The heavy library door slammed shut behind Chen Mo—a reverberation like the sealing of hell’s gate—still vibrating in his marrow. The librarian’s eyes, glowing with unnatural, cataract-grey light, and the silent, soul-piercing curse—“The child scorched ten years ago… has clawed back from oblivion…”—clung like parasitic worms to his frayed nerves. He sprawled on the corridor’s cold, polished terrazzo, the tearing agony in his right shoulder and the crushing exhaustion washing over him in nauseating waves. Each breath tasted of blood and the library’s miasma of decaying paper and chemical preservatives.
The sweat-slicked scrap of old newsprint clenched in his left hand burned like a brand. The blurred photograph—the burning building, the small, curled form on the stretcher, the charred
