CHAPTER 8

ISEUL

Frozen winds blew through my hair… snow deposited over my skin… felt like all my inner organs were about to freeze away and my death was approaching me soon… I had no consciousness of time passing by…. The only last memory on my mind was… That lady… I can't remember her name… she picked me up… and when I opened my eyes… I was being left here… in snow desert… there was no life seen in my farthest vision, she placed me under this snow lagged dry tree and said, "Let's see your core power, don't try to escape. Because there's no such option in underworld….hmmm?" passed her cold hands over my hair and the next moment my entire was locked up… I couldn't even move my fingers…not even my eyelids… all I did was to breathe and inhale the ice wind… But the worst thing was, I could not close my eyes… I had to bear the emptiness, the loneliness, the isolation of that snow desert… no sun came up, there was no concept of day and night in that space. The only thing I could see was, the red moon in the western sky… my only companion of loneliness…. My heart ached like hell but tears were frozen inside… All I could do is to wish for death…living in this underworld was scarier than death…I felt like… did she turn me into a living zombie? Even though time was passing by, death didn't embrace me… But, at this moment… I feel like, I've had enough of survival…. And finally, it's time to die.

"Did you think about dying? oh my goodness... What a poor soul" a deep husky voice hovered upon me.

My physical lock was so strong that I couldn't even turn my pupils up in the direction. I kept staring straight at the glaciers.

"Heyy...why aren't you looking at me? Oh...wait... Ha, ha... How foolish I'm... Didn't I lock your physic six months ago? I forgot... so sorry ", that voice laughed at me sarcastically.

That was Adrestia 's voice, why did she even come here again? To see the death show, my soul? I wondered...

"Iseul-ah, do you remember your Arin eonni? She's struggling up there on the earth realm. That fool thought she could get inside the Hell realm without her diamond core! Huh...do you want to see her? For the very last time??" Adrestia sat down in front of me and placed her hand over my shoulder.

My eyes were fixed straight. But my soul....it was worried about Arin, my savior... all our sweet memories passed through my mind... I kept thinking about her since day one in here, I knew, she must be running through hell and heaven just to find me out.

"That's no fun dude, you just keep on staring there in distance. Should I unlock you?? I guess, I should....anyways you've passed the test given by Lord Yanluo, so you deserve to enter inside the gates of hell and serve the Great Lord of Death...King Yanluo..."

She took her hands off my shoulders and pressed them against my head. Suddenly, I could feel the rush of blood running through my veins. The heat started to take over my tissue cells... My eyes pained like someone's piercing through them with fine ice... Arms were unable to move even after being unlocked…I managed to crawl forward towards Adrestia, she pulled me up fiercely. The pain of standing up after six months was unbearable, tears collected at the edges of my eyes… after all, I was experiencing pain and tears after a long, very long time.

"Such a baby, I don't know how you're going to manage to handle all the dark powers…." She said while sighing deep.

"What dark powers?" I asked while controlling the movement of my legs.

"Follow me." Adrestia directed me with her index finger to enter the glacier pond behind her.

"I asked you something? If you wanted me to die in glacier then why did you unlock me?" I shouted over her, it was my first time in six months to speak this loudly.

"Shut up and follow me if don't wanna sit and freeze to death here in a snow desert." She entered the glacier pond and pulled me inside.

I entered the ice-cold water with a huge splash, water went up in my nostrils, and again I experienced a near-death phenomenon for the next few minutes. Adrestia was holding my hands and pulling me deep into the pond. I wondered, is this even a pond? Why does it seem infinite like an ocean? And after few minutes why am I able to see underwater without facing breathing issues? I wished for all these underworld things to be a nightmare and wake up on my bed at Arin eonni's house. But I guess, it wasn't just a dream… these otherworldly things were actually happening with me…

As we went deep into that dark ice-ocean, a red shining entrance opened at a few meters distance before us. As we approached it, I noticed that there was absolutely no water inside that red space. A guard walked from inside and had a word with Adrestia. They were speaking in a completely different language, also the guard didn't seem like a human to me….of course he wasn't a human if he was a guard from the underworld, but he didn't even look like Adrestia who was hard to distinguish from human beings. He was covered with a black cloak and dark smoke surrounded his body, only a pair of green eyes were visible through that thick smoke. We entered inside that red space and as we stepped in, the door behind us closed off… in such a way that no one could ever tell there was something like a door there… it didn't even exist after closing… I kept walking behind Adrestia on the narrow black stone road build high up over stone pillars. Screams could be heard from the bottom of those pillars, fire flames reached up to the stone road… I was scared, scary was not even a word enough to describe that space… that's when I realized, it was the real underworld… Hell realm…

"Scared?" Adrestia asked me while walking towards the green emerald cave.

"What do you even expect from me?" I said in a low whisper.

"Can you not talk back like this? I can simply push you down in the hellfire pit….you know it right?" She said as she turned back and pulled my face near to hers.

"No, you won't do that. Don't consider that I'm a young little girl who would never learn your dirty tricks! No Goddess would ever bring a lowly human being into the underworld, that too alive… if you've brought me here, then for sure you need me… or I should say, your Lord Yanluo needs me?" I smiled at her.

"Ohh, so this is who you are… Park Iseul… I knew it, demon lord would never choose a pure soul to propagate his dark culture on Earth realm…"

"You made me like this, Adrestia… sitting there in snow desert for six whole months… do you think anyone could remain innocent and pure after spending a lonely time under the red moon? Don't you know that snow desert has full of negative energy blowing through ice winds? Didn't you want to test me, if I could take all that disgusting negativity inside me and survive? See… I've survived, my willpower to survive is far more than your dark cultures…" I said caressing her face with my fingertips, and the smirk on my face increased as I saw a tall dark figure fly outside the green emerald cave.

"Welcome, Iseul. This is your real-world, Underworld Hell realm. Welcome to my kingdom." Demon lord Yanluo landed over his emerald throne high up on the mountain surrounded by the fire pit. He was wearing a long dark red velvet robe, under which was a black iron armor… His fair skin tone made me question his position as demon lord of death with such good-looking manly facial features. I kept staring at him with millions of curiosities in my mind.

"Goddess Adrestia, don't bother Iseul anymore. She has passed all the tests of Underworld." He said in a majestic voice.

"Your highness, she is still a young child. I completely accept your judgment based on few tests, but personally, as I've studied human behavior for decades now, I suggest you to please wait before inculcating dark powers through her veins. She hasn't entirely influenced with negative energy yet, I advise you to send her back to the earthly realm with me and let me monitor her behavior. Until she turns into an evil person, she cannot work for us as the main propagator of our religion and also cannot handle other evil human clients whose souls we need to increase Underworld power."

Demon lord seemed to have convinced with Adrestia's words… She was not just the Goddess of lust and greed but also a genius who captured my present mental state through my eyes…. It was my failure to make her believe that I needed no more negative energy within me….

"What are you exactly trying to turn me into, Adrestia?"I asked on our way back to earth.

"A pitiful, resentful, lusty, greedy…. Evil… propagator of Hell… That's what you are meant to become…"

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I regained my consciousness and found myself lying down on the jogger's track of Han river park. I got up slowly and managed to sit on the bench nearby. Took a deep breath full of fresh air on earth, and relaxed my head back on the bench. Even though I've been sent back to the earthly realm, Adrestia must be somewhere around me to keep an eye over me. I've somehow managed to convince her that the negative energy from the snow desert has heavily affected my core and destroyed my innocence as well as purity. But she's Adrestia the Goddess after all…. Nothing can be pretended before her for a very long time. She's witty and quick enough to tell that I was pretending to have turned evil. I had no idea about how to escape this trap… I didn't want to work for Demon lord Yanluo and the only way to get out of the underworld was to pretend that I've passed their tests and ready to serve them. How did Adrestia even think that I could ever betray my older sister Arin? If not for her, I would've died long ago at the shores of Jindo island.

"Arin eonni? Yes, I need to meet up with her as soon as possible…. I need to tell her what has happened to me for the past six months… But how do I escape from the eye of Adrestia?" I murmured softly.

As I was regretting my choice to pretend to be affected by snow desert, A lady walked over and sat down beside me on the bench. I turned towards her thinking if Adrestia has changed her appearance to monitor around me, but that lady looked completely different yet somewhat similar to Adrestia… I kept on observing her long golden hair, pearl white skin, the bright aura surrounding her face while sky blue cotton dress covered her extremely tender figure.

"Is it too much? I'm not quite sure if this physical appearance suits me…." She asked with a gentle voice. A breeze of warmth and positive fragrance curled around me.

"May I ask….if you're a… a human being?" I stuttered while asking her such a weird question but the things happening with me recently forced me to ask such a question to any normal human being.

"Why? Don't I look like one?" she asked me

"No…" I said unknowingly and got startled with my own words the very next moment.

"Of course, I'm a human being!!! Don't go around asking this question to all the people trying to interact with you, or else people would think something has gone wrong with your brains!" She said and laughed out loudly.

"That's true though…. But then… who are you?" I asked while staring at the white purse in her hand. It seemed quite similar to the purse I had seen in Arin eonni's hand.

"I've come here to receive you. Arin has been searching for you for the past six months, today she didn't get time due to her laboratory work. So, I've come here to help Arin find you out." She said with a broad smile on her face.

"So it means…this purse…"

"Is Arin's purse, I've taken it as a token from Arin….so that you won't refuse to come along with me."

"Okay…fine… let's go… But can you please tell me, is it true that six months have passed after my disappearance? Because I don't see any changes in season… it's still monsoon in here…" The moment I woke up, it was a big question before me, have six months really passed? Or Adrestia was again playing tricks with me?

"Hmm…Iseul, there are some things in this universe which you cannot explain in scientific terms…there are just no reasons behind that stuff… Yes, six months have passed… but not in this realm… here only six days have passed away, and the place we both are sitting in right now… is the interspace between two realms. Just make sure to hold my hand tightly and let us enter the earthly realm safely, hmm?" She said while holding my hands tightly but gently.

I walked behind her, a golden hollow opening was awaiting us at the end of the road. Both of us stepped inside that extremely shining bright hollow, and within a second I found myself standing at the door of Arin's house. That lady was standing in front of me and rang the doorbell.

The door was opened in the next few minutes and Hongseok came out of the house.

"Oppa!!" I cried and ran towards him.

His face was covered with shock and happiness. As I was about to hug him in happy tears, the lady in the blue dress pulled me back quickly. It left me in utter confusion…. Why did she do that? A rage of anger started to build up within me… I had no idea why it was burning inside my heart… It was so unlikely of me to behave in such arrogance…

"You feel the change within you, right?" She asked me in a rough tone.

I looked at her helplessly…. Unable to control the burning sensation inside my heart… the next moment a sound of chirping sparrow reached my ears. I looked inside the house, two sparrows were eating the grains Arin used to keep every day for birds. My feet were walking without my will…I ran towards the window gallery… and attacked one of the sparrows with my nails and within a split second that innocent bird fell into my feet…. Dead and cold…. The burning inside my heart went off slowly and brought me back to normal.

"Iseul…." a scared and shivered voice called me from behind. I turned around and saw Arin standing at the main door beside Hongseok.

"Eonni!!!!!" I ran towards her and hugged her tightly.

"Eonni!!! I was so scared! She left me alone there in the snow desert!!! I couldn't even close my eyes!! Eonni!! I was so scared…. She took me inside hell!!! I was so scared!!! So freaking scared!! Eonni!!!" Words blurted out of my mouth seamlessly. I wept hard in the tight embrace of Arin, she patted over my hair softly.

"It's okay…It's fine…. You're safe now, you're with me now…. Don't be scared darling, your eonni is here to protect you…it's all good…" She consoled me with her sweet words.

But deep down in my heart, I knew that the snow desert had unknowingly affected me, and I couldn't imagine my future life with this heart getting covered in dark powers from hell….