Junho laughed like nothing was wrong, already walking, already talking about how it was getting dark and they should probably head back before it got any later.
Ishaan followed his lead, laughing along at something that wasn’t actually funny, matching his pace step for step.
They were almost clear of the trees when it happened.
Something yanked Junho backward, hard enough that he stumbled and hit the ground, sliding a few feet before catching himself against a root.
Ishaan froze on the other side of an invisible line he hadn’t known was there a second ago.
He was outside the zone.
Junho wasn’t.
Junho looked at him, wide-eyed, and mouthed one word.
Call.
Ishaan fumbled his phone out and hit Jihoon’s name, hands shaking too hard to type anything more complicated.
That was when he actually looked at what was holding Junho in place.
It stood taller than any person had any right to be, shoulders wide enough to block out what little light made it through the canopy.
An axe hung loose in one massive hand.
Its whole body looked like it was rotting from the inside out, skin sloughing away in patches, and yet it still moved like something powerful, something that hadn’t lost an ounce of strength despite the decay.
It had no head.
Just a ragged stump where a neck should have been, nothing above it at all.
Ishaan’s stomach turned over completely.
The call connected.
“Yeah, what happened?” Jihoon’s voice, immediate and alert.
“We’re in the red ribbon area,” Ishaan said, fast, barely keeping his voice steady.
“Junho’s being held by something.
It’s got him.”
“Why did you two go into the forbidden zone?”
“I don’t know, we were just walking and talking, and we ended up here.”
“Wait.
Junho’s the one being held?”
“Yes.
And it’s getting dark, and I’m seeing more than just that one thing now.”
A pause, sharp and tense.
“Okay.
Stay exactly where you are.
I’m bringing the whole team.
Don’t talk to it, don’t let it hurt him.
Put me on speaker.”
Ishaan switched it over.
“You absolute idiot,” Jihoon said immediately, loud enough that Junho winced from where he sat pinned against the ground.
“Why did you go in there?”
“I got distracted, okay?
Sue me.” Junho tried for a grin, though it didn’t fully land.
“Look, at least I’m making good conversation while I wait to die.”
Ishaan could see straight through the joke.
Junho’s hands were shaking just as badly as his own.
It felt like an eternity before Jihoon arrived, though it couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes.
He came with Youngtae right behind him, both of them moving fast through the trees.
Youngtae didn’t hesitate.
He started chanting immediately, voice low and commanding, eyes fixed on the headless thing holding his son’s oldest friend in place.
“Give the child back,” Youngtae said, cutting through his own chant, voice carrying an authority Ishaan hadn’t heard from him before.
Yuna’s voice came through Ishaan’s phone speaker a second later, relaying something none of them could hear directly.
“It’s saying he should be the sacrifice.
It wants his body.”
“Give him back to us.”
For a long, terrible second, nothing happened.
Then Junho was shoved forward, hard, stumbling straight into Jihoon’s arms.
“You’ll have what you require,” the thing said, or something close to it, the words arriving in Ishaan’s mind more than his ears.
Everyone stood there a moment, stunned, before the scolding started all at once.
Youngtae rounded on Junho first.
“You,” he said.
“You grew up on this mountain.
How do you not know where the boundary is?”
“I was talking to him,” Junho said, gesturing weakly at Ishaan.
“I wasn’t paying attention.
I’m sorry, I really am.”
Ishaan cleared his throat.
“Why doesn’t it have a head?”
Nobody had a clean answer.
Nobody in the family had ever actually seen the spirit up close before tonight, not really, not the way Ishaan just had.
It had simply always been there, inhabiting that patch of mountain for longer than anyone could trace.
Ishaan described it anyway, every gruesome detail, the rot, the axe, the ragged stump of a neck, the way it had moved like something far stronger than its ruined body should have allowed.
“Stop,” Somi said, arriving with the rest of the group just in time to catch the tail end of it.
“I didn’t need that image in my head before bed tonight.”
“What about me?” Ishaan said.
“I saw it in person.
Full resolution.”
“Okay, okay,” Jihoon said, holding up a hand.
“Both of you, enough.”
Junho filled everyone in on the shaman’s visit once things settled, the enchanted talismans, the warning about the goddess, all of it.
The reaction was immediate and loud.
“Enchanted talismans take months to produce properly,” someone said.
“We’re talking ten, twenty of them minimum, and that’s if everything goes smoothly.”
“Who’s even available to sit and chant for that long?” another voice added.
Ishaan waited for a lull before speaking.
“Can someone explain why that whole area was even marked off in the first place?”
“Nobody really knows who marked it originally,” Jihoon said.
“That thing’s been there for centuries, as far as anyone can tell.”
“Then why not put up an actual warning sign?
Or a fence, at least.
Build a wall around it.” Ishaan gestured back toward the trees.
“We nearly walked right into it without knowing.”
“Wouldn’t a fence just make people more curious about what’s behind it?”
“Maybe, but leaving it wide open like that isn’t exactly comforting either.” Ishaan crossed his arms.
“Aren’t all of you shamans?
Why are there still this many spirits wandering around here, some of them clearly dangerous?
Why isn’t anyone doing something about it?”
The whole group went quiet.
“It’s not that simple,” Jihoon said finally.
“Out in the open like this, they can run, hide, relocate.
We can’t properly track or contain something that has an entire mountain to disappear into.
That one zone is the only spot with genuinely high activity.
Everywhere else on this property is fine.”
“I’m just trying to understand.
It’s a lot to take in.”
“Okay.
Let’s not turn this into a fight,” Jihoon said, rubbing his eyes.
“We’ve got a preliminary check at the mall to prepare for.
Everyone needs to get ready.
As for the talismans, we might have some enchanted ones already made.”
“We have about fifty,” Youngtae said.
“I usually go through a hundred to three hundred on a job like this,” Junho said.
“Don’t worry,” his mother said, appearing from somewhere behind them with a look that suggested she’d already been listening for a while.
“I’ll send more than that.
Is it alright if we use blood for them?”
“That’s fine,” Junho said.
“Blood, salt, the usual.”
“I know how it works,” she said, swatting his arm lightly.
“Just make sure all of you stay safe out there.”
“About the goddess,” Ishaan said, before the moment could pass entirely.
“What did he mean, that she can’t be trusted?”
“And the other shaman,” Somi added.
“The woman who left the mountain.
What was that about?”
Junho rubbed the back of his neck.
“There was a shaman here, years back, really respected.
She moved to a different city eventually.”
“We should go talk to her,” Jihoon said.
“This whole situation feels bigger than what we’ve been treating it as.
These things existed long before any of us did.”
“The little girl called us mortals,” Ishaan said slowly, the realization settling in as he said it out loud.
“Like we’re beneath her.
Like she’s been around long enough that we’re barely worth noticing.”
“Exactly,” Junho said.
“I want to know if this other shaman has real, concrete answers, or if we’ve just been looking in the wrong direction this whole time.
And I want to know if the goddess actually lies to us.
We’ve trusted her with everything.
If that trust was misplaced, we need to know who we’re actually supposed to believe.”
That set off another round of arguing, older voices insisting they shouldn’t build theories off the ramblings of a dying old man.
“We’ve been right before, based on exactly this kind of lead,” Jihoon said, cutting through it.
“I’m not ignoring it just because it’s inconvenient.”
Eventually the argument wore itself out, nobody fully satisfied but nobody willing to keep pushing either.
Ishaan let out a long breath.
“Tonight’s sleep is going to be terrible.”
Sunhwa appeared beside him, giving his shoulder a light nudge.
“Whatever you saw tonight, try thinking about something you actually like instead, before bed.
And if nothing comes to mind, just think about my son.”
She glanced past Ishaan toward Jihoon as she said it, eyebrows lifting just slightly, a look that said see, I’m doing you a favor here as clearly as if she’d spoken it out loud.
Ishaan missed it completely, too busy actually turning the suggestion over in his head, genuinely considering it.
The first image that came to mind, unbidden, was Jihoon standing in front of a headless axe-wielding spirit, cleaver raised, blood and frost and burning talismans somewhere in the background of the same thought.
“Yeah, no,” Ishaan said slowly, still picturing it.
“That’s just going to give me more nightmares, not less.”
Somewhere behind them, Jihoon made a sound that was almost, almost a laugh.