Chapter 8: The Ground Remembers

The Vault let So Cheong go the way a held breath is released—reluctantly, and incomplete. At the top of the stairs, the sun struck them as if they had been buried for a month. They raised a hand against it, and the furnace in their core settled into a low, steady simmer—a live coal wrapped in ash. The name Un Hui had shown them no longer pressed against the inside of their skull, but it had left t...