Chapter 40 · I Name What Comes After Ash

The first coffin opened with a sound like a blade being drawn across bone.

Then another answered it.

All around the plaza, iron lids slammed against the stone. Pale vapor spilled from the compartments beneath them, crawling low across the floor and wrapping around the ankles of the dead soldiers who had stood there moments ago. One corpse twitched. Its fingers scraped the ground. A second body jerked upright with a wet metallic click in its throat.

Above the execution platform, the Ashfall Core pulsed.

TEN MINUTES TO CONTINENTAL ERASURE.

The words burned across the black crystal in bands of red light.

Ivra Kohn stared at them, her face reflected in the polished surface: powdered skin, bloodless lips, and eyes too wide for the mask of authority she had worn for years.

No. Not authority anymore.

Exposure.

The Core had already peeled away her titles, her carefully manufactured history, her speeches about national defense. It had shown the plaza the command records in Xia Lan's voice.