Do you believe that the eerie tales passed down through the countryside of Nanyang are more than just rumors?
My name is Mo Fan, and I make a living selling strange tales and ghost stories. To research a book, I set off on an adventure through Southeast Asia, hoping to document the oldest and most barbaric customs, forgotten by modern civilization.
I thought I was a hunter armed with pen and paper. Little did I know I had long since become prey to the darkness.
From the “Doll Stakes” deep in Thailand’s rainforests, where the living are sacrificed to pray for power, to the “Living Bodhisattvas” beneath Yangon’s golden pagodas in Myanmar, whose lives are frozen into eternal works of art to satisfy a twisted aesthetic, and then to the “Memory Eaters” at a secret feast in Chiang Mai, who savor other people’s memories and talents... I pursued the truth and fled for my life, leaving footprints across Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
I witnessed the “Fate Swappers,” who trade the destinies of rich and poor, and the “Dream Weavers,” who spin eternal dreams...
Every time I gazed into the abyss, the darkness ate away at me. The shadow of an ancient evil god stirred quietly within me, growing stronger until it finally took control. It devours every evil I have witnessed, learns their abilities, and sees me, this broken body, as its next perfect “masterpiece.”
I am no longer a recorder of stories. I have become the storyteller of the darkness itself.
I am no longer master of my own body. I am now the eternal prisoner of my own shadow.
Open this book, and you will embark on a journey from which there is no turning back. But remember this: as you gaze into the abyss, the “thing” within it has already chosen you as the subject of its next story.
