Chapter Three: Light Sent Seven Years Ago

Xingyao looked up at the Shen Yan reading this memory. She should not have been able to see an observer seven years in the future, yet she walked directly toward him. “Yan, if you have come here again, I failed.” She reached through the starlight and touched his forehead. Pain burned through his skull. Images flooded him: streets without a sun, thousands of crossed-out names, a colossal gate sleeping beneath the river. At their center, Xingyao knelt before the eight-year-old Shen Yan and asked, “Will you forget your sister so they can live?” The child nodded. The vision broke. Shen Yan found himself beside the sundial in the ruined observatory, Li Wu prying away his hand. He could no longer remember the color of his father’s coffin.