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In the forest is a monster
It has done terrible things
So in the wood, it's hiding
And this is the song it sings
In the forest, there lived a monster.
When Rumi was a child, she killed her mother; or so she believed. But all to often belief was enough—Rumi's mother was dead and Rumi believed she had killed her and that made it true.
So, when Rumi was a child, she killed her mother. Miyeong bled out in the forest, her body protecting the child she loved so dearly.
But Rumi had two mothers. The survivor raised her, taught her, trained her, loved her. Even when her patterns grew. Even when she was less girl and more monster. Even when she told Rumi it was her duty to kill monsters.
Even though Rumi was a monster herself.
The monsters that bore the same patterns as Rumi had kept coming and kept coming in endless waves. Celine bled out in the forest, her blood coating Rumi's hands. She hadn't been ready, hadn't been fast enough or strong enough and because of that, Celine had died to protect her.
When Rumi was a child, she killed her mothers. She lived alone ever since with only gentle threads of starlight to love her and a song she didn't know the words of to comfort her.
The apocalypse started and no one noticed. Almost no one.
A twelve year old girl from Burbank, California noticed. How could she not? Her whole life, she'd seen the lights. Luminescent starlight that rippled when she laughed and pulsed when she sang like sound given form. It nudged her in one direction or another and she was pretty sure it had saved her life more than once.
She could see other lights, too, like thin threads. Blue energy in the hearts of people around her and somewhere far away, two points like the warmest of stars.
The end of the world began when those threads went red like bloody veins ripped open by monstrous claws. The threads quickly got worse. As people disappeared, their blue flames snuffed out one by one, the monsters under the bed became very real, very fast.
The monsters came for Zoey where she lived with her mother in Seoul, where the flame of her mother's soul blipped out right before her eyes.
The lights flickered, and then the lights flickered, blades in Zoey's hands and violet dust in the kitchen air.
Zoey felt so alone.
There was no one left to love her but the shuddering threads that wrapped around her as she sobbed, an ancient song reminding her that she'd never truly be alone.
People were going missing. Dozens in days and with no obvious explanation panic was gripping the country.
For most of Mira's life, she'd felt as though something were guiding her. Holding her when she felt lonely—which was most of the time—encouraging her to pursue her love of music and dance and some wordless song that she could never quite grasp.
It couldn't shield her from her parents' voices. It couldn't shield her from her father's fists. It nursed the bruises on her body and soothed the ones on her heart and told her that somewhere out there were two souls that were hers.
So when she watched her parents die, the only thing she felt was relief. There were worse monsters in the world than demons, and now they were gone.
There'd never been anyone who loved her, save the threads that danced around her. And in the distance two stars burning bright, growing closer and closer, a song growing louder and louder.
They need you
Find them
Protect them
In the forest, there lived a monster.
That was what Zoey had been told. That the monsters who stalked the land had origins deep within it. She wasn't sure how true that was. Oh, she'd seen monsters, had watched them steal the souls of people around her. Had killed a few in a desperate bid to save people. To save anyone. She'd failed her own mother, she would spend the rest of her life making up for that.
The threads, those thin strands of starlight that she'd seen most of her life, rippled. Not the violet that preceded the rifts that spawned the monsters, but the blue that sung of comfort and harmony. The same way it had when—
"We're not alone." The hand in hers tightened, and Zoey looked up at the taller girl.
One of those she'd saved but something more. Something big and world shaking in importance.
Find them the threads had sung. And she'd found one a year after the end of the world. That had been four years ago.
Zoey exhaled and nodded, looking out around them into the dark woods, "Hello? We're not here to hurt you! We're… looking for you. I'm Zoey, this is Mira. We've been looking for you."
Nothing. Zoey squeezed Mira's hand, noting how tightly Mira was gripping the shimmering Gok-Do that she'd summoned not long after they'd met. It had been a surprise to both of them, but Zoey's range and Mira's reach meant they could work well together. They only really lacked in the ability to counter something that got too close.
The aching scar on Zoey's side was testament to that.
Mira thought she could see something moving, and her heart threatened to beat out of her chest. It was too dark here, the trees too close. She wasn't exactly trained in actual combat and so far had mostly succeeded through sheer flailing luck.
How could she protect Zoey if she could barely keep from pissing herself? She'd been asking herself that for years now and knew some day her luck would run out. But as long as it was her and not Zoey that fell, she could live with it. Figuratively speaking, since she'd be dead.
Eyes suddenly shimmered gold in the dark and she jerked her weapon around, pointing it in that direction.
The eyes drew closer, a shadowed figure stepping into the light of Zoey's lantern.
"Stop!" Mira hefted her weapon, the bladed end shaking.
"Leave." The figure's voice was soft and melodic, and the threads shimmered with it.
Zoey put her hand over Mira's and Mira slowly lowered her weapon.
"I've been looking for you," Zoey said. She pressed her other hand over her heart, "Can't you feel it?"
Mira felt the threads hum, exactly as they'd done the day that Zoey had found her. It still didn't make any sense that anyone would be looking for her, a failed daughter of a failed family.
But then there'd been Zoey and something had filled an empty space in her heart. It had only grown warmer since and her feelings had very quickly crystalized into something beautifully hopeless.
The figure stepped more into the light. A girl their age, but with the same patterns that the monsters so often had. Her eyes glittered gold, horns rising from her forehead. Her fingertips ended in deadly looking claws and a tail lashed in the darkness behind her.
What stilled Mira's fight or flight response was the glowing blue light centered in the girl's chest.
A soul.
She'd figured out what that was very quickly. The difference between human and monster, though Mira knew better than anyone that a human could be a monster. Her parents were proof of that. But humans could be reasoned with most of the time and this one had a soul. Whether she was a monster or not was up in the air, but a second empty place in her heart began to fill.
"Leave!" Rumi repeated, tail lashing angrily behind her. Her voice carried that same monstrous echo it always had from as far back as she could remember.
Could they not see? Could they not tell? She deserved nothing, she belonged nowhere but in darkness. And these two girls needed to leave before she destroyed them the same way she'd killed her mothers.
"This forest is not safe for you," She said, eyes darting between them as the taller one's weapon returned to the Honmoon.
That should not be possible.
Her mother … Celine had taught her that only those with a special destiny could draw upon it. That those who did were protectrs and defenders, and that they could destroy the monsters that hunted the innocent.
Monsters like her.
All she'd ever really wanted had been to not be alone. To have her moms back. To have friends. Because that would mean she was someone worth being around. Someone worth having. Someone worth loving.
That she wasn't a mistake.
"I'm Mira," the tall one said. She held her hand out. It trembled, and not just from fear. Something was twisting up inside Rumi's chest, something both wonderful and terrifying at once and she knew instinctively the other two could feel it too.
Was she corrupting them just by being near? Rumi realized, too late, why their souls felt familiar. They'd been a part of her for as long as she could remember. Longer, she was certain.
"Zoey." The other approached her, hands up and palms out, then she offered one, "We've been looking for you."
"But I'm a monster," Rumi whispered. Her eyes focused on their hands. Mira's had steadied, and Zoey's was open and inviting. She looked up into their faces.
"Whether not you are," Zoey replied. "You're ours."
Mira's eyes flashed with something. Determination, wariness, protectiveness, "And we're yours."
She almost wanted to fold into them and forget for just a moment what she was.
"I'm Rumi." Slowly, Rumi took their hands. Something burned in her chest, like the dying embers of a fire suddenly stoked to life and engulfing her heart. The Honmoon sang. And in response, she heard a distant roar.
"You have to run," She gasped, but they wouldn't let go of her hands. "You have to, you have to he'll kill you like he killed them please you have to run!"
The threads pulsed an angry magenta and Zoey flicked her wrist to pull the luminous throwing knives from thin air. She didn't know if they were magicians or magical girls, and it didn't really matter because no matter the source or reason she could one-shot any of the monsters.
Where before, Rumi had started to shift into something more human, the claws returned and so did some teeth that woke something in Zoey she'd have to worry about later. Mira drew on the threads, returning her own weapon to her hands.
Despite the danger, Zoey could feel the song of the threads. Like it was filled with some kind of joy—like it had been waiting for the three of them to come together.
And then the first of the monsters tore through the threads, the song growing discordant with pain. Instinctively, Zoey started to hum, throwing one of her daggers and striking a blow on one of the monsters. While they tried to avoid fights when they could, she'd gotten a lot of practice in. And humming always seemed to make things go a little easier.
Mira tapped her weapon on the ground in time to Zoey's humming as the threads responded to that.
She'd never done that before and the threads lit up like Christmas.
Another time and pace and they'd be experimenting with this. But this was probably the last place in Korea where the threads had been strong and now… and now…
"You have to…" Rumi had her arms around the neck of one monster as she held it in a choke hold, "You have to sing!"
She tore the monster's throat out and Mira made a sound next to her that Zoey felt in her soul. She muttered, "I should not be as into that as I am."
"I love to sing," Mira muttered, slamming the butt of her weapon into a monster before swinging it around and gutting another. "Dad always tried to beat it out of me."
Zoey reached for the first song that came to mind, "They say there's no other monster like you. They tell me to become a good doll like a pet. Shut up and step back. Or else, I'll snap your head back! I-I-I, me and my girls, we look so alike. Only we will decide our rules, Shut up and step back, Or else we go break it!"
"Really?" Mira asked, before joining in, "Party like Madonna. We're freely covered in scars. We just wanna rock and roll."
"I wanna make your head bang! Bang, ba-bang!" As they moved into the chorus together it felt to Mira like they were finding a new rhythm, weaving not just the music together but their movements and the strikes of their weapons. They'd always been in sync but this was a new level that Mira had never experienced before.
It was still missing something. Missing a third part that should have been alongside and between and all around them.
Rumi, who was struggling against too many of the monsters at once, fighting apart from them.
Mira still didn't know what she was or if they could even trust her. She wasn't sure Rumi was sure they could trust her either. But she wasn't going to let anything happen to her.
She needed her and and she needed them. Both she and Zoey had felt it. The need to find those points of light, to protect them. No one in Mira's life had ever protected her and Mira had always felt that if she could protect just one person, just one single person then maybe she could make her sorry life worth it.
And now she had two people to protect.
She flung her Gok-Do like a spear. It pierced several monsters before getting embedded in a tree. Zoey vaulted over Mira via her shoulders, landing a kick on another monster before fanning her arms out and wildly throwing more of her little knives.
"Sing with us!" Zoey said, helping Rumi to her feet. Rumi stared at her.
She opened her mouth, the most haunting melody that Mira had ever heard filling the air. Retrieving her weapon, Mira started to harmonize with Rumi and Zoey's voice joined theirs a moment later.
Starlight flared to life in Rumi's hands, twirling and twisting until a blade formed lined with constellations.
The girl stared at it, wide eyes, tears flowing down her cheeks, "My eommas had swords like this…"
Different shape but the same blinding light. It was why she'd known that Mira and Zoey needed to sing, because she remembered Celine singing as she had fought, had remembered the stories she'd shared of her partners. How the Honmoon had rippled and responded to it.
That felt important. In her heart and in her gut she knew that was important. But Rumi had never believed she was worthy of her mothers' birthright. Of either of them. After all, she'd killed them both.
But the proof was in her hand, was in the thrumming in her chest, in the way her soul rattled against the cage she'd locked it away in so long ago.
Rumi only knew one song but she trusted the girls to follow her in it, knowing—somehow—that they would know it too.
It welled up from somewhere deep inside, Mira and Zoey's souls responding immediately as their voices joined hers. And for a brief, solitary heartbeat a thousand thousand doorways opened before her.
They'd sung this song before.
In past lives, in other worlds, an infinite mirror of possibilities reflected back at her.
Rumi's heart beat again and the doorways closed. All that remained was a sense of belonging, as if she'd found her kindred spirits.
Their song washed away the demons, leaving them alone with the gently humming song of the Honmoon. Fragile, but intact.
"We-We fixed it." Zoey looked around in wonder.
"Just here," Rumi said. She looked at her hands, human, without claws, though still bearing the patterns of her birth, "It's strengthens when you… when we sing and it keeps the demons away from the human realm. But it needs souls to inspire."
"I don't know about you, but I feel pretty inspired right now," Mira said, resting her Gok-Do on her shoulder.
"There's a whole country out there," Zoey said. "People are dying. We can stop it. But… how do you know about this?"
"My eomma taught me. My other one," Rumi inspected her sword, "She died fighting the demons. But she taught me some things. About the Honmoon, about hunters. I just… I always thought I was something …. else. Because my father was a demon."
"So we're demon hunters? I knew it! Magical girl Choi Zoey!" Zoey blinked, "Wait, you're like a half-demon?"
Rumi nodded.
"Cool."
"I'm not sure I want to know the implications," Mira muttered. "But it doesn't matter to me. You've been nothing like any of the ... demons ... we've seen so far."
She stepped closer, hand half lifted as if to touch her. After Rumi stared at her a moment, she stubbornly put it on her shoulder, "How many hunters are there?"
Rumi looked at her hand, then at the girl it belonged to, "There's only ever three."
That sobered Zoey right up. But she threw her arms around the both of them, "Okay so we put on a tour and we make some music and we get the… Honmoon?"
Rumi nodded.
"We get the Honmoon strong again. Like patching a leaky pipe. Then we can figure out some long term solutions once the apocalypse is put on hold."
"I … think that's basically what we have to do," Rumi acknowledged. "But you have to promise me something."
"What do you need?" Mira asked.
"If I … if the demon in me is too much, you need to put me down."
"No." Zoey cupped her face. Her hands were warm on Rumi's cheek, her gaze intense and eyes flashing, "I literally just found you. I'm not going to just… euthanize you because you're afraid you'll be too much to handle. I know you just met me but trust me I know too much to handle because I usually am. But I don't give up on friends, especially soulmates."
"Same," Mira said, thickly. "If something does happen, I'm not killing you. I might have to knock some sense into you until we can figure it out, but I'll do everything I can to help you."
Eyes watering, Rumi whispered, "You don't even know me."
Mira squeezed her shoulder, "Then give us the chance to."
"Okay." Rumi pulled them both into her first hug in years.
In the forest there lived a monster, so the story goes. Two women found it there and offered it their souls.
In return, it offered them its own. The selflessness transformed it from a monster to a beautiful young woman. Soulmates, some stories tell. Destined and bound by some pact made in a past life, long before that day.
The trio traveled the land, fighting the monsters that ravaged the countryside, sealing them away with their songs.
With the monsters banished, the women disappeared. Their legend grew, songs and stories lingering of their bond and a kind of love that comes but once a century.
Every generation, three rise to strengthen the barrier and so the legend endures. It holds that one day the three will be born anew and their song will seal the monsters away for good.
It holds that they will know each other by their song.