Ink-Stained Legacy: The Relic Transcriber

Urban supernatural | Case-of-the-week mysteries | Shades of human nature | Intense push and pull | Memory possession | Suspense and mystery | Not a power fantasy | Mild horror | Ensemble cast

Synopsis:

Su Yan runs an old document transcription studio tucked deep in an ancient alley.

She cannot see wandering spirits, but she has a talent that feels like a curse.

As soon as her fingertips touch something written by the hand of someone who has died, be it a diary, a family letter, an account book, or a final letter, the dead person's lingering memories, joys and sorrows, resentment, and fear surge into her mind.

Others see ghosts. She “lives through someone else's death.”

To keep her mind from being devoured by these foreign memories, she has only one option: transcribe every memory without missing a single word onto specially made rice paper, and strip away the lingering thoughts.

She cannot catch ghosts or ward off evil. The wolf-hair brush in her hand is her only means of self-protection.

One unsolved case after another finds its way to her. Lu Shen, a detective with the major crimes unit, is a staunch materialist who believes only in physical evidence, traces, and logic.

At first, he regards Su Yan as nothing more than a specialist handwriting consultant. But time and again, the strange truths revealed by the deceased's belongings overturn everything he believes.

The ones causing harm are not necessarily spirits.

Hidden beneath the creases of the pages are, more often, the greed, lies, and murderous intent of the living.

And locked away at the very bottom of her safe is a black notebook left behind by her mother, one she cannot open.

Every time she takes on the lingering thoughts of someone who has died, another fragmentary, broken image appears in her mind.

There is a group of people who have been searching for those with the gift of “transcription,”