Time after time they tried, always with the same results. The area was dead to life.

In the summer a few young men tried to swim down to see if there was something on the bottom that was making the spot warm. But the water was too deep and the undertow too strong. They gave up and swam back to the surface.

After that the area was left alone. The old men cursed and spit upon the waves even as they rowed wide around the spot. All avoided the evil warm blot, which, as time went on, grew more and more like the color of human blood.

The spot was there for many months. Then one night it vanished.

The supernatural stain on the waves was erased, consumed by cold and tide.

Not a soul was there to see.

When it happened, the village of Sinanju was asleep.

The rock walls of the bay were a black void, swallowed by the moonless sky. A jagged lip of stone formed the line between earth and air. Stretching up before the twinkling stars was a pair of upthrust basalt rocks. The artificial rock formation formed a pair of horns.

The white starlight cast the inky shadow of the horns across the bay. They rolled up and down across the waves like a pair of pinching black fingers. Far out, between the most distant, curving points of rock, they framed the spot where the water had been warm but had suddenly grown very, very cold.

In the hour after midnight there came a flash. It was brilliant, white. The white flash was the flash of a meteor. But it came from sea, not sky. From the dark depths of the bay. A bright pop of something otherworldly from beneath the waves.

No one saw it. Sinanju slept.

The water grew hot once more. Then boiling.

The air was cold. Steam rose white over the icy bay, rolling into shore like sweet-smelling fog.

The water churned. Hotter than blood. A swirling, frothy red foam bubbled to the surface.