All Souls’ Zoo

A travel vlogger stays behind at Blackwood Zoo on a sweltering All Souls' Eve, live-streaming from the primate house, when a lone macaque begins kowtowing to her. Master Shanyuan, a defrocked Jesuit who studied Taoism, warns that the creature is one of the Old Ones, its yang lifespan run dry, and that it is begging to borrow her life. She kowtows back, out-bowing the monkey by forty-seven strikes until it collapses, only for it to return from the Underworld's antechamber and give chase.

Shanyuan's advice comes with a price: talismans from the Azure Sky Priory's shop are sold out, and a custom sigil costs a generous donation. The park is closed, the paths will grow longer, and the parrots speak of a man who is not alive. Ahead waits the Tiger Territory, where a reading of the coins may reveal what the road holds.