Eop (業神, the House Fortune Spirit)

The Eop settles somewhere inside the home. A corner of the attic, beneath the earthen jar stand, within the crack of an old pillar. In places where no eye lingers, it breathes in quiet, holding the household's wealth and fortune together like thread drawn taut.

It takes no single fixed form. Most often it appears as a great serpent; sometimes a weasel, sometimes a toad, so the old accounts say. But whatever shape it wears, the person who first encounters it knows at once, by instinct — this is no ordinary creature.

A house where the Eop dwells prospers in uncanny ways. Trade opens up, sickness passes more lightly, and the household grows without apparent reason. People cannot easily say why, yet they are careful never to leave the storehouse key lying carelessly about.

But if one morning you look up and see a serpent crossing the yard and slipping out through the front gate — if that serpent was the Eop — then the saying still passed from mouth to mouth holds true: that household will not survive the year.

To anger the Eop is more dangerous still. From the day it is struck down unrecognized, something in the house begins, quietly, to come undone. Wealth seeps away, people fall ill, and dreams turn violent. The elders who know the reason say this: the Eop came to bestow fortune, but fortune that has been betrayed moves more quietly than calamity — and lasts far longer.