The neon signs of Seoul flickered overhead, casting artificial light onto the wet asphalt.
Kang Ji-Hoon walked with his hands stuffed deep into his pockets, his black hair blending into the shadows of the evening. He looked like anyone else, just a tired college student, broke and hungry, trying to decide between instant ramyun or a cheap kimbap for dinner.
Kimchi stew would be nice, he thought, exhaling a cloud of white breath. But I don't get paid until Friday.
He stopped at a crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. Ideally, he should have been looking at the traffic. Instead, for some reason, he looked up.
The night sky was empty. No stars, just the hazy pollution of the city.
But then, the air rippled.
High above the skyscrapers, floating in the void as if sitting on an invisible throne, was a man.
He wore ancient, tattered black robes that billowed in a wind that didn't exist. His hair was long and wild, darker than the night sky itself. But it was his face that froze the blood in Ji-Hoon's veins.
It was a face that looked terrifyingly similar to his own, yet different. Harder. Crueler.
The figure slowly opened his eyes.
They weren't human. They were molten gold, glowing with a vertical reptilian slit.
The entity locked eyes with Ji-Hoon down on the street. Slowly, a lazy, arrogant smirk spread across the man's face, revealing sharp, white canines. He looked like a predator who had just found a lost rabbit.
'Who... is that?' Ji-Hoon thought, paralyzed by the overwhelming pressure crushing his chest.
The golden eyes flashed.
Riiiiiing.
Ji-Hoon gasped, his body jerking violently.
He wasn't on the street. He was in his small, messy apartment, tangled in his sweat-soaked sheets. The neon light from the window outside hummed.
"Just a dream..." he whispered, clutching his chest. His heart was hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. "Just a stupid nightmare."
Riiiiiing.
His phone on the nightstand buzzed again, vibrating against the wood.
Ji-Hoon rubbed his face, trying to shake off the image of those golden eyes. He reached out and grabbed the phone without checking the caller ID, his voice groggy.
"Hello?"
"Is this Kang Ji-Hoon?"
The voice on the other end was unfamiliar. It was dry and cold, like rust scraping against metal.
"Yeah, that's me. Who is this?"
"Are you the grandson of the shaman, Kang Myung-Ja?"
Ji-Hoon flinched. The title 'Shaman' stung his ears. It was the word he had spent five years running away from.
"Yes," he said, his voice tightening. "Is she okay?"
There was a pause. A silence that lasted a second too long.
"She has passed away."
The world seemed to stop. The hum of the refrigerator, the noise of the traffic outside—it all went silent.
"What?" Ji-Hoon whispered.
"She passed this morning," the stranger said, devoid of empathy. "We are currently at the residence. We have not placed her in the casket yet. We were waiting for the next of kin."
Ji-Hoon sat on the edge of his bed, the phone trembling in his hand.
Grandma is dead.
Memories he had tried to bury forced their way to the surface. He remembered the smell of burning incense that clung to his school uniform. He remembered the kids mocking him, calling him 'Ghost Boy' because of the talismans she sewed into his underwear.
He remembered the day he left. He had packed his bags in the middle of the night, desperate to be normal. Desperate to escape the bells and the chanting. He hadn't called her once in five years.
I just wanted to be normal, he thought, a lump forming in his throat. I thought I had more time to apologize.
"I'm coming," Ji-Hoon said, his voice cracking. "Don't touch her. I... I want to be the one to prepare the burial."
---
The drive to the countryside took three hours.
By the time Ji-Hoon arrived, the sun had set. The mountain village was dead silent. The wind howled through the trees, rattling the dry branches like bones.
His grandmother's house stood at the end of a dirt path, isolated from the rest of the village. It was an old Hanok, surrounded by stone walls. Colorful fabric strips—red, blue, yellow—hung from the eaves, whipping violently in the wind.
Ji-Hoon stepped out of the taxi, paying the driver who refused to drive all the way up to the gate.
He stood before the old wooden gate. It creaked open before he even touched it.
"Hello?" he called out.
No one answered. The stranger on the phone was nowhere to be seen.
The courtyard was filled with clay pots. The smell of incense was overpowering, masking the scent of the damp earth.
Ji-Hoon walked toward the main room. The paper doors were slid open.
Inside, a single candle flickered.
And there she was.
"Grandma?"
Ji-Hoon froze in the doorway.
She wasn't lying down. She wasn't covered by a white sheet.
His grandmother was sitting upright in the center of the room, her back facing him. She was wearing her ceremonial shaman robes—bright, chaotic colors that looked grey in the dim light. Her long grey hair was loose, cascading down her back.
"Grandma?" he said again, taking a hesitant step forward. "I thought... they said you were dead."
She didn't move. She didn't breathe. The air in the room was freezing cold, colder than the winter night outside.
Ji-Hoon reached out a hand to touch her shoulder.
Creak.
The floorboard groaned under his weight.
Suddenly, a memory slammed into his mind. It was the last thing she had said to him, five years ago, standing at this very gate while he held his suitcase. Her eyes had been wide, terrified, clutching his arm with desperate strength.
'Ji-Hoon-ah. Listen to me. No matter what happens... even if you hear that I am dead... do not come back.'
'Never come back to this place.'
Ji-Hoon's hand stopped inches from her shoulder. The hair on the back of his neck stood up.
Why was she sitting up?
Where was the person who called him?
Slowly, unnaturally, the figure sitting in front of him began to turn its head. The sound of vertebrae cracking echoed in the silent room.
Crack.
The sound was like a dry branch snapping in a quiet forest.
Her head didn't just turn; it tilted at an impossible angle, her ear nearly touching her shoulder. The movement was jerky, mechanical, as if the thing inside was struggling to operate the strings of a puppet that had long since broken.
When her face finally came into view, Ji-Hoon stopped breathing.
It was his grandmother's face, but it wasn't her. The wrinkles were there, the familiar grey hair was there, but the eyes... the eyes were entirely white. The pupils had rolled back into her skull, leaving only the sclera.
Her jaw unhinged slightly, dropping lower than humanly possible.
"So..."
The voice that came out of her mouth wasn't the warm, raspy voice he remembered. It was a distorted, grinding sound, like gravel being crushed between steel plates.
"The shaman has been hiding you all this while..."
The thing wearing his grandmother's skin smiled. It was a wide, stretching grin that threatened to tear the corners of her mouth.
"I have been searching for you desperately."
Ji-Hoon stumbled backward, his shoes scraping loudly against the wooden floor. His heel caught on the doorframe, and he nearly fell into the courtyard.
'That's not my grandma.'
The thought screamed in his mind, overriding his fear. 'That isn't her. That thing... it's wearing her.'
"Who are you?" Ji-Hoon choked out, his voice trembling. "Where is she?"
The entity didn't answer. It stood up.
It didn't use its hands to push off the floor. It simply rose, its limbs stiff and straight, defying gravity. The colorful shaman robes fluttered around it as shadows in the corners of the room began to stretch and coil like living ink.
"Five years," the entity hissed, taking a step forward. The movement was wrong—too fast, too fluid. "She carved runes into her own flesh to mask your scent. She burned her soul to keep you hidden from the Abyss."
It stepped onto the porch, the moonlight catching the white of its eyes.
"But a vessel like yours... it shines too bright to stay hidden forever."
Ji-Hoon turned to run. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to flee, to get out of the mountains, to go back to the city where the neon lights were safe.
He barely made it two steps.
Whoosh.
Long, cold arms wrapped around his chest from behind. They felt like bands of iron, freezing cold even through his jacket.
He hadn't even heard it move.
"Leaving so soon?" the voice whispered directly into his ear. It smelled of sulfur and old blood. "Grandma missed you, Ji-Hoon-ah."
He was lifted off his feet and thrown back into the room.
Ji-Hoon crashed into the small altar table. Candles and bowls of rice went flying. He hit the floor hard, coughing as the wind was knocked out of him.
He scrambled to look up.
The entity was standing over him, its shadow stretching long and monstrous across the floorboards. It raised a hand—his grandmother's hand, now tipped with black, necrotic nails.
"Do not worry," it said, looming over him. "I won't kill you. I just need to hollow you out. Your body... will make a magnificent throne for me."
It lunged.
Ji-Hoon squeezed his eyes shut, throwing his arms up in a futile attempt to protect himself.
Is this it? Am I going to die here?
As the cold, rotting fingers touched his forehead, time seemed to freeze.
There was no sound. No warning.
Just a sudden, violent snap deep within his soul. Like a heavy iron chain finally rusting through and shattering under tension.
The fear that had paralyzed him a second ago didn't just fade—it was incinerated.
A searing heat, hotter than magma, exploded from his chest and flooded his veins. It wasn't human adrenaline. It was something ancient. Something that tasted of blood, iron, and deep ocean water.
The entity froze.
Its hand, which was touching Ji-Hoon's forehead, began to smoke.
"Aaaagh!"