At the Marigold House orphanage, Kavya had learned what rejection looked like: couples who smiled, promised to call, and never did. So when the Hans finally said yes, she let herself feel something she had long avoided: hope.

The Hans seemed gentle, even kind. But their house came with rules, and the rules grew stranger with time. For one, the kimchi was not optional.

The lavish mansion that was meant to shelter her began, slowly, to feel like a prison. Its silences felt deliberate. The smiles always arrived a moment too late, and dreams carried memories that weren’t hers.

Beneath the house lay a basement she had never been told about, yet somehow knew. Its shelves were heavy with occult manuals, and its floor was thick with dust. One book lay overturned there, and on its page, in faded ink and old Hanja, someone had left a warning:

Beware the house that keeps its mourning by lamplight, for its grief is a window, and every window looks both ways. Where fear is left to fester, the veil frays like old silk, and what waits behind it will find its way through: the Eodukshini.