In the middle of his meditation, after swallowing a handful of mushrooms, Hue found himself face to face with an uninvited guest.

  He remembered clearly how the medical report described those purple bruises and cracked holes on Mr Yang’s battered corpse. But the most important detail was the elite mark curved bone-deep on his neck that traced the sleek silhouette of a cobra visible in sharp, bloodied scar line.

  It was unmistakable. This person in front of him was the one he never failed to mention in most of his conversations.

  “W-why are y-you here, Mr Yang?” The question spilled out from his paralytic mind caught between the friction of fear and unpreparedness.

  The ghost fastened his eyes on Hue with a deep stare as intrusive as a driving screw drilling into the depths of Hue’s thought. Like a detuned radio, he replied. “You called me.”

  “Me? I-I-I just thought about you sometimes. H-how come you know? A-aren’t y-y-you supposed to be trapped by K-king Cobra?”

  “No.” Not contributing more than what he was asked, Mr Yang was rather occupied with his curious hands poking and tracing Hue’s shoulder up and down, while maintaining eye contact that refused to free Hue from its grip.

  Hue pressed on, “W-what do you mean? You literally have the cobra curse on your neck.”

  “We are both dragged.”

  A tinkling feeling stirred Hue’s stomach, and in a heated passion, he asserted, “Drag by what?!! Are you suffering from a repeating tragedy!!”

  Mr Yang didn’t make an effort to address it and instead continued speaking in a voice that rubbed the ears like a slow glitch. “You are strange, so strange. You aren’t supposed to be here. You have no place in his loop of karmic cycle.”

  “W-what loop of karmic cycle?”

  “So long…this must be the sixth cycle now. You are probably led here by his grief swallowing the whole town bit by bit....”

  “I don’t understand, what is this all about?! Please, Mr Yang, what is going on? Who is he?!”

  “That child.” Mr Yang leaned closer to Hue’s left ear, “The child of the captain.”

  “Huh?” Hue’s face was drained sheet-white. “But the captain’s child is a girl.”

  In the same disoriented fashion, Mr Yang ignored his comment again and went on, “You can almost see his shadow at some lonely corners of this town if you stand still. Sometimes he comes as a child, sometimes as a young man, crying of the pain and the hell borne home he never learns to escape. You have to save yourself before you get dragged into the loop. It will never end.”

  “W-what?” Something about this warning struck Hue with a profound sadness. Knowing Mr Yang only talked about what he wanted to, Hue carefully proceeded, “Me…how? What about everyone else? L-like your family…and those in the loop and those who are not. Is there nothing we can do?”

  There was a look of hesitation in the ghost’s face as Hue’s words sank in and struck a chord in his soul, recalling a tune of failure that defined his desperation, and with that, a hint of humanness surfaced on his bluish face.

  Slowly but deliberately, he started whispering something into Hue’s ears. The young exorcist's expression quickly hardened by an intensity of shock that left his speech hanging between slightly parted lips.

  Suddenly, Hue felt a pumping in his head that compressed his vision inward with a gradual darkening hue until only a faint glow of light lingered for a second before the vision completely dropped.

  Then, he heard someone calling, “Hue, can you hear me? Hue!”

  Hue fought the heavy weight of his eyelids and woke up to the sight of familiar faces. Teacher Lay was standing in front of him, holding his hand tightly between the grip of two sweaty palms. There were two other teachers a foot behind them, both looking up at the same time from thick sheets of overturned script scrolls that buried half of their faces.

  But what struck Hue the most was the presence of a medical Angel. Despite catching Hue’s drifting glance, her focus remained on his blood pressure and pulse.

  “Good Lord, I am glad you regained your consciousness. How are you feeling, young Angel?” Teacher Lay spoke first; his soothing voice threaded through the silence on a trembling note.

  Hue tried to speak, but his words came out like a senseless mumble ringing in his head and failing to deliver any sensible messages. It was then that he noticed the smear of bloody handprints all over his uniform and face.

  The medical Angel asserted her remark, “Look at the mess you put yourself into. The mushroom almost killed you!!!”

  “W-wha?” Hue pulled himself upright, trying to make sense of her blurry voice while the lingering pain pounded and erupted through his head.

  “Your fragile body can’t handle it like a normal human, Hue!” The Angel continued, “Do you know you stopped breathing halfway?”

  Teacher Lay nodded heavily as he soaked a clean cloth and proceeded to wipe the bloody stain off Hue’s face. “Child, your innate luck is quite prominent, but this is really dangerous. A foreign energy even tried to enter you. No matter how hard we chant for your protection, it clung really tightly. If you followed it to the plain of afterlife, you wouldn’t make it back here.”

  “That’s Mr Yang.” Without reservation, Hue finally uttered his first speech, crisp and clear.

  A tide of confusion rose to everyone’s faces; nobody was able to discern whether Hue was serious or just disoriented. But when Teacher Lay met those sunken eyes stripped of light, he sensed a surge of urgency.

  “We are running out of time; something terrible is going to happen!”

  In another corner of the House of Glory, around the backyard garden, several Angels were pacing about on their night guard duty. The constant, undisturbed cry of crickets hidden behind blankets of shadowy bushes brought with it the calmness of a solemn hour.

  The sheet-white moon peered behind the triangular contour of the grand temple that rose from the ground like a tier of pyramids, narrowing with each ascending level. Streaks of slanting light shed through every pointed edge and dissolved toward the ground as soft as a gradient shading.

  A pair of Angels was sitting by the staircase leading toward the open corridor.

  One of them let out an unapologetically loud yawn. “Is there no update? The day is already ending. I won’t be able to go home, will I?”

  “Come on, Eunfeen, where is the passion? Where is the fire? We are at the House of Glory.”

  Eunfeen was a senior exorcist in her mid-thirties. Besides those characteristic freckles, a battle scar cut across her nose horizontally right in the middle, which perfectly split her face in an even half.

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  “Nah, Guyer, I’m not like you, joking all day after taking five cups of caffeine.”

  Guyer, on the other hand, was a dandy in his late twenties. His oily, slicked-back hair came off as a desperate attempt to look like a last romantic of some sort, which threw other colleagues off, although he seemed to have no doubt in perceiving their reaction as jealousy.

  “Whatever.” Guyer pulled out a lighter from his inner pocket and lit a cigarette.

  “I don’t think that’s allowed here.” Eunfeen voiced her concern as she seized him with a deliberate side-eye.

  “Shush! Don’t say that out loud, nobody will know! It’s an open space, no fire alarm!”

  “So that’s what you call, fire and passion.” Eunfeen rolled her eyes. “You should know this house was rebuilt six decades ago because a fire caused severe destruction.”

  Guyer clicked his tongue in response. “That’s what they said, but there is no official record.”

  “What do you mean?”

  "Exactly, we don’t have any official records. Strange right? Usually, they should be in the organisation file, but there is none. So rumour said the destruction could be caused by other things.”

  “Like what?” There was a hint of excitement in Eunfeen’s voice.

  “Who knows? Maybe a disease outbreak, maybe a dispute and loss of funds or…” He let out a cloud of smoke as he finished his sentence, “...a malpractice?”

  “Talking with that much swag? Cut that off! If you want to talk, talk straight!”

  “Oh my, such a hot temper. You are even more impatient than I thought.”

  Guyer leaned closer to Eunfeen, not withholding his smirk, “Have you ever heard of the story of the fake Oracle?”

  The older exorcist shrugged her shoulders, feigning disinterest, but her forward-leaning posture told otherwise.

  “This House of Glory was built during ancient times by the Lord himself. The practice, the teaching, the prayers, everything was passed over from one group of disciples to another.”

  “Yeah, I read about that.”

  “But you probably don’t know that about 500 years ago, there was a mysterious teacher who trained diligently to become the Oracle one day. After attaining the title, he started to create many fake scripts and practices for the daily prayers.”

  “Fake scripts and practices? Like what?”

  “Fake scripts and practices that were baseless and superstitious, of course.”

  “Like what exactly?!”

  Guyer, almost caught off-guard by Eunfeen’s passionate question, started to stumble over his words. “Such as…such as, no teacher could keep a single penny in savings, all needed to be submitted to the altar, and everyone needed to go through a strict diet of certain fruits, grown in a certain way.”

  Guyer was now folding his fingers one by one as if counting through sweat. “Breaking the rules brought severe punishment, such as whipping. Their prayers were mostly about praising and glorifying the Lord and the Oracle as his prophet. Such and such. Are these examples enough?”

  Eunfeen shrugged her shoulders again pretentiously. “What with those weird practices, anyway?”

  “Exactly! It helped the Oracle see how much influence he could have without anyone questioning him. These practices also gave him immense control over every single activity of the House. But behind that strict mask, that Oracle was actually nurturing and feeding a lot of demons within himself who did his dirty deeds.”

  Guyer flicked the cigarette with his index finger, dropping the ashes on the ground, before inhaling another lungful of smoke as he continued, “During every full moon, he would ask a teacher to make an offering to the main altar, located on the top floor of the temple, alone. Then, he would kill the teacher during the offering prayer, eat his heart and cannibalise his flesh. The flesh fed the demons and kept them happy, while the heart prolonged his own lifespan.”

  “Prolong his lifespan?” Eunfeen echoed.

  “Yeah, because he wanted to be immortal. But sooner than later, the altar became tainted. The teachers in the House started to register the strange disappearance of other teachers and noticed the shift in energy. As their suspicion grew, they ganged up to collect all sorts of evidence and finally uncovered the truth. Guess what happened.”

  “They caught him?”

  Guyer winked a smile, “Exactly! So in a faithful evening ritual, they proceeded to lock the fake Oracle inside the main prayer room with the tainted altar and sealed the door forever. Together they built a new wall with a new main altar over the divine seal; bigger, taller and stronger.”

  “Why didn’t they kill him, though?” There was a note of disappointment in her voice.

  “Of course not! Eunfeen, they are teachers.” Guyer waved his hand upward, drawing a trail of smoke in the air with his cigarette. “They would never take a life! Instead, they kept him locked forever until he died of starvation. You should be more interested in the new altar. It was both symbolic and energetically significant. It cleansed the demonic presence and relieved the suffering souls tormented by the Oracle.”

  “Oh my Lord, for real? And?”

  Guyer breathed in the cigarette smoke deeply to allow a moment of reflection before he admitted, “I believe it.”

  Eunfeen grimaced in discomfort, “Where do you get that from?”

  “My father was a teacher here before he moved to the Bay Bellamy town to become an independent journalist. You probably have heard of him. His reports about the mass suicide case in the neighbouring Sacreed Town are widely read. Nobody knows more about old stories than him!” That final comment was a deliberate attempt to follow up the conversation with another gossip.

  However, Eunfeen remained sceptical. “For real! You mean your father is that notorious conspiracy theorist who always writes nonstop about the unfounded drama between Captain Huang Lee and a wanted, malicious mage that lived along the hunted railway track?"

  “Hey! Have some respect! He did a lot of research! We all know Huang Lee is a nosy old man who seeks power. He even shot his shot at Captain Koi once to get involved—”

  “Nah, Captain Huang Lee is one mess for sure, but I wouldn’t trust a journalist who does research just to support his biases.” Eunfeen shook her head nonchalantly. “The Exorcist organisation would notice any malpractice in the House of Glory anyway.”

  “Eunfeen, it’s 500 years ago! How big and powerful can our organisation be at that time compared to the House of Glory with such an ancient history?”

  “Hmm, what? So you mean if it’s true, the corpse of the fake Oracle would still be behind the wall of the new altar?”

  "That's what I am wondering. You know, the new altar stays intact despite all the constant rebuilding. It is definitely divinely protected.”

  Eunfeen let out a tired breath. “Why does that fake Oracle lowkey sound like King Cobra?”

  Guyer almost jumped to his feet in a surge of excitement. “Oh, wait, you make a very good point! Damned, from a fake evil Oracle to an elite demon, that Cobra really doesn’t stop. That’s worth a headline.” He was almost nodding to himself.

  “Here we go again. Like Father, like son…” Eunfeen paused with slight hesitation before proceeding again. “By the way…did none of you know about the fact that King Cobra was looking for an immortal soul of some sort?”

  “What do you mean?” Guyer was almost baffled. “Why do I not know?!” He leaned closer as if trying to pierce Eunfeen’s personal space to steal more information.

  Eunfeen immediately backed off in annoyance. “I knew it. Neither Captain Koi nor Lieutenant Chan bothered to tell anyone about it. I was one of the Angels who supported them throughout the initial investigation, but I got hit pretty hard during Zun’s ritual and didn’t leave for the mission.”

  “So what’s the deal with the immortal soul?”

  “From my understanding, King Cobra was looking for a soul that seemed to reincarnate many times in a loop, collecting vengeance along the way, almost immortalising itself with negative energy.”

  “Really?” There was an obvious drop in attention in Guyer’s voice. “Well, they probably didn’t care because it doesn’t concern the exorcist’s mission. We fight demons, not cure soul suffering, anyway.”

  But Eunfeen was rather cautious. She impatiently glanced at Guyer up and down as she collected her thoughts to rationalise her next point. “But the things Hue said about a repeating tragedy just makes me think about the immortal soul.”

  “What are you implying?” He asked, unbothered.

  “Imagine there is really a loop of karmic cycle, and we are all—.”

  Suddenly, a pair of bats dashed out from a nearby tree toward the moonlit horizon at a blinding speed, squealing as they escaped.

  At that moment, they heard a silent knock on the back door gate. It came in like a slow, heavy pound from the fist, trembling with every knock on its weight.

  The other guards nearby strode forward to unlock the gate, but the minute the visitor came into sight, he let out a piercing shriek. The stillness of the night was shattered in an instant.

  Without a second of hesitation, Eunfeen rushed to the forefront with her chain ready. But to their astonishment, the person who greeted them was none other than the Head of the Teacher, the Oracle himself.

  He was covered in rotten wounds emitting a raw odour of burnt flesh that almost stifled their breathing. His head was crooked to the side in a constant twitching motion. Under the bleaching radiance of the moonlight that spared the finer details to the depth of intense shadow, Eunfeen could make out the torn robes drenched in blood.

  “What the hell is this?!” Eunfeen shouted, “Are you okay?!”

  The Oracle stared through her; his murmur carried echoes of overlapping sinuous words in various pitches. “Kill! Kill! Kill! If we kill everyone and every teacher in the House of Glory, we will gain our promised freedom! The King will finally set us free!”

  Guyer rushed beside Eunfeen. “Step back, guys! The Head Teacher is...he is definitely possessed!”