The Forbidden Gate

When I was six, I pulled a nail out of the depths of Yin Mountain. It had been driven into the Taiji symbol before a stone coffin. A dragon was carved into its head, and its eyes could glow. After I pulled it out, the woman inside the coffin sat up. Dressed in white and barefoot, she asked me: “Do you want to die, or do you want to live?” I said I wanted to live. She took me with her. Ten years. Spending nights in wells, practicing horseback riding on wooden stakes, and driving a copper coin sword into a female ghost’s heart with my own hands in a funeral hall. She never explained and never went easy on me. She only said one thing: “There are no ghosts in this world, but there is a door. On the other side is another world, and every Ghost Festival, things slip through.” That door is called the Forbidden Gate. And we are the Yin Sect. “If that world is yin and ours is yang, then we are the judges of the underworld.” Later, she went through that door to look for a key. Before she left, she gave me her black blade and said, “Leave the curse and the truth about your father’s death to me.” It’s been ten years. She hasn’t come back. Today, I set out.