The Name Sacrifice

In ancient times, everything had a name, and rituals established order. Names were power; sacrifices were shackles.

Now the incense of the mortal world has gone cold, ancestral halls lie in ruins, and graves have been moved. Countless nameless victims who died unnatural deaths have broken free of the constraints of names and forms, becoming horrors that haunt the world.

Maoshan talismans, pacts with the Chuma spirits, corpse-driving in western Hunan, and tales of rules and taboos: at their core, all magic is a pact of names and forms made with the uncanny. Borrow its power, and you incur a debt of humanity. The higher your cultivation, the farther you drift from being human.

My name was erased from the registers of the Underworld. I am the world's only Restorer of Names. I walk between yin and yang, restoring names to fierce ghosts and rites to evil spirits. But the more true names I restore to the uncanny, the more I glimpse a cataclysm brewing since time immemorial. The old order is about to collapse, ten thousand horrors will emerge, and all living beings are caught in a game of names and forms.