Chapter Text
As with all cities, there are two Bangkoks. The first is the one everyone knows, the one that you can catch planes to visit, might even have enough luck to see your favourite actors vlogging their hours and activities for fans. The one where Korn Theerapanyakun has an iron grip on most of the shady dealings and a firm hand on some of the legal ones.
Then; there is the Undercroft. The hidden mirror world that only people with glimmer in their DNA can unlock.
Korn Theerapanyakun married a woman whose eyes and hair shone like lightning and sapphires, hoping that she would give him sons who glimmered.
She bore him three children; the first son glistened like opals from his hair to his toes, to the delight of his father. The second son had veins full of vermarine — hard to scratch, but easy to shatter. No matter how hard he strove, he couldn’t live up to the fiery light of his elder brother. The third son didn’t seem to glimmer at all, with his heart of black rock. His father turned away from him, abandoning him to the care of others.
“It’s okay, my love,” his mother whispered to him. “You and I know better; you’re more than what you seem.”
She died before she could help Kim shape his heart into facets that would catch the light, capture his father’s attention. She died, and Tankhun’s opal shine crazed, leaving him fractured and ruined. She died, leaving Kinn’s transparent vermarine veins to be tumbled and polished to a shine in replacement for his brother as heir.
She died; but not before she told Kim how to find the Undercroft.
You can’t tell anyone, she whispers, blood bubbling from her lips. No one, except —
She dies before she tells him who he can trust with the secret, so he tells no one. He puts away that part of him, hides it so that no one can see. Splits himself into three parts to keep the secret safe; Kim, Khimhant and Wik.
Wik seems sad to see him go, but Khimhant… Khimhant laughs as he locks Kim away in the cage of black spinel.