The rain in Beijing never ceases easily.
At two in the morning, torrential downpours lashed Qingya Street in the old quarter, the very air carrying a damp, acrid odour.
As I waded through puddles into the old apartment block where the fire had raged, my boots creaked beneath the water, as if warning me—something unnatural lurked within.
"Confirmed?" I asked.
A deep voice came from the forensic team: "Body on the third floor, bedroom. No external injuries, no signs of struggle... only, it's been burned to ashes."
Burned to ashes.
Those four words felt like an ice cube dropping into my chest.
In my seven years with the Criminal Investigation Department, I'd witnessed every manner of death—shootings, falls, dismemberments—but never a corpse consumed so utterly by fire.
My name is Evelyn Song, Detective Chief Inspector of the Criminal Investigation Unit at Lanhe Police Station.
And tonight, for the first time, I began to question the boundaries of this world.
---
A peculiar odour permeated the apartment corridor.
Not petrol, not gas, but the sickly sweet, acrid scent of "living tissue scorched by intense heat"—
a smell I'd encountered only once before in the forensic lab, where I'd nearly vomited.
The walls were charred black, light bulbs flickering. Each step felt like treading into someone else's nightmare.
When I pushed open the bedroom door and saw the body, my breath caught for two seconds.
On the bed, a woman's body lay curled in the foetal position, her skin melted into dark red ash.
But strangely—
the surrounding sheets, wooden floorboards, even the pillow remained untouched.
As if the flames recognised only her, consuming her alone.
"Spontaneous combustion?" I murmured.
Forensic pathologist Zhang Yuan shook his head. "Theoretically, human spontaneous combustion can't be this complete. Yet that's exactly what we found. No ignition source, no signs of external fuel."
He handed me a Polaroid photograph.
The charred human form, distorted by the flash into some bizarre prayer posture, fingers pointing skyward.
Staring at the image, I couldn't shake the feeling those fingers were pointing—behind me.
I whipped my head round. Nothing was there.
Only wind whistling through the window crack, stirring swirls of ash.
Yet in that instant, my heartbeat surged inexplicably.
A faint, almost imperceptible "ringing" exploded in my mind, like something whispering.
—"See me."
---
"Eve? Are you alright?" Zhang Yuan's voice drifted from afar.
I snapped back to reality and nodded. "Fine. It's just... the air feels off."
I pulled out my notebook and jotted down case keywords in the margin:
> Combustion without flame.
Single victim.
No ignition source.
Smell of burning lingers.
As I reached the line about the "burnt smell," my pen tip snapped.
Ink bled across the paper like a drop of blood.
The instant I looked up, the entire world suddenly—froze.
The lights flickered, turning an eerie white.
Electricity seemed to pulse through the air.
Then I saw her—the woman, standing beside her own charred body.
Her face was indistinct, skin cracked as if smoked.
But her eyes—those eyes were clear, cold, despairing, staring straight at me.
"...Can you see me?"
The voice didn't reach my ears; it exploded inside my mind.
I froze.
Reason told me this was impossible.
Yet the voice grew clearer, trembling with fear and a desperate plea.
"I didn't set myself alight... He's here... He's still here."
I tried to retreat, but my body wouldn't move.
The woman's shadow stretched and twisted on the floor—splitting into a deeper shadow, as if shed from her body.
The shadow raised its head.
It had no features, yet I could sense its laughter.
The next instant, all the lights went out simultaneously.
---
"Evelyn! Come out now!"
Zhang Yuan's shout echoed down the corridor as the beam of his torch swept across the door.
I practically stumbled out, drenched in cold sweat.
"Just now—" I tried to say "someone was here," but my throat felt constricted.
All I could manage was: "That smell. It's getting stronger."
Zhang Yuan frowned. "Smell? What smell?"
He sniffed the air, a puzzled expression crossing his face.
"Nothing at all."
Only then did I realise—only I could smell it.
That sickly sweet, burnt aroma was now seeping through the air into my lungs, like scorched memories.
I forced myself to calm down.
"Check this building's electrical system and the residents' backgrounds. What was the victim's name?"
"Wu Jia, thirty years old, single, advertising designer."
Zhang Yuan leafed through the file. "Neighbours say she hasn't left the flat in days. Only at night did someone hear her speaking, as if she were—'begging for forgiveness'."
Forgiveness.
The word sent a chill down my spine.
I turned to look at the bedroom door.
The flames had long since died out, leaving only charred remains and silence within.
Yet I saw it clearly—in the ashes by the door, a trail of footprints.
Black, still faintly smoking.
Stretching from the bedside to the doorway, then beyond—outwards.
"Zhang Yuan," I murmured, my voice barely audible, "the corpse... were the feet intact?"
"Feet?" He faltered. "No. Her lower body was most thoroughly burned. The bones were shattered."
—Then what had I seen?
---
The rain fell harder.
I stood beneath the eaves outside the building, my fingers still trembling.
The wind whipped dust from the ground, stinging my face.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
In that instant, the world fell silent.
I heard the rain slow, the air thickening like water.
Then—images flooded my mind.
No, images of her.
Flames. Wails.
Wu Jia sat on the floor, lighting a stack of paper talismans with a lighter.
As the ashes swirled, she looked up in terror, gazing towards some invisible point in the air—
"You promised... you wouldn't come back!"
The flames surged back into her body.
The next second, she was engulfed in fire.
Before her stood a shadowy figure, its outline blurred, resembling a man's form.
He stood within the flames, his voice low and echoing:
> "I never left."
—The vision shattered.
I opened my eyes to find myself kneeling on the ground, hands trembling.
The sound of rain flooded back into reality.
I stared at my hands, a searing mark imprinted on my palms.
As if someone had grasped my hands and burned them with fire.
In that moment, I knew what I had seen was no illusion.
I had glimpsed the "memories" of the dead.
Vision Sense—
It awoke that night.
And from that moment, I could no longer pretend this world belonged solely to the living.
---
(End of Chapter One)