Chapter 4: The God Walks Among Mortals
SEVEN DAYS AFTER THE RESURRECTION
The news had spread through Seoul's elite circles like wildfire through dry grass. The Park family mansion—one of the most secure properties in Gangnam—had suffered what authorities were calling "an unprecedented structural failure." An entire wall had simply vanished, leaving behind a perfect void that defied architectural explanation. Security footage from that night showed nothing but static and electromagnetic interference. The only witnesses were the Park family themselves, and they weren't talking.
They weren't talking because they couldn't. Not coherently.
Mrs. Park had been found by the housekeeping staff the next morning, sitting in her destroyed dining room, staring at the wall that no longer existed. She hadn't moved in fourteen hours. When the paramedics tried to speak to her, she could only whisper two words over and over: "He came back. He came back. He came back."
Mr. Park had locked himself in his study and hadn't emerged since. Servants reported hearing him making frantic phone calls—to shamans, to priests, to anyone who claimed knowledge of supernatural phenomena. His voice carried through the thick oak door, alternating between desperate pleading and incoherent terror.
Min-Jun had fled to his penthouse apartment, but solitude brought no peace. Every reflective surface showed him glimpses of burning eyes watching from impossible angles. His Lamborghini had mysteriously developed electrical problems—the engine would start, but the radio played only static that sounded disturbingly like whispered threats in a language he didn't recognize.
And So-Young... So-Young had simply vanished.
None of them knew that their tormentor was currently sitting in a 24-hour coffee shop in Hongdae, looking perfectly ordinary as he sipped an Americano and watched the sunrise paint the city in shades of gold and crimson.
To any casual observer, the man at table seven appeared unremarkable. Average height, lean build, wearing a simple black suit that looked expensive but not ostentatious. His face was handsome in an understated way—the kind of attractiveness that drew second glances without being obviously supernatural.
But the careful observer would notice things. The way other customers unconsciously gave his table a wide berth, as if some primal instinct warned them away. How electronic devices flickered when he passed—phones losing signal, laptops freezing, the espresso machine grinding to a halt for no discernible reason. The way shadows fell differently around him, creating patterns that hurt to look at directly.
And if someone were foolish enough to meet his eyes, they would see something that would haunt their dreams forever—infinite depths that contained the birth and death of stars, the rise and fall of civilizations, the absolute certainty of divine judgment.
Tae-Hyeon—though that name felt increasingly inadequate for what he had become—reviewed his plans with the methodical precision of someone who had waged war across galaxies. The Park family's destruction would be elegant, surgical, and absolutely complete. But it would not be swift. Swift was merciful, and mercy was a luxury he had no intention of extending.
His phone—a new model he had acquired through means that didn't involve currency—buzzed with an incoming message. The sender's identity made his lips curve in a smile that would have terrified anyone who saw it.
**Unknown Number:** "We know what you are. Meet us at the old Gyeongbokgung Palace. Midnight. Come alone, or Seoul burns."
Tae-Hyeon's laugh was soft, but it made every piece of glass in the coffee shop develop hairline cracks. Threats. Mortals still believed they could threaten him.
He typed back with fingers that left faint scorch marks on the phone's screen: "I'll be there. Bring friends. I could use the entertainment."
THE PARK FAMILY RESIDENCE - DAY SEVEN
So-Young stood in what had once been her family's dining room, though 'stood' was perhaps too generous a term. She swayed slightly, her designer clothes wrinkled from days of wear, her perfectly styled hair hanging in limp strands around a face that had aged a decade in a week.
She had tried to run. Had packed her most essential belongings—jewelry, cash, her passport—and made it as far as Incheon Airport before something impossible happened. Every flight she tried to book showed as unavailable. Her credit cards were mysteriously declined despite having unlimited spending limits. Her passport had somehow become invalid, though she had personally renewed it just months ago.
The message was clear: she wasn't allowed to leave. Something was keeping her here, trapped in Seoul like a mouse in a maze built by a cat who preferred to play with its food.
"So-Young?" Her mother's voice drifted from the sitting room, thin and reedy with fear. "Is that you?"
So-Young found her mother exactly where she'd left her that morning—huddled in the corner of the couch, wrapped in a blanket despite the summer heat, staring at shadows that moved when they shouldn't.
"Mother, we have to talk about what happened," So-Young said, though her own voice carried little conviction. How did one discuss the impossible? How did one explain that her murdered husband had returned as something that could erase walls with a gesture?
"He was dead," Mrs. Park whispered. "I checked his pulse myself. Twenty minutes. No heartbeat, no breathing, no response to stimuli. He was clinically dead."
"I know, Mother."
"Then how—"
"I don't know!" So-Young's composure finally cracked, her voice rising to near hysteria. "I don't know how he came back, I don't know what he's become, and I don't know what he's planning to do to us!"
Mrs. Park's eyes, which had been unfocused and distant, suddenly snapped to her daughter with laser intensity. "What he's planning? Isn't it obvious? He's going to destroy us. Completely. Utterly. And we deserve it."
The admission hung in the air like a death sentence. For the first time since the night of the poisoning, mother and daughter acknowledged the full magnitude of what they had done—and what was coming for them in return.
"We have to do something," So-Young said desperately. "Hire bodyguards, leave the country, contact the government—"
"With what money?" Mrs. Park's laugh was bitter and broken. "Haven't you been paying attention? Our accounts have been frozen. The merger with Lee Industries has been 'postponed indefinitely'—Min-Jun won't even return our calls. Our assets are mysteriously tied up in legal complications that shouldn't exist. We're being systematically dismantled, piece by piece."
So-Young's blood ran cold. "That's impossible. Those accounts are protected, regulated—"
"By what? Laws? Governments? Mortal institutions?" Mrs. Park's eyes gleamed with the fevered intensity of someone who had stared too long into the abyss. "What we saw that night... that wasn't human. That was something else entirely. Something that operates by different rules."
Before So-Young could respond, every electronic device in the mansion activated simultaneously. Televisions blared to life, radios crackled with interference, tablets and phones chimed with notifications. But they all displayed the same thing—a simple message written in text that seemed to burn against the screen:
MISS ME YET?
The message held for exactly seven seconds, then everything went dark. The mansion's power had been cut—not by any earthly utility company, but by something that could manipulate electrons as easily as breathing.
In the darkness, So-Young heard her mother begin to sob.
"He's playing with us," Mrs. Park whispered. "Like a cat with mice. He could end this whenever he wants, but he's... enjoying it."
So-Young's hands shook as she reached for a flashlight, but even that refused to work. The batteries had been drained of power, leaving them in absolute darkness.
And in that darkness, they heard footsteps.
Slow, measured, deliberate. The sound of someone walking up the marble steps to their front door. Each footfall echoed with unnatural resonance, as if the sound was being amplified through dimensions.
The footsteps stopped directly outside.
Three knocks. Not urgent, not angry. Patient. Polite. Terrifying in their civility.
"Don't answer it," Mrs. Park hissed.
But So-Young was already moving toward the door, drawn by a compulsion she couldn't name. Her hand reached for the handle of its own accord, guided by some force that bypassed her conscious will.
She opened the door to find... nothing.
The front steps were empty. No figure in the shadows, no sign that anyone had been there. Just the warm summer night and the sound of cicadas in the garden.
But on the doorstep, placed with precise care, was a single white chrysanthemum. In Korean culture, the flower of death. The flower placed on graves and given at funerals.
A calling card from a god who understood symbolism.
So-Young picked up the flower with trembling fingers, and the moment her skin touched the petals, she heard his voice—not spoken aloud, but whispered directly into her mind with intimate familiarity.
"Hello, wife. Did you think I'd forgotten about you?"
GYEONGBOKGUNG PALACE - MIDNIGHt
The ancient palace grounds were officially closed to visitors after sunset, but such restrictions held little meaning for beings who existed outside mortal law. Tae-Hyeon walked through the traditional Korean architecture with the casual ease of someone who belonged there, his footsteps silent on the stone pathways.
He could sense them before he saw them—a dozen figures arranged in a perfect circle around the main courtyard. They wore traditional Korean hanbok robes, but these were no costume party attendees. These were the old ones. The shamans and mystics who still remembered when gods walked openly among mortals.
The eldest among them, a woman whose age could have been anywhere from seventy to seven hundred, stepped forward. Her eyes held depths that spoke of decades studying forces most people pretended didn't exist.
"Cheon-Wang," she said simply. The name carried weight when spoken by one who understood its true meaning. "We felt your awakening. The very fabric of reality trembled when you took mortal flesh."
Tae-Hyeon tilted his head slightly, acknowledging the recognition. "And you are?"
"Keepers of the old knowledge. Guardians of the balance between worlds. We have maintained the barriers that keep entities like yourself from walking freely in the realm of mortals." Her voice carried quiet authority, but not foolish courage. She knew exactly what she was addressing.
"And yet," Tae-Hyeon replied, his voice carrying harmonics that made the ancient stones resonate, "here I am."
The woman inclined her head. "Indeed. Which means either our barriers have failed... or you are here by cosmic right. Tell us, God of War—do you come as conqueror or as agent of justice?"
It was a clever question. In the old laws that governed supernatural beings, the distinction mattered. A conqueror could be opposed, banished, bound by ritual and sacrifice. But an agent of divine justice operating within cosmic law was protected by forces far greater than any earthly magic.
"I come for what is mine," Tae-Hyeon replied. "Nothing more. Nothing less."
"The Park family."
"Among others."
The eldest shaman nodded slowly. "We have researched their crimes. Murder, betrayal, the poisoning of an innocent. By the old laws, their blood debt is yours to collect."
"Then you know why I cannot be stopped."
"Cannot... perhaps not. But you can be... limited." The woman raised one weathered hand, and the other shamans began to chant in a language that predated written history. "We cannot prevent your justice, Cheon-Wang. But we can ensure it remains proportional. They poisoned one man—therefore, you may claim one life from each bloodline involved. No more."
The chanting grew louder, and Tae-Hyeon felt something attempting to wrap around his divine essence like chains made of starlight and obligation. For a moment, the bindings almost held.
Then he smiled.
"One life from each bloodline," he repeated thoughtfully. "How... limiting."
He raised his own hand, and the shamans' binding spell simply... ceased. Not broken, not shattered—simply made irrelevant by the presence of something that existed beyond their comprehension of cosmic law.
"But you see," he continued, his voice growing softer and infinitely more dangerous, "I am not bound by the justice of mortals. I am not constrained by human concepts of proportionality. I am divine retribution given flesh, and I operate by my own laws."
The eldest shaman's face went pale as she realized the magnitude of their error. This was not a supernatural entity operating within cosmic law. This was cosmic law, incarnate and personal.
"Besides," Tae-Hyeon added with casual cruelty, "who said I intended to kill them?"
With that statement, the shamans' protective circle collapsed entirely. Death, they could have limited. Death was finite, bound by rules and precedents. But divine punishment... divine punishment could be eternal.
"There are fates worse than death," Tae-Hyeon continued, beginning to walk away. "And I have had millennia to perfect them all."
As he disappeared into shadows that seemed to reach out to embrace him, the eldest shaman whispered a prayer to gods she hoped were listening.
She feared they were not.
* * *
**LEE INDUSTRIES HEADQUARTERS - 3:17 AM**
Min-Jun sat in his corner office on the 47th floor, surrounded by the trappings of his success—awards, photographs with world leaders, certificates from the most prestigious universities. None of it meant anything now. None of it could protect him from what was coming.
His hands shook as he poured another glass of whiskey—his seventh since midnight. The alcohol did nothing to calm his nerves, but the ritual of pouring and drinking gave him something to do with his hands other than tear at his hair.
Every shadow in the office seemed to contain watching eyes. Every reflection showed him glimpses of something that should not exist. He had installed additional lighting, hired security guards, even consulted with a priest, but nothing helped. The terror followed him everywhere.
His computer chimed with an incoming email. The sender's address was simply "[email protected]"—an address that should not have been able to reach his secure corporate servers.
The message contained only a single line: "Check your portfolio."
Min-Jun's blood turned to ice as he accessed his investment accounts. The numbers that greeted him defied rational explanation. Every stock he owned was in freefall. Every bond had been mysteriously downgraded. His cryptocurrency holdings showed as completely worthless—not declined, but literally valued at zero.
In the span of seven days, his personal fortune of 2.3 billion won had been reduced to exactly 47,000 won—the price of a modest meal.
But that wasn't the worst part.
The worst part was that when he called his brokers, his financial advisors, his accountants—none of them could explain what had happened. The transactions were legal, properly documented, and completely inexplicable. It was as if the universe itself had decided that Lee Min-Jun was no longer worthy of wealth.
Another email arrived. This one contained an attachment—a photograph taken from outside his office window. The image showed him sitting at his desk, whiskey glass in hand, looking exactly as terrified as he felt.
The photograph had been taken from the perspective of someone floating forty-seven stories above the ground.
Min-Jun ran to the window and pressed his face against the reinforced glass, staring out into the Seoul night. Nothing. No helicopters, no drones, no platforms or equipment that could explain the image.
But as he watched, words began appearing on the glass itself, traced by an invisible finger in frost that shouldn't have been able to form in the summer heat:
**"I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN ABOUT YOU, MIN-JUN. WE'LL TALK SOON."**
The letters glowed with inner fire for exactly ten seconds, then vanished, leaving only the memory burned into his retinas.
Min-Jun stumbled backward from the window, his legs finally giving out entirely. He collapsed into his expensive leather chair and began to laugh—not from humor, but from the sound of a mind beginning to fracture under pressure it was never designed to handle.
He laughed until he cried, and then he cried until he laughed, and through it all, he felt the weight of divine attention pressing down on him like the gravity of a collapsing star.
In the darkness beyond his office window, something that had once been Kim Tae-Hyeon watched and waited and planned the exquisite details of revenge that would make Min-Jun beg for the mercy of mere death.
The Park family had wanted him gone.
Instead, they had awakened something that understood that the best punishment was not swift justice, but the slow, methodical dismantling of everything they had ever valued—starting with their sanity and working outward from there.
The God of War had returned to Seoul.
And he was just getting started.