The Sacrifice Reversed
Seoryeong forced her eyes wide open, straining to look as if nothing were wrong. The sight spread out before her was, quite simply, overwhelming.
Everything required for the curse ritual had been laid out in perfect order. The sacrificial offerings, the paper to be burned, the instruments, the shaman's tools — and last of all, a shaman of immense, far-reaching power.
"You wretch, Yeomga! The most shameless creature this world has ever spawned! I shall hold you to account for every sin you have committed under that iron mask!"
Seoryeong's voice cracked as she shouted up at Yeomga. At some point the wicked ones had stopped their playing, and silence settled over the ritual ground like a shroud.
"The sin of trying to overturn fate! The sin of seizing a kingdom in your fist and twisting it to your whim! The sin of snatching up the people and stuffing them into a starving tiger's jaws!"
Her white hands had clenched into fists without her noticing. Seen from below, gazing up at Yeomga standing atop the blade, Seoryeong looked so very small.
And yet, Seoryeong faced her.
"The sin of deceiving innocent children... and starving them to death!"
Because she had to. Because this was something only Seoryeong could do.
Yeomga looked down at her, then tilted her head just slightly, just barely. The Hahoe mask hid her face entirely, but the mockery behind it was unmistakable. A dry, rasping laugh drifted out across the silence.
Then it came. The ritual music struck up once more.
"...Ugh...!"
Some unseen force bore down on Seoryeong. Her body refused to obey her will, refusing to hold.
The instant Seoryeong collapsed where she stood, flames roared up on all sides and flooded the space with light. The broad ritual ground appeared on the screen as if viewed from high above the sky.
A rectangular structure, its woven mats scorched black in places — and at the very front and the very back, positioned like opposite poles, Yeomga and Seoryeong.
The people watching understood, all at once, a single truth.
The ritual ground itself was one enormous talisman. And among its offerings, Seoryeong was included.
By pouring out the life and divine power that sat at the talisman's farthest edge — her own — Yeomga meant to conjure a whirlpool of hell itself.
"Hh... ugh...!"
Maddening pain crashed over her. Seoryeong couldn't even breathe; she clawed frantically at the ground, blood beading at the tips of her nails.
The mat was packed tight with inscribed characters. The mark of the curse character, seared in as if branded by a hot iron. Seoryeong crawled along the ground, her fingers tracing those characters one by one.
"Jiokchase — hell itself, into this world!"
Yeomga leapt and bounded across the blade's edge, again and again, as though the earth itself could not hope to hold her. Light as a soul ascending to heaven, she danced atop the knife.
Seoryeong, the offering laid out on the ground. Yeomga, the shaman dancing through the sky above. The gap in their power looked absolute — violently, vertiginously vertical.
"Musaengno — the road of no life!"
The audience's focus took on weight. The air in the screening room grew so dense it was hard to breathe. Not a single person blinked before the crushing gravity of the two performers' acting.
At last Yeomga descended from the blade. From within her robes, she drew a knife.
If she cut Seoryeong down and spilled her blood now, the curse would be complete.
Yeomga advanced on Seoryeong, who lay collapsed and broken with agony. The wicked ones hammered their gongs and drums at a frenzied pace.
Yeomga seized Seoryeong by the hair and hauled her head up. Hollow-eyed, Seoryeong looked up at the masked woman — wearing that peculiar detachment unique to those standing at death's door.
"Insolent thing..."
So saying, Seoryeong smiled, quiet and soft. And in that smile, Yeomga felt something twist. In a moment like this — how could anyone be smiling?
Seoryeong spoke, her voice trembling.
"You never... once thought to look... down."
Yeomga sensed that something had gone terribly wrong, and for an instant she faltered. That was when Seoryeong opened her mouth.
The knife slipped from Yeomga's grip. In the same breath, Seoryeong tore free of her hold. Hair a ruined mess, she rose slowly to her feet.
The weight between the two of them had inverted. Now it was Yeomga writhing on the ground.
"Do you know how many things live and breathe down below? Of course you don't. You never cared to look..."
Seoryeong murmured the words as she passed Yeomga by. The mat she had clawed at in her agony, the gaps between the curse characters seared into it — tucked into one of those gaps was a single paper talisman.
The character written upon it: reverse.
The moment Yeomga's foot came down on that talisman, Seoryeong was granted her one and only counterstrike.
If Yeomga sought Seoryeong's life — then the reverse.
If Yeomga offered Seoryeong up as the sacrifice — then the reverse.
Now the offering of the ritual ground was Yeomga herself.
"How tearfully each of them struggles to survive... what each of them carries in their heart as they go on living..."
Seoryeong drew a gourd from within her robes. Inside it was blood, steeped with the desperate yearnings of countless people.
The lady who, through every humiliation, could never conceive a child. The stepmother of Janghwa and Hongryeon, who had sought only to prove her daughters' innocent deaths. Hwa-yeong, gritting her teeth because she could not bear to lose another woman at her side. The girls of the fallen-blossom house, who had never wanted to live like this...
"There's no way you would ever know."
The blood in the gourd, each life dissolved into it, was thick beyond measure.
Where Yeomga had wielded han — the poison of long-kept resentment — Seoryeong answered with won.
Not the won of bitterness and blame, but the won of longing — to hope, to wish, to pray, to yearn, and so to live.
Seoryeong walked to the very center of the ritual ground, blood trailing from her in a long red line. The talisman was being rewritten.
The flames ringed around the ritual ground surged higher, fed by her divine power.
"How dare you — how dare you — how dare you—!"
At last Seoryeong reached the very front of the ritual ground.
The offering now was Yeomga; the shaman was Seoryeong. The hands of the wicked ones flew faster than madness. Gongs and flutes and hourglass drums came crashing down like a tidal wave.
"Yeongsin cheongmyeong — let the spirits hear and obey! Geo cha gwicheon — depart this place and return to heaven!"
Seoryeong screamed as though coughing up blood.
"I beseech the spirits — leave this place and return to the sky! You, my sworn enemy whom I cannot face beneath the same heaven! This body is not your body, and this life is a flickering lamp at its end!"
Yeomga was clawing helplessly at the mat with fingers that no longer had any strength in them. If her nails tore the talisman, the entire ritual would come to nothing.
There was no time. Her advantage would last only the briefest of moments.
She had to end everything before Yeomga's counterattack began.
Seoryeong hastily pulled the blade from her robes and cut her hair off with a single stroke — then flung it into the flames. Her offering, set against the burning papers of Yeomga.
Seoryeong turned, her hair cropped short. All around, she could hear people drawing in their breath.
Desperate. It was the only word for the look on her face — a face for which no other expression seemed to exist.
"Blood tears will never dry from your eyes; pus and blood will clot in your own hands!"
Urgency drove her mouth open as though she were wrenching the words out by force. From behind the Hahoe mask came the rattle of failing breath. But Yeomga, too, refused to surrender.
Both of them fought with their lives on the line.
"Let the souls of the guilty pursue you, guilty spirits, and drag you away at the last without mercy! Let this sin reach your very life and claim it!"
Her chest burned as though a coal had been lodged inside it. Sweating, bloodshot eyes fixed on Yeomga, Seoryeong glared her down.
"Ascended lords of the white heavens, great ones of a thousandfold heaven, great sages enthroned above all living things, hear me across all the heavens under the sun..."
Please, please, please. It had to hold — she had to block it. Desperate, Seoryeong chanted without pausing even to breathe. Blood ran in a thin line from between her teeth and pooled at her chin. Here and there in the dark, people could be heard stifling sobs.
"The hell of darkest night, the hell of the white tiger, the hell of charcoal and firewood, the hell of the yellow springs, the hell of the golden sand, the hell of the earthen waste..."
Seoryeong never blinked once, bearing down on Yeomga as though to pin her within her very field of vision. The thing writhing on the ground thrashed without cease.
"Let the spirits hear and obey — depart this place and return to heaven."
In the voice of a young child.
"Let the spirits hear and obey — depart this place and return to heaven."
In the voice of a withered old woman.
"Let the spirits hear and obey — depart this place and return to heaven..."
In the voice of a broad-chested man.
Seoryeong looked down at Yeomga and chanted without rest. At some point she had been swallowed by the spirits entirely, and now she could not stop.
She knew that if she went on like this, she would certainly die. Her mouth spoke anyway, on its own.
"Let the soul be severed and the spirit scattered — depart this place and return to dust."
I want to live.
"Let the soul be severed and the spirit scattered — depart this place and return to dust..."
I want to live.
"Let the soul be severed and the spirit scattered — depart this place and return to dust—!"
I want to live — so badly it's killing me.
That was what Seoryeong seemed to be saying as the tears fell. She had never once even properly called Myeong-do's name. She wanted to see him call her name.
And together with that — trading their names with one another, in this land the two of them had saved...
"Hhk..."
I wanted to live.
"Let the soul be severed and the spirit scat—"
Yeomga's convulsions finally quieted, and Seoryeong crumpled where she stood. Blood trickled steadily from the corner of her mouth. Gasping, she kept chanting.
The wicked ones played on, grinning wide, the music of the ritual ground shaking heaven and earth.
Then—
"Seoryeong!"
From far away, a voice calling her name.
The desperate thunder of hooves sounded like the heartbeat the two of them had once felt pressed together, and the ground trembled violently.
He had come. Myeong-do had come.
"..."
Only then could Seoryeong stop her mouth.
You kept your promise.
That was what she seemed about to say — Seoryeong, still on the ground, broke into a brilliant smile. Myeong-do, too, was already racing toward her.
It was over. Only happiness remained.
Yeomga was seized by the guards where she lay, the Hahoe mask clinging precariously to her face.
As they dragged her away, Yeomga turned her head. Taking in the sight of the two beautiful people, the corner of her mouth curled in a fish-belly sneer.
Her divine power was sealed away completely now. The only craft left to her was something weaker than a child's parlor trick — a spell so feeble it was barely a spell at all.
"...My blade cuts you down..."
"What did you just say?"
"Fall, in obedience to heaven's law."
But it was enough. The Hahoe mask dropped to the ground.
With her face revealed, Yeomga smiled brilliantly. It was a smile that curdled the blood.
Then it happened. A hairline fracture split the base of the great dead tree. Leafless and gaunt, the vast trunk swayed and heeled over—
—and came crashing down.
Myeong-do saw it and yanked Seoryeong into his arms. A deafening roar split the air. Beneath the falling tree, he—, in her place—
"...Myeong-do...?"
—was crushed.