"Reza – " a voice calls out from within my dream. "Reza, Reza! Awake! Now!"

It's Shinhak's voice.

I groggily wake from my slumber to find myself in a darkened cell. Stiff mattress upon steel bedframes greets my back. I massage my sore muscles loose.

Shinhak stands beyond the bars of my cell, facing away, standing at ease. Soft shadows from the tangerine light outside fall upon his spiky and short crew-cut hair of white. The high-standing collar of his dark navy trenchcoat conceals the nape of his neck still.

What isn't the same is the urgency in his voice.

Dao Mirror Art:

Whisper of a Sparrow.

I feel the squawking of crows and the chirping of magpies, until a distinct thread of a sparrow-call unravels itself in my consciousness in ordered speech.

"...Re... chirp... Reza, can you hear me?"

"What the – yeah! I – " I reply out aloud.

"Shh! Get the hint. Use your head. Just thinking will do. I can hear you perfectly fine."

"Oh – " I think, rather taken aback –

"There we go. Anyway, to break the news short, the higher-ups rejected our plan. Your execution is going to move forward."

"WHAT?!" I exclaim in my head, trying to stifle an audible gasp from my mouth.

"At least, that was the happenstance until Mireuk held them off. The elders now want to see you first, then lay down their judgment."

"What's going to happen to me?"

"At any moment now, guards will march you up to the Council of Elders. I will be accompanying you with the guards up there, but I'm not supposed to be seen communicating to you now that our official interrogation is over. This is my only chance to give you tips."

"Mmmhmm," I nod worriedly.

"Listen carefully, Reza. Though Mireuk spoke lightly of the higher-ups last time, he only said so in comparison to himself. To almost everyone else, the Elders are titans of the Mirrormusha. Do not speak out of line. Do not swear, do not be rude, do not jeopardize what Mireuk and I have been building for you."

"I'll keep my mouth shut, got it."

"That won't be enough. You will need to shut out your mind, because the Dowager will be able to read yours."

"Read my – who?"

"Dowager Justicar Madam Yang. Mouthful, I know. Now you get why Mireuk isn't fond of her, or the rest."

"Uh-huh."

"During the meeting, the Dowager will most definitely try to probe your mind for your thoughts, inflections, emotions. She will be trying to look for evidence to kill you or make it seem impossible that you can be trusted enough to join the Musha."

"Exactly how?"

"She will make you voice aloud your own thoughts, even against your will."

"What in the hell is her problem?"

"You. Because you threaten her cushy position. Now, here's what you need to do to recognize that she's trying to get into your head, and how to stop it."

"There's a way to stop it?"

"Repeat after me. The mind that can be pronounced is not the true mind."

"The, what?"

"The mind that can be pronounced is not the true mind."

"The mind that can be pronounced is not the true mind," I repeat.

"Do you know what it means?"

"No."

"It – damn, they're almost here – it means that whatever other people think they know about you is wrong – that only you can know your true thoughts. Remember that!" emphasizes Shinhak, turning his neck minutely to spy the arrival of two guards in robed uniforms.

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"Mr. Shinhak," one of them says, bowing.

"Evening," he replies, stepping aside to let the guards open my cell. The metal bars creak open with a screech that makes me cup my ears.

"Hands gathered to the front," a male guard orders me. A female guard next to him puts heavy handcuffs on my thin wrists, made of a completely black metal. A blindfold is put over my eyes.

They prod me up from the bed, and shuffle out the cell into what must be the corridor.

The faint whiff of mold and the acrid pungence of rust waft into my nostrils as I amble along. I hear only the clack-clack of my foot upon concrete, the rhythmic footsteps of the guards, and the weighty march of Shinhak's own behind me. I trip a bit in my shrouded vision.

We turn a corner. Then another corner. Then another, then another, and – how many corners have we turned? It was left, right, right, left – or was it left, right, left, left? I can make no sense of the directions as we march along several bends.

The sounds of our footsteps change. It's no longer the clatter of shoes against concrete, but more a soft croon of shoes against wood.

I feel us enter a small chamber, then accelerate upwards. Must be an elevator of some kind, I wonder, except made of timber.

I'm prodded off, the guards on my shoulders and Shinhak behind. After walking what seems like forever in my dark blindfolds, we finally come to a stop.

The guards whisk the blindfolds off of my face. We stand in a completely isolated – and almost pitch-black – square chamber of some sort, like a cramped elevator. Except everything's made out of wood. Great, I wonder. Another elevator, wow.

Suddenly, the floor we stand on begins to rise along with us, while the wooden walls descend and recede out of our view. I hear voices and echoes from above. They grow louder and louder until I'm able to recognize its holder: others, and Mireuk.

As soon as my thought strikes, a trapdoor above us flings wide open. We ascend and rise out of the floor and into a sight that escapes my imaginations.

I find myself in a colossal hall of wood and latticed paper-doors, stretching as far into the heavens and the horizontal depths as the eye can see. Crepuscular rays – hazy and colored orange as if from the sunset – descend from above at an angle, sweeping the vista of the hall in a timeless, almost fantastical atmosphere. Hundreds of various doors with latticed wooden frames – filled with starchy paper to serve as windows – float and move about far in the air, occasionally drifting next to equivalently floating platforms and tables.

Some way off, high above where I stand and far into the center of the hall, floats a giant table in the shape of an arch, perhaps a semicircle. I spy the silhouettes of four, no, five figures, behind the table.

Far above me, and some way forward, there floats an oval platform upon which stands the purple-robed figure of Mireuk, who minutely turn his head at our arrival below, his long and loose ponytail seeming to float on its own accord.

The hall silences amidst furious discussion.

The guards accompany me to a wide circular platform without railings, stand with me shoulder to shoulder, and flick their hands. The platform rises – I rise forty, perhaps fifty meters into the air, until I am just in front of and right to Mireuk's own, while Shinhak's own platform rises to greet my altitude to my right and behind.

The guards bow, and so does Shinhak behind me.

I give a cautious bow in their example.

The wide, sweeping ray of light drench the figures at the giant table and the hall in a warm, tangerine color, but due to shining from behind them, the contrast shrouds the faces of their owners in deep shadow, making their features practically unseeable. A deep, unsettling chiaroscuro falls upon each of their faces in totality; the only thing knowable to us are the outlines of their hair and the shapes of their dresses of choice.

Far away, the silhouette of a figure seated at the center of the table raises their hand as if to return us at ease. The figure's hair seems wavy, shaped in the style of a loose bob that comes down to their shoulders, with the outline of a dress that must be a traditional hanbok, perhaps an ancient one. The light makes it hard to see.

"Kang Reza. You are received."

A graceful and authoritative woman's voice – perhaps an old woman's voice – resounds across the hall to our ears. I imagine it must be the Dowager Justicar's, or whatever title it was that she held.

Mireuk nods at me once, returning his gaze to the figures on the far-off table. His expression is ever calm with a dashing cool.

"The Council of Elders had voted 4 against, and 1 in favor, of Mireuk and Shinhak's proposal. Therefore, Kang Reza, it was in our original intention to proceed with your execution as planned. However – "

I remain silent, waiting for the right opportunity.

"We have decided to witness you in person before we deliver your final sentence. Any challenges before you are committed to the row?"

"Yes," I declare, mustering up my courage, although ravaged by guilt at all the other innocent that perished because of my battle against the vulture guemul. Sure, I saved hundreds, perhaps thousands, of more lives, but I had no way of knowing whether my argument could work. After all, I don't know how much value they place on saving civilian lives.

I choose an alternative.

"I want to know why," I continue. "Why you rejected our proposal when there's something more dangerous out there. Especially now that the Golden Age of Demons is about to return," I inquire with force, recalling Mireuk and Shinhak's words back at the interrogation chamber. That was more than two days ago.

"You are aware that our imminent return to a time such as thus is your mistake, yes?" An elderly man's voice – gravelly in texture – sounds off towards my direction. The personage behind the voice is shrouded; I cannot make out who made it.

"Yes, I know that," I reply. "But as it stands, I'm the only person who knows how to wield a Demiurgic mirror that is so far neutral to you. I know whoever shattered my mirror is out there. And they don't like you. And I'm just about not going to like you very much if you move ahead with the sentence."

I can hear the veins on Shinhak's face bulge as he frowns into a pained grimace.

Damn. I wasn't supposed to say that.

Mireuk makes an audible laugh.

"Do you find this funny, Mireuk?" announces another elderly voice.

Mireuk crosses his arms, trying hard to wipe the chuckle off his face.

"No, it's just that you are getting absolutely schooled on basic facts by someone other than myself. Don't you feel even a tiny bit of shame?"

"Out of topic," admonishes the dignified woman's voice, reverberating off the walls. "Kang Reza, you say as such. Then demonstrate how and why we should trust what you say."

"...What do you want me to say to prove it?"

"Of your motivations behind killing three-hundred-ninety-one people of Seoul. We want to hear why – I want to hear why with your own voice, and that you possess no evil intent behind your deeds. It shall be one step towards demonstrating your innocence."

How would you know I'm telling the truth and not a lie, I think, when in an instant, I feel a wave of pressure squeeze my head.