A week later.
I was almost back to normal. The only exception was the occasional ache deep inside my ribs when I climbed stairs. I’d started going out at night again, but I stuck to minor spirits. Grade Seven and low Grade Six. After one Grade Five had put me in bed for three days, I’d decided to watch my step for a while.
That night, I planned to stick to the plan.
Around midnight, my palm began to tug.
It felt different this time. Not like something tugging on it, but like I was being dragged along. My wrist tilted west on its own. Jangmuk’s fragment twitched against my spine. It wasn’t cold. It was trembling.
The outskirts of the city. Farther in than the abandoned factory site where I’d caught a Grade Six vengeful spirit on my tenth night. Three rusted steel-frame buildings stood joined together.
I could see it from far away. The air above the roof rippled, like heat haze over midsummer asphalt. But it was going the wrong way. Instead of heat rising, cold was settling down.
I stopped at the entrance.
The density was different. In the alley where the Grade Five had been, the air was thick. Here, it was heavy. Every breath filled my lungs with cold.
Stronger than a Grade Five. Maybe two ranks higher.
“Turn back.”
That was what my head told me. It was right. The Grade Five had taken thirty hours. I had no idea how long this would take. No, it might not even end in hours.
I was about to turn around when I heard a sound from inside.
Thud.
The clang of a metal plate. Then footsteps.
I peered inside through a broken window.
Someone was there. A woman with neat black hair tied back. I recognized her from the waiting room in the testing room. Eight hundred twelve.
It was Se-ra Yoon.
Se-ra stood in the middle of the factory. White, translucent energy gathered in both her hands. Refined yin energy. It had the same texture I’d sensed when I brushed past her in the testing room. Like ice, filtered once and frozen cold.
Her stance was precise. The distance between her feet, the height of her shoulders, even the angle of her wrists. It was as if she’d opened a manual and followed it to the letter. No, it was more like the manual had been written with her in mind.
Se-ra thrust out her hand. The white energy shot in a straight line and struck a pillar deeper inside the factory. Precise and clean.
And it missed.
There was nothing on the pillar. I could see it. The malignant spirit wasn’t on the pillar. It was in the entire steel frame. The ceiling trusses, the rusted crane rails, the H-beams set along the walls. Black yin energy spread through the steel like a web. There was no single body. The factory itself was its body.
Se-ra’s energy had aimed at one point. But there was no point to aim at.
The steel frame groaned. The black tendrils in the ceiling all curled inward at once. Something like a gust of wind slammed into Se-ra. She flew into the wall. The metal buckled inward.
Se-ra got up. Fast. A little blood marked the corner of her mouth. She took her stance again. The exact same stance as before.
And missed again.
I clenched and unclenched my hand at the window.
I had no plans to get involved. Really. She was an eight hundred twelve, and I was a zero. There was a reason I might be able to do what she couldn’t—there was. My palm was telling me so. Just pull it in, it said. Gather up what’s spread out.
But my palm was telling me the price, too. Twice what the Grade Five had cost me. Maybe three times.
“She’s with the Bureau. Help will come.”
That was what I thought, right up until the moment it happened.
All the black tendrils in the steel frame bent in one direction. Toward Se-ra. The whole factory curled inward, like it was taking a breath. Se-ra raised her hands. White energy formed a barrier. It was thin.
I saw a crack form in it.
The next thing I remember, I was inside the factory.
I didn’t remember climbing through the window. I didn’t remember running across the floor. When I came to, I was standing between Se-ra and the black tendrils. Just like in the boiler room, my body had moved first.
The pressure crashed over me all at once.
My shoulders sank. My knees threatened to buckle. My eardrums throbbed under the pressure. Yin energy piled onto my skin like weight. The white puff of my breath froze halfway out.
I held on. The walls of my meridians held. I’d spent nearly a month thickening them every night.
Behind me, Se-ra’s breathing stopped.
I spread both hands.
I didn’t push it away. I pulled it in.
Not one point. All of it. From the ceiling trusses, the crane rails, the H-beams. I pulled in the black tendrils spread through the steel all at once, like I was yanking on threads.
The steel frame screamed. Rust crumbled and fell like rain. The yin energy scattered through every corner of the factory rushed toward my palms. Dozens of tendrils converged on a single point.
The malignant spirit wailed. It wasn’t a sound. It was the vibration of something being devoured.
Five seconds. The sensation of the entrance to my meridians tearing.
Ten seconds. Jangmuk’s cold covered my spine. I couldn’t count how many strands there were. My entire back turned to a sheet of ice.
Fifteen seconds.
It was inside me.
The factory fell silent. The black tendrils vanished from the steel frame. Only flecks of rust drifted slowly to the ground.
Blood poured from my nose. It wasn’t running. It was pouring. My hands were shaking, and wouldn’t stop. The right half of my vision went dark. No—not dark. It was the Other Side. I could see the layer overlapping the factory beyond its walls.
I dropped to my knees.
Backflow started inside my meridians. One, two, three. I stopped counting. Around nine spots. Two more than after the Grade Five.
Footsteps sounded behind me. One step. Then they stopped.
I turned my head. Se-ra was standing there. The white barrier was gone. Her hand was frozen in the air.
Se-ra looked at me.
Those were the eyes that had passed right over me in the testing room hallway. Like I was a telephone pole.
Now, she couldn’t take her eyes off me.
Her lips parted. No sound came out. They closed, then parted again.
Huh. So that’s what it looks like when a telephone pole saves someone.
I almost laughed, but blood ran down my throat from my nose, so I couldn’t.
I stood up. Not in one try. I braced myself against a steel pillar and managed on the second. I wiped beneath my nose with the back of my hand. It came away bright red.
I walked past Se-ra.
“Hey.”
Her voice came from behind me. It was hoarse.
“You’re Grade Zero.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have the breath for it. And I had nothing to say. She was right. That’s what the Spirit Gauge said.
I walked out of the factory. The night air was cold. Inside my body was colder.
It was a forty-minute walk home.
As I walked, I counted the spots in my meridians. Not one of the nine had stopped. If anything, a tenth began to twitch below my heart, where Jangmuk was lodged.
The Grade Five had taken thirty hours.
This time, it didn’t feel like it would end in hours.