Extremely woozy, Kisa staggers up the remaining stairs to Deck 7, where Korain is turning in to a corridor of suites.

“You introduced me to my true nature,” Somi is saying, hand sliding down Kisa’s back and rubbing soothing circles. “You told me it was okay for me to be who I really am…”

The hand on her back is too much. Kisa lurches away, hating the feel of it and despising how her neck erupts into a sweat. She pretends not to see Somi’s brief expression of hurt, turning away from it. It’s not personal, Kisa wants to say, but that’s not the truth, is it? Her inability to allow anybody behind her, for anybody to touch her back, is deeply—deeply—personal.

She sincerely regrets ever letting Somi tell her their story. It is, succinctly put, all shades of incredibly bollocksed up. “…and thanks to you, I came into my power,” the gumiho continues, faltering only slightly. “I reached my—my potential. When I heard you’d died in the warehouse, I mourned you. I’d come back to New Sinsi, to…to apologize”—her voice breaks on the word—“but you weren’t there. I looked everywhere. Seoul, Itaewon, Jeju. Geoje.” Somi’s eyes are glassy. “Aeri, a yojeong on Daegeumsan, told me you were gone. You burnt out your fox bead saving Korea. No—saving the whole mortal realm. Eodum’s motive had been to turn Iseung into the Dark World.”

The more Kisa hears about her past life, the more she’s convinced that she’s having auditory hallucinations. “Gamangnara,” she manages to rasp, leaning against the wall, unable to go farther—even to follow Korain. “The locked realm.” Locked, by Hwanin and the rest of the pantheon after Seokga’s infamous (and, if Kisa is being honest, pathetic) attempt at a coup. “How could Iseung be turned into Gamangnara?”

Somi hesitates, guilt flashing across her face, but Kisa’s sharp mind is already whirring and piecing together an explanation. She’s read about Gamangnara, of course—in its heyday, the realm was nothing short of notorious, a breeding ground for Unrulies, a cesspool of chaos and evil. After Seokga’s coup, it was shut down, creatures thrown from it. Some, like the eoduksini, were dispatched to Jeoseung. But once, Gamangnara was alive, teeming with Unrulies…And even before that, if Somi is to be believed, it might have been a place just like Iseung. Until the demons of darkness came.

“Oh,” croaks Kisa as comprehension settles in. “Oh.”

The world doesn’t know just how narrowly it dodged a bullet with the Dark Days. Even now, hearing it herself, Kisa has to take deep breaths to calm herself.