Daki watched as the smoky soul rose upward, light shimmering around it like a final farewell.
But her eyes, glowing deep red, narrowed.
One of the souls tried to rise with the others, but she raised her hand and commanded it to stop.
With a flick of her wrist, the soul froze midair, trembling under her control.
Daki grabbed it, trapping it inside a dark glass jar. It pulsed weakly inside, screaming silently.
As she turned to leave the wreckage of the house, her foot was caught.
Bo Ah, her body weak and soaked in blood, had grabbed her ankle.
Bo Ah: "Please… kill me…"
Her voice was hoarse and broken. "I did something I shouldn't have… It's my fault. If I hadn't brought them here, those people… they wouldn't have died."
She clutched Daki's leg like a child lost in a storm.
"I don't want to live anymore…"
Daki sighed and bent down to her. Her eyes were no longer cold—they were curious.
She reached out and poked Bo Ah's cheek gently with her finger.
Daki: "You want to die that badly? Hah… But did you know something?"
She leaned closer, voice soft like silk.
"Your mother wouldn't have said sorry if she truly wanted you to die."
Bo Ah's lips trembled. Tears poured down her dirtied cheeks.
Daki: "Sigh… Why do I even care? I can't believe I'm wasting time on this."
She stood back up, brushing off her hands. "I can't save your life. That's meaningless. But…"
She paused, her hand glowing with strange black smoke.
"I can help you forget."
Bo Ah blinked, confused.
Daki: "Your memory, human. I'll wipe it. Every single thing that happened here—your mother, your sisters, the pain, the blood—it'll all disappear."
Bo Ah cried harder, her strength leaving her.
"Isn't that… a gift?"
She fainted.
Daki spread her arms as smoke unfurled from her palms. It wrapped around Bo Ah's body like a cocoon, gently erasing every scar in her memory. Not from her body—but from her soul.
Daki stepped outside the house, now reduced to shattered wood and bloodstained walls.
She paused at the doorway. Not to look at Bo Ah.
Not even her mother's remains.
But something—
Something behind her… a presence. Cold, lingering.
She stared for a moment.
"Tch… Probably nothing," she muttered, and vanished into the night.
Three minutes later.
A faint breeze passed through the ruins.
From the direction Daki had been looking—
A woman emerged.
Her long black hair flowed like smoke, and her eyes shimmered like obsidian. She wasn't beautiful—she was terrifying. Her skin was pale, almost translucent, and her presence was wrong. Rotten.
She stood where Daki had paused, then walked up slowly to the unconscious Bo Ah.
A smirk crept across her face.
"What a mess…"
She crouched, studying the girl like a spider examining its prey.
"Did she die?" she whispered mockingly. "Shame."
She looked around the destroyed home.
"Up till now, I've been the pain in your family, Bo Ah."
She stood tall and laughed—low, cruel.
"I move like smoke. I whisper like nightmares. I am the evil that infected your family."
She placed a cold hand over Bo Ah's chest.
"I caused your father's death. He wasn't fated to die—but I whispered in the drunk driver's ear. I caused your sister to be raped—I clouded his heart with darkness."
Her voice grew more distorted, gleeful.
"I feed on pain. I destroy families… one by one… until there's only one left."
Her tongue flicked against her lips.
"And now it's your turn. I wonder… what you taste like."
She reached out to touch Bo Ah's forehead—
CRACK!
Her hand snapped in half, bone shattering like glass.
She screamed and staggered back.
"What—?!"
The woman looked at her hand, now cracked and regenerating slowly.
She turned to Bo Ah and gasped.
A strange mark glowed faintly on Bo Ah's forehead.
It pulsed with the same energy she had felt earlier—during Daki's presence.
Then it hit her.
"That damn woman…" she hissed.
She backed up, growling. "She set a barrier… A protection seal. A spell that no demon can touch."
The woman trembled in rage. Her smoke-like body pulsed as if it would explode.
"Who is that bitch?!" she screamed.
"She ruined years of my work. YEARS!"
She looked around the ruins of the house—her masterpiece, the perfect breeding ground of pain and despair.
"I'll find her. I'll kill her. I'll rip her apart…"
Her voice turned into a hiss.
She disappeared in a swirl of smoke, vanishing into the darkness.
But not before whispering into the wind:
"Bo Ah… I'm not finished with you yet."