Chen Zhu

Chen Zhu grew up beside Bai Xue'er, who called him Dazhu. By the old locust tree at the well in Pangzhen's back streets the two of them buried a little clay jar as children and made a wish over it.

Before his mother died, she hoped he would use a certain necklace to marry the Bai girl from the next village.

He was gone from the town two years, and came back in a martial man's gear, rank with blood and road dust. Aunt Qin who sold buns at the town gate, old Ku the herbalist, and the villagers Fang Li, Deng Guijiang and a nameless farmer all died by his hand.

He was a Maskwalker now, and he worked for the Order: the squad in the creek valley answered to him, and he wrote to it ordering the recovery of a lost blade, warning that Master Huang must not hear of it. Afraid of killing again, he set down every life he took, and called the page his ledger of atonement.

The ledger went missing, and he begged Soul to bring it back from the caves. Once it was in his hands he laughed and said the old Chen Zhu could die with the past — he was about to be reborn.

When he was struck down he left an old necklace and a small key to a courtyard in Pangzhen's back streets. The necklace stirred the female puppet at his side: Bai Xue'er's mind was inside it.