The incense taste had faded, replaced by garden dew and the copper residue of prophecy. Evren stood at the moon-viewing pavilion, the Death card heavy in his right palm, the fallen card face-down at his feet on the white stone.
He heard the silk robes first—heavy, embroidered, moving without hurry. Grandmother Yi rounded the lotus bend, leaning on her jade staff, the moon catching the silver in her hair. She stopped ten paces away. She did not look at the smoke rising from the Ancestral Hall behind them. She looked at his eyes.
"How's your body?" she asked.
Evren considered the question. The joints ached. The lungs were narrow. The soul was a size too small, or perhaps the skin was a size too large.
"Functional," he said. Then, correcting himself with that cursed bluntness: "Operational. The previous tenant left it in decent condition."
Grandmother's staff tapped the stone once. She stepped closer. "Why don't you go straight to my chamber? It's almost dinner. We should eat together."
Evren looked down at the fallen card. He flipped it with his toe.
The Tower (XVI). Lightning splitting gold-crowned masonry. Bodies falling. Fire licking the corners of the painted illustration. It smelled like ash already.
He looked up at her. "The estate will burned," he said. "If we don't change the route."
"Then we'll eat before the fire," Grandmother said. She turned, expecting him to follow. "I dreamed three nights ago that you would die today. That something wearing your skin would ask me for dinner."
Evren slipped the Tower into his sleeve, next to Death. "I'm not asking. I'm calculating the caloric necessity of accepting."
"Accept?" she said, not looking back. "The cooks are already terrified of you."
The servants pressed themselves against the corridor walls as they passed. Evren heard the whispers, sharp as knife scratches:
"How long has he been standing there?"
"Is he listening?"
"We're dead if he looks at us."
Evren didn't react.
Grandmother's chambers occupied the third floor of the west wing—a library disguised as a residence. Jade tables. Heated floors. A single square table set for two, porcelain bowls steaming with milky-white ginseng soup.
She served him herself. Ladle in wrinkled hand, pouring the soup into his bowl. The liquid rippled.
"I saw the bones," she said, sitting across from him. Her eyes were cloudy with cataracts, but they tracked him perfectly. "The divination said my grandson would be brain-dead by sunset. Empty flesh."
Evren lifted the bowl. It was hot against his scarred palm—the old wound from that other life, still throbbing.
"The divination was accurate," he said. "The body was vacated. I'm subletting."
Grandmother picked up her spoon. "Then pay rent with your presence."
They ate in silence that was not empty.
The candles—pure beeswax, scented with pine—flickered. The flames turned green for three seconds, then recovered. The temperature dropped ten degrees.
The copper taste returned to Evren's tongue.
"Finish your food." she swallowed the last of her soup and stepped away. Evren hurried and watch. Tools ready on the spirit table.
She rang the bell.
The lattice window exploded inward.
Not wind. Not force. A distortion—a shambling figure with a belly bloated by unfulfilled. The Hungry Ghost screamed silently, black smoke pouring from its sewn mouth as Grandmother Yi forced it toward the porcelain jar.
She rang the bronze bell—BRRRNNGG—and slashed the air with her trident knife, trying to sever its resistance.
It didn't kneel.
The ghost thrashed, bloated belly distending further. The jar cracked under the spiritual pressure. Grandmother's hands shook—age, or the void in the Yi succession weakening her authority.
"It won't fit," Evren said, watching the smoke leak through the jar's fissures. "The container is too small for its anger."
"Silence!" she gasped. "Hold it down—force it in—"
The ghost lunged toward Evren instead, sensing the empty slot where a shaman should be.
Then:
[The Rumoured Deck System: Interface Active]
[Host: Yi Evren]
[Spirit Detected: Hungry Ghost (Architect of False Shrines)]
[Conventional Containment: FAILED]
[Critical: Host in Danger]
[Available Protocols:
I. Death (XIII) - SEVERANCE (End the ghost)
II. The Tower (XVI) - CONTAINMENT (House the ghost)]
[Select:]
Evren froze. The text hung in his vision, translucent and gold-edged.
Behind him, the air turned cold. Death stepped forward—the skeletal figure in black robes, manifesting physically for the first time. Silent. Efficient. It placed a bony hand on Evren's shoulder and pointed to the second option.
Evren pulled The Tower from his sleeve. Empty. Waiting.
"Architecture," he said, understanding nothing but the word.
He held the card toward the ghost.
The ghost stopped screaming. It looked at the card—saw the lightning, the fall, the beautiful destruction of its own death. It reached.
And flowed into the paper.
The Tower card grew heavy, warm. The illustration changed—the falling figures stabilized, standing on the rubble.
[Contract Established: XVI - The Tower]
[Status: Occupied]
[Ability Unlocked: Structural Collapse (Localized)]
[Warning: 2/22 Major Arcana Filled]
Grandmother Yi dropped the bronze bell. It hit the jade floor with a sound like a cracked skull.
She didn't look at the card. She looked at Death—the foreign spirit standing beside her grandson, protective, patient. Then she looked at Evren's eyes.
"How did you do that?" she whispered.
"Gave it a contract," Evren said.
She stepped closer. Her fingers trembled as she touched his cheek, then his scarred palm.
"I couldn't ignore it," she said. Her voice broke. "The soul is foreign. But the face... the face is my grandson's."
"The estate will burn in two days—that was our fate. My grandson insisted on being a shaman even though it took his life. He wouldn't accept weakness."
"Wasn't he selfish?"
She looked at the Tower card in his hand. "No. I think you understand pride better than he did. He died for it. You use it."
"Probably."
"I will teach you," she said. "Not because you're him. Because you're not, and you might survive what he couldn't."
She walked toward the door, then stopped.
"Send your Death back to the card. It might scare the servants."
Evren looked at Death. The skeleton nodded, once, and dissolved into shadow.
A commotion rose from the estate gates below. Not ghosts—human shouting. Then loud footsteps in the hallway. A servant burst through, breathless.
"Matriarch. A runner from the Gu family. He insists on delivering this to you personally."
The servant held out a white jade scroll tube. The Gu mountain crest was carved into the cap—miners, not shamans. Desperate people.
Grandmother Yi took it. She broke the red wax seal. Inside, a single hair wrapped in wax—the life-debt offering. She read the charcoal scrawl:
"To the Yi Matriarch—Our Young Miss dies of lies. The physicians are frauds. The shamans we hired are thieves. Come. Midnight. Payment in truth."
She looked up at Evren. "They want a shaman. I'm the only one they know." She moved to the broken window. Below, torchlight flickered at the gate. "And the Gu family estate is not far. Three ri by mountain path."
Evren stilled. Chapter 10—Page 4. A girl in a palanquin. The Young Miss who died off-screen to motivate Haoran's alliance with the Gu jade mines. In the manga, she had no name. Just a tragedy.
Then, he heard something. Faintly.
"Ah," he added, tone flat. "They need a carrier. One of them will break their back. The ligaments in the lower spine. L4 and L5."
A shout rose from the gate below: "The runner collapses! He is too old—someone help me!"
Grandmother didn't look away from Evren. She held out the jade scroll.
"You follow me today," she said. "Treat this as your first day of training."
[Warning: 47 hours until Estate burns]
[New Location Unlocked: Gu Manor]