Chapter 1 - The last ritual

The final bell rang like a sigh through the school’s hallways, followed by the familiar rustle of students stuffing notebooks into backpacks and rushing toward the gates like a tide finally released. Sunlight streaked across the cracked pavement of the courtyard, golden and warm, and the breeze carried the faintest scent of roasted chestnuts from the street vendor who parked near the crossing every Thursday.

She didn’t run like the others. She wasn’t in a hurry after all.

Instead, Hana slung her navy-blue bag over one shoulder and adjusted the charm bracelet on her wrist—woven red cord, amber beads, and a small silver bell. It jingled once, light and high-pitched, and the student beside her flinched.

"Still wearing that thing, Kim?" her classmate muttered, eyeing the bell like it might bite. "Kinda creepy."

"Still failing math, Park?" Hana answered sweetly, already turning away.

She didn’t mind the stares anymore. They'd stop by next semester anyway, asking for good luck charms before exams or to help with a “feeling in their house.” She smiled to herself and walked on.

She opened her backpack, retrieved her earphones, and put them on her ears, smiling the moment the music started.

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’

The ride home was the same as always; everyone ignored her. Looking outside from the window of the train, she thought about how she wanted more in this life. She wanted to be rich and travel the world without being forced to work in the same field as her mother. Even if sometimes it was interesting to work there, she wanted more. It wasn’t like she hated her mother; she truly loved her.

As the other girls chatted about cram schools and dating apps, Hana stared out the window at the same apartment buildings she’d seen every day. She wondered how far the tracks would need to run to take her somewhere new.

Just when one song finished playing, she had to come out and walk the rest of the way home.

Her family shop stood two train stops away, tucked between a nail salon and a shuttered bookstore. The sign was written in brush calligraphy:

Jang's Spirit Remedies & Blessings.

Beneath it hung paper charms fluttering in the wind—each hand-painted with sigils for peace, protection, and clarity.

When Hana stepped through the curtain of bells over the entrance, the smell of incense greeted her like an old friend—smoky sandalwood with a hint of myrrh. Her sneakers squeaked on the polished wood floor as she called out.

"I'm back!"

From the back room came a voice, low and lyrical. "You’re late. I was about to send a fox spirit to fetch you."

Hana rolled her eyes. "You’re mixing up traditions again, Mom. That’s Japanese."

A laugh. Then her mother emerged—tall, elegant, her black hair tied up with jade pins, sleeves rolled to the elbow and smudged with ink. The years had been kind to her, or maybe the spirits had. Her presence had a weight to it, like gravity, and her gaze had that same sharpness that cut through lies like smoke.

Hana dropped her bag by the counter and pulled on the apron hanging on the wall. "What’s on the menu today?"

"Two minor house cleansings, one charm renewal, and Mrs. Oh is picking up her anxiety balm."

"Any actual spirits?"

"Only the nosy kind."

That was code for harmless. Some energy residue from a tense household, maybe a place where people argued too often. Nothing malicious, at least not for today; she could finally have some peace.

The front of the shop was a mosaic of oddities and tools: shelves of clay jars labeled in faded ink, bundles of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, crystal bowls, copper bells, and folded cloths inscribed with old Chinese characters. A low glass counter displayed protective bracelets and talismans, all handmade, all effective enough to ward off the little things—the kind of spiritual noise most people didn’t even know they had.

Hana liked the rhythm of it. Her after-school life was a pattern of mixing salts, grinding herbs, sketching sigils on slips of paper, and lighting candles in exact order. No one outside understood it, but that made it more hers.

As she set out the ritual tools for the evening’s appointments, her mother watched from the doorway, arms crossed.

"You’ve improved," she said. "The salt ring’s cleaner than last time."

"Didn’t you say a perfect circle is impossible?"

Her mother smirked. "I say many things. Doesn’t mean I believe them all."

They worked in companionable silence for a while. The doorbell jingled once or twice—regulars picking up orders or dropping off payment in little red envelopes. Hana handled them all with a polite bow and a practiced smile.

By six, the day had slowed. Outside, the sky turned the color of honeyed tea. Her mother was sitting cross-legged in the back room, brush in hand, drawing a large seal onto a circle of white cloth. It was a complex one—eight-sided, precise, with several layered glyphs.

Hana crouched beside her, curious.

"What’s this one for?"

"A restraint sigil. For the Moon-Bent Ritual."

Hana frowned. "You’re doing that one again?"

"I have to. A client came in last night. He said something’s wrong in his family home. The spirits there are old. Not the kind that floats around for attention."

"Do you want me to come?"

Her mother’s hand hesitated just a second too long over the next stroke.

"You’ve never seen a true spirit possession before," she said softly.

Hanna had only ever read about the Moon-Bent Ritual. It was one of the few her mother never taught her. The kind performed when normal wards weren’t enough—when the spirit was something deeper.

Hana didn’t look away. "You said I was ready for advanced work."

"Yes, but—"

"I know the rites. I can draw all the major seals from memory. I’ve practiced with you since I could hold a brush."

Her mother exhaled, setting the brush down. She studied her daughter—not just as a parent, but as a teacher weighing readiness.

"You’re confident."

"I’m trained; I had been studying all this since I learned how to walk.”

"Confidence is louder. But you’re not wrong." A pause. "Fine. You can assist, but only assist. You don’t speak during the invocation unless I tell you. You don’t break the circle, and most important of all, you don’t improvise."

"Got it."

"And you wear the talisman."

"The bell one?"

"The bell one."

Hana groaned but nodded; she hated that one; it looked ridiculous when she wore it on her forehead.

Later that night, after they locked the front and turned off the shop lights, Hana stood beside her mother, watching the older woman pack the ritual tools into a black lacquered box lined with red silk.

The air had changed; she could feel as if something important was about to happen.

"Is this going to be dangerous?" she asked.

Her mother closed the box gently, her fingers resting for a moment on the lid.

"All real work is," she said. "But that’s why we learn. That’s why we prepare; you should remember that, sweetheart."

And for the first time, standing there in the quiet, surrounded by old books and herbs and the scent of sandalwood still clinging to her sleeves, Hana felt something different stir in her chest.

She wasn’t afraid. The more time she spent in the work, the more it felt like her life meant something. Maybe when she was older, she could travel the world solving all kinds of problems like a true adventuress.

The rest of the night passed in calm preparation, but the kind that buzzed under the surface. Hana swept the floor three times instead of two. She burned the cleansing incense without being asked. She checked and rechecked the box of ritual threads.

Some part of her kept replaying what her mother had said, how this was her first time in an exorcism.

She didn’t know why, but it felt as if something was calling her.

By the time she stood in front of her bedroom mirror to unpin her hair, she realized she hadn’t touched her phone in hours. That had to be a first, she didn’t even listen to music and she loved to do everything hearing one of her favorite songs.

The red cord of her charm bracelet caught the lamplight, its silver bell shining faintly in the reflection. Her mother had reinforced it earlier, muttering something about “layering protection when crossing into old places.”

Hana reached for it, then paused. Let her fingers drop away.

She stared at her own face—calm, curious, a little tired.

"This time," she said aloud, just to the mirror. "I’ll prove I’m more than ready."

The bell on her wrist jingled softly in agreement.

***

The road to the estate twisted through dense pine and stone paths, the kind of mountain trail that felt older than the city below it. Their car—a quiet hybrid with salt pouches under the seats—made the slow climb just past midnight. Hana sat in the passenger seat, her fingers resting on the lacquered ritual box on her lap.

Her mother drove in silence. She never played music on ritual nights. She said that it was about respecting their job, how they should instead listened to nature. To the old things that stirred when humans stopped filling every silence with noise.

As they passed the second ridge, the trees began to thin. And then, just as her mother had said, they saw it.

The Lee estate stood like a memory in the mist—large, traditional, with sloping tiled roofs and wide eaves, its courtyard framed by stone lanterns and carefully trimmed pine. The gates were iron, yes, but inlaid with thin silver lines that shimmered faintly under the moonlight.

The gates creaked open before they even touched the horn.

Hana felt her skin prickle.

“Did they… hear us coming?” she asked, glancing to her mother.

“They were expecting us,” her mother replied.

That didn’t answer the question.

The car rolled to a stop just inside the gates. A stone path led them past an ornamental garden and a koi pond that didn’t ripple, even though Hana was sure the wind hadn’t stopped.

Waiting by the main house entrance stood a single person—an older woman in dark robes, hands folded neatly. She bowed as they approached.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“The master is asleep,” the woman said. “The room is ready.”

Her mother bowed in return. “No one else in the house is to enter.”

“They have been instructed.”

“Thank you.”

Hana offered a shorter bow, hugging the ritual box a little closer as she followed the two women into the house. The floors were spotless, the wood grain polished to a near-reflection. Paper walls framed with cedar divided the space, and somewhere in the stillness, a wind chime rang once—though there was no breeze.

They were led to a room at the far end of the estate. It was bare, except for a single low table and a square window that faced the forest. The walls bore faint markings—old, faded talismans that had long since lost their charge.

Her mother stepped inside and stood still for a moment, eyes closed. Then she nodded.

“This room will do.”

She turned to Hana. “Start setting up. Cloth first.”

Hana knelt without hesitation, laying the restraint cloth in the center of the room. It was perfectly dry now, the ink dark and clean. She unwrapped the candles next—four white, two red—and placed them at the cardinal points, then began the salt ring. Her movements were methodical. She looked trained, and nothing could disturbed her.

Only once did her hand shake—just slightly—when lighting the first candle. But the flame caught immediately. Her mother noticed but said nothing, she thought that it was something normal, since this was her daughter’s first experience in a ritual like this.

Next came the tools: a silver bell, a dish of blessed water, a wooden bowl with charcoal ash, and the narrow inkbrush tied with crimson thread. Her mother knelt across from her, robes pooled neatly around her legs.

“Don’t forget your talisman,” her mother said.

“But…”

“We talked about this.”

“Yeah,” Hana said before retrieving a talisman from the materials she had brought and put her on her forehead.

“Watch closely,” Her mother said.

Then she began.

***

The chant was soft and slow, the mother was singing with passion—low syllables that felt like they came from the stomach rather than the throat. Her mother’s hands moved in tandem: one drawing a temporary sigil in the air with her finger, the other sprinkling ash in precise strokes.

Hana had heard the start of the Moon-Bent Ritual before, but only through the crack of a door during private sessions. Now, seated at the circle’s edge, she felt it—there was power in the air, something was growing heavy, like the calm before a storm.

The sigils on the cloth began to glow faintly. The flame of the red candles danced, despite the air being still.

The moment the circle activated, Hana sensed it inside her, something responded to their ritual.

She could feel a presence with them, they were no longer alone, she hadn’t felt something like that, as if a person that didn’t belong in this world was descending with them.

A pulse could be felt from beneath the floorboards. From the cracks in the walls. From the space between seconds, for a second Hana thought that they were in the middle of an earthquake.

Her mother continued, steady and unshaken.

Hana swallowed and reached for the bell. Her role was simple. She was supposed to listen and observe and only intervene if—

The window slammed open.

The wind that rushed in was freezing—icy, laced with the sharp scent of pine sap and something older. She heard it like a man was screaming from pain.

The candlelight bent as if pulled, flickering toward the window’s darkness. The salt line shivered.

Her mother didn’t pause. “Bell,” she said, calm and crisp.

Hana rang it once.

The tone echoed, sharp and clear. The wind stopped instantly.

And then, something stepped through the circle.

***

It was not a form exactly, she could see just a shape—a blur of dark mist coiling above the center of the cloth, threading upward like smoke from a fire that had no source. But it moved with intention.

The red candles flared.

Hana felt her breath catch. The thing in the circle wasn’t writhing or screaming like the spirits in her training lessons. It wasn’t even angry.

It was watching.

Her mother dipped the brush in the ink and traced three final symbols on the outer circle. Then, for the first time, she spoke directly to the entity.

“You were sealed and you broke free, but this is not your time.”

The shape didn’t answer.

But it pulsed.

Once.

A wave of pressure washed over Hana—it felt ancient, like someone whispering in a language she had almost forgotten. Her charm bracelet buzzed faintly.

Her mother drew a line through the air with the ink brush. “You will be bound again. This place does not belong to you.”

The pressure grew. The mist inside the circle thickened, started to take shape—growing in size into a demonic form. Tall and lean and shadowed, with two points of light that might’ve been eyes. It leaned forward as if listening.

Then it looked at Hana.

The pressure focused on her for the first time—it was sharp, as if it was probing her, maybe testing what she would do.

She didn’t flinch. She sat straight and let it look. Let it feel that she didn’t fear it.

The thing tilted its head.

Then it whispered—it wasn’t in a language she had ever heard before, but somehow she could understand it, she couldn’t process why that was the case.

“You are not like her.”

Hana’s eyes widened.

“What did it say?” her mother asked sharply.

Hana blinked. “It… it spoke to me.”

Her mother’s face changed, Hana couldn’t see anger or fear on her face, it was as if she was expecting something like that to happen.

“The circle’s failing,” she murmured. “Hana, step out. Now.”

“But—”

“Now!”

Hana moved—but not fast enough.

The moment she crossed the salt line, the mist surged forward. The restraint sigils flared once—then shattered. The red candles blew out, all of their countermeasures couldn’t contain this entity.

A voice filled the room. It wasn’t deep or guttural, but instead, it was calm, she could felt it was male.

“You opened the door. You asked to be seen.”

The shadows lunged—not at her mother.

At Hana.

She felt it hit her—not physically, but through her soul. A sharp, burning rush that went through her skin like lightning, through her chest like ice.

Then everything was silent.

And black.

There was no floor beneath her. No weight to her limbs. Just silence.

Not the kind that followed a loud noise—not that ringing stillness of shock.

This was complete.

Like she’d fallen into the pause between two thoughts.

Like she had stepped outside time.

Hana tried to breathe, but the concept didn’t quite reach her. There was no air, only sensation. No color, only endless gradients of light and shadow—clouds that pulsed with memories not her own.

Above her, something pulsed, she wasn’t afraid of it for some reason, which was strange.

She drifted closer.

At first, she thought it was a star. But no—stars didn’t hum like this. They didn’t sing. The thing in front of her was spherical, glowing with slow, molten waves of gold and violet, threaded through with veins of black and crimson that pulsed like a heartbeat.

A soul, something in her was telling that information but she didn’t know the reason that she knew.

The soul looked ancient, powerful and impossibly vast.

She recognized it—from instinct. It was the demon. The entity they’d tried to seal.

But now, without the fear, without the barrier of ritual and symbols and expectation… it didn’t feel monstrous.

It felt curious.

And so was she.

Her thoughts floated out like ripples in water.

What are you?

It answered, without the need to use words, but with memories.

She saw flickers of desert storms, of iron cities buried in sand. She felt the weight of time pressing down on temples carved into mountain spines, of thunder that answered when a name was spoken.

I am the chain breaker, it whispered. I am what was sealed. What was forgotten. What was feared. And you are the first to look at me without trembling.

She didn’t know whether to be proud or terrified.

Somewhere, far away, she felt the echo of her mother’s voice—shouting, panicking. A chant stuttering into silence. A sigil unraveling.

But that world was growing dimmer by the second.

She reached forward, as if to touch the thing before her, even though she had no hands.

“I didn’t mean to open the door,” she thought.

But you did. The soul pulsed again. And you didn’t close it.

“I didn’t want to be possessed.”

You weren’t.

That gave her pause.

“Then what had just happened?”

You weren’t taken. You were invited, and now you stand at a threshold. You may leave. Or you may take me.

She flinched. Take?

Consume. Bind. Anchor. Weakened as I am, you have the will. You have the name. Take me—and I will be yours.

The thought was horrifying—and yet, not.

Hana had never wanted power for its own sake. But this wasn’t about dominance. This wasn’t about conquest. It was about choice.

Just one moment. One answer.

She could retreat. Return to the world. Let the entity fade or reform or disappear into mist.

Or—

She could accept.

She could take in its power, not as a thief, but as an heir.

Her heart—if she still had one—raced.

“I don’t want to become a monster,” she thought.

Then don’t. But monsters aren’t born in moments. They are grown in the dark.

Take me into the light.

And for a reason she couldn’t explain, Hana believed it.

So she reached forward—

—and inhaled.

***

The sensation was like fire and wind and starlight flooding her insides. It was pressure and heat and something like song, curling through every thread of her soul. She felt every brushstroke her mother had ever drawn, every herb she’d ever ground, every chant she’d ever repeated—and all of it ignited.

The soul didn’t resist.

It folded into her.

And for one impossible second, she was everything.

She stood in a forest where gods once walked. She knelt in ruins where kings had begged. She flew through skies stained red with fire, through temples where names still echoed in broken stone.

And then—

Nothing.

A pull.

A snap.

The world blinked.

***

She gasped—air burning in her lungs.

Except they weren’t her lungs.

She was small. Too small.

The blanket that wrapped her was soft, scratchy against unfamiliar skin. A hand—someone else’s—lifted her gently, and the face that greeted her was unfamiliar. A woman, young, brown hair braided down the side of her face, with kind eyes and a tired smile.

“Finally awake, little one?” the woman whispered in a tongue she didn’t know—but somehow understood.

“You gave us a scare. You were so quiet after being born. I thought the midwife was going to cry.”

Hana stared.

Or tried to.

Her body didn’t respond quite the way it should. Her limbs were floppy, her voice just a breathy murmur.

Her thoughts, though, were clear.

She was alive.

And she wasn’t on Earth anymore.

Not in the Lee estate. Not in her mother’s arms.

The demon’s soul was still inside her. She could feel it, curled like a dragon asleep beneath the waves. Warm. Silent. Waiting.

It was bound by her.

And as the woman cradled her closer, humming a lullaby in a language she'd never heard before, Hana closed her eyes.

She didn’t know the rules of this new world. Didn’t know its magic, or its people, or what dangers it held.

But she had taken in a demon and lived.

And now, she had time.

Time to grow.

Time to learn.

Time to become more than what anyone had planned.

The bell on her wrist was gone. Her charm bracelet was lost. Her name—Hana Kim—was likely buried with her old body.

But her soul was intact.

And her story was just beginning.