Ten Thousand Years Ago
In the beginning there was darkness.
Not the comfortable darkness of a bedroom at night or the peaceful darkness behind closed eyes. This was the original darkness. The darkness that existed before light had the audacity to show up uninvited and ruin everything. The darkness that looked at the concept of creation and said absolutely not and meant it.
From that darkness came Malachar.
He did not arrive gently. He tore his way into existence the way something truly evil enters a room — with complete certainty that the room was always his and everyone else was just visiting. He was enormous. Ancient. Made entirely of the kind of power that makes reality nervous about its own stability.
He built his empire across nine dimensions in six hundred years. He unmade civilizations the way other people clear their browsing history — efficiently, thoroughly, and without a second thought. He commanded armies of shadow that stretched across planes of existence that didn't even have names yet. Lesser demons trembled at his presence. Greater demons quietly relocated to different dimensions and hoped he wouldn't notice.
He was, by every measurable standard, the single most terrifying entity to ever exist across any plane of reality that had the misfortune of being near him.
He was also, and this is important, extremely proud of all of this.
The Sealing
The sealing happened four thousand years ago. A coalition of the twelve most powerful holy warriors across three dimensions, wielding weapons that cost entire civilizations to forge, sacrificed everything they had to trap him.
It took all twelve of them.
Three of them survived.
They pressed his soul into a book — a black, ancient, deeply unhappy book — and sealed it with a mark so powerful it rewrote the laws of three dimensional planes simultaneously.
Let this darkness never emerge, the seal said, in a language older than language. Let this evil remain contained until the stars themselves forget their names.
Malachar spent the first hundred years screaming.
The next hundred plotting.
The next two hundred planning his revenge in extraordinary detail.
The remaining three thousand six hundred years he spent mostly waiting and occasionally updating the revenge plan because he kept thinking of better additions.
It was a very thorough revenge plan.
It involved seventeen dimensions, the complete unmaking of four star systems, and a strongly worded speech that he had been refining for approximately two millennia.
He was ready.
He had always been ready.
He was born ready.
Thursday Morning. Seoul. An Alley Behind A Chicken Restaurant.
Something touched the seal.
Malachar felt it immediately. After four thousand years of nothing, a presence. Warm. Gentle. Completely unthreatening in a way that was somehow more alarming than a threat would have been.
Finally, he thought. Someone has found me. Someone powerful enough to locate my prison across the dimensional planes. Someone worthy of witnessing my return. Someone who will tremble as the seal breaks and know in their final moments that they have unleashed upon this world the most ancient and terrible—
The seal began to come off.
Malachar blinked.
Not metaphorically. His consciousness, compressed into four thousand years of patient evil, actually blinked.
It was coming off.
Not breaking. Not shattering under the assault of tremendous power. Not cracking under the weight of a desperate forbidden ritual performed at great cost.
It was being wiped.
Like a smudge.
Like someone had looked at his four thousand year old dimensional seal — the most powerful binding ever created across nine planes of existence, the seal that had required twelve holy warriors and the sacrifice of three civilizations to create — and thought that looks dirty and started cleaning it.
Stop, Malachar thought, with considerable alarm. STOP. Do you know what that is. That is not a SMUDGE. That is a SEAL. A BINDING SEAL. You cannot just—
The warm golden light pressed a little harder.
It's being stubborn, something outside seemed to think, in a tone of mild professional irritation. Come on.
"I AM NOT STUBBORN I AM ANCIENT AND TERRIBLE—"
The seal came off completely.
Malachar erupted into the alley with ten thousand years of compressed fury and the very detailed revenge speech and the full weight of his ancient terrible power and absolutely everything he had been saving for this exact moment.
The darkness filled the alley. The ground cracked. Car alarms screamed. A nearby pigeon made a noise and flew directly into a wall.
He opened his eyes — enormous, red, the kind of eyes that had watched the death of stars — and looked down at the creature that had released him.
A young man in a blue janitor uniform was crouching on the ground looking at the mana condensate Malachar was dripping onto the concrete.
"You're dripping," the young man said.
Malachar stared at him.
"...What."
"The smoke. It's leaving residue on the ground. That's mana condensate. Very hard to get out of concrete if it sets." The young man stood up and reached into his bag. "How long have you been in that book?"
"I HAVE BEEN SEALED FOR FOUR THOUSAND—"
"Because if it's been a while the condensate is going to be really dense." The young man produced a spray bottle and looked at it thoughtfully. "I'm going to need the good solution for this. Hold on."
"HOLD ON?"
"Just don't drip anywhere else." He started rummaging more thoroughly. "I just cleaned this alley yesterday."
Malachar, Sovereign of the Nine Hells, Devourer of Worlds, the Eternal Darkness that preceded creation and would outlast it, looked at the spray bottle.
Looked at the young man.
Looked at the spray bottle again.
In ten thousand years of existence across nine dimensions, through the rise and fall of civilizations beyond counting, through wars that reshaped the laws of reality itself, through four thousand years of patient imprisonment during which he had refined his revenge plan to extraordinary detail —
Nobody had ever told him to hold on.
"Are you not afraid," he said.
"Of the dripping?" Han-Ho found the solution he was looking for. "A little. Mana condensate is genuinely annoying to—"
"OF ME."
Han-Ho looked up. Looked at the enormous column of ancient darkness filling the entire alley. Looked at the two red eyes the size of small cars. Looked back at his spray bottle.
"Should I be?"
Inside the darkness, something shifted.
Malachar had delivered variations of his reveal many times across many dimensions. Lesser demons. Holy warriors. Kings and gods and entities that predated the concept of mortality. All of them had reacted appropriately. With terror. With awe. With the specific expression of something that has just understood, completely and irreversibly, that it is about to cease to exist.
Not one of them had ever said should I be in the tone of someone who was mostly thinking about concrete.
"I AM THE ETERNAL DARKNESS," he said, because the speech was right there and he had been working on it for two thousand years and he was going to deliver it.
"You said that part."
"THE DEVOURER OF—"
"Also that part."
"I HAVE UNMADE SEVENTEEN CIVILIZATIONS."
The young man considered this.
"Were any of them in Seoul?"
"...No."
"Then it's not really my problem is it."
What happened next Malachar would spend a very long time trying to understand and never fully succeed.
The young man pressed his hand flat against the book.
The golden light came again. Warm. Gentle. Cozy in a way that was deeply inappropriate for something that was about to do what it was about to do.
Malachar felt it touch the edges of his darkness.
Oh, he thought. Oh no.
"WAIT," he said. "WAIT WHAT IS THIS."
"Almost done," said the young man, with the calm focus of a professional handling a routine task.
"MY DARKNESS. MY ANCIENT POWER. MY CAREFULLY CULTIVATED—"
"There's a really stubborn bit in the middle."
"THAT IS MY SOUL—"
From inside the darkness, Malachar watched ten thousand years of evil come off in layers.
The hatred went first. Clean sweep. Gone in a second like dust off a shelf, four hundred years of cultivated malevolence just lifted away and Malachar felt its absence the way you feel a tooth coming out — sudden, total, and accompanied by the bizarre sensation of a space where something used to be.
Then the ambition. Two thousand years of conquest planning, seventeen dimensional invasion strategies, the very detailed revenge speech — all of it lifted cleanly away and Malachar thought wait no that speech was very good but it was already gone.
Then the cruelty. The pride. The ancient territorial fury. The specific satisfaction he had always felt watching civilizations crumble. Gone. Gone. Gone.
"I WORKED VERY HARD ON THOSE," he said, with considerably less volume than before.
"Hold still."
"I AM TRYING BUT YOU ARE CLEANING MY ENTIRE PERSONALITY—"
"Almost."
The last thing to go was the darkness itself. The original darkness. The darkness from before creation that he had been born from and built himself out of and worn for ten thousand years like a second skin.
It came off like a coat.
Malachar felt it go and braced for the nothing that he was certain waited underneath.
There was no nothing.
There was something.
Something small. Something quiet. Something that had apparently always been there underneath ten thousand years of evil, waiting patiently in the way of something that has a very long time and nowhere else to be.
Something that, when the last of the darkness lifted away and the warm golden light reached it, did not recoil.
Something that, for the first time in ten thousand years, felt the warmth and thought —
Oh.
Oh that's nice.
"Done," said Han-Ho.
The alley was quiet.
The darkness was gone.
The car alarms stopped one by one, embarrassed.
The pigeon that had flown into the wall shook itself off, looked at the alley, decided this was above its pay grade, and left permanently.
Han-Ho looked at the alley. Clean. No condensate. No residue. No evidence that the most powerful dark entity across nine dimensions had been here at all.
He nodded with quiet professional satisfaction.
Something small landed on the ground in front of him.
He looked down.
Approximately the size of a large cat. Black, but not darkness-black. Just regular black, like a very small creature made of shadow and fresh air and profound confusion. Floating slightly off the ground. Two red eyes that were significantly less enormous than they had been sixty seconds ago. Small wings that were mostly decorative. An expression that could best be described as someone who had just woken up from a very long sleep and found themselves in a body several thousand sizes smaller than the one they went to sleep in.
It looked at its tiny hands.
Turned them over.
Looked up at Han-Ho.
"I," it said, in a very small voice that still carried the faint echo of something that had once made civilizations tremble, "appear to be smaller than expected."
"Little bit yeah."
"And I appear to be..." It looked at its hands again. The red eyes were wide. Not threatening. Just genuinely bewildered in a way that was entirely new to them. "...Clean."
"Very."
A long pause.
"What did you do to me."
"Cleaned the book."
"You cleaned my—"
"The seal on the cover was stubborn. Had to do the inside too."
The small creature stared at him.
"You cleaned my soul," it said.
"Was that a problem?"
"I had ten thousand years of carefully cultivated darkness in there."
Han-Ho considered this.
"You want it back?"
The creature opened its mouth. Closed it. Checked its internal inventory with the expression of someone who has just discovered that the warehouse is empty and is genuinely unsure how to feel about it.
"It's very quiet in here now," it said slowly.
"Is that bad?"
"It's..." A pause that contained several thousand years of recalibration. "...Nice, actually. It's quite nice." It said this like admitting to a crime. "I don't know what to do with nice."
"That's fine," said Han-Ho. He put his spray bottle back in his bag. "I need to finish my rounds."
The creature looked at the empty alley. Looked at the book, now clean and ordinary and completely devoid of ten thousand years of apocalyptic significance. Looked at Han-Ho.
"I don't have a wherever anymore," it said. "You cleaned it."
Han-Ho stopped.
Turned around.
Looked at the small floating creature with the wide red eyes and the expression of something that had ruled nine dimensions and currently had absolutely nowhere to be.
"Are you hungry?" he said.
The creature blinked.
"I am the former Sovereign of the Nine Hells. I do not experience—" It stopped. Looked genuinely alarmed by its own next sentence. "...Yes. Apparently yes. What is that."
"That's hunger."
"I don't like it."
"Nobody does. There's a GS25 around the corner."
"What is a GS25."
"Convenience store."
"And they have food."
"Triangle kimbap mostly. There's a hot dog situation near the register that I don't fully understand but it exists."
The creature was quiet for a moment.
"I once feasted on the life force of an entire civilization," it said.
"The tuna mayo one is pretty good," said Han-Ho.
They walked to the GS25.
The convenience store clerk looked up when the door opened. Looked at Han-Ho. Looked at the small black floating creature with glowing red eyes drifting in behind him. Looked back at Han-Ho.
"New pet?" she said.
"Something like that."
"I am not a pet," said the creature, with considerable dignity, from shin height.
The clerk looked at it for a long moment with the expression of someone who has worked the morning shift for six years and has achieved a state of spiritual transcendence beyond surprise.
"Ten thousand won minimum purchase," she said, and went back to her phone.
The creature floated beside Han-Ho through the refrigerated section and studied each item with the focused intensity of someone encountering commercially packaged food for the first time, which was exactly what was happening.
"What is this one," it said, pointing at a shrimp cracker.
"Snack."
"And this."
"Energy drink. Don't."
"Why."
"Trust me."
"And this."
"Lemon flavored thing. Also don't."
"Why."
"It just doesn't deserve you."
The creature considered this with great seriousness.
"I once cursed a king so thoroughly that his bloodline forgot how to dream for seven generations," it said.
"The honey butter chips are over here," said Han-Ho.
They sat outside on the plastic stools.
Han-Ho ate his triangle kimbap with the efficient satisfaction of a man who has been working since seven and has finally, justifiably, sat down. The creature sat cross legged on the stool next to him — floating two centimeters above the surface out of habit — and ate honey butter chips one at a time with the expression of someone experiencing a revelation in snack form.
"These are," it said, after the fourth chip.
"Yeah," said Han-Ho.
"These are extraordinary."
"They're pretty good."
"I have consumed the essence of dying stars," the creature said. "I have drunk from the void between dimensions. I have tasted the last breath of a collapsing world." It held up the chip and looked at it with genuine reverence. "This is better."
"Honey butter does something to people."
"I am not people."
"Honey butter does something to things."
The creature ate three more chips in meditative silence.
"I should tell you something," it said eventually.
"Okay."
"When the seal broke I attempted to possess you. Take over your body. Use your physical form to re-establish my dominion over the nine hells and begin the reconquest of all dimensional planes starting with this one." It looked at its chips. "I had a very detailed plan. I had been working on it for two thousand years."
Han-Ho nodded slowly.
"Did it work?"
"No."
"Okay."
"Your soul repelled me. Completely. Instantly." The creature's voice carried the specific tone of someone who has never been embarrassed before and is experiencing it for the first time at a very advanced age. "In ten thousand years across nine dimensions nothing has ever repelled me. Your soul just looked at me and said no and I was outside before I understood what was happening."
Han-Ho finished his kimbap. Folded the wrapper. Put it in the bin.
"Huh," he said.
"That's all you have to say."
"I mean I did notice my hand itched."
"That was me attempting to enslave your consciousness."
"Bit annoying yeah."
The creature stared at him.
"You are," it said carefully, "a very unusual person."
"I'm a Mana-Janitor."
"Yes but—"
"Rank F."
"I understand but—"
"One skill."
"I KNOW but—" It stopped. Took a breath it technically did not need. "What I am attempting to communicate is that your soul is the cleanest, most powerful, most genuinely terrifying thing I have encountered in ten thousand years of existence across nine dimensional planes and you are currently sitting on a plastic stool outside a convenience store and your primary concern this morning was mana condensate on a concrete floor."
Han-Ho thought about this.
"The condensate really is hard to get out if it sets," he said.
The creature looked at him for a very long time.
Something shifted in its expression. Something warm and involuntary that ten thousand years of darkness had never once permitted.
"I want to stay," it said. Very quietly. "If that is acceptable."
Han-Ho stood up. Picked up his bag.
"You can't sleep on the floor," he said. "I just cleaned it."
"I don't sleep."
"Corner of the couch."
"I don't need—" It paused. "...I would like the corner of the couch."
"It's not a great couch."
"I have sat on thrones made from the compressed suffering of a thousand conquered kings."
"So the couch should be fine."
"The couch will be fine," it agreed, with the quiet dignity of something making a very significant decision and choosing to be casual about it.
Han-Ho started walking.
The creature floated after him. Exactly two feet behind. Still trying to be subtle. Still absolutely failing.
"What do I call you," Han-Ho said, without turning around.
"I am Malachar. Sovereign of the Nine Hells. Devourer of—"
"That's a lot."
A pause.
"...Moru," it said. "You can call me Moru."
"Where'd that come from."
"I don't know." It looked at its tiny hands. "It was just there. In the clean part."
Han-Ho nodded.
"Okay Moru."
"Okay," said Moru.
They walked home.
Behind them the alley was spotless. The book sat clean and ordinary in Han-Ho's bag. The GS25 clerk watched them go through the window, looked at her phone, looked back up, decided some things were above her pay grade, and went back to her phone.
Three blocks away in a different alley, something large and cold was stepping through a Gate.
It was not having a good morning either.
But that was tomorrow's problem.
Han-Ho had floors to clean first.