Chapter Four: My Shadow Boarded Before Me

When a second line appeared on the black coin, eighty thousand phones across the plaza chimed at once. [NEXT STOP: THE LIGHTLESS GROTTO, DUNHUANG. THE CORONA KEY WILL OPEN IN FORTY-EIGHT HOURS.] Lu saw the message on the phones of police officers, cleaners, and his director. They blinked; it became a weather alert, and no one remembered reading it. Only Isabel removed her battery. “The Succession is sending invitations through the broadcast,” she said. “Candidates see them. Ordinary people's shadows forget for them.” At last, she named the Noonday Council, which had managed the seams between reality and the Backlight for three centuries. Major eclipses served as succession trials. Isabel's disk marked her as one of seven surviving Observers.