The Sacred Prisoner

Yang Mo was afraid of death, deep in his bones.

To stay alive, he was willing to give up anything: the quiet life of a hardware store in the outer city, a dream that had lasted eighteen months, a notebook that recorded only the names of the dead, and the hunger in his blood. Every time he fed it, he gained a little more pleasure and lost a little more of his humanity.

When he woke, he had become a "patient." In his ears, the tower counted backward. Underwater, a door waited for someone to knock. And behind him, a figure in a silver mask always walked just ahead, where he couldn't see, counting every step he took with perfect clarity.

Everyone said a god was sealed inside the tower.

No one told him that he, too, was just an object clutched in someone else's palm: something to raise, let grow, and then devour.

What he could least remember was how, on that night, one hundred and fourteen lives had carried him out of his dream.

A man imprisoned by the word "saint" must take himself back before the blade falls.