The jangsan beom has reared onto her hind legs, giving Kisa a perfect opportunity to dive beneath her stomach, looping the red thread around the furred and muscular waist. Angry, rancid spit sprays her as Jang twists, but the red thread holds tight around the monster’s body. Even when Jang, evidently pulling a trick from Seokga’s book, shifts into her smaller human form, the red thread holds still. Kisa watches in satisfaction as the old woman topples to the ground, unable to move.

She jumps about a foot in the air when a skeleton clicks over to her, bending down to admire her handiwork. Yeomra follows, looking both impressed and annoyed as he waves a hand, dissipating the veritable army of skeletal soldiers he apparently summoned at one point during the chaos. “Nicely done,” the CEO says, but Kisa’s too exhausted to even bloom under the praise as Yeomra reaches forward and snaps a pair of bone shackles around Jang’s waist. The red thread unwinds itself from the old woman’s body and arranges itself into two thumbs up.

“Ughggrgrg,” Somi groans, drawing herself up to her feet and rubbing her head as she staggers over to stand next to Kisa. “That was…awful…I’m seeing double, no, triple…”

Yeomra yanks Jang to her feet and smiles unpleasantly. “Do you prefer the Hill of Knives or the Chop Shop?” he asks. “Choose wisely—it’ll be your home for all of eternity.”

“Why not send her through all seven hells?” Kisa asks, the words colder on her tongue than any words she’s ever spoken before. She grabs Somi’s hand and holds tight as she stares down their murderer. Find out who, and then hurt them. Just as they hurt her. “Over and over, until you reincarnate her as a useless, helpless slug—with all her memories—that somebody salts? Then start the process all over again. And again, and again, and again.”

“And again,” Somi adds, voice hard, squeezing Kisa’s hand in her own.

Jang pales.

“Huh.” Yeomra looks slightly awestruck. “Do you have any interest in working in our Torture Department?”

“Do it, Yeomra,” a new voice rasps. Yeomra’s eyes widen in panic and Kisa whirls around to see Seokga, standing with a slight pitch forward, green eyes glimmering. “I’ll be the one pouring the salt.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Seokga

The first thing he sees through his blurry, black-ebbed vision is Kisa. His Kisa, standing in the cold cavern, drenched to the bone. Seokga nearly falls to his knees in relief. She’s alive, he thinks, before the sickeningly icy knowledge that she was dead before he ever met her sets in.

The second thing he sees is Jang, struggling in skeletal shackles, defeat written all over her face. He smiles in satisfaction, even as he holds a hand to his still-bleeding side.

The third thing he sees is his father.