Movable Type

Everyone lives inside The Chronicle of Quelling the Strange, a living manuscript printed with movable type. The obsessions of all living beings guide the hand that writes it. Those who loathe calamities write taboos that bind people for life; those who despise suffering erase every sorrowful memory; those who fear strange spirits discard entire timelines. All erased beings become remnants of strange text, gnawing at the foundations of the present world. Lin Yanqiu, the last heir to a century-old movable-type shop, becomes the world’s only “Wordbreaker” after his grandfather’s mysterious death. He can see the manuscript that spans heaven and earth, and use jujube-wood type and a carving knife to alter the rules and fate already written. Change a single word, and he can save a hundred people from oblivion or reverse a death set in stone. But an iron law hangs over him like a blade: for every word he changes, he must permanently forget a part of his own life. The Bureau of Text and Seal marks him as the source of ten thousand strange spirits and hunts him across a thousand miles. The Copyists revere him as the last typo before the perfect final draft, and close in on him at every turn. The whole world sees him as a madman and an outcast. Yet he still grips his ebony carving knife, carving a place to live for every forgotten being in this doomed manuscript. Even if, in the end, he completely forgets who he is.