Chapter Five: A Murder That Never Happened

Then the cost came. Shen Yan remembered Xingyao shielding him from the bookcase, but not who carried him to the hospital afterward. A warm hand had existed along that road. Now it was blank. “Come back!” Li Wu called from far away. He left Star Memory and turned his camera on the mirror array. The flash repeated until the engineer's true attack hung in the air. Forced to witness their own lie, the Name-Takers' masks cracked. Li Wu stared at a woman behind the younger Zhou in the projection. Names covered her neck, and her face resembled Li Wu's. “My mother. The council said she was erased for treason.” The woman gave an old bronze marker to Xingyao. “The entrance must belong neither to the council nor to humanity. Let the two children decide.”