Chapter 25 · The Fracture in Her Name

The sky over Riftport came apart in layers.

Blue fire peeled across the clouds. Cannon shells climbed through the smoke, vanished for half a heartbeat, and came down as white-hot spears. The vault shuddered beneath Xia Lan’s boots. Somewhere above them, an entire watchtower collapsed with a groan of metal and stone.

She barely heard it.

The Ashfall Core had reached inside her.

Not her mind this time. Deeper.

A thread was being pulled from the center of her chest, thin as silk and sharp as wire. Every inch it slipped free took something with it—the shape of a handwritten character, the sound of a woman calling her home, the taste of sugared tea on a winter morning.

Then a word surfaced.

Xia.

It flickered in the darkness ahead of her, rendered in pale gold letters.

Xia Lan.

The second character fractured.

Lan.

A warning appeared beneath it.

TWELFTH FRACTURE CONFIRMED. NEXT REBOOT: PRIMARY IDENTITY MARKER—NAME—WILL BE REMOVED.

“No.”

Her voice came out small beneath the roar of the collapsing vault.

She reached for the glowing characters. Her fingers passed through them, and the name scattered like ash.

“No. You don’t get to take that.