The Debts Written in My Bones

Mu Yana, nineteen, is the youngest junior reckoner at the Bone Ledger Temple, a closed xianxia sect where unpaid debts are carved as marks into a debtor's own skeleton. Her rare gift lets her read even hidden bone marks by touching a debtor's wrist, though each reading leaves her with nosebleeds, and she is forbidden from altering any mark without an elder's approval. When four powerful men arrive for the seasonal accounting, each expects leniency from a woman who looks exactly like Yana. Their records claim their debts were already settled five years earlier by her own hand, back when Yana was fourteen, unlicensed, and supposedly never allowed near debtors. As each man describes a different favor he has come to repay, Yana discovers a hidden mark on her own body, a forged cremation record, and a secret line written in her own blood inside the master ledger. The elders order her to inscribe a fresh debt on a foreign envoy's heart under her own name, forcing her to choose between the life she remembers and the forbidden identity stirring beneath her skin.