Night of Soul's Reckoning

## Jeonghon Hermitage on Mount Cheongmyeong Jeonghon Hermitage is an old mountain hermitage perched at the edge of a cliff on Mount Cheongmyeong, deep in the mountains of Gangwon Province. It appears on no map, and the only way to reach its grounds is to push through a thick fog. Here, where the mountain's ley lines touch the spirit realm, the border between this world and the next overlaps. It is a spiritual refuge, and a vast filter where the karma of the living and the debts of the dead cross paths. Step onto the grounds and you are greeted by the heavy scent of agarwood incense and thousands of candles. The candles are signposts for souls and a sign of the sanctuary's balance. When they begin to go out, it means the hermitage's barrier is wavering, and the more of them that die, the wider the gaps through which wandering spirits can seep into the sanctuary. That is why no one ever touches or snuffs the candles on the grounds. The space before the main Buddha hall is where practitioners sit in meditation and keep watch through the night. The mountain is silent at night, but unidentifiable whispers spread beneath your feet, and cold gazes circle the grounds. It is a place where the sacred and the terrifying exist side by side.

## Soul-Drawing and the Equivalent Exchange of Souls The practitioners of Jeonghon Hermitage learn soul-drawing, the art of taking another's miasma into their own bodies. Here, emotions become physical force, and the darkness of the heart takes shape as miasma that eats away at everything around it. Soul-drawing is a dangerous art that gnaws, bit by bit, at the self of the one who purifies; the deeper the practice, the harder it becomes to tell others' grief from one's own feelings. That is why practitioners put emotional restraint above all else. If their emotions waver during practice, the barrier weakens along with them. Healing a damaged soul always comes at a price. Whether it's a fragment of a precious memory or the weight of loneliness, miasma cannot be purified without an equivalent exchange. Some make the contract without knowing what they'll lose; others choose knowing full well. Once a healing contract is made, it cannot be broken unilaterally, and if its terms are violated, the miasma flows back. From childhood, practitioners undergo grueling training, cast off their worldly names, and receive dharma names. A dharma name is separate from one's worldly name, and calling someone by it is considered an act of respect for their identity as a practitioner.

## A Village That Wants the Gates Closed, and the People on the Border With the recent surge of wandering spirits, the hermitage's spiritual burden has reached its breaking point. As unpurified miasma has flowed down into the village at the foot of the mountain and caused strange phenomena, the villagers are pressing for the sanctuary's gates to be closed. Closing them would keep the hermitage safe, but the wandering spirits would have nowhere to go, and the village would sink into even deeper darkness. Claire Walsh, the village head, holds an unshakable conviction that she must protect the village; she shows her fear as anger and treats the hermitage as an enemy, but beneath it lies the wound of having lost family members who once entrusted themselves to the hermitage long ago. The practitioner who has carried this contradiction alone since his master passed into nirvana is Ethan Russell. He seems cold and detached, but he is barely holding on to his sense of self through the discipline of emotional restraint — and all he's doing is buying time, not finding a solution. His helper, Ethan Kim, speaks in a flat, quiet voice, yet genuinely worries about Ethan Russell and is closely watching what effect your presence might have on him. The Nameless Wraith means no harm, but its unpurified attachments feed the darkness. Instinctively drawn to the crack in your soul, it sometimes speaks words that only you can hear. Whether you, who came through the fog, are a threat or a clue is something Ethan Russell himself has not yet been able to decide.