At the Wangfeng Pass, her three thousand personal guards were wiped out. Her maid took an arrow for her, only to be pierced through the heart by her own father.
The day she crawled out of the pile of corpses, a crack appeared in one of her palm bones. That was the first debt she collected.
Eventually, everyone in the world learned of her fatal weakness: thirty-one dead people live in her heart. She used a secret art to bring herself back to life, at the cost of bearing the lingering thoughts of everyone who died. When she encounters the blood relatives of those dead, she loses control, hesitates, cries, and cannot bring herself to strike.
Only later did she learn that her father was not the one who betrayed her. It was a rule laid down a thousand years ago. On this continent, the rise and fall of every dynasty is decided not by people, but by four hidden organizations. One keeps a dragon locked away; another raises ink worms capable of rewriting memories.
Above them stands a mountain, where all those cast aside by the rules live. Her mother was one of them. The last line of her mother’s will read: “Do not come home.”
She burned the will and opened the door of the Bone Lodge. She had two things to do.
First, collect what was owed. She carried a blank register for those she took in. Every time she won someone over, she wrote down a name and a note. Beside each name was a curved line slanting to the left. That was the first lesson she learned: the way slanting left is the way out.
Second, go home. She would piece all the bones together into a complete map, from the mortal world to the mountain. The rules of that mountain had held sway for a thousand years. Her mother could not break them, and neither could her three thousand personal guards. But she could.
The register takes in no villains, only those who choose. Choose the right direction, and you can find your way. Choose the right direction, and you can make it home
