Chapter Three: The Street Written into Being

Let her bear the nameless weight of ten thousand and seal ten days beyond the calendar.* When Su touched her name, ten bloody fingerprints surfaced. Every door in the lane opened. Faceless figures bowed to her. Memory returned without mercy. Four centuries ago, Su had been seventeen. The provincial governor locked the city gates to suppress desperate refugees, and fire burned for ten days. To conceal the massacre, the court ordered those ten days deleted from history. Too many had died; collective memory resisted the lie, tearing reality open. Su Henian was forced to make his daughter the First Forgotten. Once the city successfully forgot her, that single act became the lock upon thousands of erased names.