Scene 1. The Beast in the Light
At the top of the stairs, there was a door.
Iron. Thick. Locked from the outside. A door designed to keep whatever was down here from coming up.
He raised his foot.
The sole pressed against cold metal. His heel drew back. His knee folded. The muscles of his thigh swelled.
He kicked.
BOOM.
The door screamed. The hinges tore from the wall — bolts punching through concrete and spinning free. The entire door, lock still attached, launched forward. It hit the floor. Iron plate skidding across marble: a long, shrieking wail that carved itself into the silence.
Light poured in.
White drove into eyes that had been soaked in darkness. His vision detonated. The sensation of hundreds of needles driving into his retinas simultaneously. He did not close his eyes. Could not. His pupils contracted against the assault but the light came through his eyelids anyway.
A chandelier.
Hanging from the ceiling — a mass of glass with dozens of candle flames burning inside it. The glass fractured the candlelight and scattered it in every direction. Shards of brightness lay across the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Nothing like what existed below. He hadn't known light could be this violent.
He stepped forward.
Marble ended. Carpet began. Something soft pushed between his toes. Plush, thick, deep. The dried blood and dust and concrete grit caked to his soles pressed into the fibers. One dark red footprint. Stamped.
A corridor.
Wide. Three times the width of the underground passage. Framed paintings lined both walls — gilt borders, contents irrelevant. Marble side tables beneath them. Porcelain vases. Dried flowers. The carpet was deep burgundy. Mirrors on the walls caught the chandelier light and threw it back in flashes.
Things that gleamed. All of them.
Things that would shatter under pressure. All of them.
Second step. Another dark red print pressed into the burgundy pile. Blood and soil and cement dust spread into the fibers. Third. Fourth. Fifth. A line of prints laid itself down the corridor — everything dragged up from below, writing a path across Count Yi's most expensive floor.
The air was different.
Instead of mold and rust and rotting blood, wood polish and beeswax candles and dried flowers. The smell of things pretending to be clean. And bare feet were walking through it. Every step pulled something from below and pressed it into the carpet, and with every step, the pretense peeled away a little more.
Music was coming from somewhere.
Distant. Second floor, or the far end of the corridor. A phonograph. Violin — an arpeggiated melody creeping down the walls. Slow and soft. The kind of thing a house like this played to put itself to sleep.
Over that melody, the sound of bare wet soles pressing into dry carpet. Thwap. Thwap. Thwap. The sound the violin could not swallow.
At the end of the corridor, a staircase. Wood. Leading to the second floor. Carvings in the banister — flowers or beasts, impossible to say — gleaming under polish.
The smell of perfume was descending from above.
Getting stronger.
He walked.
Scene 2. Flies
On the third step, boots exploded from above.
Coming down. Not one — two, three. Fast. The thunder of men taking stairs at a run. Leather gear rattling. Bolts being racked: CHAK-CHAK.
Three gun barrels looking down from the second-floor railing.
"Halt! Move and we——"
He didn't halt.
Fourth step. Fifth. Bare feet on polished wood. The slick of lacquer under his toes. Dark red marks left behind.
The guns fired.
BANG.
It grazed his shoulder. The uniform cloth tore. A ribbon of hot air crossed his skin. A fly brushing past his ear. The feet on the stairs did not slow.
BANG. BANG.
Two more. One punched through a banister post — wood fragments spat into the air. The other buried itself in the wall plaster, which exhaled a puff of white dust. The graze on his shoulder was already closing, dark red compound flooding into the furrow of skin, sealing it.
Seventh step.
The lead soldier tried to drive his bayoneted rifle downward. A stabbing thrust from above, using the height advantage. The bayonet tip caught the light.
A hand shot out.
Not at the bayonet. At the barrel. The palm closed around hot iron — recently fired, warm against the skin. He squeezed. The barrel bent inside his grip. KREEEE. A military rifle's barrel folding into an L-shape, the way you'd twist a strip of taffy.
The soldier's hands hadn't released the stock. His fingers had locked. The bending force yanked his body forward. As it came, Lee Kang caught the elbow. Pushed it the wrong way.
SNAP.
The joint folded backward. The soldier's mouth fell open — the scream hadn't risen yet — and Lee Kang drove a foot into his chest. The body flew back into the two soldiers behind him and they all went tumbling up the stairs.
Eighth step.
Somewhere, the phonograph violin played on. Slow, soft arpeggios. Over that, the sound of a body rolling up the staircase: thud, thud, thud.
The second soldier came up and drew his sword. Military saber. Light ran the length of the blade. He swept it horizontally at waist height.
The edge grazed his side. The uniform opened. Skin parted — shallow, a single sheet of paper's depth. Blood welled and stopped. The flesh sealed itself. The dark red compound was matching the blade's pace, filling the cut as fast as it was made.
He caught the sword hand at the wrist. Twisted. The wrist rolled and the saber dropped free — CLICK — skidding down the stairs. Without releasing the wrist, he yanked the body in. His knee came up. It found the soldier's stomach. THUD. The man folded and went down.
Eleventh step.
The third soldier was backing away. Gun raised. But the trigger finger wasn't moving. The barrel was shaking. Not just the barrel — the hands holding it. The arms attached to the hands. The shoulders the arms hung from.
One step forward.
The soldier took one step back. His back met the second-floor corridor wall. Nowhere left to go. The muzzle trembled toward Lee Kang's chest.
He reached out and cupped the barrel with his palm. Slowly. No urgency. The round mouth of the muzzle pressed into the center of his hand. If it fired, the hand would be punched through. Punched through, it would seal. The dark red would fill it.
The soldier's eyes went wide. His pupils shook. His mouth opened. No sound.
Lee Kang pushed the barrel sideways. Toward the wall. The soldier's hands released the gun on their own. The gun hit the floor — CLANG — and the soldier slid down the wall and sat.
He didn't tip him over. Didn't kill him. He'd taken enough. He wasn't blocking the way.
He walked past.
He stood in the second-floor corridor. From below the staircase, the violin melody climbed up. Under it — groaning, the labored sounds of what had been left on the stairs.
He walked the corridor. Bare feet sinking into second-floor carpet, thicker than the first floor's. His prints pressed in deeper. Darker.
The perfume smell was stronger now.
At the end of the corridor, a door.
The largest door on this floor.
Scene 3. The Breathing Behind the Door
He stopped in front of the door.
Oak. Thick. One panel fitted with gold hardware. The handle was brass — polished surface catching the chandelier light. This door was different from every other door in the corridor. The size, the grain of the wood, the weight of the handle. The door itself was advertising what it guarded: the highest thing in this estate.
He didn't reach for it.
He stood. In front of the door. Barefoot. On the carpet, a dark red pool was spreading — everything that had soaked into his soles was seeping out, bleeding into the burgundy fibers beneath him.
His ears opened.
Sound from beyond the door. Breathing. Shallow, fast, uneven. Not the in-through-the-nose, out-through-the-mouth kind. All mouth — inhaling through the mouth, exhaling through the mouth. The nose wasn't blocked. Breathing through the nose would make noise, so the mouth had taken over. Breath trying to be silent. Failing. The more it was heard, the faster it went. The faster it went, the more it was heard.
It's audible.
Perfume was leaking through the gap under the door. That thin, cold winter scent. And something mixed into it that the perfume couldn't cover. Something sour. Cold sweat from the back and the armpits. The perfume wasn't reaching it. The lid had come off. No matter how expensive the bottle, if what's inside has gone rotten, the smell gets out.
The violin arpeggios from downstairs rose between the floor joists. In the gaps between each phrase, the breathing from beyond the door pushed through. Sound the music couldn't absorb. The dissonance a terror-seized pair of lungs produces.
He pressed his palm flat against the door.
The smooth grain of the oak met his hand. The oil of the polish worked into the creases of his bloodstained palm. The door was cold. But beneath his hand — traveling through the wood — something transmitted. A vibration. A fine trembling. Something was leaning against the other side of this door. Spine pressed against the panel. Shaking. The trembling wicked through the oak and into his palm.
He didn't lift his hand.
He read the trembling. Fast, fine, irregular. The same quality of vibration as a mouse shivering in a corner when it hears a cat's footstep.
The person behind this door had come down the stairs holding a lantern. Had smiled through iron bars. Had pointed a finger at his chest and said you. Had turned away and said goodbye, little brother.
That mouth was holding back a scream right now.
From beyond the door came the sound of something toppling. Small. Glass knocking against wood — a perfume bottle, or something from a vanity. Knocked over by shaking hands. Then the sound of fabric dragging across the floor. Crawling. Trying to put more distance between herself and the door. Moving deeper into the room.
He didn't hurry.
He stood with his palm on the door. A blood-soaked handprint pressed into the oak surface. Five fingers spread, dark red bleeding into the polish. Everything this door had been guarding — rank, power, the family name — pressed down under that handprint.
Beyond the door, the breathing went faster. Shallower. Higher.
It's loud.
His bare feet were rooted in the carpet. In the center of the dark red pool. He didn't move. Not yet.
The violin finished a phrase. A brief silence. The empty beat before the next phrase began.
In that empty beat, only the breathing from beyond the door remained.
Scene 4. Regards
He pushed.
One palm. The oak panel swung inward — then stopped. The hinges holding. He added pressure. The wood cried out. CRRK. The hinge bolts tore from the wall and the entire door toppled inward, hit the floor. BOOM. The air inside the room detonated outward.
The perfume broke open.
Everything the door had been holding back flooded out at once. That cold, sharp scent. Under it, the sour sweat beneath. And under that — urine. The smell of something that hadn't been held. Fear had opened the bladder first.
He stepped inside.
Large. The combined floor space of four underground cells. A small chandelier hung from the ceiling — eight candles. Their light fell across the floral wallpaper. A Persian carpet on the floor. The bed was against the far wall, silk curtains drawn back. Empty. The duvet half-pooled on the floor.
She was at the vanity.
Beside the overturned chair. Sitting on the floor. Her back against the vanity cabinet. A perfume bottle had tipped on the surface above her, lid open, liquid running down the wood and dripping to the carpet. Drip. Drip. The same interval as the water drops in the underground cell.
Lee Soyeon.
A silk nightgown. White silk, black hair spilling over it. Both hands clutching the fabric at her thighs — knuckles gone white. Knees pulled to her chest. She had made herself as small as she could.
Her face came up.
She looked at Lee Kang.
It was not the face that had smiled through the iron bars. The mouth that had said visiting my brother while descending with a lantern was hanging open, unable to close. Both corners pulled down. As though they had never been raised. Her cheeks were wet — tears or sweat, impossible to distinguish. No need to.
Her eyes were shaking.
Her pupils dropped from his face to his body. The bloodstained uniform. The bare feet. The line of dark red prints leading across the carpet directly to where she sat. Her gaze rose again. Stopped at his hands. The dried and cracked hands. Not the back of the hand with the bite marks — that was the other one. But under every fingernail, dark red was packed in.
Her lips moved. Soyeon's lips.
"You——"
One syllable. That was all. Nothing followed. Her voice had cracked. The commanding register was gone — the edge that had said take him through the bars. A scabbard with the blade removed.
He walked.
Three steps to the vanity. Two. One. Soyeon's eyes were looking up at him, chin tilted back, the angle of someone sitting on the floor looking up at something standing — the precise inversion of the angle where Lee Kang had hung from chains and looked up at Soyeon.
He bent.
His hand came down.
It found her throat. Below the chin. Below the ear. His palm cradled the back of her neck and his fingers followed the line of her jaw upward. Inside his grip, her pulse was going: fast, fast, fast, fast — like a bird's heart, hammering as if it meant to break through. The pulse met his palm through the skin.
He lifted.
Soyeon's feet left the floor. The nightgown hung slack below her. Her toes trembled in the air. Both her hands found his wrist. Her nails drove into his skin. He didn't feel it.
Their eyes met.
The chandelier light was reflected in Soyeon's eyes. In the fractured brightness, amber was burning — Lee Kang's eyes, mirrored in her pupils, glowing like an ember. Cold. Still. Not human eyes.
Soyeon's mouth opened. A scream was climbing. It rose and hit a wall — his hand was around her throat. Instead of a scream, what escaped was a thin, reedy hiss of air going nowhere. Tears ran from both eyes simultaneously. Down her cheeks, onto the back of his hand. Warm.
He opened his mouth.
"Pass along my regards,"
he said.
Low. Cracked. No mockery in it. No anger. As dry as an animal making a sound. Not words loaded with meaning and thrown. Just something heard, returned.
Soyeon's body convulsed.
Her hands fell from his wrist. The strength to hold on had left. Her arms went slack at her sides. Beneath the silk nightgown, something ran — down her thighs, down her calves, dripping from her feet. Drip. A small pool spread on the carpet.
The perfume bottle rolled off the vanity and hit the floor. It shattered. Glass scattered across the carpet. The liquid inside poured out, mixing with the urine already there. The smell of winter and the smell of terror wound together and filled the room.
Soyeon's eyes rolled back. Only the whites. Consciousness gone — not from the grip on her throat. Fear had gotten there first.
He released.
Soyeon's body dropped to the carpet. THUD. Like a doll. Onto the Persian carpet. Into the pooled mixture of perfume and urine. The white silk soaked through and clung to her skin. She was trembling. Unconscious but trembling.
He looked down at her.
The thing that had smiled through the iron bars was curled on the carpet. The mouth that had said goodbye, little brother hung half open, leaking foam. The tongue that had said I'll pass your regards to Yeon-hwa had slipped out past the lips.
He turned.
He left the room. Stepped over the torn-off door panel. Back into the corridor. Another line of dark red prints pressed into the carpet.
Behind him, the violin began its next phrase.