Shen Du can hear the sounds the dead leave behind.
They aren’t ghosts speaking, but “echoes of the dead”: fragments of sound left at the scene in the final moments of a person’s life. The shrill squeal of tires at a crash site, one last scream at a crime scene, the long, flat tone of a heart monitor beside a hospital bed. They’re like grooves carved into space. Ordinary people can’t hear them, but Shen Du can.
He uses this ability to determine causes of death, and has made a name for himself in a small circle.
Until one day, he hears a sound he should never have been able to hear: his own name coming from inside the skull of a corpse that has been dead for seven years.
From then on, he discovers that echoes of the dead aren’t just “sounds from the past.” Some are still alive. They can crawl, bite, or disguise themselves as the voices of the living to lure you inside.
Shen Du also discovers something else. He can use specific sounds to “strike back” at these living echoes: resonate with them, shatter them, or devour them.
The first ghost he killed took just three notes.
