Behind the Doorplate

When Su Yuan wakes up in his rented room in Qingchuan City, all he can see outside the window is a frozen expanse of white. An anonymous text message tells him, "Head south. Don't look back." He boards an old, driverless bus and is carried to a city of eternal night called Mist City. In front of every building hangs a bronze plaque engraved with three seemingly absurd rules. There is only one way to survive: before the midnight bells ring, find the true way out hidden behind the rules.

Su Yuan has prosopagnosia and cannot recognize faces, but he can see "patches of emotion" floating above everyone's heads. In Mist City, this disability becomes his only advantage: monsters have no color.

But the deeper truth is that Mist City isn't a city at all. It's a mental prison that split off from Su Yuan after he fell into a coma seven years ago. Every plaque represents a wound deep inside him that has yet to heal. Clearing each plaque's challenge means stitching his soul back together.