Chronicles of the Lantern Bearer on the Long Night

The sun died three hundred years ago. Since then, night has known no dawn, and humanity has kept warm by burning its own memories. Memories are currency, fuel, and identity. The poor sell memories for bread; the rich buy them to experience other lives. Wen Deng, a lamp oil worker in Gray Harbor, saves every penny to buy back the memories his sister sold three years ago, before she vanished without a trace. Then he discovers something no one believes: the dead leave embers of memory in lamp wicks, and he can hear them, and set them alight. The old man from the Fire Administration says debts must be repaid. Wen Deng says, “Then let’s keep a ledger.”