Mul-gwisin (물귀신) — The Water Wraith

Not every soul that perishes in water becomes one of these. By some vanishingly rare chance, certain deaths choose to remain within the water—or are chosen to remain. What is left behind, people call the mul-gwisin.

This presence favors places with depth. Lakes whose floors cannot be seen, the still pools of slow-moving rivers, the dark stretches of coastline unmarked by any buoy. The deeper the water, the deeper the rumors grow.

It is said to lure people with its voice. A resonance low and soft enough to be mistaken for the sound of water itself, drawing footsteps toward the shore. Those who draw near are already, in every sense that matters, half-submerged.

Whatever it touches, it does not release. Whether ankle or wrist, the force pulling downward into the water is said to feel not like terror but like cold certainty. No one has returned, and so no one knows precisely what that force is like.

There are those who say that some of the dead claimed by a mul-gwisin become mul-gwisin in turn. Whether this is a curse, or simply the creature's own way of filling a loneliness particular to itself—the water answers nothing.