Cold.
That was all there was.
It seeped through stone and skin alike, blanketing the small mountain Shinto temple nestled near the edge of what was once a thriving evergreen forest. Now, that forest stood quiet and brittle, weighed down by layers of snow and icicles hanging like jagged glass teeth from barren branches. The sun hung high above, pale and distant, casting more light than warmth over the frozen temple grounds.
On any other day, the temple would echo with the soft footsteps of worshippers. They would come to pray, to leave offerings, to pay their respects at the grave of a local **miko**, a shrine maiden once said to hold great spiritual importance in the region.
But not today.
Not yesterday. Not for the past month.
No pilgrims climbed the winding mountain path. No monks lit incense or swept snow from the worn stone steps. The temple was silent—save for the prayers of a lone, steadfast priest who continued his devotions beneath a sky that offered no answers.
Something malevolent had taken hold of this place.
It had begun with disappearances. Then came the bodies—mangled, disfigured, abandoned like discarded dolls in the snow. Only one man had lived to tell the tale.
His voice shook as he described it: a towering creature, larger than any man, cloaked in pitch-black fur. Its eyes were blood-red. Its claws like knives. Its gaping maw, that of a bear, only larger.
The tale spread quickly. It reached the ears it was meant to reach: those attuned to the unnatural, those who hunted what others denied existed.
Many had come.
Ghost hunters with high-tech equipment. Government men in black suits. A group of teenagers with a talking dog—or so the rumors said. Some returned home empty-handed. Others never returned at all. In the end, only two remained.
The first was a woman in her mid-twenties, Korean by blood, though no one would find her name in any database. She went by Choi Seo-yun—a lie, but a convincing one. Her figure was lean and agile, shaped more by dance and ritual than by combat, but no less deadly for it. Short black hair framed her heart-shaped face, drawing attention to a sharp V-shaped chin and a smooth jawline. Her eyes, a piercing green, were intelligent and unkind, lacking the double eyelids prized back home. A slender, high nose and full, blood-red lips made her look ethereal—if you could look past the freckles scattered across her pale porcelain skin or the three silver studs glinted from her left ear.
She was a mudang, a shaman of old traditions, but her version of the craft was adapted, incorporating occult traditions from all over the globe . She was a hunter of spirits. And she was very good at what she did.
Before arriving at the temple, Seo-yun had already confirmed the presence of something supernatural through her network of sources. Now, after questioning the one surviving witness, she sat surrounded by scrolls, charms, and ritual tools—preparing her bujeok, readying her Mu-geom.
Normally, she was cold. Calculating. Methodical.
But something was testing her patience.
Not the elusive nature of this spirit. Not the time consuming preparation. Not even the elderly priest who kept grumbling at her methods.
No—it was the second person who had remained.
He called himself Solomon Kane, though she doubted that was any more real than her own name.
He was tall—absurdly so—and barbaric-looking, an oegugin who stood out like a wolf among foxes. Six-foot-four, rail-thin yet muscular, he looked like a starved beast barely held together by skin and sinew. His dark hair hung in unkempt shoulder-length strands, and his only clothing was a pair of cheap sneakers, threadbare pants, and a silver chain that did nothing to protect him from the chilling weather, though he didn't seem to be bothered.
He was always eating—loudly—snatching whatever food he could find, then lazing about like some stray animal. When he wasn't stuffing his face, he was making jokes in English, trying to charm anyone who could understand a word of it.
"Why is he even here?" Seo-yun wondered sometimes , watching him from a distance. "Where are his parents?"
Despite the sharp cheekbones, the hollow cheeks, and the permanent shadows under his sunken blue eyes—despite the hard jawline and the three-day stubble—he was not even old enough to buy cigarettes, which he begged others to procure for him like stereotypical delinquent from a past generation.
She found him irritating. Bizarre. A waste of time. A mockery of her lives purpose.
But none of that mattered now.
Because a sound reached them both.
A chime.
Faint. Delicate. Easy to miss.
Seo-yun heard it first—of course she did. She had set up the **bellless bell**, a spiritual ward meant to ring without metal or movement . It rang only when something unnatural crossed the veil into the her marked territory.
And now, it was ringing.
Like lightning Kane had burst into motion without any warning , his sprint was unnaturaly swift and steady vaulting over objects and people that were in his way . Before she could even get her equipment he was gone from eyesight, disappearing into the snowed over forest.
***
The first thing Seo-yun noticed was the smell—thick, metallic, and raw. Blood.
It hung in the cold air like steam, heavier than the mist curling along the snow-covered ground. The second thing was the sound: a wet, crunching snap, like boots stomping through a field of brittle branches—but wetter, more deliberate. The kind of sound bones made when torn apart slowly.
Seo-yun stepped lightly into the clearing, expression unreadable. She wasn't a stranger to death. If anything, she'd grown too used to it. It was a constant companion in her work—an expected outcome when dealing with the monstrous and the otherworldly. So when her eyes fell upon the hulking, fur-covered form crouched over a corpse, she didn't flinch.
A massive bear—its fur an unnatural pitch-black, glistening like oil in the pale light—was hunched over a ruined body. Its claws, longer than daggers, worked with horrifying precision, peeling flesh from muscle. Blood soaked the snow beneath it in a wide, spreading pool, steam rising from the warmth of fresh death.
And the corpse—if you could still call it that—was Solomon Kane.
Or at least, what was left of him.
His face had been ripped clean off, leaving behind a grotesque, red smear of torn sinew and bone. Lacerations crisscrossed what remained of his body—deep, ragged wounds gouged into his chest and limbs. One leg was twisted backward at an unnatural angle, shattered so badly the bone had torn through skin. His left arm was missing entirely, ripped away at the shoulder with such violence that even the socket had been obliterated. His ribcage lay open, caved in like crushed porcelain, as the creature rooted through his insides with a savage intensity, yanking free his lungs in pulsing, glistening pieces—as if hatred alone animated its every motion.
And still, Seo-yun didn't panic.
Instead, she reached calmly into her sleeve and flung a handful of brightly colored marbles across the snow. The little orbs bounced and scattered, humming faintly as they landed—each one infused with layers of warding spells and explosive energy. A moment later, the bear's head snapped up.
It roared—a sound that wasn't just sound but physical sensation,low and guttural, vibrating through the earth and her bones alike. It was not a beast's cry, not entirely. There was intelligence ,not much but still there, behind it. Hate. The kind that wasn't born, but cultivated, fermented over centuries like a rotting wound.
And then it charged.
The snow trembled beneath its feet, and the trees themselves seemed to draw back from its path. Each thunderous stride cracked frozen soil and sent plumes of white powder into the air. It came at her like a natural disaster—furious, primal, unstoppable.
Still calm, Seo-yun didn't flinch. She reached into the folds of her coat and slowly drew her Mu-geom, its etched blade whispering against the lacquered scabbard.
Only when the creature was inches away—its rank breath hitting her face like an oven of rot—did the marbles shatter.
There was no explosion.
Just a sudden shockwave, invisible but brutal, like the rippling aftershock of a thunderclap. The bear was hurled backward with impossible force, slammed into a tree, and crashed through it as if it were made of paper.
The tree cracked in half with a thunderous snap.
As did her marbles.
But Seo-yun cursed under her breath. "Damn it."
She narrowed her eyes, assessing. The protective field had failed to vaporize the creature outright.
"Either it's more powerful than it looks… or more physical than expected," she muttered aloud, watching as the monstrous figure struggled to rise beneath the weight of the fallen tree.
She watched it, eyes gleaming with calculation. "It's the latter."
It wasn't some ethereal phantom or cursed shadow. No, this thing had weight, muscle, and terrifying presence,a brute force born into the world through rage alone.
Without wasting another second, Seo-yun snatched three talisman papers from her sash—each marked with crimson brushstrokes that shimmered with latent power. She sprinted forward, light on her feet even through the snow, blade ready in one hand, the talismans unassuming in appearance but full with latent energy in the other.
The beast had just begun to rise, flinging aside the shattered trunk of the tree, when she closed the distance.
But the talismans ignited midair.
With a flash of blinding white, the sigils detonated into columns of purifying flame, halting the creature's charge just as it launched toward her. It froze in place—paralyzed by spiritual forces —its body rigid and smoking with residual heat.
Seo-yun didn't hesitate.
She slashed—a clean, elegant arc—and took one of its massive front paws at the joint. The blade hissed through corrupted flesh like a red-hot needle through silk. Black smoking ichor sprayed across the snow.
But before she could pivot and go for the head, the bear—screaming in fury and agony—lunged with the bleeding stump, catching her square in the chest and sending her flying.
Pain exploded through her ribs.
She hit the ground hard, tumbling through the snow, the world spinning as impact cracked bone. The snow cushioned the worst of it, but not enough. Something inside her gave way with a sharp pop.
She lay there for a second, breathless, staring at the sky.
She wheezed, coughing blood.
A voice rang out—sharp, angry, familiar.
"Hey bitch ! That one is mine."
It came from her right.
Seo-yun turned her head just in time to see Solomon Kane—
the boy who only moments ago had been reduced to ribbons—
still moving.
He should not be alive, no human could be in his state. Not with how she'd seen his chest flayed open, his lungs torn out and held aloft like trophies in the maw of that monstrous beast. Not with how his face had been shredded down to cartilage and gristle, the meat of his jawbone laid bare. No, this wasn't something modern medicine could fix . And this wasn't any form of healing.
This was something entirely different.
" Is this a possession ?." She thought as she tried to right herself. It was clearly not of man made origins.
And whatever it was…
it was hard to believe.
At first, Seo-yun thought her vision was blurring. His chest was expanding—too fast, too wrong—each rib visibly flexing beneath the blood-slicked skin like something crawling inside him. A new pair of lungs were already inflating, pink and raw and wet as they filled with their first unholy breath. Tendons twitched as if played like harp strings by invisible fingers. Something squirmed behind the curtain of Kane's flesh, something that had no business existing.
Seo-yun had seen abominations before—spirits that were twisted versions of their own death, beasts summoned by cultist , men who had destroyed their own human form through alchemy.
But this?
This was new.
This was going to become the kind of story she'd tell in dark corners of pubs, half-drunk and daring someone to call her a liar.
She didn't look away.
Kane's body spasmed violently, snapping upward as if yanked by a meat hook. Muscles ballooned beneath the skin, swelling with grotesque speed. Each new bulge stretched his skin to the point of tearing—and tear it did. Great, jagged fissures split open across his arms and chest, skin curling away like peeled bark from a tree as raw, red muscle pulsed and flexed in the open air. Bone cracked with wet pops, reshaping themselves like molten wax hammered into new frames. His spine extended, each vertebra popping out with sickening clarity as his back hunched and thickened.
A wet gurgle erupted from his throat—then another, more violent. Kane fell to his knees and vomited. Not food. Not bile. Blood—boiling hot and thick as sludge—gushed from his mouth in torrents, splattering the snow and sending up hissing clouds of steam. The stench of burned flesh and iron hit Seo-yun like a punch. He choked, retched again, vomiting more—this time accompanied by a thick glob of his own tongue, half-dissolved and blackened from within.
His eyes burst next.
They didn't just pop like balloons—they boiled, the sclera liquefying under the intense internal heat, melting down his cheeks as yellowish pus and steaming gore. He screamed—mouth open wide, filled with shattered remnants of his teeth, now falling out in a blood-drenched cascade, some already fused into grotesque fangs that jutted from split gums.
The great black Ursine —had watched just long enough to understand one thing:
*This one still lived.*
It lunged, snarling, trying to finish the job before the transformation completed.
But it was too late.
Kane's arm, which had been snapped in three places not a minute before, shot upward with unnatural speed,the bones now denser,longer, brutishly thick. His fingers clenched around the bear's throat, the nails falling away mid-motion in a spray of blood and keratin. In their place erupted razor-like claws, curved and black as obsidian, growing in real-time like living blades.
The bear shrieked—an awful, guttural sound no natural creature should make—as Kane's clawed hand tightened,tightened around its head, locking it in place . Kanes blood poured down his forearm, hissing where it touched his newly exposed muscle.
Then, as casually as plucking a weed, Kane turned to his left. With his free hand—now grotesquely swollen, its knuckles bulging like boulders—he grabbed his own face.
And crushed it.
Bones cracked. Cartilage exploded. His skull, already half-exposed from the earlier mauling, caved in under his own grip. There was a grotesque splorch as his eye sockets collapsed inward, brain matter bursting between his fingers like rotted fruit.
But Kane's body didn't fall.
In fact, it grew.
The destroyed head sagged like a ruined pumpkin—and then the flesh around the neck split open like a fruit too ripe, a new shape bursting from the wound. The transition was unspeakably violent. Bones extended in gory snaps, sinew twisting around them like writhing vines. A new skull emerged—elongated, beastlike, canine in structure, but with unnatural proportions. Thick fur began to spread from the base of his neck, sweeping across his shoulders, his arms, down his chest like black fire.
His legs cracked backward with the sound of tree limbs breaking, thighs and calves thickening as his posture shifted into a digitigrade stance. His spine extended, vertebrae lengthening into a bristling, whip-like tail. His body, once too emaciated for his height, now swelled with monstrous strength—eight feet tall and still growing, every inch radiating raw, corrupt vitality.
The Ursine howled in mindless rage as it swiped at the beasts in front of it.
But Seo-yun wasn't paying any attention to what was happening, for she had to run, flee like her life depended on it.
Because it did, she had no way to fight of any kind of werewolf.
Especially not one whom could transform without a full moon. She had planned for an angry ancestor spirit, or a Yokai.
And not for something known under occult circles for their tendency to leave no survivors behind.
As two monster clashed Seo-yun ran to the temple.