My Ghost Marriage Partner Wants to Refine Me into a Stand-In

I’m a paper effigy maker. I make brides for the dead.

That night, as rain poured down, my employer forced me to open the eyes of a lifelike paper figure. “The ghost wedding has to happen tonight. She’s waiting for the groom.”

The moment my brush touched the figure, the paper bride suddenly grabbed my wrist. Blood ran from the corner of her eye as she wrote on my palm: “Run. You’re next.”

The eerie bride possesses me and says she wants to borrow my body to find his bones.

Only later do I learn that the ghost wedding was never meant for him.

He was merely chosen to be made into a living burial pillar, a living person tasked with holding down a coffin of vengeful spirits for the real groom.

And I am the vessel meant to be made into his substitute.