Banished Divinity: Learning to be Human

When we reached the campsite, it looked like a rescue mission drama series unfolding in real time.

Professors and faculty personnel were on their phones—some talking, some shouting, one crying into a walkie-talkie like it was a long-lost relative. Island security guards were everywhere, flashlights sweeping through the trees, radios crackling with static and urgency. Someone had set up floodlights, and the whole scene was bathed in harsh white light that made everyone look like they had just seen a ghost.

Which, technically, they had. Just not in the way they thought.

Yuna lay on a stretcher being carried out of the bushes by two very serious-looking healers whom I came to know as paramedics. She was unconscious but alive, her face slack, her clothes still filthy, her body slowly returning to its normal age now that the hag had been expelled. I wondered if she would remember anything. I wondered if she would wake up and think it was all a nightmare.

Probably not. Nightmares didn't usually leave you covered in hag dust and surrounded by island security.

Students were everywhere. Some were hugging each other—the girls, mostly, clinging to each other like they had survived a natural disaster. The boys stood in clusters, laughing and joking around, taking videos with their phones. I could hear snippets of their conversations floating through the night air.

"Bro, this is going up on Insta for sure." One boy held his phone up, grinning like he had just won a prize.

"TikTok, man. TikTok is where the views are." Another boy nudged him, his eyes gleaming with excitement.

"Did you see that girl come out of the bushes? Crazy." A girl whispered to her friend, her voice a mixture of fear and fascination.

"I heard she was possessed." Her friend leaned in conspiratorially.

"Nah, man, she was just lost. Probably ate some bad mushrooms." A boy shrugged, already losing interest.

"Wait, are we allowed to post this? Is this, like, a legal thing?" A more cautious student looked around nervously.

"Who cares? Content is content." The first boy grinned and pressed record.

I sighed. Mortals and their need to document everything. In my day, when you survived an encounter with an ancient evil, you simply went home and never spoke of it again. Maybe wrote a cryptic journal entry. Maybe carved a warning into a cave wall. You did not post it on something called "TikTok" while your friends made bunny ears behind your head.

"SERA!"

Jiyoung and Haejin were at my side immediately, materializing out of nowhere like Dad but with less emotional baggage and more snacks. Jiyoung's eyes were wide, her face pale. Haejin was clutching a bag of chips like it was a lifeline.

"What happened?!" Jiyoung demanded, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me. Her grip was surprisingly strong for someone who looked like she could be blown over by a stiff breeze. "We heard screaming! Then the security guards started running! Then someone said there was a girl in the bushes! Then—"

"Then Yuna happened," I said, my voice flat.

"YUNA?!" Haejin's eyes went so wide I thought they might pop out of her head. "The Yuna? The one who got expelled, Yuna?"

"The very same."

"WHAT WAS SHE DOING IN THE BUSHES?!" Jiyoung's voice cracked with a mixture of horror and disbelief.

"Attempting to bathe me in my blood, mostly." I paused. "She was... not successful."

Jiyoung and Haejin exchanged a look—the kind that said, "Our friend is insane again and we have accepted this."

Then they went into full mother-hen mode.

Jiyoung dragged a stool over and pushed me onto it with the force of someone who had dealt with too many emergencies. Haejin thrust a bottle of water into my hands, her movements brisk and efficient. Someone—I think it was a random student who got caught up in the chaos—handed me a pillow. Then Haejin shoved a large, soft teddy bear into my arms.

"For comfort," she said seriously, her eyes boring into mine.

I stared at the teddy bear. It was brown. It had a little red bow tie. Its eyes were made of plastic and seemed to judge me with the intensity of a celestial tribunal.

"I am a celestial being," I said flatly. "I do not need comfort from a stuffed mammal."

"The bear is for emotional support. Take the bear." Haejin's voice left no room for argument.

"I do not need emotional—"

"TAKE. THE. BEAR." Jiyoung and Haejin said at the same time, their voices perfectly synchronized.

I took the bear.

It was soft. It smelled faintly of lavender. I hated how much I liked it.

Human Sera floated nearby, just beside the tent, her translucent arms crossed, her ghostly eyes shooting laser beams of pure judgment at Minjae. She was not blinking. She was not looking away. She was staring at him with the intensity that could burn any living creature alive.

"I'm watching you," she hissed under her breath, though Minjae couldn't hear her. "I'm watching you so hard right now."

Minjae stood a few metres away, talking to Jaehyun. He was probably explaining what had happened—or at least, a version of what had happened. The version that did not include words like "hag" and "tentacle" and "I have been able to see ghosts since I was twelve."

Jaehyun listened, nodding occasionally, his face a mixture of concern and confusion. Every few seconds, he glanced at me. Then back at Minjae. Then at Human Sera—who he could not see, who was now making faces at him, who was definitely going to haunt him later.

"Why does he keep looking at the air?" Jaehyun asked Minjae, his brow furrowed.

"The air is very interesting tonight," Minjae replied flatly.

"The air?"

"The air. Very interesting. Lots of... molecules."

Jaehyun squinted. "You're being weird."

"I am always weird."

"Fair point."

---

A few moments later, a man and a woman healers, both wearing navy blue uniforms and expressions that said, "We have seen worse, but this is still not ideal," knelt beside me, examined my arm, and got to work.

I watched, fascinated, as the woman healer stitched me up. The needle moved in and out of my skin with precision and grace. Her hands were steady. Her movements were efficient. She was such a skilled healer.

This is fascinating, I thought. I need to learn how to do this. It would come in handy next time I fight creatures. Human Observation Log #312: Mortal healers in navy blue uniforms possess advanced textile-based healing techniques. Must investigate further.

"You're being very calm about this," the woman healer said, not looking up from her work. Her voice was professional, but there was a hint of curiosity beneath it.

"I am a celestial being. Calm is my default state."

"Right..." She paused, glancing at the teddy bear in my arms. "And the teddy bear?"

"Emotional support."

"Ah." She nodded, as if this explained everything. "That's nice. My daughter has one just like it. She calls him Mr. Snuggles."

"This one does not have a name."

"Every bear has a name. You just haven't found it yet."

I looked at the bear. It looked back at me with its plastic, judgmental eyes.

What title would you like? I thought, trying to use my telepathic celestial brain waves to see if the bear could respond. A miracle had happened earlier, so perhaps another one was possible?

The bear said nothing. It just stared.

Fine. Be that way.

Before I could receive an answer, the woman healer finished. She sat back and examined her work with a critical eye. "The wound should heal fine. No touching water for the next few days. Keep it clean. Come back if it gets red or swollen."

"I am a celestial being. My wounds heal faster than mortal wounds."

"Then you'll be fine in, what, two days instead of three?" She raised an eyebrow.

"...Yes."

She patted my knee, packed up her supplies, and left. As she walked away, I could hear her muttering under her breath, "What a strange girl..."

---

Jiyoung and Haejin were now trying to cook ramen.

It was not going well.

"Where are the chopsticks?!" Jiyoung yelled, her voice rising to a fever pitch.

"WHY WOULD THERE BE CHOPSTICKS AT A CAMPING TRIP?!" Haejin yelled back, throwing her hands up in exasperation.

At this point, I had no idea who was talking and who was yelling. Their voices sounded exactly the same, and they showed no signs of stopping.

"BECAUSE WE ARE EATING RAMEN!"

"USE A FORK!"

"A FORK?! FOR RAMEN?!" Jiyoung's voice cracked with indignation.

"THEY'RE NOODLES! FORKS WORK ON NOODLES!" Haejin grabbed a fork and waved it in the air like a weapon.

"YOU ARE A DISGRACE TO OUR ANCESTORS!" Jiyoung pointed an accusatory finger at Haejin.

"OUR ANCESTORS DIDN'T HAVE INSTANT RAMEN, JIYOUNG. THEY HAD RICE. AND SUFFERING." Haejin jabbed the fork in Jiyoung's direction.

"WELL, I AM SUFFERING NOW. WHERE IS THE HOT WATER?!"

"IN THE POT!"

"WHERE IS THE POT?!"

"ON THE STOVE!"

"WHERE IS THE STOVE?!"

"IN THE TENT!"

"WHY IS THE STOVE IN THE TENT?!" Jiyoung's voice was now approaching a register that only dogs could hear.

"BECAUSE IT'S RAINING!" Haejin screamed back.

It was not raining.

I decided to let them figure it out. They were adults. They had survived this long. They would either produce food or they would produce a tent fire. Either way, it would be educational.

---

Human Sera had given up on glaring at Minjae and was now circling around Jaehyun like a very excited, very translucent shark.

She floated in front of his face. He blinked. She floated behind his head. He scratched his neck. She floated to the side and blew on his ear. He shivered.

"Did you feel that?" he asked Minjae, his hand instinctively going to his ear.

"Feel what?" Minjae asked back, his face carefully neutral.

"The... the wind. It felt like someone breathed on my ear."

"The wind is excited about the camping trip. And especially you." Minjae's voice was flat, but there was a hint of amusement in his eyes.

Jaehyun squinted. "Fair point."

Human Sera floated back to me, her ghostly face flushed with happiness. "I love him," she whispered, her voice giddy. "I love him so much. Did you see his face when I blew on his ear? He shivered. He SHIVERED, Sera. That means our souls are connected."

"That means he felt a draft." I sighed, not having any energy left to deal with an overpowered ghost generator.

"Draft is the language of love." Human Sera hugged her chest as she spun around mid-air, her translucent form leaving trails of light.

"Love does not speak in drafts." I sighed again, the sound heavy with exhaustion.

"You don't know love." Human Sera pointed at my emotional support bear. "You think a bear who is your only emotional support is love!"

"He IS emotional support. His bow tie alone has prevented three panic attacks." I hugged the bear closer.

"You didn't have a single panic attack even before you got that bear." Human Sera rolled her eyes so hard I thought they might get stuck.

"That means the bear is working." I pressed my face into the bear's soft fur.

Human Sera huffed and floated away, muttering about clueless celestial beings and their attachment to stuffed animals.

---

# Epilogue: The Butterfly in the Shadows

Within the bushes, hidden from mortal eyes, a butterfly rested on a dark leaf.

Its wings were the colour of black silver, shimmering with an oily iridescence that seemed to drink the light around it. Its body was slender, elegant, and utterly wrong. And its eyes—where a normal butterfly would have simple compound eyes—were covered in millions of human irises, each one blinking at a different rhythm, each one watching a different thread of reality.

It had seen everything.

The girl who sang to the moon.

The ghost who refused to leave.

The ancient thing wearing a human face.

And the price that had yet to be paid.

The butterfly fluttered up from the leaf, its thousands of eyes tracking the scene below. Yuna lay on a stretcher, her body battered, her face slack, her chest rising and falling with shallow breaths. She was alive.

The creature that had inhabited her had been purged—burned away by something bright and silver that had answered a prayer.

The butterfly's wings trembled. It rose higher, moving faster than any natural creature should, and vanished into the shadows.

---

In the darkness of the Velvet Noose, Cassian sat upon his throne.

It was not a throne of gold or marble. It was a throne of shadow and silence, woven from the screams of the forgotten and the whispers of the betrayed. He reclined against its darkness, his dark brown eyes half-closed, his fingers steepled beneath his chin.

Before him, a swirling pool of shadow showed him the scene at the campsite.

He watched Yuna being carried away. He watched the paramedics tend to her. He watched the girl with the dark hair and the impossible confidence walk away from the chaos, her arm bandaged, her expression unreadable.

He watched in silence.

The butterfly landed on the edge of his throne, its thousands of eyes blinking in unison.

His dark brown eyes followed the image of Sera disappearing into the crowd. Unblinking. Unfathomable.

Then, slowly, a smile spread across his lips.

"Interesting," he murmured.

He raised his hand, and the butterfly rose from its perch. It hovered before him, waiting.

"Go," he said softly. "Remind her."

The butterfly's wings shimmered with dark silver light. It turned and vanished into the shadows.

---

Inside the ambulance, Yuna lay motionless on the stretcher, her body still and pale, her chest rising and falling with shallow breaths. The paramedics moved around her, checking monitors and adjusting IVs, their faces focused and professional.

No one noticed the butterfly that appeared on the window.

No one noticed as it melted into a thin stream of liquid blackness, seeping through the crack in the glass.

No one noticed as it slid across the floor, rising up like a serpent of shadow, and slipped into the ear of the medic sitting beside Yuna's head.

The medic stiffened. Her eyes glazed over. Her body went rigid, and then relaxed.

When she looked at Yuna, her smile was wrong.

The medic leaned forward, her face suddenly too still, her dark brown eyes gleaming with something ancient and cold.

"Yuna." the medic whispered.

Yuna's eyes snapped open. Her body jerked, her breath catching in her throat.

She tried to scream.

No sound came out.

The medic reached out and placed a hand on Yuna's forehead. The touch was gentle, almost tender.

Then she leaned close and whispered, her voice soft and velvety:

"Mine."

Yuna's body convulsed once. Twice. Her eyes—wide with terror—stared at nothing.

Then they went still.

Empty.

Her chest still rose and fell. Her heart still beat. But whatever had been looking through those eyes was gone.

The medic blinked. Her eyes cleared. She shook her head, confused, and looked around the ambulance.

"What... what happened?" she muttered. "Did I black out?"

The other paramedic shrugged. "You zoned out for a second. Probably just tired."

The medic shook her head again, frowning, and turned back to her monitors.

Yuna lay still.

Her eyes stared at the ceiling.

She was breathing. Her heart was beating.

But she was not there.

---

The butterfly returned to the Velvet Noose.

It perched on the edge of Cassian's throne, Cassian smiled.

He leaned back in his shadow throne, his dark brown eyes gleaming with satisfaction.

"Good," he said softly.

The butterfly's thousands of eyes blinked.

One after another. After another. After another.

Watching.

---

**End of Epilogue.**