Chapter 13 · The Ash Leads Back

The ash is still under my nails when I wake up.

I didn't sleep. I sat on the edge of my bed for four hours staring at the photo Lin left on my nightstand. Me, dying in his arms. Qin Yi's shadow in the corner. The timestamp: three months ago. The same night I burned.

Except I didn't burn. He pulled me out.

And then I came back and remembered burning anyway.

My head hurts. The facts don't line up. But the ash does. I scraped it off the photo's corner this morning and it smells exactly like the fire I died in. Not wood. Not gasoline. Something chemical. Industrial. The kind of smell that gets into your lungs and stays.

I need to see the site.

Claire texts me at nine. *You good? Lin left two hours ago. Didn't say where.*

I don't answer. I'm already in a cab heading east toward the old district where my parents' first warehouse used to be. The one they sold off five years ago when the company started bleeding money. Lin bought it through a shell corp six months ago. I didn't know that in my first life.