Prologue: The Emperor’s Lanterns

The Gravekeeper’s candles, set atop crumbling tombstones, blew out in succession as he sprinted down a narrow corridor of the graveyard. He reached the end of his path, cornered by phantoms rising amidst the burial markers.

For nearly a century he’d blended in amongst the mortals of Kunlun City, assuming a variety of discrete, unremarkable identities. His latest had been a mistake, or perhaps it’d just been poor luck. Regardless, it hardly mattered. Not while the night was out, and the town was asleep.

The Gravekeeper was backed into the stone wall of a mausoleum dedicated to the Governor’s lineage.

Curse his eyes, the Gravekeeper thought. If he hadn’t invited the Emperor’s Lanterns, of all disagreeable bastards, it would’ve been an ordinary night spent in bliss devouring the abandoned corpses of slum-dwellers, and maybe even the occasional nibble of noble sweet-meat—they never noticed pieces of their dear old patriarchs missing, more concerned with matters of inheritance.

Desperation and fear were overcome by the Gravekeeper’s rage. He’d been doing everything right, feasting only upon the dead and hardly touching the living. Were the Heavens so cruel as to refuse even the lowliest of existences to the inhabitants of the night?

His form twisted. His face turned ashen, eyes blood-shot. The joints of his bones jutted out at extreme angles, piercing through gray, scaled flesh. He screamed as razor-sharp talons pushed cracked nails from his fingertips.

If I’m going to die, the Gravekeeper thought, his pointed hat falling to the dirt, I’ll drag these bastards to hell with me!

The graveyard was completely silent. Nobody would hear the battle, not with the Lantern’s paper talismans pasted all around the steel fencing of the cemetery. The product of accursed Sorcery from craven witches that had forsaken their own kind for the yoke of the Emperor.

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The Gravekeeper heard his end calling. He’d given up on reasoning with the Lantern long ago. Only a single thing made Lanterns smile; a dead demon.

Even if that demon had spent an eternity languishing as a miserable being stuck between humanity and the night. The Gravekeeper roared with renewed fury. He’d done everything right, and they weren’t even willing to listen to him. Suilin had been right. Humanity was not deserved mercy, no recompense from the night, they were to be hunted, to be slaughtered, to be—

The ring of phantoms circled closer around the Gravekeeper, but kept their distance, their tortured voices melting into vague whispers. A faint whistle echoed through the night. He took one last look at the city skyline above the graveyard, committing the beautiful red buildings with curved tile eaves and the mono-rail lines weaving between them to memory.

“You put me through quite the chase,” a soft voice cut through the incessant whispering of the phantoms. “To think, a corpse-eater was living under our noses this whole time. The capital has gone soft indeed.”

The Lantern appeared from the shadows between two tombstones, a silver-brimmed bowler hat on his head, a Western-style coat hanging from his shoulders. He stood with a pistol pointed at the Gravekeeper. Within it would undoubtedly be a demon-slaying bullet. It usually only ever took one, and Lanterns were rumored to be wicked shots.

“Wait,” the Gravekeeper said. “I- I can… please. I’ll just go. You’ll never see me in the capital again.”

He couldn’t make out the Lantern’s face, not while it was beneath the shadows of the moon-less night and the brim of his round hat, the distinguishing mark of a Lantern. But his piercing red eyes, the supposed eyes of a demon, were unmistakable.

Hapless mothers told their children tales of demons to frighten them straight. Demons hunted mortal men since time immemorial. The Heavenly Laws demanded everything within its domain to return to eventual dust, but demons did not age, not in the human sense, and only grew stronger, their malice more potent, with the years.

So, how did the Heavens right the balance between man and the night? The Gravekeeper stared down the cold, rifled barrel of the Lantern’s pistol and found his answer in a blinding flash