Chapter Four: An Alliance of Blood Debt

The flash froze the darkness beyond it. Hundreds of faces stopped mid-surge, while the maid remained free. Paper names flew backward from her mouth as if reeled in by invisible thread. Pei Du slammed the black door. The closing edge severed a final scream. Silence returned. The exposure counter dropped to eight. Pain arrived slowly, a needle entering behind Jianyue's ear. She braced herself against the wall and realized she no longer knew where she had spent her nineteenth birthday. Yet someone else had been present. She remembered a pale hand lighting candles, the scent of cedar, and herself asking, Why do you come every year? The person's face had been cut out. She looked at Pei Du. “Were you with me on my nineteenth birthday?”