The candles had almost burned down to nothing, tiny pools of wax cooling on the altar before her. The room smelled of mugwort and smoke, an intoxicating perfume that made her dizzy and, in some strange way, alive. Lee Bo-ram's mother — though nobody called her by her birth name anymore — sat cross-legged, still in her ritual robes though the ceremony had ended hours ago.
Her teacher's voice haunted the silence.
"When I go, it will be you."
That had been his last words before his breath rattled out of him like wind through dead branches. He had placed the bells in her hands — the same bells that now hung motionless beside the altar — and smiled with that maddening calm of his.
"You could have lived," she whispered into the shadows, her voice sharp enough to cut the air. "You could have stayed."
It had been seven years since he left her with this burden, this crown of bones and incense smoke. Seven years since she had been forced to become it — the village's shaman, the medium, the one everyone ran to when the spirits screamed. She had been a wife then. A mother. She had worn lipstick, argued with arrogant wives of CEOs, nagged her husband about his declining affection.
But the spirits had chosen her. Or cursed her
She laughed bitterly, startling even herself.
Husband.
That man. That pitiful man who had not waited, not even for a year, before remarrying. She pictured his face when he had come to her, hesitant and guilty, announcing that he had found someone new. Someone young. Someone who could give him the "normal life" she apparently could not. Someone who could be a wife.
And then he had married that woman — that sweet-faced, soft-voiced woman who smiled too easily, who never looked at her without pity in her eyes.
Her jaw tightened.
"Normal life."
As though her visions, her nights spent kneeling before the altar until her knees bled, were a performance. As though she had chosen this.
She closed her eyes and pictured the other woman's face — smooth, innocent, with the faint softness of someone who had not been broken by anything. Her hands curled into fists. She hated that woman's memory as much as she hated the man who had loved her. And yet — the woman was gone now, wasn't she? Crushed between metal doors, leaving only whispers and grief behind.
They had said it was an accident, a tragedy. But she knew better. The spirits rarely made accidents.
She should have felt satisfied. She had done the right thing, She had burned the right offerings, sent the right prayers to the right gods. She should have felt that the universe had balanced the scales. But no. The bitterness still clung to her like smoke.
And then, there was the girl, who survived. Her gaze shifted to the far wall, where a single framed photo sat: a much younger version of herself with a girl on her lap.
Her daughter.
Bo-ram.
The name rolled in her mind like a coin flipping end over end. She had not seen the girl in months, not since their last fight — that screaming match where Bo-ram had thrown her words like knives, called her "mad," called her "a fraud."
The name floated through her mind, and with it came the memory of their last fight — shouting, crying, the girl's voice sharp with accusation. "You're insane! You care more about those spirits than me!"
Her mouth softened at the memory, but not with sorrow. With calculation.
Her lips twisted into a smile that had no warmth in it.
The girl was 18 now, wasn't she? A legal adult. A beautiful one, too — she had seen the photos, the society pages. Heiress to the family fortune, the perfect little princess her father always wanted.
Perfect. And perfectly wasted.
Bo-ram could be useful.
Yes — useful.
She had her mother's face, her mother's temper, though she denied it. That spark of wildness could be turned, shaped, honed into something sharp. If only Bo-ram would stop fighting her, stop pretending to be her father's daughter.
The spirits were not kind to those who turned away from blood. She would have to remind Bo-ram of that. Remind her of who she was — whose she was.
Her fingers traced the edge of the ritual dagger on the altar, the one her teacher had blessed.
She could almost hear his voice again.
"When I go, it will be you."
Yes, it was her.
And if the gods had chosen her, then the girl had no choice but to follow.