Chapter Text

The Revenant

First, it hurts. Then, it changes you.

[Play House of Balloons by The Week End]

The needle threads fire into Zoey’s skin.

A soft glint of silver kneads between two hunks of flesh, poorly held together by trembling hands. Zoey grits her teeth, her body hunched over like a dying, shriveled up roach. She thinks of how pathetic she must look, crept under a bridge, holding her intestines together with strands of squandered hope and fish lining. Her hands shake uncontrollably, her lungs tightening with dread. Zoey tries to hold her breath, but she can barely catch a wisp of air.

She threads the fish lining into another fold of skin.

Crraack! The bricks fracture beneath her palm.  Zoey’s hand snaps over her mouth. A cry erupts from her throat. She’s gasping, heaving. Holding onto the grimy bricks of Haean bridge, willing herself not to spew what had been left of last week’s rations. The moon howls wretchedly above her—a yellowed blister in the sky, bruising the shade with its sickly glow. She cannot stop it. The tears teasing the corners of her eyes, the quake in her hands as she tries to finish the last loop in the stitch. Her torso is mangled, deep fissures torn into her abdomen where a daemon’s claws had raked across her flesh. Black tendrils crawl across the wound in a silent warning of what she could become if she leaves the injury to fester.   

Zoey grits her teeth. Stitches the last loop.

The moon is not the only one that hears her cry.

Zoey drags her palm across the blackened bricks of Haean, her fingers tracing along the spongy grooves, thick with algae and mold where the river runs below her feet. Her steps are quick. No wasted movements. The only sign of her swift departure being the wind that chases her feet. 

The blood chases, too. 

Coagulated to her torso, biting into the wound, leaving traces of her scent on the stone bricks spiralling down the alleys of Eoduun. The Haean bridge had been an unruly screw, connecting an old block of Seoul to the demolished buildings in the West. As Zoey flits between shadows, she catches a glimpse of chalk-smeared driveways, strewn bikes, and cars with their doors still open. Some of them were occupied, with the driver's unmoving hand on the wheel, and another head of hair, tied in pigtails, peaking from the back seat, gnats chewing on the hair ties. Zoey’s eyes snap back to the pathway. She cannot allow herself to be deterred any further. The daemon’s mark bled onto her skin. This wound—the empty houses, some with their lights still on; long forgotten incense and shrines with spilt candles—would not be allowed to fester, not like the one already marring her skin.

Yet, she remembers, in happier times. A kinder one. When she’d graced these very streets. Her hair tied in two big buns, her eyes filled with trepidation as her parents lugged two heavy suitcases into the car, speaking of an odd place she didn’t yet know. A foreign place with foreign people and a foreign language. America, she had learned on the drive to the airport.

Welcome home, she thinks dryly.

Zoey swallows the stinging bile clawing up her throat as the memories tear into her. The world fractures, the moon split into tiny fragments of light, and the darkness swallows them whole. Her feet remember, though. The path she always takes. How could a child forget their home? Her shadow makes it to the door before she does, creeping along the blue plaster and the shriveled up shrubs. Her hand twists the oak knob, splinters wedging underneath her nails. She steps quietly upon the cracked tile. She doesn’t bother taking off her shoes. You never know when it may be time to run.

A gust of air weaves through her hair and the door snaps shut. Amber light ignites atop drawers and countertops. The kitchen, the living room, and next to the TV, with wires spewing from its side. Candles drip with melancholy, crying the very tears Zoey never let herself drop. Not anymore.

“You made it,” whispers a voice behind her.

Zoey nods. The sound grates her ears,“Celine.”

The shadow steps into the lowlight of the lit candles. There, Celine stands tall, her hair frayed in all directions, tangled and matted. Her jaw is tight, but her cheekbones protrude wickedly like someone had taken a shovel and dug the meat from her face. Zoey’s brow twitches and she clutches the mossy cloak tighter to her form, as if her rage could be contained by a mere piece of fabric. Celine had always been given the first of whatever Zoey and the remaining survivors had managed to scrape up in the splintered bowels of Seoul. Gutted houses, their second floors sloping with frayed wood, childhood beds—bright pink—upended and thrown about chewed up lawns. Whatever they’d given the Yeowangbeol hadn’t shown in the pitiful lump of muscle clinging to her bones.

“You know why you’re here.” Celine says resolutely, because of course Zoey had known. You wouldn’t beckon a Huntrix for fretful matters. No, the Huntrix demanded blood, and those who laid upon their sights paid with their lives. Zoey can feel the verve nipping at her fingertips, the raw energy spasming her muscles, zipping down her arm. Crackles of blinding white-light festered in her palms, alabaster blades remaining just out of sight.

“Someone must pay the jug-eum-ui maengse.”

Celine looks to the candles littered upon the mantel just beneath the TV. The tendon in her neck jumps, but she swallows before uttering out, “The Oath of Death.”

Zoey’s heart races. Static pierces her mind. Her tongue goes numb, as though fire ants had bitten it swollen. A bitter fury burrows into her bones. She had once been a savior, once been a bubbly and sweet girl. 

Now, her guardian, the woman she called mother long ago wanted her to kill her own.

“There aren’t many of us left. Gwi-Ma’s forces grow stronger every day.” Zoey recalled pensively, “We can’t afford to lose more Meogi resistance fighters, especially by our own hand. Traitors can be reformed, punished, but not—”

“Killed.” Celine hissed. She tightened the emerald shawl around her shoulders, deep slashes carved through her skin, “They must be killed. Dealt with. They swore jug-eum-ui maengse, and knew the significance of our fight. Had they complained that Yeowangbeol filled their stomachs with food? Had they complained when I set forth my forces against their captors? They had no mercy on our pain, so our grief hath none. Fix the world…”

“And make it right.” Zoey bites the inside of her mouth. Blood blots her tongue. It's the most she’s eaten all day.

Celine sighs resolutely, drawing away from the foyer and into the shadows of the dimly lit kitchen. Pots and pans lay scattered across cracked granite, the stove leaning to its side like a wayward drunkard. Whoever had ramshackle her house had stolen the microwave, cables spewing like blood from the place where it’d been torn away. Her hands trace the coffee circles etched onto the tables, ones she could never scrub away no matter how much she tried and the old, forgotten newspapers.

“You will not embark on this quest alone.” Celine hesitated.

The younger’s hands froze, her eyes wide and questioning with a glare. Though the door had been closed, a faint gust of air slid across her throat like a hand, tightening around her throat. She couldn't swallow. Her body felt alive in a horrid way, over aware, the hairs on her arm teaming with cognizance. Down the darkened halls of her home, past the shoes toppled across the carpet, she could hear a muffled groan. A light tune, descending into a deep, Ahhh.

Ooo, ahhh.

A chill bites at her nerves. Zoey turns her head swiftly.

“Jinu?”