No Name in Heaven

In the Dayao Nine Lands, every person receives a common name at birth and undergoes the Name Rite at sixteen. Only when one's name is inscribed in the heavenly registry can they kindle their fate lamp, forge a life contract, and gain recognition from heaven and earth. Ji Ye waited sixteen years—only to be met with four words: "No such person." His household register begins to fade. The rooms he once occupied leave behind no traces. Even those who knew him gradually forget his face. In seven days, he will lose all right to "exist." To survive, Ji Ye breaches the Guijin Pit, the burial ground of nameless bones. There, he hears the myriad unfulfilled promises of the dead: a soldier's final letter never sent home, a victim's plea for buried crimes to see daylight, and those who, even in death, refused to accept heaven's verdict of rank and worth. Ji Ye discovers he can take up these dying vows, borrowing the deepest skill each deceased once possessed. But every vow he accepts also saddles him with the debts of that life; should he fail to fulfill them, he will not only lose fragments of his own memory—everyone who has ever witnessed him will forget him as well. From a border-town laborer to the Nine Lands Academy, from a sunken dynasty to the ancient tombs among the stars, Ji Ye walks the path of demanding justice for the nameless. Step by step, he closes in on the truth behind the heavenly registry: that the so-called unassailable will of heaven is nothing more than the first answer a group of people wrote long ago—just to keep the world going.