Ho Chi Minh City pulsed with life, but Mien moved through it like a ghost.
Years had passed since she left Oxford, and though her body had returned to Vietnam, her spirit walked between veils. She lived in a quiet area near the Saigon River surrounded by beautiful plants and stray cats that never quite left her doorway. The nights were hot and close, and the city never truly slept, but in her quiet corner, she kept vigil.
She lived happily with her husband, her son and her mother. Unbothered. But never truly at peace.
The dreams hadn't stopped. If anything, they grew more vivid. The crossroads beneath the ancient tree. The dark woman with torches. The black hound waiting in silence. The name still haunted her like a half-remembered song: Hekate.
In these moments of uncertainty, Mien found solace in her husband, Duy. Unlike others who might dismiss her experiences as mere dreams, he listened with unwavering attention, his eyes reflecting both concern and understanding. Late into the humid nights, they would sit on their small balcony, the city's distant hum providing a backdrop to their intimate conversations.
"Sometimes I feel like I'm being called," she would confide in him, and he would nod, holding her hand tighter. He didn't pretend to have answers, but he shared her burden of knowing, of sensing something vast and ancient stirring in the spaces between worlds. When she described the recurring visions, he would encourage her to sketch them in a notebook, helping her piece together the puzzle of symbols and signs that seemed to follow her.
To the outside world, she played her social role well: polite, presentable, successful on the surface. But in the sanctuary of their home, she could let the facade crack, could voice the questions that plagued her. Duy became her anchor, grounding her in reality while motivating her to pursue the truth of these otherworldly calls. "Perhaps," he would say, his voice gentle but firm, "these dreams aren't just memories to carry, but paths waiting to be walked."
---
She found her way to an old Zen monk living on the outskirts of the city, tucked behind a weathered stone gate and a curtain of banyan leaves. No one advertised him; people just found him when they needed to. She sat before him under a banyan tree, its aerial roots twisted like stories in the wind. He didn't ask for her name. He poured her tea and waited.
After some time, she said, "I thought I was cursed. But now I wonder if I'm just hallucinating."
The monk looked at her with clouded eyes that seemed to see straight through. "You are not cursed. You are open. But openness without grounding invites everything."
She looked away. "What do I do?"
He tilted his head and said, "Listen deeply to the silence. Not the noise around it. That is where you will hear who you are."
She returned to her home and began spending hours in silence, trying to hear what lay beneath thought. But silence did not bring peace - it brought every shadow to the surface. After weeks of meditation and confusion, the hunger for movement returned. She needed something structured. Tangible.
So she flew to Singapore.
---
At first, she enrolled in a coaching certification course. It was reputable, professional, and carried a promise of self-empowerment. She told herself it was practical. Marketable. A way to ground her intuition in something the world valued. But one evening after class, she wandered into a seminar led by an American energy coach. His presence filled the room before he spoke, despite his short figure. His voice had the cadence of thunder wrapped in silk. He looked at her once and smiled as if they already knew each other.
Afterward, he approached her. "You have a gift," he said. "But you're afraid of it."
"How do you know that?" she asked.
"Because power always knows power."
He invited her to his private mentorship circle. She joined, curious and cautious.
He taught her how to channel energy through voice, gaze, posture. How to shift the mood of a room without saying a word. How to draw people in and wrap their attention like silk. How to walk into a negotiation with silence and win without ever raising her voice. He also gave her a warning:
"You'll attract what you haven't healed. Especially men who echo the pain you fear most."
And he was right.
She rose fast. Clients trusted her instantly. Later on, she landed contracts with big brands, startups, and digital entrepreneurs. People described her as magnetic. In meetings, her intuition struck like lightning; she knew what people wanted before they did. But alongside the success came shadows. Entitlement. Boundary-crossing. A string of men she met professionally who mistook her calm presence for submission, her power for consent. The more radiant she became, the more they tried to consume what they didn't understand.
One night, after an event, a man followed her to the lift. He touched her waist without asking. She burned with anger, but didn't say a word. That night, she learned he had abandoned the deal, shut down his team, and flown home without explanation.
The same night, a pigeon flew into her window. Neck broken.
She stared at its tiny, twisted form in her palm and whispered, "I didn't mean to."
But she had.
She took it as a victory. But it didn't feel like one.
She fled again. This time to Bali.
---
In Ubud, she found a Hindu guru who agreed to speak with her. He had eyes like ink, his skin wrapped around his skull like aged yellow fabric, and his husky voice filled the room like smoke. He offered her water, lit a lamp, and waited.
She told him about the energy, the dreams, the strange synchronicities, the feeling that something inside her had been ancient long before she was born.
He listened. When she finished, he said:
"You are powerful, and your power is beautiful. But you are dangerous if you do not understand yourself fully. An ocean that is so quietly deep, but full of underground waves. A river that does not know its path will drown the village."
The guru's words sank into her like stone.
From there, she went to Hanoi, chasing a final thread she had known from an acquaintance - a feng shui master who was said to speak with spirits.
The master was young, quiet, and smelled faintly of sandalwood. He sat there, stirred his coffee and looked at her slowly. After several minutes, he placed his hand over her shoulder and said:
"You are not alone. There are spirits around you. Animal ones. Loyal, but restless. They follow your energy."
"What do they want?" she asked.
"They want you to lead. But you must be strong enough to hold their wildness. If you do not lead them, they will tear you apart from within."
Back in her home near the Saigon River, Mien tried to make sense of it all. Her journals overflowed. Symbols. Dreams. Names. She drew sigils on paper. Sketched the black hound again and again. The ancient tree. The woman with the torches. She drew and wrote until dawn many nights, desperate for the symbols to form a language.
But they did not.
Then came the breaking point.
It was a rainy Tuesday evening. One of her business partners had desperately asked her for a last-minute important call. Mien, overwhelmed and exhausted, dreaded the call that she could not refuse. Her whole body recoiled from the idea of showing up.
That night, the woman canceled the call at the last minute due to an emergency. Nothing fatal. Yet these events had happened often enough to frighten her. Whenever she hoped something wouldn't happen, circumstances would mysteriously unfold in her favor but with unpredictable consequences: someone would fall ill before a dreaded meeting, or a competitor would back out of a deal she actually wanted.
And, a man who hanged himself because of her anger. Fortunately, he was saved.
Mien didn't sleep. Guilt crawled under her skin like insects.
Overwhelmed with stress, she struggled to contain her dark thoughts. Two days later, a short-eared owl she had rescued - a wounded creature she'd nursed back to health with tender care - stopped eating. It perched motionless, its eyes dull and feathers unkempt. That morning, it fell from its perch and lay lifeless at her feet.
Mien buried it beside the riverbank under a plum tree. The earth was soft from rain. Her hands shook as she placed the small, still body in the ground.
"You felt that negativity," she whispered. "And you couldn't hold it."
The weight of what she carried was no longer theoretical. It had shape. Teeth. And it was bleeding into everything she touched.
She walked back to her home barefoot in the rain. Mud clung to her ankles. The city shimmered like a fever dream. Thunder rolled like drums from the sky.
By the time she reached her door, soaked and silent, she already knew.
None of the advice she had received could resolve Hekate's call. The name still coiled around her ribs like smoke.
She began to understand that the goddess was not asking her to worship - but to face something.
Her shadow. Her rage. Her hunger. Her power.
---
And so, she said yes to the final invitation - the one she'd always felt waiting beyond the edge of reason:
The Amazon.
A full moon shamanic ritual.
A beckoning.
The place where the earth speaks without needing permission.
Where the soul has nowhere left to hide.