Rain hammered against the grimy window of Jin-soo’s third-floor apartment, a relentless percussion that drowned out the hum of the city below. The storm had rolled in at dawn, painting Seoul in shades of charcoal and steel. Water cascaded down the glass, distorting the view of the neon-lit streets into a grotesque kaleidoscope.

Inside, the air hung thick with the acrid tang of stale coffee and the musty dampness of unwashed laundry.

Jin-soo sat hunched at his desk, the flickering light of a dying bulb casting jagged shadows over the stacks of medical journals that surrounded him.

Their spines bore titles like Advanced Surgical Techniques and Critical Care Protocols, but their pages were dog-eared and yellowed, untouched for months. He traced a finger over the cover of one, his nail catching on a coffee stain that had long since dried into a rusty brown blotch. The journals were relics of a life he’d abandoned—or rather, a life that had abandoned him.

A draft slithered under the door, cold and insistent, carrying with it a single envelopE. It skittered across the warped floorboards like a spider, coming to rest at the toe of his scuffed leather shoe.

Jin-soo stared at it, his breath fogging the air. The apartment’s heating had broken weeks ago, but he hadn’t bothered to call the landlord. The cold suited him now.

The envelope was made of thick, yellowed parchment, its edges frayed as though it had been torn from an ancient ledger. A wax seal held it shut—a serpent coiled around a hollow eye, its pupil a void that seemed to swallow the dim light. Jin-soo’s hands trembled as he picked it up, the wax cracking like brittle bone under his touch.

Inside, the letter was written in a looping, archaic script:

"Dr. Kim Jin-soo,

You are summoned to the Isle of Asphodel. Here, the Veil Games await—a trial for those who seek redemption. Come alone. Come prepared.

The ferry departs at midnight.

—The Keeper"

The words blurred as Jin-soo’s vision swam. Asphodel. The name echoed in his mind like a funeral bell. He’d heard the nurses whisper about it during late shifts at St. Mary’s—a cursed island shrouded in fog, where the desperate and damned bartered their souls for second chances.

Superstition, he’d called it. A fairy tale for the weak.

But now, the paper burned in his grip, the ink seeping into His skin like poison.

The monitors had flat lined at 3:07 a.m.

Jin-soo could still hear the scream of the alarms, the frantic shouts of the code team, the way the mother’s wail had sliced through the sterile hospital air. “You promised!” she’d shrieked, her fists pounding against his chest. “You said you’d save her!”

He hadn’t slept since.

Now, the memory surged forward unbidden: the girl’s small hand in his, her fingers ice-cold even as the fever raged. Eight years old. Bright-eyed. A laugh like wind chimes. Leukemia, stage four. He’d promised her mother a miracle. He’d promised himself he could outrun the odds.

He’d been wrong.

The guilt had hollowed him, carving out his insides until only a brittle shell remained. He’d quit the hospital. Sold his apartment. Moved into this rotting studio, where the walls wept condensation and the neighbors’ arguments seeped through the floorboards.

A flicker in the cracked mirror above the sink caught his eye.

Jin-soo froze.

His reflection stared back—pale, unshaven, eyes sunken into bruised sockets. But as he watched, the corners of its mouth twitched. Then curled.

The face in the glass grinned, sharp and predatory.

Jin-soo spun around, his chair clattering to the floor. The apartment was empty. Rain drummed against the window.

“Hallucination,” he muttered, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes until stars burst behind his lids. “Sleep deprivation. Stress.”

But when he looked again, the reflection was still smiling.

The docks reeked of salt and decay.

Jin-soo stood at the edge of Pier 13, his coat collar turned up against the biting wind. The storm had worsened, the sea churning black beneath the skeletal remains of the boardwalk. No one else was here—no fishermen, no late-night vendors. Just shadows that shifted at the edge of his vision, too quick to be real.

The ferry emerged from the fog like a ghost ship.

Its hull was rotted, barnacles clinging to the wood like tumors. No lights glowed in its cabin. No crew manned the deck.

As it drew closer, Jin-soo’s breath hitched.

The figure at the helm was impossibly tall, swathed in a tattered cloak that billowed in the wind. Its face was hidden beneath a wide-brimmed hat, but Jin-soo felt its gaze—cold and unblinking—rake over him.

“Tickets,” it rasped, its voice the creak of a coffin lid.

Jin-soo fumbled for the letter. The figure snatched it, the serpent seal glowing faintly before disintegrating into ash.

“Welcome to Asphodel.”

The deck groaned underfoot as Jin-soo boarded. The ferry lurched forward, the island materializing in the distance—a jagged silhouette of stone, its cliffs shaped like skeletal hands clawing at the sky.

Behind him, the reflection in the rain-puddled deck smiled.

The cabin was empty save for a single lantern, its flame guttering in the damp air. Jin-soo slumped onto a mildewed bench, his head in his hands.

Why am I here?

The answer came not in words, but in a sensation—a cold finger tracing the curve of his spine.

Redemption.

Jin-soo jerked upright. The voice had been inside his skull, slick and serpentine.

You want to undo it, don’t you? The voice purred. The girl. The mother. The blood on your hands.

“Stop,” Jin-soo hissed.

The Veil Games will grant your wish… for a price.

The lantern flared, casting monstrous shadows on the walls. For a heartbeat, Jin-soo saw them—figures writhing in the darkness, their mouths stretched in silent screams.

Then the light died.

When it sputtered back to life, the cabin was empty.

But on the bench beside him lay a single playing card: the Hanged Man, his face a mirror of Jin-soo’s own.

The ferry ground to a halt on a beach of black sand.

Jin-soo stepped ashore, the granules crunching like broken glass beneath his boots. The air here was thick, cloying, stinking of rot and copper. Above, the sky churned with clouds the color of bruises, their underbellies lit by the sickly glow of a crescent moon.

Ahead, a path wound up the cliffs, flanked by gnarled trees that clawed at the air like arthritic hands. At its summit loomed a fortress—a sprawling monstrosity of black stone, its towers twisted into impossible angles.

Asphodel.

Jin-soo’s breath fogged the air as he climbed.

Halfway up, he paused, his pulse roaring in his ears.

The sand behind him was unmarked.

No footprints. No sign of the ferry.

Only the faint impression of something dragging itself toward the sea.

Rain lashed the docks, the storm’s fury undiminished from the night before. Jin-soo stood at the edge of Pier 13, the serpent-sealed letter clutched in his hand. The ferry loomed ahead, its hull rotted and streaked with bioluminescent algae that glowed faintly in the gloom. Sixty-five others huddled behind him, their faces pale and drawn. No one spoke. The only sound was the creak of the dock and the hungry slap of waves against wood.

A figure materialized from the fog. The ferryman’s oilskin coat dripped with seawater, his face obscured by a wide-brimmed hat crusted with barnacles. “Tickets,” he rasped, his voice like a coffin lid grinding shut.

Jin-soo handed over the letter. The ferryman pressed a blackened thumbnail into the wax seal. It sizzled, releasing a curl of smoke that reeked of burnt hair and decay. “Welcome to the Veil,” he croaked, stepping aside.

The passengers boarded. The deck groaned under their weight, planks slick with a viscous, tar-like substance. Jin-soo gripped the railing, his knuckles whitening as the ferry lurched forward. Below, the black water churned—until a shadow darted beneath the surface, too large and too wrong to be natural.

“You’re not here for redemption either, are you?”

He turned. A woman stood beside him, her face gaunt, eyes hollow. She clutched a tarnished locket. “Lila,” she said, flicking it open. Inside was a photo of a gap-toothed girl. “My daughter loved the sea. She’d have laughed at this… this floating coffin.”

Jin-soo’s breath hitched. Min-ji.

He’d signed her discharge papers two years ago. “Funding cuts,” the hospital director had said, avoiding his gaze. “Prioritize patients who can pay.” She’d died weeks later, her mother’s screams haunting the ER for months.

“Leukemia,” Lila said, snapping the locket shut. “They called her a fighter. But fighters need weapons, don’t they?”

Before he could reply, the engine sputtered to life.

The ferry carved through the fog. Jin-soo scanned the crowd:

Viktor Volkov, a silver-haired politician, leaned against the mast, flicking a gold lighter. The flame cast leaping shadows that clung to his tailored suit like parasites.

Sasha, a young woman with a shaved head, carved symbols into her forearm with a rusted nail. Blood dripped onto the deck, hissing like acid.

Tomas, a hulking man with a scarred face, stared into the mist as if it might spit out enemies. A military tattoo coiled around his neck like a serpent.

Amara Cruz, a journalist, scribbled in a notebook, her camera swinging from her neck. “Sixty-six passengers,” she muttered. “Same as the Asphodel’s manifest when it sank in 1923. You believe in ghosts, Doctor?”

“There are worse things than ghosts,” Sasha hissed, clutching her bleeding arm. “They’re watching. The Hollow’s children.”

“Save the cult crap,” Tomas growled, but the ferry shuddered violently. A scream tore through the air.

“Something’s in the water!”

A man at the stern pointed. Jin-soo followed his gaze. Pale shapes writhed beneath the surface—skeletal, elongated, their jaws unhinging to reveal rows of needle-teeth. One pressed a hand to the hull. The wood splintered with a sound like snapping bones.

“Lifeboats!” someone shouted.

There were none.

The ferry listed sideways. Passengers slid across the deck, clawing at the air. Jin-soo grabbed Lila’s wrist as she slammed into him, her pulse rabbiting against his fingers.

“Hold on!”

Water surged over the railing. The creatures breached the surface—translucent skin stretched over jagged bones, their hollow eyes fixed on the living. They dragged a woman under, her scream ending in a wet crunch.

“Move!” Tomas barked, herding survivors toward the bow.

Viktor elbowed past, shoving a teenager into the path of a creature. “Out of my way!”

“You bastard!” Amara lunged, but the ferry split with a thunderous crack. Cold water swallowed Jin-soo, filling his lungs with salt and rot.

Jin-soo washed ashore on his back, gasping. The sky churned with bruised clouds, the moon bloated and red. Twenty-three survivors coughed on the black sand.

Lila lay nearby, her locket missing. “Min-ji,” she rasped. “I’m sorry.”

Min-ji.

Jin-soo crawled to her. “You’re her mother.”

She recoiled. “You.” Her nails raked his cheek. “You sent her home to die!”

Tomas hauled her back. “Save your rage for the thing that brought us here.”

Torchlight flared.

A woman stood atop the cliffs, her face hidden behind a silver mask etched with weeping faces. “Welcome to Asphodel,” she said, her voice honey and poison. “I am Anya, priestess of the Veil.

Six trials. Six days. Sixty-six souls.”

“There’s only twenty-three of us,” Amara said, raising her camera.

Anya’s mask glinted. “The Veil provides.”

A gong echoed. The survivors turned.

Sixty-six figures now stood on the beach—dripping wet, their faces identical to the drowned.

“What the hell?” Tomas snarled.

“The first rule,” Anya said. “The game requires sixty-six players. Always.” She snapped her fingers.

The doppelgängers dissolved into smoke. “Rest tonight. Tomorrow, you dance.”

As she vanished, Jin-soo pressed a hand to his chest. His heartbeat stuttered—two pulses, out of sync.

The survivors were herded into the mansion’s decaying foyer. Jin-soo slumped against a mildewed wall, his clothes still damp. A cracked mirror hung nearby.

His reflection stared back—pale, unshaven, eyes sunken. But as he watched, its mouth twitched.

Then curled.

The reflection grinned, sharp and predatory.

Jin-soo recoiled. The mirror’s surface rippled like water. Words formed in the condensation:

YOU’RE ALREADY ONE OF US.

The survivors awoke to the toll of a funeral bell, its mournful clang reverberating through the mansion’s rotting bones. Jin-soo’s head throbbed in time with the sound, the double pulse in his chest a relentless metronome. He sat up on the mildewed divan where he’d collapsed hours earlier, the remnants of the ballroom’s blue-flame candles still flickering behind his eyelids. The others stirred around him—Amara rubbing her temples, Viktor picking lint from his ruined suit, Sasha muttering under her breath as she traced symbols into the dust. Only Tomas lay still, his massive frame sprawled across a moth-eaten rug, his breathing shallow and wet.

Anya appeared in the doorway, her silver mask catching the weak dawn light filtering through cracked stained-glass. “Rise,” she commanded, her voice honeyed and hollow. “The Veil does not reward sloth.”

They followed her through corridors choked with cobwebs and the scent of decay. Portraits lined the walls, their subjects’ faces scratched out, leaving only hollow-eyed silhouettes. Jin-soo kept his gaze fixed on Anya’s back, the serpent-and-eye emblem on her robes shimmering faintly. He didn’t notice the floor shifting beneath his feet until the wood gave way to cracked marble.

The ballroom was a cathedral of ruin. Crystal chandeliers hung crookedly from the ceiling, their fractured prisms casting jagged shadows. A gramophone sat atop a grand piano, its brass horn rusted, the record spinning silently until Anya brushed a finger over it. The needle screeched, then settled into a waltz warped by time and malice.

“The Hanged Man’s Waltz,” Anya said, spreading her arms. “A dance of sacrifice Of surrender,

Choose a partner, or one will be chosen for you.”

Above them, nooses swayed from the rafters, their ropes frayed and stained.

The survivors scrambled. Viktor seized Amara’s wrist, his gold lighter glinting as he yanked her close. “Try not to step on my shoes,” he sneered.

She wrenched free but stayed silent, her camera swinging like a pendulum. Tomas lurched upright, coughing black bile into his palm, and Sasha pressed herself to his side, her shaved head barely reaching his shoulder. “Stay close,” he grunted, though his eyes were glassy, unfocused.

Lila stood apart, her arms wrapped around herself, fingers clutching at the empty space where her locket had been. Jin-soo hesitated, the double pulse in his chest quickening. Shadows pooled at the edges of the room, thickening into humanoid shapes—translucent, their necks bent at impossible angles, limbs contorted as if frozen mid-fall.

“Choose quickly, Doctor,” Anya purred, her mask tilting toward him.

He grabbed Lila’s hand. Her skin was ice.

“Why?” she whispered.

“I owe you,” he said, though the words tasted like ash.

The remaining survivors were not so lucky. A teenage boy—Jin-soo couldn’t remember his name—backed away, shaking his head, until a ghostly figure materialized behind him. Its fingers, skeletal and dripping seawater, closed around his shoulders. His scream cut off as his spine twisted, vertebrae snapping like kindling, his body mirroring the spirit’s broken posture.

The music swelled, the waltz’s tempo quickening.

Jin-soo guided Lila through the steps, her movements stiff, mechanical. The floorboards beneath them groaned, then vanished entirely, revealing a void filled with writhing shadows.

Whispers rose from the abyss, voices overlapping, suffocating:

“She died afraid… alone…”

“You promised…”

“The Veil sees you…”

Lila stumbled. “They’re in my head,” she gasped. “Min-ji… she’s crying. She’s scared.”

“Don’t listen,” Jin-soo said, tightening his grip.

Across the room, Viktor stepped on Amara’s foot, his lip curling. “Clumsy bitch,” he hissed.

“Go to hell,” she spat.

“We’re already here.”

A ghostly dancer lunged at Tomas, its jaw unhinging with a wet crack. He shoved Sasha aside, taking the blow. The spirit’s hand passed through his chest, and he collapsed, choking, black bile spilling from his lips.

“Tomas!” Sasha screamed, scrambling toward him, but the music accelerated, the waltz spiraling into a frenzied crescendo.

Lila’s foot struck something metallic. She glanced down, and Jin-soo followed her gaze—a tarnished locket glinted on the floor, Min-ji’s gap-toothed smile staring up through the cracked glass.

“Leave it!” Jin-soo hissed.

“No.” She tore free of his grasp, lunging.

The gramophone screeched. The music stopped.

Lila froze, the locket clutched in her hand. Her ghostly partner materialized behind her, its translucent fingers closing around her throat. It lifted her effortlessly, her boots kicking at empty air.

“No!” Jin-soo grabbed her legs, but the spirit’s strength was inhuman.

“It’s okay,” Lila choked, her eyes locked on the locket. “I’ll see her again.”

A noose dropped from the rafters. The ghost yanked her upward, knotting the rope around her neck with practiced ease.

Snap.

Her body swayed gently, eyes wide and unseeing. The locket slipped from her fingers, tumbling into the void below.

The survivors regrouped in the grand hall—sixteen now, their faces ashen. Jin-soo stared at his hands, the ghost of Lila’s weight still clinging to his palms.

“I could’ve saved her,” he muttered.

“No,” Sasha said, her voice hollow. She knelt beside Tomas, wiping black residue from his lips with her sleeve. “The Veil punishes mercy. It feeds on it.”

Viktor lit a cigar with his gold lighter, the flame casting hellish shadows across his face. “Sentiment gets you killed,” he said, blowing smoke toward Jin-soo. “Remember that, Doctor.”

Amara cornered Anya near the staircase, her camera raised. “Why sixty-six? What’s the point of all this?”

The priestess tilted her head, the weeping faces on her mask catching the light. “The Veil hungers,” she said simply. “It always has.”

That night, Jin-soo found the Hanged Man card under his pillow. The figure’s face, once a stranger’s, now bore his own features—eyes wide, mouth twisted in agony. He turned it over. The back was blank, save for a single word scrawled in blood:

SOON.

In the cracked mirror above the washbasin, his reflection stared back. Pale. Unshaven. Eyes sunken into bruised sockets.

Then it smiled.

“You’re next,” it mouthed, as the double pulse in Jin-soo’s chest stuttered, then fell into sync with the distant toll of the funeral bell.