The Scent of Forbidden Rites
Two days before the recovery began, Lee Serin woke with a strange sensation prickling across her skin.
It felt as if every fine hair on her body had risen in alarm at some alien presence. It was the instinctive warning of an organ tied to primal survival, and at the same time, the eerie unease of a draft slipping through a closed door. The moment the feeling hit her, Lee Serin’s eyes snapped open. She slid out of bed as the demon whispered directly into her ear.
Something is performing a ritual.
The demon, shaped like a crimson camel, lifted her onto its back and moved without a sound. Its hooves sank deep into the floor as if treading desert sand, yet left neither trace nor echo behind. The place they reached was…
Is this not the room of that older brother of yours who is so fond of insects?
“Don’t say it like that… It sounds weird…”
Her older brother—technically not blood-related, yet bound by special circumstances to live as family until adulthood. The strange relationship that was Park Jinsung. They stood before his door.
Then how should I phrase it? Should I speak as your older sister would? She would probably call it something like “non-blood-related household cohabitant.”
“That sounds even weirder…”
The demon and Lee Serin bickered in front of the door without the slightest tension. The camel dug its silver hooves firmly into the floor, split its mouth in a wide grin that reached its ears, and continued teasing her. Lee Serin shot it a half-hearted glare, yet still indulged every one of the demon’s mischievous jabs.
Hahaha, I merely repeated what your older sister said, yet you only pout at me.
“She’s not my older sister. She’s my younger sister…”
She set foot in this world first, so is she not the older one?
“I yielded inside the womb. It was my older sister’s generosity…”
Haha, I will never understand how twin folk constantly flip between older and younger. Whether demon or human, the moment twins are born they both insist they came first… Even that fallen angel I know struggled desperately to stand above his own brother.
The camel laughed silently and lifted a hoof to point at the doorknob.
Come now, my contractor. My adorable contractor who once peered into the past to determine who was born first. Here before your eyes lies the very secret your insatiable curiosity craves.
“I-I couldn’t help being curious…”
I am not scolding you. Is it not the very nature of humans to be adorable precisely because they poke and prod at every secret? Since I too take pleasure in uncovering mysteries, such behavior only fills me with affection.
“Y-yeah… Everyone wants to know secrets… This is normal…”
Gulp.
Lee Serin unconsciously reached for the doorknob, then froze.
“S-still… Peeking at my brother’s secret feels… a little wrong…”
No matter how curious she was, no matter how unsatisfied she felt until every question was answered, secretly spying on Park Jinsung’s room left her with a strange pang of guilt. The thought that they were family warred with the knowledge that they shared no blood, making it feel like she was committing the crime of voyeurism against a complete stranger. Especially now, with independence looming after this year and the knowledge that they would see each other far less often.
That is precisely why you must look now. Whatever ritual he is performing, if you let this chance slip by…
“Ah… In the future… I might never see it again?”
Indeed. He may never perform this ritual again. Even if another opportunity arises by chance later, it will likely be a different ceremony entirely. And if your brother raises his skill as a sorcerer high enough, he may even prepare defenses against prying eyes.
“B-but…”
Moreover, once he becomes independent it will be even harder. When he is no longer part of this household, do you truly believe he would return here to perform his rites? He will surely conduct them in whatever home he prepares for himself. Do you think you will be able to witness it then?
In the end, Lee Serin could not resist the demon’s whispers. Or rather, she had never truly intended to resist. Her hand naturally closed around the doorknob. Pretending she had no choice, she cast aside the guilt blooming in the corner of her heart and surrendered herself to curiosity. She opened the door just a crack.
Thanks to the demon’s power to conceal their presence, the door opened without a sound. The gap was just wide enough for them to peer inside. Lee Serin and the demon pressed their eyes to the opening and looked into the room.
“Ugh!”
The instant she leaned in to spy, Lee Serin nearly let out an uncontrollable groan.
“What is that smell?”
It was like burning meat, like singed hair. The stench of long-rotted flesh mingled with sourness and the reek of sewage. It was an overwhelming odor that felt like needles and blades slicing through the membranes of her nose.
Hmm. Just what manner of sorcery produces such a stench? It is worse than the cauldron of a witch drunk on ergot.
“The smell is too strong… But… why didn’t it leak outside?”
Lee Serin pinched her nose, grumbling in discomfort. Behind her, however, the demon’s eyes narrowed with a hint of wariness as it sensed something. The room was filled with thick white smoke that hung like fog, so dense it was impossible to see even a few steps ahead. The only thing visible was a black silhouette waving its arms—most likely Park Jinsung.
The shadow stretched and shrank in the flickering candlelight, dancing across the room. Its waving arms writhed like tentacles, twisting through the smoke.
A shadow serpent… I see a shadow serpent.
Realizing something was seriously amiss, the demon invoked its power of clairvoyance and cast it over both their eyes.
“Huh?”
The moment the clairvoyance took effect, Lee Serin clapped a hand over her mouth in shock.
“W-what is all this?”
What she saw was an altar. It was made of rotten wood so decayed it seemed it might reek on its own. A thick layer of leaf mold covered it like a carpet, and atop that sat crudely fashioned clay bowls arranged as if for some kind of offering. The bowls were cracked and looked ready to crumble at any moment. Inside them lay various objects, each one more repulsive than the last.
“Heads… There are heads.”
Heads. The heads of countless creatures were there. A snake’s head. A fish’s head. A mountain of insect heads. Even the head of a dried-up roe deer that had clearly been dead for a long time. All of them sat upon the altar, their eyes rolling wildly as they stared toward Park Jinsung.
“Behold, pitiful things who have ended your lives and become buried in karma. Here, inside and outside have been inverted and the self has grown infinitely heavy. Therefore, follow the path of life you once bore. The traces left upon your lives while you lived are the very roads you shall walk. Come here and pursue the self along those paths.”
The sight of Park Jinsung receiving the gaze of so many severed heads could only be described as steeped in ghostly energy. In one hand he shook a small cylinder; in the other, a tiny bell no larger than a fingernail.
Ding-ling.
Contagios Magic? No… something far more primitive…
The demon tilted its head as it watched.
Ding-ling.
“Come. Follow life into the burrow. Take your rest. Even without wings, insects can fly. Even without becoming a dragon, serpents shall rise. Even without legs they shall kick against the earth; even without water they shall swim through the void. Come. Cross the sea of incense, don the winged robe of smoke, and come to this place.”
Park Jinsung’s ritual reached its climax. The white smoke rising from the candles writhed like snakes and flowed toward the altar, wrapping around the heads inside the clay bowls exactly as if a fairy were donning her feathered robe. Then the heads floated upward as though grasped by invisible hands. All at once they turned toward the cylinder and shot forward at terrifying speed.
Thud. Thuuud.
Like someone tossing balls into a basket, the countless heads with their rolling eyes began to fill the cylinder. Snake heads, insect heads, snake heads, insect heads, fish heads… When it came time for the roe deer head, its skull crumbled into powder like sand. The fragments fluttered like a swarm of insects and completely packed the cylinder.
Click.
The cylinder closed its lid on its own. A bluish eye-shaped pattern surfaced on its exterior. Park Jinsung smiled.
Hssssss…
As if sensing the ritual’s end, every candle in the room went out at once, and the smoke stopped pouring forth. The thick fog that had filled the chamber rushed toward Park Jinsung’s nose and mouth, drawn inside him. The altar melted into a dark liquid as though ice under a summer sun, then spread in every direction and seeped into the walls as if it possessed a will of its own. In the end the room became spotless, as though nothing had happened.
“Huu…”
A small sigh. A satisfied smile. Park Jinsung stood smiling in the center of the room.
We should withdraw.
“Huh? O-okay…”
The sorcery is over. If we linger, we risk being discovered.
“Mmm.”
Hmm. I had expected some form of ritual common to this peninsula, yet it was far more primitive… What exactly should one call this kind of sorcery…? My curiosity is truly stirred…
Lee Serin and the demon quietly closed the door they had left ajar and returned to her room without a sound.
My contractor, the hour is late. You must sleep at once.
“Yeah… Since I’m already awake, can’t I stay up just a little longer?”
Absolutely not. If you do not sleep properly during your growth period, you will not grow properly. Only when growth is achieved correctly can a human’s beauty truly blossom. Therefore you must seek sleep at once.
“Fine…”
The moment they entered the room, the demon began pestering Lee Serin to go to bed. Only after watching her fall asleep did it finally turn away and move toward the window.
Hmm. It truly was a bizarre sorcery. It did not belong to this peninsula… nor to my homeland…
The crimson camel demon flicked out its tongue to lick its nose and continued turning the ritual over in its mind. Then, quite suddenly, a thought occurred to it.
That moment when the smoke had moved like a serpent.
The instant when countless heads had flown through the air and burrowed into the cylinder.
The feeling that, for a split second, its eyes had met Park Jinsung’s.