"...What did you do?" Mireuk coldly enunciates towards the floating table of Elders, his dispassion evident.

"An insurance," the Dowager slyly replies, her every syllable seeming to glissade in the air like some sort of visible serpent.

Mireuk grips his eyewrap as if to throw it off, but halts at the Dowager's next words.

"Ah, ah, ah, I wouldn't do that if I were you. Not if you wish to see the girl turn to mush in front of your eyes. She doesn't have her mirror with her, does she? I'm afraid any action taken in haste will... erase her forever."

Mireuk's usual calm expression is now punctuated by the twitching of a brow and the bulge of a vein. He cannot say anything more in the absence of what exactly the hag means and what she's done.

Dowager Yang claps her hands twice, and, as if they were waiting all along, the mezzanine of the hall far down below divides neatly into two. The retracting floorboards give way to two more rising platforms, each holding what seems to be a person, shouldered on both sides by guards. The platforms rise and rise until they are just a stone's skip away from me; one platform to my left – further left to Mireuk – holds a girl my age with a disheveled bob-cut of ruby-red hair. The other platform to my right – further right to Shinhak – holds a boy my age, perhaps a little older – with long, straight hair of charcoal-navy falling to his waist in spiky tendrils like a palm tree. Both of them are handcuffed like me.

"Go Joyoung, Keum Hwaryeong, Kang Reza, all sixteen years of age – you hereby stand before the Goryeo Musha Council to receive your official sentences. First, Go Joyoung," the Dowager Justicar announces, turning her head minutely to the general direction of the boy, "we find you guilty on two counts of parricide and two counts of siblicide for the murders of your mother, father, your two sisters, as well as assault of your little brother in your wanton outburst. You are a disgrace to your longstanding Musha family."

The boy – named Go Joyoung – makes little effort to rebut. He stands silent with shackles clinging from his wrists.

As if a peaceful life with family is not blessed enough, you choose to murder your own kin? For what? I feel a deep sense of disgust rise from my heart.

"Next, Keum Hwaryeong," the Dowager Justicar declares, turning to the ruby-haired girl on my left, "we find you guilty on twenty-two counts of involuntary manslaughter against civilians of North Korea, as well as nine counts of voluntary manslaughter against armed officials, for a total of thirty-one."

The ruby-haired girl stifles a coming sob and lowers her head. She clutches her gathered hands deep into her chest. A strange sense of pity plays in my consciousness.

Wait, she killed civilians in North Korea? But she's here, being tried along with me in the South? Did that make sense?

"And finally, Kang Reza," announces the Dowager, turning to me. I can feel the intensity of her shadowed gaze upon my figure. "We find you guilty of three-hundred-and-ninety-one counts of manslaughter against the citizens and civilians of South Korea."

Three-hundred-and-ninety-one.

Both the girl and the boy creak their heads toward my figure in apparent disbelief. I briefly meet their glances but turn away quickly, looking to the floor. The magnitude of my rampage is put in no unclear contrast: mine was a number that dwarfed their counts by a factor of more than ten.

"Now," the Dowager continues after a dramatic pause, "Mr. Mireuk here desires the Council to absolve you of all of your wanton crimes. We find this demand wholly unreasonable. Surely the ghosts of the dead will be anguished if you were to go free."

We all look down.

"But as it stands, times are rapidly changing. Your demonstrations of power with your respective mirrors – inherited or found – are promising to the Musha, which brings you all here before the Council."

Mireuk narrows his single eye.

"To equip us towards a better future, the Council has come to a solution regarding your sentences," the Dowager continues, angling her head minutely to Mireuk, stealing his words of just a moment prior. "We have decided that your execution shall not be at our hand, but rather at your own."

What does she mean?

"All three of you have been administered damrak-powder yesterday evening through your meals that were laced with it. You do not need to understand exactly what it is; only the fact that when inside your body, the powder acts as a ticking time-bomb. By now, it should have spread to every corner of your blood. You have approximately 3 days to neutralize it before the powder bursts inside your body."

The ruby-haired girl collapses to her knees and wretches. Her vomit dribbles off the platform and falls fifty meters to splatter in creamy drops across the mezzanine far below. I too am driven to do the same, witnessing her sorry sight, but I manage to halt myself. The boy on the other hand stands as reticent and stoic as ever.

"As such, your executions will be practically automated should you not be able to neutralize the damrak-powder in your bodies. To neutralize it, I recommend you lean your ears."

The Dowager makes a brief pause to let the ruby-haired girl finish her wretches and wipe her mouth. The guards pull her to her feet again.

"The girl that stands between you two – Kang Reza – " the Dowager declares, "owned an important mirror that unfortunately shattered in the skies above Seoul. A nontrivial number of shards have landed on the city below. Your mission will be to exorcise a guemul that has come into possession with a shard. Doing so will neutralize the powder in your bodies, and offer life once again. Fail to find and exorcise one within 3 days, you die."

3 days was impossible. We had to find a guemul that had eaten my mirror shard. Then we had to defeat it. There was no guarantee that we could defeat such a guemul – which could be worse than the vulture guemul of earlier – let alone find one in the concrete jungle of Seoul. It was an area too vast for just 3 days.

A deep silence falls upon the hall as we ponder the mission that is given.

"...Finished yet, Ms. Dowager?" accuses Mireuk, frost in his words. "Bringing out a 17th-century powder for your amusement?"

"You must excuse Mr. Mireuk," the Dowager coolly continues, the tables completely reversed. "While his heart is in the right place, he has misplaced priorities on bringing the most good."

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"Misplaced priorities indeed. Please forgive me as I neutralize your farce right now," Mireuk sarcastically mutters, gathering his hands, ready to pronounce his words. But no sooner than his fingers touch together a rending pain skewers my chest. I collapse to my knees.

Mireuk glances back and immediately takes his hands apart. For the first time since meeting him, I see a minute expression of something other than calm and cool. Shock flashes across his face, however brief.

The pain in my chest subsides. I look around to see the girl has also fallen to her knees as well – and so has even the quiet, stoic boy, although he's just fallen to one knee instead of two.

"I'm afraid you can't really do that," chides the Dowager, raising and wagging her index finger in a slow, serpentine rhythm. "The damrak-powder is attuned to the resonance of Kang Reza's mirror shard. Your Seongi will not be able to neutralize it, Mr. Mireuk. In fact, it will only hasten the process, and hence their pain."

Mireuk and Shinhak's faces begin to darken like clouds heralding a storm.

"The only thing that can neutralize the powder is a burst of Akgi which specifically gives off the same resonance. In other words, only by exorcising a guemul with a shard of her mirror inside," the Dowager elucidates in punchable decorum.

"Thank the spineless Artifices for their service. Unfortunately, I'm erasing all of it," says Mireuk, about to pull off his eyewrap.

"Are you sure about that?"

The words drive Mireuk to pause.

"The more powerful the wielder of the Cintamani Sonoret, the more powerful the Seongi that leaks. Are you confident that your effort – however brief – will not immediately consign those who you vouch for to utter oblivion?"

A moment passes in utter and absolute quiet, the heartbeats of all of us soon to be doomed beating in sync with one another. We didn't want to die.

As if he's heard our wish, Mireuk slowly lowers his arm.

"What other poisons have you had them eat?" Mireuk pronounces, pointing his finger towards the Dowager herself. His voice comes off so suddenly and so loud that for a second, I am convinced that lightning and thunder have materialized in the hall. Tendrils of Mireuk's long hair – a shade of white tinted with purple – rise and take to the air on their own accord, sparking arcs of white electricity.

"None else, Mr. Mireuk."

"Unfathomably rich you cowards are, sending them on a suicide mission! Do you not realize that guemuls that have eaten the shards currently overpower them by orders of magnitude?" Mireuk intonates with justified indignance, the air across the hall being swept in the direction of the Council's table. The paper from the floating doors are shredded and flung off in a cacophony of flutters; the Dowager's hair and that of the other Elders are swept back by the gale of his delivery. It is frightening to witness the usually nonchalant figure of Mireuk being moved to anger proper: as the saying goes, never incur the ire of a gentle and easygoing man.

Shinhak rushes his platform towards Mireuk's.

"Whether or not it's a suicide mission depends on the choices they make, Mr. Mireuk," the Dowager answers, seeming relatively unfazed. Condescension practically oozes from her tone; it reeks of false dignity. Mireuk and Shinhak must be properly incensed too, but before they can speak, the Dowager continues. "You suggest that the talented youth should be given the chance to join our Musha instead of being preemptively removed. But their talents mean nothing if they cannot exercise it for a shared goal of good. Neither will it be useful to us if they cannot work together to achieve their aims. Consider this a trial run for your ideas. It's better than shutting it down, no?"

Mireuk composes himself a little and lets out a dismissive chuckle.

"Giving Machiavelli a run for his money, aren't you, Ms. Dowager? Surely you do not wish to conjure the spirit of Cesare Borgia to see how it went for him?"

"Trying to forestall a fox in a henhouse is hardly Machiavellian, unless you possess the perverse notion that the pursuit of security is somehow opposed to idealism," the Dowager replies back, as calm as ever.

"Ardently textbook. Then continue. Allow me a guess – you will talk of the rules next, and then dispose of them down below. Let me hear what other 'rules' you have in store for the three."

"I would have done it sooner if not for your interruptions," remarks the Dowager, angling her head towards mine and the two others. "The rules are few and simple. They are involved with not accidentally triggering the damrak-powder in your bodies. As Seongi hastens the process, it would be prudent to not let any Musha of higher rank help you exorcise the guemuls that you find. You probably do not prefer to explode prematurely."

I look down at my palms.

"Second, each of you have the freedom to search and roam Seoul on your own to save yourself. You do not have to stick together."

We steal a brief glance at each other. The girl is still too afraid to look my way. The boy, however, does, and in him I see nothing but emptiness. There's no remorse in his face at all after having killed his family.

"Third, you will not be given any other mirrors and weapons apart from the ones that have been confiscated from you at the time of your arrest. This includes any devices of help as well."

"Kindly halt," Mireuk interjects, his eye closed. "What'd you just say?"

The Dowager cocks her head.

"Did you say they will not be allowed any devices of help?"

"Indeed."

"The Mirrors of Mushim?" warns Mireuk, his voice low and threatening.

"They shall be forbidden."

Shinhak steps past Mireuk and forward, holding out his arm as if to stop him. He enunciates Mireuk's rebuttals instead. "Dowager Yang, you must provide the Mirrors of Mushim to the convicted three. Anything otherwise unveils your attempt at this trial as nothing more than a prolonged enjoyment at their suffering."

"Hardly. The Mirrors of Mushim grant knowledge too sensitive for their use."

"Disagreed. Without the Mirrors of Mushim, they are certain to die before the time is up. 3 days is already impossible enough for untrained youth, let alone successfully exorcising a guemul. There will be no point to their missions at all."

"The Mirrors of Mushim will grant them too easy of a shortcut in light of their talents."

"With due respect, this does not help you assess their potential. If you want a proper demonstration of their abilities, the same conditions must be given to them as are given to our official Musha Pradihta."

"They deserve no such provision. Recall, Mr. Shinhak, the three that stand next to you are murderers, convicts. No different than guemuls that have robbed many lives on their own. This is an allowance already lenient enough. If they wish to live, they must prove their desire to live."

"Your words are cruel, Dowager Yang. I am officially quitting the Musha here if you move forward with this rule."

The hall falls silent with Shinhak's words. The Council itself falls quiet; the five Elders, the Dowager included, turn their heads minutely with brief glances and consult with each other in hushed exchanges.

A full three minutes passes until the Dowager raises her head again.

"Very well. Each of them shall be allowed the Mirrors of Mushim."

Shinhak makes a nod as he steps back.

"The Council agrees to admit any survivor into the order of our Goryeo Musha for further training. Otherwise, your deaths shall be considered proper justice dealt to appease the ghosts of the dead. Dismissed."

Without any warning, the platform falls out from underneath us.

When the others and I are awakened by Mireuk and Shinhak, we find bronze bracelets upon our wrists. Red letters in ink steadily count down upon their surfaces.

All of ours read 1 day, 23 hours.

I thought we had three.