a slow, devilish curve of his lips. His eyes glinted with something ancient and amused. "A generous offer," he said, his voice smooth as silk. " We'll see if you've earned the privilege.."

Yuna's mother took it as agreement. She stepped back, her smile bright and hungry. "Let me go freshen up."

She turned and walked toward the adjoining chamber, her hips swaying with deliberate intent. The door clicked shut behind her.

Cassian watched her go.

"Foolish woman," he murmured. "She thinks she's the one making a deal."

He turned back to the window, watching the city below. Somewhere out there, Yuna was running. Changing. Becoming something new. Something ancient. Something hungry.

But he wasn't thinking about Yuna.

He was thinking about the girl who had fallen from the sky several weeks ago. The girl who had no idea he had been watching. The girl who thought she was safe in this mortal world.

"Seraphyne," he whispered.

The name tasted familiar. Bitter.

He knew about her fall. He knew about her banishment from the Tribunal. He knew every detail of her punishment—how she had been stripped of her power, cast down to this insignificant realm, forced to live among the creatures she had once looked down upon.

And he knew, with absolute certainty, that she had no idea he was here.

"You've ruined enough of my work," he said softly. "You've undone enough of my plans."

He smiled again—a slow, dark smile.

"Payback," he whispered.

The words hung in the air like smoke.

The silence stretched.

Then he laughed—a low, soft sound that held no warmth at all.

He had waited millennia for this moment. He could wait a little longer.

The Unmaker was patient.

End of Interlude.

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