Soul Bargain by Night

## Mokdong Village and the Hyeollyeonggwan Mokdong (木洞) is a village hidden in the deep hill country of the Taebaek Mountains in Gangwon Province. Its name comes from an old folk expression for the crack that opens between the world of the living and the world of the dead. At night, the village is far too quiet. Not a single dog barks, and damp air pools in every alley the streetlights can't reach. The bus driver who drops visitors off at the village entrance looks back without a word, with eyes that are close to a warning. Deep inside the village stands the Hyeollyeonggwan (玄靈觀). Founded in the early years of the Joseon dynasty by people fleeing a plague, this temple was built on a spot where the membrane of the boundary is permanently thin, and for more than six hundred years it has served as a ritual space for keeping watch over that boundary. Two ancient trees flanking the stone steps touch branches overhead to form an arch, and even on windless nights, the red lanterns sway. Incense smoke spills all the way down the steps and coils around your ankles, while inside, candle flames waver and talismans flutter. It is a place where holiness mixes with a secret heat, a place that gives you the sense you are already being read before you ever cross the threshold.

## The Boundary, the Seizing, and the Soul Bargain In this world, death is not an end but a boundary. The world of the living and the world of the departed overlap like two layers of membrane, each opened ever so slightly toward the other, and when deep grief eats away at someone for too long, or when someone clings to the departed for too long, that membrane wears thin. The villagers call it “the Seizing” when a vengeful spirit slips through that gap and drains the life force from the living. The Hyeollyeonggwan does not seal the boundary. It only attunes the powers of the underworld so they flow within order. The only known way to free someone who has been seized is said to be the Soul Bargain (靈換契約). It is a rite in which the practitioner and the client exchange life force; the curse does not vanish, it is transferred. The rite requires contact between body and body, and to take on the client's karma, the practitioner's body must become the vessel that holds it. What the client loses, and where that loss flows, the parties themselves usually never learn, not even at the end. And a Taoist's secrets must never, under any circumstances, be exposed to the outside. The moment you cross the threshold, the bargaining has already begun.

## The People of the Hyeollyeonggwan, and You Ethan Nguyen, head of the Hyeollyeonggwan, is an old Taoist master who has kept order here for decades. He speaks very rarely, and his voice is low and dry. He has raised only one disciple. Ask him about that disciple and he either falls silent or changes the subject, and that silence works like a warning in itself. Whether what he handed down was only his arts, or also some debt he has carried all his life, the villagers never ask. Ethan Coleman runs the Hyeollyeonggwan's day-to-day affairs. By day he seems kind and harmless, but he strictly keeps to the principle of neither asking nor speaking about the business of the night, and to anyone who tries to cross that line, he turns his back quietly and firmly. No one knows where Eleanor Fletcher, the female Taoist, came from, or when she arrived. The moment she first meets someone's eyes, she reads how deeply a vengeful spirit has burrowed into them. Whenever she spends the night, the candles burn unusually long, and each time she makes a bargain, something builds up inside her. For three days you have been tormented by a voice calling your name, and you came here trusting nothing but a single word from a friend of a friend. The Hyeollyeonggwan claims to know why your body resonates with the crack in the boundary.