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The Geomancer
Shen Que, the geomancer of Mianlu town, has set burial acupoints for thirty years. When the wealthy He family asks him to re-seal the 'Rhino Moon' living spot, his compass needle snaps and points to an abandoned well — where a man was once buried alive to feed the hungry earth. The living spot has claimed the pointer's pulse; now it demands Shen himself. After he vanishes, a bent figure with a compass is said to haunt the town gate at midnight, pointing wanderers not home but to the well.
The Storyteller
In Qingluo, Yan has told 'The Mute Girl's Crossing' for thirty years. A scribe records it and finds the tale growing new verses nightly; hearers lose their voices and return as river-lanterns with sewn mouths. He learns the tale tells the teller — the mute girl borrows listeners' voices, not water-song, to walk free. When Yan strikes the waking-block a third time, she steps from the page and takes his voice. The scribe finds his own name at the tale's end. A note from the Midnight Records.
The Stone Eyes
Mo the stone-mason of Shenxi town carves river-guardian beasts whose eyes he must seal with his own blood—thirty-seven over forty years. When a girl drowns and every beast loses its eyes overnight, he learns the river's drowned do not want a substitute: they want the mason whose blood bound them. His vanished master had been taken first. By a storm-lit quarry the half-carved general bears Mo's own face, waiting to be sealed.
The Night-Ferry Teahouse
A fleeing bookkeeper shelters in a riverside teahouse that opens only after midnight, serving a seven-herb brew to the ghosts of those who never came home. He learns the house is kept by stove-keepers bound by a soul-binding tea they can never leave — and that his own name is already in the ledger. A lingering dread.
The Indigo Dyer
In riverside Wudu, old dyer Lan Jiu has dyed soul-cloths for the dead for fifty-eight years. But fifty years ago he drowned a wronged maid's spirit into his indigo vats to brighten his river-calming cloth—and the blue has been climbing back out ever since, until her brother comes seeking the cloth and the vats rise.
The Crack-Mender
Fan Jiu, a crack-mender of the riverside town Tongdu, seals a cracked soul-jar holding a drowned boy's spirit. The leak he closes finds a new vessel in his own fissured body, and the more bowls he has mended over thirty years, the further the cold spreads — until half the town's wares weep black water and its people dream of a white-faced boy at the river's heart, asking to be let out. A note from the Midnight Records.
The Paper-Maker
For forty years the paper-maker Gou has given his funeral effigies living eyes by breathing on them. Hired to craft a companion for a drowned boy, he finds the figure now wears his own face—and the river-dead, having claimed his breath, are slowly turning him to paper. A lingering dread.
The Night-Lantern
A blind man sells night-lanterns that light no road but only the shadows at a buyer's back. The more he sells, the longer the shadows that follow him home — until the longest proves to be his own dead, never-named blind master. A lingering dread.