Long ago, the Seven True Gods sealed the evil spirits away, assigning one of seven divine beasts to guard each region. A thousand years later, the seals began to weaken, and the evil spirits seeped into the modern world as “strange cases”: a theater turned into a paper prison, matching names on wristbands, footnotes that rewrite fate… The True Gods cannot intervene directly, so the divine beast lineages must pass down their legacy among mortals and hunt the spirits according to ancient rules.
In 2025, Shen Yuan, heir to the Vermilion Bird, awakens during the “punishment of the mistaken character.” The White Tiger and Black Tortoise wage their own secret battles. Shang Jiahe, an actor connected to the Yinglong line, has yet to awaken, and treats “blocking” as instinct. Meanwhile, Mi Zhiyuan, heir to the Azure Dragon, chooses a more difficult path: bearing witness.
Mirrors and fire are the keys; printed scripts, footnotes, and commas are the doors. With every case solved, the evil spirits retreat a little, but someone must pay a real price: a “debt of the pen,” “shadow delay,” “the weight of the shell door,” or “witness authority.” The Mad Daoist threads his way through the shadows, offering one reminder of the rules: “Do not give your name outside the mirror.”
This is no divine miracle descending from the heavens. It is ordinary people, caught between order and their true names, carefully marking life and death as “pending,” then writing them back into the human world with their own hands.
When two people with the same name “check into” the same hospital bed, and a stand-in shadow of the “Regent” tries to rewrite life and death, they are forced to join forces: they will speak through evidence and finish the job with magic. Trapped between human law and mythic order, they must reclaim their true names and give those names back to the people who bear them.
This is no miracle of a god descending to the mortal realm. It is the light of ordinary people lifting their heads.
