Late Spring, 1993

  It was evening, and his footsteps reverberated down the corridor of the temple like distant thunder fading. The light, pale blue, a moon unnatural against the familiar walls and pillars, made foreign the memories of a place that would have brought him comfort. The scrolls unraveled, pinned to the pillars and walls, floor to ceiling, his handiwork, his markings, repeated over and over back at him, like a firm tut from the lips of disappointment. At the end of the blue-lit corridor, his grandfather, old, rigid, like a statue with breath, kneeling alongside a mirror, the mirror, covered in black gauze. His grandfather revealed another scroll, seemingly similar to all the others passed before. It unfurled, revealing the same brushstrokes.

  “You drew the line wrong, Hyeon-Seong.”

  Hyeon-Seong Kim’s eyes opened. His hand, no, his scar, etched into the hand, was warm. He held it up, looking at it in the morning light. He let the hand fall as he propped himself up on his elbows and craned his head to the open window of his hanok style room within Bulguksa Temple. He grew up in this room, now he was stationed in it.

  He took his time getting up. The temple wasn’t going anywhere and his responsibility was few and far between. The hard work done, the maintenance constant, the task practiced. He washed his face and got dressed in his uniform. Before leaving, he wrote in his notebook.

  “They’re not wrong, they’re yours.”

  He checked in first to the kitchen, no, the galley, to be greeted by a division of worlds. The area for cooking remained generally unaltered, save for a few appliance upgrades, but the small eating area was expanded, a wall relieved of its storm covers to present a more open eating area for a sizable group of soldiers. The family still had their table to eat at.

  Korea’s IERF Branch, the Echoic Response Division, had set up an adjacent facility within the still operating Buddhist holy site, much to the chagrin of the Kim family, the keepers of the temple; they didn’t have a choice, post war, EPs were rampant, bleeding from DMZ areas. Hyeon-Seong was recruited “for the defense of the living.” It wasn’t a choice.

  He didn’t see any soldiers, an odd sight at this time. His mother was cooking. He walked up behind her and kissed her on the cheek.

  “Ae-gi, eggs are fine?”

  “Yes, eomma.” He looked out the open wall to the long tables, then out to the courtyard, a lack of activity. “Eomma, where are the rest?”

  “Gone, Hyeon-Seong. They did not say. The Sergeant is still here, if you want to ask. After breakfast, yeah?”

  He nodded as she gave him a plate of rice, eggs, and kimchi. He ate quietly, his mother cleaning after herself. Before leaving, she kissed him on the forehead and left to tend to temple duties. He had his own duties as well.

  From the kitchen, after washing up, he walked the courtyard. After the courtyard, he walked the entranceways. After the entranceways, he headed down each corridor. His job was a simple one: maintain the seals. Munjang talismans and their practical application was new; while runology would like to understand it, it was Hyeon-Seong and his grandfather that enticed the IERF into Gyeongju, and the ERD studied them; the munjang, of course, but the IERF were here to study the Kims. Each sigil was made by Hyeon-Seong’s grandfather, but sometimes they needed updating, as paper and ink fade quickly as frequencies vibrate through parchment. Hyeon-Seong took his time, checking for discoloration or dim brushstrokes. Since the soldiers came, since he and his grandfather had been questioned, this was the practice. Maintain the seals. The IERF watched.

  He happened on the war room, the term used sparingly in lieu of recent history. The Sergeant was watching some monitors with live feeds and digital map and statistical readouts.

  “Sir,” Hyeon-Seong saluted.

  “Kim, welcome to the day. Troops are abroad, so just you and me, it seems.”

  “Where to, sir?”

  “Japan. The Sea of Trees.”

  Hyeon-Seong nodded knowingly.

  “On your rounds, Kim?” asked the Sergeant.

  “Yes, sir. Uneventful.”

  “Mind your words, Kim. Uneventful means tamed, and to speak the contrary would warrant the undesired effect.”

  Hyeon-Seong absently nodded, thinking on it.

  “My grandfather?”

  “With them.” Hyeon-Seong took a moment to process this. “Back to it, Kim, I have my monitoring, you have your sigils. Good morning.”

  “Good morning, sir.” Hyeon-Seong saluted again, and left.

  Hyeon-Seong continued with his day, pleasantly quieter with the soldiers away. There were over 300 glyphs to check. Most of them were munjang to ward, to keep malevolent spirits at bay, others beckon good will, an appeal to let guiding spirits in, and very few, if an echo passed a certain section of the temple, would counter, burning the soul away. Those were, very much so, a work of his grandfather. It didn’t render him completely incapable. He thought back 8 years ago, before the IERF. To how he got the scar on his hand. He couldn’t tell if the memory was an errant thought or he was deliberately being reminded. He felt the corridor that he was in cool, colder than the season, and the sigil he was examining seemed…wrong.

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  He blinked a few times. It was his brushwork, at least it looked like it was, but the Hangul was wrong. A character was slightly off. He pulled out his vellum and wrote a new one, tore the other, and muttered a prayer before placing the new sigil. A mild worry crept like a breeze up his neck, as he doubled back, checking over his previous work. He closely examined each one, but up until that point, after double-checking all the way back to his room, it seemed to have been the first one that seemed off. He walked back to it and checked it again. He checked the area, the wood, the place that the glyph rested upon, covering a similar glyph etched in the wood. He ran his finger across it, feeling the depression of the wood carving through the page, tracing it with the edge of his finger to make sure the strokes matched the base. His finger felt something, a thing that shouldn’t be there. He pulled back the glyph. He looked closer.

  In Hangul, small, slight, faint, and shallow, carved into the wood: Sungyeon.

  He stumbled back.

  Sungyeon.

  8 years ago the temple held a mourning ceremony. Paper effigies were being burned. The temple keepers, the Kims, his family, watched on, presiding over the event. When the ash began to coalesce and mingle into form, emerging into a parody of a human shape, the words of the deceased leaking out of its sootstained mouth, the young Hyeon-Seong outshone his own grandfather to contain the aberration, saving his cousin from it, saving young Sungyeon. Hyeon-Seong produced a glyph unlike the Kim family had ever seen, its activation so powerful it cracked open his hand.

  He stared at the name, etched into the wood. He replaced the handmade glyph over his grandfather’s woodcarving, then set to work examining every glyph.

  With time, he examined each one, high and low, and as he checked newer ones, he eventually found another glyph that was wrong, then another, until he had found three more. He checked each etching below it, looked for a name, but it seemed as though the first was the only one. Each one of these glyphs were mimicry, seemingly his, but they were warped. They lacked intent, all technique and no substance. Enough of these and the barriers of this holy site would weaken.

  He found himself replacing the last one in the inner sanctum of the temple. This led to a built out facility enclosure underground the Foundation had placed, one made as a containment unit. Hyeon-Seong had been here once, during the initial IERF installment. Containment. He has only ever seen this empty.

  He walked in, examining the heavy locking mechanism to the modern door. I wasn’t locked. He walked further in, glass cells on either side of a moon-blue lit hallway. Each one seemed vacant, he was leaving when he saw it, tucked in the back of one cell.

  A mirror.

  The door to the cell opened without issue.

  The mirror was old, uncovered, but polluted, seeming to have been victim to fire. The bezel and the surface were covered in soot, but like a night sky, small granules of sandy speckles dotted it. His feet scuffed at a textured surface. He looked down and about the room. Salt. The room was full of salt.

  He approached, careful, that even a claude mirror could be dangerous.

  His reflection was distorted. Too young to be him, yet, he knew, it was himself looking back. Confused, young, scarless. He took a step forward. His reflection held up a hand, and he reflexively did the same. Another step and his scar began to glow, just as it did 8 years ago, and in his reflection, his younger self’s hand glowed. A crack fractured across the surface, distorting the image. Hyeon-Seong held out his hand to it and the mirror shattered, jagged pieces blowing out towards him, but their velocity muddled through the air until the pieces stopped, spinning in place in a blown out arc towards him, a figure behind the mirror, pulling itself away from the frame towards him. It rasped out to him in a reverberating timbre that vibrated the salt around his feet.

  “You should not have saved me. You were not meant to.”

  Sungyeon.

  He did. He saved him. He meant right by it, only did. His hand held up, his scar glowing a sickly blue, he only wanted to save his cousin. Sungyeon died anyway. Months later, a sudden death in his sleep. He was 12. It was as though it was all for naught. It was as if it meant nothing. The salt danced in the violent hum as Hyeon-Seong fell back, sliding backwards as the figure menacingly bent and contorted towards him, a slow moving cone of jagged glass shards leading the figure towards Hyeon-Seong. The door swung open. Small vellum squares blowing into the room, hand-brushed Hangul coming in from the temple above, being whipped up in a windless storm with sand and soot amid shards of glass slowing forming a spear, wielded in the air by a angry child.

  The pain in Hyeon-Seong was just as it had been before – he cracked the world to save his cousin – thus, it seemed, this moment would crack him.

  But he wouldn’t let it.

  His scarred hand slammed the firmament, and he began to draw in the salt. He scribed and wrote and brushed through the pain as vindictive bits of glass cut into his cheek and forehead. The glyph he worked on, an untrained symbol, a random assortment of Hangul and instinctual lines of unimaginable text began to glow a crimson hue, his scar glowing the same uneasy color of red. He pulled the glyph from the floor, and, like a shield, his scarred hand wielding it, pressed it through the glass shards, obliterating each one to the atom. The vellums and salt began to calm, and the image of his dead cousin, since physically manifested in the space, cried out in a resonant tone that shook the cell, the salt, and Hyeon-Seong’s core. With his other hand, he pushed the glyph, glowing and vengeful, and pressed his cousin back into the frame, searing the glyph into the now restored glass. The sigil’s bright red light dissipated, and behind the glass Sungyeon silently screamed at him, then began to pace.

  Hyeon-Seong straightened his stance. Looking about the room, the salt wasn’t the issue, not so much so as the vellums that were sucked down from the temple. He started to collect them, the corner of his eye trained on the mirror cautiously.

  He shut the door of the cell and the containment section properly, but before leaving, etched the same, new glyph into the doors and walls.

  While replacing the glyphs back, his Sergeant passes him in the corridor.

  “All good, Kim?”

  He nodded.

  “Nice and calm, huh?”

  Kim did not respond.

  After the work was done, Hyeon-Seong found himself in his room, the day waning into twilight. The oranges fading into soft reds, then purples.

  As the pale blue light filled the temple, Hyeon-Seong Kim wrote in his notebook.

  “They’re not the wrong glyphs, they’re mine.”