Beyond the black wall lies a long night that devours the world.
Within the black wall are the poor, the sick, the dead, and a group of night watchmen too afraid to sleep too deeply.
When Gu Changjin was sixteen, his father, missing for three years, knocked on their door during a snowstorm.
He knew the city’s rules: never answer a knock at night.
But when he refused to open the door, whatever was outside set its sights on his younger sister.
From backward footprints to the pale-faced monster, from a black coffin knocking at the door to echoes from an old well, from his father’s old blade to the unsolved case of the Third Patrol Team, Gu Changjin is dragged step by step into the deepest reaches of the long night.
Others light fires to stay alive.
He lights fires to protect those behind him.
The long night is endless?
Then he’ll burn a path through it.
