On the very first page of the journal, it says in loopy handwriting: Dinner is served at 6 p.m. I would love to have you there.

Kyuhyun runs a sharpened claw over the delicate edge of his newly acquired journal as he rereads Sungmin’s message. The make is high quality, it seems. He appreciates good workmanship. He slips it into the inner pocket of his suit jacket. It fits perfectly.

The sky is dotted with clouds pierced with golden sunbeams. Peace doves fly by, some of them coming only inches away from him before scattering. Kyuhyun supposes, with a wry grin, that few of the local birds are used to people invading their high perches on these ancient buildings. It is the same all over; the pigeons in New York, the sparrows in Tokyo, and now the doves in Seoul all think they own the skies.

Kyuhyun steps from the tip of the church steeple into the streets below.

It has been decades since he has been to Seoul. Kyuhyun remembers when it was heralded as the center of the universe, the center of the world. Now, it is only the capital of South Korea. Seoul, indeed.

He slips into the crowds that flood the streets, ambling across the cobblestones that shimmer in the heat. A summer day in Seoul may as well be a day in hell, if he’s honest. He watches the cars as they honk and the nearby street windows as they swing back and forth, glinting in the sun.

Kyuhyun leans against a brick wall, watching the traffic go by.

He feels the thunder working below him, the generators powering the city, and takes out a cigarette from his silver case. He lights it with a flick of his thumb. The smoke trundles upwards as he breathes it out, and he watches it go.

He has never been here before, here in the world of the living, without feeling the weight of it scratching at his soul.

He feels so light.

Humans pass him by, chattering and smiling. For the first time in a long time, Kyuhyun doesn’t feel driven to rip them apart.

“That’s a properly drawn-up magical contract for you,” he says to himself, grinning. He stubs out his cigarette on the heel of his shoe. “Well, back to work for me. No rest for the weary, as they say.”

Kyuhyun falls through the brick wall and back into hell.

His secretary is not pleased to see him. She looks up from her files, shakes her head, and acid hisses out of when she sighs. It melts part of her desk.

It makes sense; she was talking to him about his schedule and leading him to an important meeting this afternoon before he’d stopped in the middle of the hallway, said ‘Damn,’ and disappeared. Summonings are always so inopportune when it comes to scheduling.

“Marcu, really, where were you? You couldn’t bother to stay another twenty minutes without taking off to who knows where?” she snaps at him from her desk chair, legs crossed.

“Awfully sorry, dear, I was called to the land of the living, and not entirely by my choice,” Kyuhyun says in a clipped tone. He brushes acidic runoff from his suit jacket. It burns instantly into smoke on contact.

“Damn those magicians. I’ll have to reschedule the entire board of directors meeting because of them.” She spins in her chair, typing away. “I’ll sort this out. You owe me a bottle of blood-vipers and a new desk for this.”

“Thank you, Jessica . Make sure to get me my month’s schedule on my desk by the end of your shift.”

She flutters her dragonfly wings in response. The conversation appears to be over.

He heads into his office and looks out his glassless window that takes up his entire back wall, like a massive open cave mouth. Such a different sight from the streets of Korea, and yet so similar. Hordes of demons are running around down there, all trying to one-up each other for a promotion. The dark sky overhead looms with black clouds, and the fires from below burst up in columns to meet them every so often with explosive fervor. He feels the thrum of the fires and the metals as they pulse and roil beneath his volcanoes.

Kyuhyun lights another cigarette. As he takes a drag, he flicks open the pocket watch. It’s barely five over there. He has some time.

He snaps the watch shut and flicks his cigarette out his window and into the view. He watches the dot of flame fall through the murky air. It’ll plunge for miles and miles until it hits anything.

Kyuhyun jumps after it.

His wings cut through the dank smog, and he’s flying. He speeds after the faint glow of his cigarette, rolling through the air like a hawk after its prey.

Finally, he clears the cloud cover. The wind whips through his hair, and he grins at the sudden rush. The demons down below are as big as pinpricks, and the gnarled, blackened trees that hang off of the cliff sides whip at him as he coasts down the steep falls of the company headquarters mountain.

Just as the cigarette is about to fall into an outcropping of sharp rocks, he swoops in and snatches it.

He beats his wings back to stay level, hovering for a moment, and then steps nonchalantly onto a nearby company ledge. It’s bustling with low-level employees. Kyuhyun walks along the pathway, brushing off soot from his suit, relighting his cigarette, and folding his wings back.

The demons all around him scatter away in fear, just like the doves in Seoul , staring at him with wide eyes. He takes a long drag from his cigarette.

“Enjoying your break?” Kyuhyun grins at them, smoke issuing out from between his teeth. They scramble to get back to work, hefting their heavy loads of mined metal and rock up and down the mountain.

He keeps walking along the leveled platform until he comes to the employee entrance that runs to the heart of the volcano. He opens the barred metal doors with a lazy flick of his fingers and goes straight in. It whips shut behind him. Kyuhyun struts down the massive tunnel, higher-level demons everywhere with their clipboards and data analysis spreadsheets scuttling from one tunnel to another. The electric lights lining the complex are flickering overhead; he makes a mental note to get them fixed.

He has to flick open a few more security doors before he finally reaches the dead end. It’s a colossal hunk of reinforced adamantium that Kyuhyun mixed himself that runs around the inside of the volcano. It’s lava resistant and protects the tunnels from collapsing in case of a flare-up. Employees call them the ‘shells,’ according to Jessica .

Kyuhyun reaches out with a hand and reverently brushes his fingertips on the smoothed metal.

His eyes fall shut as he’s flooded with feedback; the entire shell hums at his touch. It knows him.

He sends a vibration through the whole structure looking for aberrations, like a spider plucking the threads of its tuned web. There are a few spots, he can see, that the layers are melting together and weakening from overexposure to the heat from the underground mining. Those have to be fixed immediately.

Kyuhyun takes a breath, flattening his palm against the shell, and pushes.

Miles away, on the other side of the volcano, the edges of the shell bend and flex. The shell hums and the melted layers s