Chapter Five: The Nameless City

The train carried them to a market where thousands of names hung above stalls. A merchant in a deer-skull mask guarded twelve bottles. Inside each curled the final character of a patient's name. "An echo without a childhood wants to buy twelve lives?" it asked. Shen Yao put down the blank nameplate. "I trade the original." The market fell silent. "From today on, I will not decide whether a consciousness is real by who was born or died first. Take my obsession with an original." The word ORIGINAL appeared on the plate and burned. The bottles shattered. Twelve names became silver fish and entered the map. But the Shepherd's whisper came from beneath the merchant's mask. "Good. If there is no original, no one can identify the counterfeit."