The Chang’an Secrets: Broken Vows at the Shrine

Chang'an has four bureaus: the Foresight Bureau, the Wind Bureau, the Water Bureau, and the Incense Bureau. After the Foresight Bureau was erased from the records, the Incense Bureau became the last flame entrusted with guarding people's wishes and severing them. Reading the path in broken incense, discerning hearts from ash, tracking the leaps of wish-flames: these are the duties of Shen Luotang, a wish-severer of the Incense Bureau. One night, a deserted temple in the southern part of the city erupted in a fire with no bodies in sight. When the flames died, all that remained was a ring of incense ash split open by wish-force and traces of thoughts on the stone wall that should not have been there. Soon, a second and then a third case of severed wishes followed. Every victim's wish-flame had suddenly turned back on them before their wish could be fulfilled, and the incense trail pointed to a hidden thread someone had rewritten. The deeper she investigated, the more certain she became: someone was using incense to kill, severing other people's wishes to forge their own fate. And that hand was somehow connected to her sister, who had vanished years ago. The Incense Bureau's duty was to sever wishes, but this time, she first had to speak the words the dead had been cut off from saying. When a wish is forcibly severed, the incense turns on you. When the incense speaks, Chang'an will know no peaceful night.