Fantasy, a strong female lead, an ensemble cast, twists, and attention to detail
Shan Nai always has the same dream.
In it, she is surrounded by endless water, icy cold, and keeps sinking deeper. She opens her eyes but can see nothing. Broken bubbles drift from her lips in strings, like silent muttering. Whenever the sensation of suffocating is about to steal away her consciousness, a deep, distant voice pierces the layers of water and strikes her skull:
“Remember your name…”
She jolts awake, her clothes soaked with sweat.
At four in the morning, the mountain city outside her window lies in dead silence. In her palm, she clutches an object that had appeared in her dream just moments ago: a jade pendant of a deep, bluish-green hue.
Shan Nai works at an unremarkable secondhand bookstore. Her days pass quietly, like rice paper soaked through with water, blurring everything that came before. She thought she would remain this insubstantial forever, until one rainy night, when an unexpected visitor barged into the shop.
The visitor was drenched from head to toe. Beneath the hood of his black robe, all she could see was a jaw set in hard lines. He handed her a book tightly wrapped in oilcloth. Its cover was battered, with no title.
“Returning this to its rightful owner.” His voice was hoarse, with a faint, almost imperceptible weariness. Yet Shan Nai’s heart clenched. Those words sounded strangely familiar.
He left the book behind, turned, and vanished into the rain as if he had never been there.
Shan Nai ran her fingertips over the oilcloth. The pages, made of treated animal hide, had an unusually supple yet ancient feel. They contained no writing, only a series of bizarre illustrations painted with mineral pigments and… some kind of dark, muted pigment: a vast underground palace, twisted star charts, and guards with inhuman forms, clad in armor and armed with weapons.
