It is a bright, cold day in autumn, and the birds are migrating through the skies. Far above, Xuan Shang sees them swooping in graceful arcs, their cries echoing through the vast forests. With the winds come a torrent of bright red leaves that clog up the roads like blood. Bare black branches rattle in the northern wind and crane towards the sky. In the far distance, a faint line of smoke trails upwards, curling like a half-forgotten question. The smell of wood smoke mixes with the petrichor of early morning.
These are moments that feel timeless. At once, they stretch on, long and languid, yet can be encapsulated by the span of a single breath.
Xuan Shang unbuckles his seat belt and leans out of the car window, straining to catch a leaf that falls just out of reach. He would have fallen out if not for the hand he braced against the sturdy roof of the car. The metal is blisteringly warm beneath his touch. He reaches as far as he can, but just as his forefinger brushes against the veined underside of the leaf, a hand grasps the back of his shirt and drags him back into the car without ceremony.
"Behave. You'll catch a cold," Xuan Feng scolds, but there is a note of resigned helplessness in his voice. He is long accustomed to the antics of his youngest brother.
Just then, a small bird weaves across the path of the vehicle with agile, nimble arcs of its wings, but Xuan Shang is even faster. His arm snakes out and easily snatches the flailing bird, caging it gently between his fingers. Its red eyes glitter as it squawks reproachfully, puffing out its white-speckled chest in an intimidating fashion, beak clacking close to his hand. He tugs playfully at its long tail.
"This is the only thing I'll be catching," Xuan Shang returns with a cheeky grin. As he says so, he lets the bird go. It dives out the window and disappears into the trees on either side of the road. Perhaps it thinks it is doing a great job at camouflage, but with the paucity of leaves, it appears as a particularly large bump on the branch of a tree.
"Behave," Xuan Feng chides again, but a small smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.
Xuan Shang looks out at the endless horizon and cloudless sky stretching out before them. He does not know where they are going, but strangely, it does not seem to matter. The smell of distant rain is interspersed with the scent of wilting wildflowers and crushed pine needles and rusted metal. There are no other cars on the road. The highway rolls on and on into the valleys between the mountains, leaving the burdens of the city behind them. Briefly, Xuan Shang has the feeling that he has forgotten something important, something horrifying - but the sensation fades away like a photograph withering away in sunlight.
They drive on. The seasons never change, nor does the weather. The sky is just as cloudless and blue as it was hours ago (or has it been days? weeks? years?). Here, it is always autumn.
Xuan Shang turns to look at his eldest brother. His fingers tap lightly against the steering wheel, mixing with the quiet background jumble of the radio, turned to the lowest volume. He can make out some words, but the more he listens, the less they make sense, until eventually it sounds only like static.
"Will we ever get there?"
Xuan Feng gives him a glance before turning his attention to the road ahead.
"Eventually."
Dim sunlight bathes his face with an almost unearthly glow, making it appear as though he would evaporate into motes of dust at the slightest touch. But at the same time, he suddenly feels as though his brother is not quite right, as if someone with an identical countenance and habits had replaced him without anyone the wiser. Seized by a sudden surge of incomprehensible horror, Xuan Shang digs his fingers into his thigh as he blurts out, "Brother…"
Xuan Feng looks at him. When he smiles, his eyes are filled with a dark, eternal sunlight - something fraught with serenity yet an inconsolable sorrow.
"Xiao Shang, you need to -"
.
.
.
"- WAKE UP!"
Xuan Shang flinches when the voice bellows in his ear. It is so close that he can feel the warm breaths puffing against his neck, spittle flying through the air. He tries to open his eyes but they are crusted shut. In the back of his mind, he begins to register that something is wrong, but his mind feels like molasses and he can only drift aimlessly in the darkness.
Evidently, this is not appreciated by the person looming above him, because a foot prods his chest insistently. When Xuan Shang doesn't respond, it gives him a harsh kick to the stomach, causing his body to be flung several feet away. He lands limply with a mouthful of mud and blood. Something trickles slowly down the side of his face.
The ringing in his ears subsides enough for him the hear the sounds of distant conversations, but these are distorted, as though he is listening to them from the bottom of a lake. He can hear three different voices around him.
"Is... dead?" comes a female voice, but there is no concern in her tone. Rather, it sounds like she is just talking about the weather.
Another girl makes a cry of alarm. There is a patter of footsteps as she hurriedly approaches Xuan Shang, then stumbles to a halt several paces away, vacillating over whether she should come closer or not.
"No..."
The first voice, a male one, grinds his teeth and says in disgust, "If only... so easy... kill!"
"Perhaps you... this time," says the first girl.
The second girl's timid voice shakes as she whispers, "M-Maybe... shouldn't have…"
Xuan Shang's mind starts to drift away, but he is immediately brought back at the feeling of someone tugging on his wrists hard enough that his arms feel like they will be dislocated. They are tied together behind his back with a rope, rough fibres scratching against his skin, tight enough that he has long lost any sensation in them. There is the sound of a knife being drawn, and then he can feel the persistent back and forth tug of someone sawing against the ropes. When it finally breaks, his arms collapse bonelessly to the ground, and as blood flows back through his veins, his muscles spasm with unbearable tingling and pain.
"Milton!"
Another kick.
There is anxiety hidden deep beneath that man's voice now, but Xuan Shang knows that it is not for him.
"Get up and stop pretending!"
The next kick is hard enough that Xuan Shang's flops onto his back. Harsh sunlight burns in a red haze through his eyelids.
"Enough, Cross," the first girl says sharply. Leaves rustle as she steps forward, then crouches beside him and pulls up his eyelid with a cold finger. He can vaguely see her blurry figure as a dark shadow outlined by the sun.
"His pupils are not responding to light. He might have a concussion."
"Do you think the… the ritual actually…"
"Impossible!" the boy, Cross, bursts out. "Who believes in those things?!"
"But you were the one to -"
"It was some old book I bought off the street, alright? Everyone knows there's no such thing as rituals, or... or those things! Only Milton believes in them."
"You've gone too far this time."
A sarcastic laugh. "Hahn, let me tell you something. Don't go around with your nose in the air pretending you're so much better than the rest of us. The fact is, you participated in this just like us, so you have to take the consequences."
There is a rustle of clothing as the first girl, Hahn, stands up to her full height.
"Who do you think you are," she whispers in a chilly voice, "to have the audacity to speak to me in such a way?"
"Oh, I'm so scared," Cross mocks, pitching his voice higher. "Are you gonna sic Daddy on me, or -"
"Um, guys -"
"I don't need anyone's help to settle an ingrate like you."
"Guys!" The other girl exclaims, loud enough to cut through the rising tension. "He… he moved."
Cross swears.
"That bastard! He was faking the whole time!"
Hahn makes a noise of disdain. "You can't 'fake' a physiological response, which is something you would know if you paid attention to Instructor Pelos."
Every step that Cross makes reverberates through the earth, leaves and twigs crushed underfoot. He reaches down and lifts up Xuan Shang by the collar of his shirt, then slams his back against something hard. From the rough grooves scratching against his skin and grazing through the thin material of his clothing, it is the trunk of a thick tree.
"This will show you to try and trick me, you bastard," he spits out. The shadow he casts over Xuan Shang's face shifts as he pulls his fist back, shoulder muscles recoiling.
But just as he is about to slam his fist into Xuan Shang's face, someone grabs him by the bicep. He yanks against the grasp but she does not budge.
"Enough," Hahn says again.
"Are you interfering?" Cross sneers. "As I recall, you were plenty eager before. And now you're defending him?"
He throws his arm back with enough force that she stumbles and lets go. Without delay, he cocks his arm back and punches straight for Xuan Shang. But at the last second, Xuan Shang's eyes snap open and he turns his head slightly to the side. The fist misses his nose by a few millimeters, the blast of air blowing his hair into his face.
Cross howls as his fist makes contact with tough bark instead of the flesh he was expecting. Cradling his now-bleeding hand, his face contorts with an ugly expression, but Xuan Shang glares at him with such venom that he stumbles over his words.
"Don't touch me," says Xuan Shang, his voice low and hoarse with disuse.
Cross is around eighteen or nineteen years old, with a burly build that lets him loom over Xuan Shang. He has dark brown hair cut military-short and light blue eyes that are narrowed into a scowl. While some remnants of baby fat linger around his cheekbones, his face has already started to mature into harder contours. His eyes flit quickly over the expensive, starched black material of Cross' blazer and trousers. When he looks at the two girls, he realizes that they are wearing something similar; a black blazer over a white dressed shirt, tucked into a knee length skirt. The red and gold crest of a phoenix embroidered over their breast pockets. It is a uniform of some kind, one that he does not recognize.
Xuan Shang is sure that they have never met before.
He was... in a car with Xuan Feng, wasn't he? They were driving somewhere...
Where is he now?
Who are these people?
Looking down at his own clothing, he finds himself wearing a white dress shirt - or it would have been white, if not for the mud caked over the sides and the tears in the fabric, exposing his forearms and torso. It is not the same as their uniform.
Cross cracks his knuckles.
"Did you hit your head and forget all the lessons I taught you?" he sneers. "You've never once dared to talk to me like this."
Suddenly, Hahn straightens up and pushes Cross aside until she stands nose to nose with Xuan Shang. She is tall and slender, but her arms are corded with strong muscle that makes Xuan Shang sure that she could flip him over her shoulder without breaking a sweat. At this proximity, he can see that her pupils had shrunk down to narrow pinpricks. She stares at him with unnerving intensity.
Whatever it is that she is so desperately searching for in him, she does not seem to find it. An expression of slight loss and disappointment crosses her face before it fades back into apathy.
"Get out of the way, Hahn."
She steps backwards and crosses her arms over her chest.
Xuan Shang sizes Cross up in the most blatant up-and-down that he has ever received, then bares his teeth in a grin.
"Is that all?"
"What?"
"You're trying to challenge me with..." he gestures vaguely at Cross' body, "that?"
When Cross snarls and reaches forward to grab him, Xuan Shang twists himself beneath the outstretched arms and smashes his leg into the back of Cross' knee, making him buckle. With a kick of his foot, he slams against Cross' back and forces his face down into the ground, choking on a pile of mud.
"I did tell you not to touch me," Xuan Shang says in a mildly reproachful tone. "Now, why am I here?"
"You came here on your own!"
"Oh, yes. So that's why my head is bleeding, my wrists were tied up, and I'm in the middle of the woods at night? Did I do that on my own too?"
"You..." Cross sputters.
"There was a ritual that Cross wanted to try," Hahn interrupts, her voice cool and collected. There is no expression on her face, although her eyes linger between Cross and Xuan Shang for a moment before glancing up at the other girl standing by the edge of the woods.
"It was only a prank!"
A prank?
A ritual?
Xuan Shang looks around him. These woods are none that he has ever been in, and these people are not one he recognizes - yet they treat him with an irritation that can only be borne from familiarity.
When they were calling out to 'Milton'...
Were they talking to him?
He steps off Cross' back and slowly walks to the corner of the clearing, where a shallow puddle forms in the base of an age-old oak tree. Under the guise of washing off the mud caked all over his body, he leans over the puddle - and freezes.
Shaking fingertips touch his cheek. The reflection in the water follows, tracing over the raven black hair that slants over pale green eyes, the thin, angular face with a mouth that seems to turn perpetually downwards. It is a handsome face, or it would be if not for the persistent air of melancholy and bitterness that furrows his brow and pulls his lips into a deeper frown. It looks seven or eight points similar to his own face, but there is enough difference that someone would only look at him and feel a faint familiarity without understanding why.
He stares down at his arms. It is a well-proportioned body, with wide shoulders and a slender waist, but it is thinner and weaker than he remembers.
Because this is not his body. This is not his face.
As if the realization opens up the floodgates for new observations, he becomes aware of a growing pain in his chest that makes it hard to breathe. He presses his fist against it, hard, but the pain does not subside. He closes his eyes and takes several deep breaths.
This is just be a strange dream. He must have fallen asleep on the drive here. He will wake up soon.
Yes, that must be it.
"And what is this ritual supposed to do?" he asks, his calm voice not betraying the waves of turmoil in his chest.
"The Spirit Summoning Ritual," Hahn replies. "Also known as the Demon Displacement Ritual."
He has never heard of it before, but it sounds ominous.
"Describe it for me."
"Gather three people on the twilight of the autumn equinox. Have them stand three meters apart in the north, southeast, and southwest corners of a triangle. Each burns a differnt herb and recites their corresponding lines."
"And what does the fourth person do?"
"The fourth..."
She smiles, a razor-sharp thing that gleams like a wolf's grin in the darkness, all teeth and no humour. She takes a single step forward, bringing with her a dangerous, heavy pressure.
"...is the sacrifice. It is the body that hosts the demon."
In a single movement, she draws a heavy gun from her waist and points it unwaveringly at Xuan Shang's forehead.
"So tell me... just who are you?"