Chapter 16 · The Empty Ferry Ticket

The market doors opened without hinges.

They split down the middle of the alley, two slabs of black glass peeling apart like wet skin. Beyond them, the city had become a reflection of itself. Buildings leaned at impossible angles. Streetlamps burned underwater-blue. Rain fell upward in thin silver threads, vanishing into a sky crowded with the pale silhouettes of things that had never been born.

Lin Lan pressed the memory deed against her ribs.

The paper was warm with her blood.

“Move,” Soren said.

His voice came from behind the porcelain mask, but the mask was no longer on his face. He had torn it away when the contract revealed his mark, leaving a black sigil crawling from his jaw to his collarbone. The lines pulsed with the same slow rhythm as the ink on the deed.

Tavi spat blood onto the cobblestones. “You always say that right before everything gets worse.”

“Then you should be used to it.”

A bell rang somewhere inside the opening market.

Not a market bell. A ferry bell.

One deep note rolled through the alley and shook the windows. Lin felt it inside her teeth.