The source of calamity in this world is known as the [Turbid Root].
It does not feed on blood, nor does it conjure evil from nothing. It takes root only when people shift an unbearable price onto a single person and tacitly allow that person to be completely forgotten.
When no one in the world knows your name anymore, and no one remembers anything about you, you disappear from the world. No remains, no grave. Even those who once loved you will never know what they have lost.
For a thousand years, only the Torchbearer lineage has stood against it. Each generation of torchbearers completes the handover through death, leaving no names and receiving no glory. They pass on only their skills, memories, sins, and unfinished business.
On a rainy night in Linjin City, the names of seventeen bodies in the morgue vanish all at once. Gu Changming, a keeper of names, receives the flame left behind by the seventy-second torchbearer, along with a thousand-year-old unfinished struggle.
Everyone tells him:
He will be the last to carry the torch.
But the memories of those who came before may not be the truth, and the measures heroes leave behind may rest on the sacrifices of countless forgotten people.
If the way to save the world is still to make one person bear every cost
then how are the Torchbearers any different from the Turbid Root?
