Athena1414
One map. One eight-point compass. Eight roads your heart could call home.
When the Veil thins over Aegiryang, a living map wakes in your hands-and an ancient Star Compass answers only to you. Each of its eight needles hums to a different myth-touched guardian you'll meet on the road. The ninth ring-the hollow center-points to the path you claim for yourself.
Before the ink dries, your childhood friend Bang Chan steps from the lantern rain and reveals the truth he hid at the orphanage: he is an azure dragon heir, oath-bound from birth to be your bodyguard. He is your true north-but the compass won't force your choice.
As you travel-cat shrines and tide markets, thunder forges and moving galleries-the Star Compass swivels between destinies: the precise bakeneko dancer, the warm selkie healer, the thunder-smith oni, the moon-touched crane, the quicksilver dokkaebi bard, the unblinking inugami warden, the earnest haetae judge. Each offers a chord to seal the Rift of Calamity-and a future that feels dangerously like home.
Inspired by Stray Kids' "Road Not Taken," this fantasy romance lets you pick your ending: follow one needle to love, or turn the ring inward and choose yourself. Maps breathe. Compasses listen. Every road costs-and gives-something.