A Strange Night in Hanyang

A long time ago, when the iron and glass towers had not yet touched the skies, Seoul was called Hanyang—a city of warriors, scholars, and secrets.
On a cold autumn night, under the silvery light of a crescent moon, the wind bore a whisper over the stone roads of the city. Lanterns swayed as if too fearful to confront some figure standing in the darkness. In the center city, Ha-neul, a young boy, stood against the palace wall, inscribing symbols in the ground with a twig. Not because he believed, but because it reminded him of his father, whose face he could barely remember.

He was thirteen and fatherless and known to speak to objects that no one else could see. Some claimed that he was under a curse. Others simply avoided him. But Ha-neul knew the truth—what others did not believe in, he heard through the spirits that protected the land.

Something was off that night.

Walking home from class along a bamboo grove, the wind ceased altogether. Even the crickets fell quiet. And then there was the voice—low, musical, and cold.

"Child of two worlds. why do you wander alone?"

Ha-neul spun around. A woman in white robes stood among the trees. Her hair fell in waves around her, and her eyes shone like stardust. She cast no shadow.

"Who are you?" he growled, his words quivering.

"I was once named Sae-ryeon," she breathed. "Before they forgot me too. I am the mountain temple ghost. A darkness has been unleashed beneath Gyeongbok Palace. It is fed on grief. on forgotten names."

Ha-neul's heart beat fast. He had heard the legends—old tales spoken by his grandmother, of demons imprisoned within the royal grounds. He had never believed them true.

Until now.

"What do you want from me?" he growled.

Sae-ryeon stepped ahead and placed a radiating stone within his hand. "You can see. You can feel. That makes you the gate."

"The gate to what?"

"To the memory of what was lost."

She led him down alleys no longer mapped, under moonlight statues whose faces followed them away, to a secret door in the wall of the palace. Passing through, the air thickened as though they had entered a dream of tears and silk.

Down in the palace, deep beneath in a hidden room lit by ghost-fire, it waited.

A being made up of masks—dozens of sorrowful faces, shifting and whispering—The Forgotten King. An old king, forgotten long ago, was imprisoned by jealous men who feared his power. His rage had accumulated over centuries, and now he wanted to come back.

"Who dares to disturb my prison?" the beast growled.

Sae-ryeon spoke, her voice flat. "He is the keeper of memories. The boy who remembers the names that others forget."

Shaking, Ha-neul pulled out a cloth from his sleeve. It was his father's old headband, sewn with the royal crest. His father had once been a royal guard, shamed and executed in secret.

Ha-neul stepped forward. "You were once a king. But now the people do not remember your face."

The beast wailed, its masks shattering one by one.
"Then remember this," Ha-neul said. "Not all who are forgotten are lost."

The spirit-stone in his hand blazed with light. The room was warm with sorrow and something older than magic—truth. The Forgotten King dissolved into mist, and there was only one wooden mask left, a tear etched into it.

Sae-ryeon bowed her head. "You have done what no spirit could. Tonight, history wept. and healed."

When dawn broke over Hanyang, the bamboo leaves whispered once again. Ha-neul walked home, the mask tied at his waist, the spirit-stone dark.

That morning, people found an old statue in the palace courtyard—one that nobody could remember ever having seen. A face unknown. but peaceful.

No one recalled its name. Yet every morning, Ha-neul bowed to it—not because it was a king… but because it taught him that even the forgotten must be remembered.
There are some tales that are lost to time. But some nights—strange and sacred—etch themselves into the city's soul.

– Midnight Narrator.