"Sungjoo."

The soft voice was startling and he opened his eyes to find himself in an unfamiliar room. He was already standing up, a fact that just didn't seem right in his mind; the last thing he remembered had been laying down to sleep in his quaint prison. His surroundings now were bright white, with an inner glow that made it hard to focus on anything. The floor beneath his feet, the walls around him, the benches set along the walls - all was white. 

"Sungjoo." The voice came again, recognizable this time as a woman's voice, and he thought he saw movement down the brightly lit hallway. The light itself seemed to be coming from that direction, and he held up one arm to shield his face from the intensity of it as he tried to track the motion. 

"Who are you?" he asked, though his heart already knew the answer. His tongue felt like sandpaper in his mouth, his breath coming short and fast. A woman walked toward him from the light, slowly becoming more and more visible until she stood directly in front of him, her hands held out toward him. Her skin was the color of fresh turned earth, a rich, smooth brown that contrasted with the plain white of her simple dress and their surroundings. Her small lips were curved into a smile, her features making her appear to be younger than Sungjoo's own twentyone years, but her eyes...

Her dark eyes were full of wisdom, of compassion and love. They were also familiar and Sungjoo felt his legs give out underneath him as he realized that he stood in the presence of Siakera herself. He felt something catch his weight, but he couldn't tear his eyes off of the apparition in front of him. She looked exactly as the carvers had made her statues appear, kind and beautiful and graceful. And strangely, without a hint of anger.

"Why do you attack my people?" she asked, her voice soft yet ringing with the promise of power. He didn't know what to say, his awe smothering his previous anger, and after a moment Siakera moved to take a seat beside him. It was only then that he realized that he sat on one of the benches along the wall, but his brow crinkled in confusion. He had been standing in the center of the hall, not by the walls, so how had he managed to fall to a bench?

One look at Siakera's smile and he knew better than to ask that question out loud.

"You are angry with me." It was a statement, but she added a lilt at the end so that he could take it as a question if he wanted to. Too numb to talk, he simply nodded in agreement, though at the moment he felt none of that anger. The goddess sighed, a sound like a whispering breeze through a forest, reaching a hand up to touch Sungjoo's cheek. He flinched but allowed the touch, surprised at how warm her fingers were against his skin. "Because of your brother's death," she added, and this time he felt a flicker of that anger rise up inside of him.

"Yes," he whispered, because his voice refused to raise louder than that. 

She nodded in understanding, her deep eyes locked with his own. "I remember that night, Sungjoo. I remember all who ask for my help." She kept her silence then, only watching him as if giving him the chance to question her, and so he took a deep breath to steady himself.

"Why, then? Why did you let him die? I begged..." his voice broke then, and he surprised himself to find tears sliding down his cheeks at his confession. He took another gulp of air and pressed onward, knowing that he had nothing to hide from a goddess. "I begged for you to save him. He believed in you and if you truly cared about us, then you would have healed him. So why? Why did you let him die?" And leave me here alone, his mind added, and the pity in her gaze told him that she heard those last words, too.

"He asked me to," she said simply, tears slipping from her own eyes as