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The first thing Xia Lan felt was rain.
Not the soft, apologetic rain that tapped against apartment windows while she streamed until three in the morning. This rain struck like thrown gravel. It slid beneath her collar, ran down her spine, and filled her mouth with the metallic taste of blood.
The second thing she felt was the rope.
It bit into both wrists, pinning them behind her to a splintered wooden post. Her shoulders screamed whenever she shifted. Beneath her bare feet, the execution platform shuddered in the wind, its boards slick with black water and darker stains.
A bell tolled somewhere beyond the storm.
Once.
Twice.
The crowd answered with a roar.
“Monster!”
“Burn the ash-blood!”
“Let the sky-devil die!”
Xia opened her eyes.
Gray sky churned over a city she did not recognize. Towers of pale stone rose behind the square, their rooftops crowned with iron spikes. Blue fire burned in iron cages along the streets, each flame bending sideways beneath the gale. Banners snapped from the walls—white, red, and black, marked with a symbol that looked like a crown split down the middle.
A man in a lacquered mask stood before her.
He wore ceremonial armor polished bright enough to reflect the storm. A strip of crimson silk hung from his shoulders, soaked through and plastered to his chest. In one gloved hand, he held a narrow execution blade. In the other, a scroll that was quickly dissolving in the rain.
“Xia Lan,” he announced, and the sound of her name struck harder than the weather. “By decree of the Ashfall Crown, you are condemned for the murder of thirty-seven soldiers, the sabotage of the northern gate, and the attempted assassination of Inspector Ivra Kohn.”
Xia stared at him.
The name meant nothing.
The body she occupied did.
Her wrists were too thin. Her fingers were long, the nails tapering into translucent points. Wet silver hair clung to her cheeks. When she looked down, she saw a narrow throat, a torn gray prison dress, and skin so pale it seemed almost blue beneath the lightning.
Then the executioner raised his blade, and she noticed the reflection in the steel.
Her eyes were silver.
Not gray. Not pale blue. Silver, bright as coins under moonlight, with narrow black pupils cutting through their centers.
“What the hell?” she whispered.
The executioner’s masked head tilted.
The crowd fell briefly silent.
Her voice sounded wrong. Higher than she expected, raw from disuse, carrying a faint harmonic edge that seemed to vibrate in her teeth.
A man near the front spat onto the platform. “Hear it speak.”
Another voice shouted, “Don’t let it cast a spell!”
Xia’s pulse slammed against her throat.
She remembered a monitor. A headset. The blue glow of a tactical map. She remembered telling twelve thousand viewers that the eastern flank was bait, that nobody should chase the cavalry into the ravine.
Then a flash of white.
A truck horn.
A pain so vast it had swallowed the world.
After that—nothing.
No hospital. No afterlife. No explanation for the scaffold beneath her or the strangers demanding her death.
The masked man lifted the blade.
Xia looked past him.
Four soldiers guarded the stairs. Two carried hooked spears. One held a crossbow under his cloak. A fifth stood behind the executioner, closer than the others, with a ring of keys hanging from his belt. The square was packed, but the rain had made the stones slick. The blue fire cages were mounted on chains. The leftmost chain had a fractured link.
Her mind sorted the details without permission.
Angles. Distance. Weight. Timing.
A game map unfolded inside her skull.
The platform was a choke point. The soldiers were clustered too tightly. The storm reduced visibility and made ranged weapons unreliable. The crowd was a volatile obstacle. The executioner’s blade was her only immediate weapon.
She had played worse openings.
The executioner began the sentence’s final line. Xia twisted her wrists, testing the rope.
Wet hemp. Tight knot. No room to pull free.
The blade descended.
She dropped.
Steel screamed against the post where her neck had been. Xia threw her shoulder into the executioner’s knees. He staggered with a startled grunt, and she slammed her forehead into the lower edge of his mask.
The impact burst white across her vision.
The executioner fell backward.
Xia caught the blade before it hit the boards.
“Stop her!”
The nearest spear lunged.
She rolled sideways. The hooked tip tore through her dress and scored a hot line across her ribs. Xia ignored the pain, planted one bare foot against the soldier’s ankle, and yanked.
He went down hard.
She seized the spear shaft with both bound hands and kicked the second soldier in the knee. Bone cracked beneath the storm’s thunder. He screamed, dropped his weapon, and clutched the joint.
The crowd exploded.
Some people ran. Others surged forward, hungry for a closer look. Their panic pressed against the barricades, turning the square into a living, shoving wall.
Xia spun toward the stairs.
The crossbowman had drawn.
She saw the motion before the weapon fired—the tightening elbow, the slight dip of the shoulder, the dark bolt aligned with her chest.
She grabbed the first fallen soldier by his collar and dragged him into the line of fire.
The bolt punched through his throat.
Blood struck Xia’s cheek, hot even in the cold rain.
For one heartbeat, the world narrowed to the dying man’s eyes. Surprise. Betrayal. Then the light left them.
Xia’s stomach clenched.
She had played soldiers as icons on a screen. She had calculated casualties in percentages and watched entire units vanish beneath an enemy ultimate.
This was different.
This man was warm against her hand.
The crossbowman fumbled for another bolt.
Xia threw the execution blade.
It crossed the space between them and buried itself beneath his jaw.
The crowd screamed.
She did not wait to see him fall. She rushed the stairs, dragging her bound hands over the edge of the platform until the rope caught on a protruding nail. She yanked with everything the strange body possessed.
The rope snapped.
Pain tore through her wrists, but freedom came with it.
A spear struck the boards where her foot had been. Xia stepped inside the soldier’s reach, drove her elbow into his nose, and twisted the shaft from his hands. The other soldier swung wildly. She caught his wrist, used his momentum, and sent him headfirst into the railing.
He hung there, groaning.
The masked executioner rose behind her.
“You,” he rasped. “What are you?”
Xia turned.
Lightning opened the sky.
For an instant, the entire square became white: the towers, the banners, the frightened faces behind the barricades, the executioner’s blade gleaming in his fist.
And behind Xia, something vast unfolded.
A sound like wet silk tearing filled the platform.
The executioner froze.
So did Xia.
From beneath her shoulder blades, translucent wings snapped open with violent force. They were not feathered. They stretched in thin, veined membranes, silver at the bones and faintly blue at the edges. Rain struck them and broke into beads that rolled along the delicate structure like mercury.
The wings spread wider than the scaffold.
The wind caught them.
Xia felt it—not against her skin, but through her bones. Every current in the storm became visible. Invisible pressure lines rushed around her, curling over rooftops and between towers. Her body understood the air before her mind did.
She was no longer human.
The realization did not arrive gently. It dropped into her chest like a stone.
The executioner backed away.
“Skyborn,” someone whispered.
Then the square erupted.
“Kill it!”
“Archers!”
“Ring the ward bells!”
Blue fire flared along the streets. Bells began hammering from every tower. More soldiers poured through the northern archway, shields raised, boots splashing through puddles dyed pink with blood.
Xia stared at the wings extending from her body.
Their membranes trembled with every breath.
A soldier lifted a hooked chain.
Her instincts moved first.
Xia drove one wing downward.
The blast of air knocked three men from their feet. The executioner slammed into the post. The soldier with the chain flew over the barricade and vanished into the crowd.
Xia stumbled.
The movement had taken almost nothing from her muscles, yet the effort left a cold emptiness beneath her ribs.
Limited resource, her gamer’s mind supplied. Stamina or mana. Probably both.
Great. New body, hostile civilization, unknown mechanics.
The first rank charged.
Xia ran toward them.
A spearhead flashed. She folded one wing tight against her back, slipped beneath the thrust, and drove the stolen spear into the gap between a soldier’s breastplate and shoulder guard. She ripped it free and used the shaft to vault over a shield wall.
She landed among them.
The soldiers turned too slowly.
Her wings struck left, then right. One man crashed into another. Xia ducked a sword, seized the attacker’s belt, and pulled him into the path of a second blade. Steel bit through leather and flesh.
Someone grabbed her hair.
She twisted, kicked backward, and heard a grunt. A gauntleted fist caught her across the mouth. The platform tilted beneath her vision. Blood filled her tongue.
The soldier raised his sword.
Xia saw the cracked chain above him.
She lunged not for the soldier, but for the blue fire cage.
Her fingers caught the hanging chain. She wrapped one wing around the nearest post and pulled with her entire body.
The fractured link broke.
The cage dropped.
Blue fire poured across the scaffold in a sheet of impossible cold. Soldiers screamed as the flames crawled over their armor. The executioner stumbled through them, his lacquered mask splitting as heat warped the metal.
Xia threw herself over the edge.
The wings opened.
For one terrifying second, she fell.
Then the storm caught her.
She rose three feet above the platform, spinning helplessly. The city wheeled below her, all red banners and black rooftops. Wind screamed through the membranes of her wings. Her stomach lurched.
Not flying, she realized.
Gliding. Control the current.
She angled her left wing.
The world stopped spinning.
Xia shot sideways through the rain and slammed into the roof of a low market stall. Wood collapsed beneath her. She rolled through broken crates, hit the stone street, and lay there gasping.
Behind her, horns blared. Soldiers shouted. The scaffold burned with blue fire.
She pushed herself up.
The square had become a maze of bodies, overturned carts, and fleeing civilians. At the far end, a narrow alley opened between two buildings. Beyond it, she could see the jagged silhouette of the city wall.
Escape route.
She ran.
A bolt struck the stones beside her hand.
Another tore through the edge of her wing.
Pain flashed so sharply that her knees buckled. The membrane quivered, leaking luminous blood. She bit down on a cry and threw herself behind an overturned cart.
Three archers advanced through the rain.
No cover beyond the cart. No time to heal. The alley was twenty yards away.
Xia looked at the broken stall around her. A stack of oil jars. A rusted lantern. A loose axle pin.
Her fingers closed around the pin.
She kicked the nearest jar.
Oil spread across the street.
The archer fired.
Xia struck the lantern against the cart’s metal rim.
Flame bloomed.
The oil ignited in a rushing orange line. The archers stumbled backward, shouting. Xia vaulted over the cart, wings tucked tight, and sprinted for the alley as fire reflected in her silver eyes.
A hand caught her ankle.
She hit the ground hard. A soldier crawled from beneath the cart, one side of his face burned raw. His fingers locked around her leg.
“Monster,” he hissed.
Xia drove her heel into his wrist once. Twice.
He did not release her.
She reached for the nearest thing—his belt, his knife, anything—when her fingers struck metal beneath his coat.
A ring.
Cracked down the center, dark iron etched with a symbol she could not read.
The soldier’s face changed.
Fear replaced hatred.
“No,” he whispered. “Not that.”
Xia tore the ring free.
The soldier screamed as though she had ripped out something deeper than flesh.
The alley swallowed her.
She staggered beneath an overhanging roof, rainwater cascading inches from her face. Behind her, the square roared with fire and pursuit. Her wounded wing dragged against the wall, each movement sending needles through her back.
She looked down at the ring.
Its surface was dull and cracked.
Then the metal warmed.
A thin red line appeared in the fracture.
Xia’s breath stopped.
The line spread across the ring, forming symbols in blood-bright light. One digit. Then another.
13
The number rose above the metal, glowing in the rain.
Somewhere behind her, a bell rang thirteen times.
On the final toll, a voice spoke inside her skull.
“Reset available.”
Xia stared into the storm.
The voice continued, calm and merciless.
“Memories remaining: twelve.”