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The Opera Soul
Old opera player He Qi sings yin operas for the dead, taking on their unfinished burdens. Beneath the stage lies his senior brother, silenced and killed by a forbidden play Qi once goaded him to sing. For forty years the stage sounds by night, demanding Qi finish the brother's last line—and when he does, he must go down to keep him company.
The Water Script
Qin Shouzhuo, the Water-Script Master, unravels others' nightmares by writing away his own memories into a black ink jar, believing he bears their fright. After he soothes a man's recurring drowning dream, the water stirs. On the eve of First Frost he finds, on the surface, his own hand erasing his life stroke by stroke—the hand of He Jiu, the villager he once drowned to hide a sin. Water hides nothing; it returns everything.
The Lantern-Maker
A lantern-maker spends his life crafting soul-lanterns for the dead, and with each one his own shadow shortens a notch-which he blames on the wear of his craft. Only at seventy-one does he learn the lanterns never held light, only the shadow he surrendered year by year; and that the dead soul waiting at the bridge, lantern in hand, is the one he himself burned inside it long ago.
The Bone Granny
Old Granny Qin gathers the nameless bones of the river shoal and listens, night after night, to the injustices they whisper. For forty years she has spoken for the dead — until one autumn night every bone speaks at once and names her the murderer she covered up with a single line: 'it was all just to get by.' They point her to the empty coffin she readied long ago.