The house at the bottom of the mountain was absurd, sprawling wings of tiled roof spreading out behind a gate tall enough to swallow a truck.
“You sure this is the shaman’s place?” Ishaan asked, staring up at it.
“Pretty sure,” Junho said.
“How are you so sure?”
“Look at how much money’s sitting in front of us.” Junho gestured at the gate, the manicured hedges, the two separate cars parked in the drive.
“Nobody accumulates this much without knowing something the rest of us don’t.”
“You can just tell from money?”
“You’d be surprised how often that’s the actual answer,” Junho said, laughing.
He walked up and knocked.
A younger man opened the door a moment later, maybe thirty, dressed casually but sharp-eyed, already sizing them up before either of them spoke.
“Can I help you?” he asked, polite in that practiced, customer-service way.
“I’m from the Kang family,” Junho said.
“My father mentioned your grandfather used to work as a shaman.
We were hoping to ask him a few questions, if he’s able.”
The man’s eyes flicked past Junho, landing on Ishaan, and his whole posture shifted.
“There’s a foreigner with you,” he said, tone cooling fast.
“Is this some kind of joke?
This isn’t a cultural attraction.”
“No, no, it’s not like that,” Junho said quickly.
“He can actually see them.
Spirits.
Same as your grandfather could, back in his day.”
The man’s skepticism didn’t budge.
“And I’m supposed to just believe that?”
“Test him,” Junho said.
“Right now.
Anywhere you want.”
The man considered that, then led them off the path toward a dense cluster of trees at the edge of the property, thick enough that the afternoon light barely made it through.
“Tell me what you see,” he said, arms crossed.
Ishaan looked, and immediately wished he hadn’t.
A woman crawled up the trunk of the nearest tree, if woman was even the right word for it.
Four arms, all moving independently, fingers digging into the bark like claws.
“She’s got four arms,” Ishaan said slowly.
“She’s climbing that tree over there.
She doesn’t look fully human.
Not dead long, either, I think, based on how solid she looks.”
The man’s face went pale.
He turned to Junho immediately.
“Tell your family we need a property revaluation.
Now.”
Junho, listening closely, muttered under his breath, “High B, maybe low A tier.
Perfect.
We never catch a single break.”
“Excuse me?” the man said sharply.
“Nothing, nothing.” Junho cleared his throat.
“Can we speak with your grandfather now?”
The man led them inside, through a hallway lined with old photographs, into a sitting room where an older woman rose to meet them, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Grandfather doesn’t see people anymore,” she said, before either of them could explain themselves.
“He hasn’t in years.
His mind isn’t what it used to be either.
I don’t think today’s a good day for visitors.”
“Please, Mrs.
Nam,” Junho said, bowing slightly.
“We wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.
Five minutes.
That’s all we need.”
She hesitated, glancing at her son, then sighed.
“Five minutes.”
She led them down a narrow hallway to a bedroom at the end, knocking gently before opening the door.
“Father?
The old man in the bed looked impossibly frail, skin stretched thin over bones, eyes half-lidded and unfocused.
Ishaan’s first thought, unbidden and a little horrified at himself for thinking it, was that the man looked more like a ghost than most of the actual ghosts he’d seen.
Junho knelt beside the bed, voice gentle.
“Grandfather, I wrote talismans for a spirit, and she burned every single one instantly.
A small, pale little girl.
What kind of talisman would actually work against something like that?”
The old man’s eyes sharpened slightly.
“How was she?”
Junho described the whole thing, the mall, the burning, the pressure, the crows, all of it, while the old man listened without interrupting once.
“She’s not alone,” the old man said finally, voice raspy but clear.
“She’s one of them.
They don’t draw power the way normal spirits do.
They’re higher beings entirely.
You’re not fighting one of her.
You’re fighting all of them.”
Junho went still.
“Them?
There’s more?”
“Yes.
More.”
“How many?”
The old man didn’t answer that directly.
“Normal talismans won’t touch something like her.
No matter how many you write, however carefully.
You need enchanted ones.
The kind made for month-long rituals.”
“Those take forever to prepare,” Junho said.
“They’re stronger for a reason.” The old man’s eyes drifted toward the ceiling.
“You’ll also need the land goddess’s blessing.
If she helps you, truly helps you, you can do almost anything.
Write the talisman in your own blood.
Chant over it for months before you use it.”
“Okay.
So how many of them are there?” Junho tried again.
The old man’s expression shifted, unfocused, drifting somewhere Junho clearly couldn’t follow.
“The goddess can’t be trusted, you understand.
She lies.
She watches people the way you’d watch entertainment.
She finds it all very funny.”
“Father.” Mrs.
Nam stepped closer, voice tight.
“Father, stay with us.”
He didn’t.
His words kept drifting, disconnected fragments about mountains and debts and things Ishaan couldn’t follow at all.
“It’s okay,” Junho said gently, standing.
“He’s tired.
We shouldn’t push him further.”
They thanked Mrs.
Nam and stepped back out into the afternoon light.
“He said the goddess can’t be trusted,” Ishaan said once they were walking again.
“Yeah, I heard that part too.” Junho rubbed the back of his neck.
“I don’t know what to make of it.
We’ve trusted her with basically everything for generations.
Might just be his age catching up with him.
But if the talisman part is right, we need months of prep before we’re anywhere near ready.”
“Can you make those talismans?”
“The blood part, sure.
Any of us can do that.” Junho kicked a stone off the path.
“The month of chanting has to come from the elder council, though.
And you saw them today.
They panic over small stuff. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
If I tell them there’s a whole them, not just one, how am I supposed to even explain how many?
Two?
Five?
Fifty?”
“Don’t say fifty,” Ishaan said immediately.
“I don’t even want to think about fifty of those.”
“Yeah, yeah, we shouldn’t,” Junho agreed.
“If I’m remembering right, there was another shaman around this mountain back in grandfather’s day.
A woman, actually really well known.
She moved away eventually, different city.”
“Why’d she leave?”
“I think there were just too many shamans crowded onto one mountain.
She was known for something specific, too, finding possession cases other people missed completely.
Sharp eye for it.
People don’t really have that kind of skill anymore, from what I’ve heard.”
“We should ask your dad about her.”
“Probably, yeah.”
They started back up the hill, the path curling through thick trees, quiet settling between them.
“There’s nothing else out here,” Ishaan said after a while, glancing around.
“No other houses.
How far does your family’s land actually go?”
“All of it,” Junho said.
“The whole mountain, most of downtown too.
The shaman’s house was a gift, actually.
He used to consult for our company generations back, officially, at least.
Unofficially, he was doing exactly what we do now.”
“So how long has your family been doing this?”
“Since my grandfather’s time, more or less.
Most people from his generation retired eventually.
My dad’s the only one who didn’t.” Junho smiled slightly.
“He says somebody needs to keep an eye on me and Jihoon, or we’d cause too much trouble.”
“You guys are rich, rich,” Ishaan said, shaking his head.
“Eh, we’re not that rich,” Junho said, laughing it off.
“Then why keep doing this?
You could just stop.”
Junho considered that for a second.
“If you’ve got the ability to save someone’s life, why would you just sit at home instead?
Even without the money on the line, we’d still want to do this.
It’s not only the living people we help, either.
Most of what we deal with isn’t malicious, not really.
It’s just spirits stuck somewhere, holding onto something they can’t let go of.
We’re just giving them somewhere to go.”
“Wow,” Ishaan said quietly.
They kept walking, the trees growing denser around them.
“Can I ask you something?” Ishaan said after a while.
“I’ve noticed a lot of red ribbons tied around the trees back here.”
Junho stopped walking.
“Wait.
Red ribbons?”
“Yeah, there’s a bunch, actually, tied all over the—”
Junho turned in a slow circle, taking in the ribbons scattered through the trees around them, his face draining of color.
“I’m not joking right now,” Junho said, voice suddenly flat and serious.
“This is the one area we’re never supposed to come near.
We need to back out, slowly, right now.
If you see anything, act like you don’t.
Keep talking to me like normal.
I don’t have a single talisman on me, and you don’t know how to fight.”
“It’s too late,” Ishaan said quietly.
“Something’s already following us.”
Junho closed his eyes for a second.
“I hate this.
We should’ve brought Jihoon.”