By the seventh night, the first man walked into the forest to ask it a question.

The old women in the village called it Donggeuran — the Round One. But the priest, when he saw the black spiral unfurling from the salt-crusted stone, crossed himself and whispered: Devil's Tongue .

But something did.

It wore his face like a glove worn inside out.

Not in words — in absence . In the way the light bent away from it. In the way children stopped laughing within a hundred paces. In the way your own name became strange in your throat, as if someone else had borrowed it and would not give it back.

He did not return.

The Tongue grew slowly, curling inward like a fiddlehead, each new coil slick with something that was not dew. By the third night, villagers dreamed the same dream: a round door, perfectly smooth, opening onto a hallway that smelled of their own forgotten apologies.

It had no mouth. Yet it spoke.