Chapter Four: The Man Without a Shadow

Every ray carried the fiber scars of burned death registers. Thousands of incomplete characters appeared around Ye. They did not belong to him and demanded no sacrifice. They merely showed the way. The city's shadows released the living and flowed into the record. Lines of scorched names surfaced. The fourth seal revealed its command: *Bind the shadows of ten thousand to the body of one.* Beneath it, Lin wrote the reversal: *No one body shall remember in place of ten thousand.* The net broke. Stolen memories returned. Zhou fixed the surveyor's name into the ledger with her T-square. “If my turn comes, don't trust what you feel about me. Trust the trouble I leave behind.” Lin almost laughed, then saw his shadow had not returned.