The Seventh Night Tales: Copper Coins Claim Lives

> Our town has a terrifying legend: on the seventh night after death, the dead return to claim the lives of the living.

> As a forensic pathologist, I never believed in the supernatural, until the seventh victim in a string of murders suddenly sat up during an autopsy.

> His stiff fingers held a copper coin engraved with the character “Tong,” which he shoved into his own empty eye socket.

> As the coin clinked onto the floor, I heard my dead wife's voice chuckle behind me: “You're next.”

> I fled in the middle of the night to the coffin shop run by my old nemesis, Chen Xuan.

> He was drawing talismans on yellow paper with cinnabar, without even looking up. “Close the door. Light a lamp. Don't let your shadow break.”

> Nails scraped harshly against the door outside. Chen Xuan suddenly clamped a hand around my throat. “You reek of a dead man's copper.”

> When the seventh coin rolled into the shop, he stared at my ashen face and sneered. “The one who died seven days ago tonight is you.”