The sky was dead gray when I woke up.
Cracks spread across the broken dome like spiderwebs, cutting the heavens into mismatched pieces. The bleached clouds hung low, heavy as a wet shroud over these ruins. Wind howled through shattered temple pillars, making a sound like some forgotten deity muttering in its sleep.
I lay on crumbling stone steps, half-buried in dust and dead leaves. A broken statue loomed over me—its face had long since eroded away, leaving only two empty sockets that still stubbornly stared in my direction, like it was judging a failed creation.
I had no heartbeat.
But my silver hair drifted in the wind, moonlight that didn't belong in this world. It spilled across the stones, stark against the gray. My name surfaced in my consciousness—nothing more, no memories, no emotions, just a cold label, like a serial number stamped on a container. I tried moving my fingers. The joints grated like long-abandoned machinery. When I pushed myself up, dust cascaded from my robes, revealing fabric that shimmered with faint light—no human material.
On the temple wall behind me, cracked reliefs recorded the birth of the Five Nations. But on the last stone tablet, a jagged split gouged away an entire existence.
Maybe that erased piece was me.
"You finally woke up."
The voice came from the shadows. I turned and saw a girl standing on a fractured ledge. Her gray cloak was stained dark red, and she dragged a long blade that sparked blue against the broken stone—scraped against the broken stone, sending up tiny blue sparks.
She looked maybe twenty, but her eyes were old as obsidian. "Xu Wu." She said it like a verdict, not an introduction. "I'm here to see if you need scrapping."
Wind lifted her hood, revealing a glowing brand on her collarbone—the same sigil that was missing from the statue's base. Something in my chest that wasn't an organ tightened.
"Bai Cen," I said. My voice came out level, like this body already knew how to speak.
She chewed my name, then the blade tip pressed my throat. "Know what this means?"
"A designation."
"No." The edge bit into skin—no pain, just cold metal seeping into my flesh. "It's a brand. They gave it to you."
When she pulled back, I noticed my fingers unconsciously rubbing my neck—no wound, but something remained. Something counted.
Xu Wu smiled, a curve without warmth. "Figured. You don't even have pain receptors loaded."
But as she turned—
In my shattered reflection, those pale gold eyes were locked on her back.
The wind carried the scent of ash and rust.
Xu Wu walked ahead, having draped her gray cloak over me to hide the silver hair and inhuman eyes. Inside the cloak, a tear had been crudely stitched, the needlework crooked, like she'd mended it in a hurry.
"Don't let them see you're a creation," she said, voice harsh as she tied the hood. "Especially not in Fire Nation."
I didn't ask why she was helping. Maybe my silence was too complete. Maybe I lacked the confusion of a "newly activated" creation. My existence was a paradox—consciousness without emotion, a name without self. She kept a precise distance, but always paused half a second at turns, like her body remembered someone else should be following.
Like the gouged relief on that temple wall.
"Seret," she said suddenly, voice almost lost in the wind, "the so-called Fire Nation, is collapsing. The Abyss is restless. Armies are gathering. You need to learn to run."
"Run?" The word felt foreign on my tongue. My vocabulary had more elegant verbs: traverse, inspect, purge.
Xu Wu glanced back. "You're a blind idol right now. Learn to run for your life—actually run—and maybe you'll pass for human."
The cloak weighed heavy on my shoulders, smelling of blood and... shit, what was that? Not quite warmth. More like the ghost of body heat, fading fast. It reminded me of the statue's empty eye sockets—what temperatures had they witnessed?
As we crossed the scorched plain, heat burned through my boot soles. On the horizon, firelight devoured the sky, staining clouds a sick orange. This land felt like it was breathing its last.
The attack came without warning.
Three Fire Nation constructs leaped from lava, their charred skin crawling with glowing sigils. When they shrieked, their throats sprayed not saliva but burning embers. These things couldn't be called human anymore—the geothermal radiation had remade their flesh, turned believers into monsters.
I stepped back on instinct. Xu Wu was already moving. Her scythe revealed its true form—a crescent moon that devoured light, tracing a blue arc through the flames. No mortal weapon, its dark patterns matched the glow in my robes.
Slash. Pivot. Leap back. Each movement a precision-killing poem. At one moment, her left hand shot back, fingers spread, like reaching for something.
I stood frozen. Failed to answer that unconscious invitation.
Her hand hung in the air a moment, then slowly curled into a fist, knuckles white. She didn't look at me. The scythe pierced the last construct's core. Lava gushed from the wound, melting that twisted face into slag.
Heat rippled the cloak. I clutched its hem, suddenly sensing the temperature change—not in that moment, but in the one where she'd reached out and pulled back. Not physical heat. Something subtler, like current fluctuations when a program runs.
A realization pierced my consciousness: I wasn't who she was waiting for.
And she already knew.
"Next time," she flicked molten slag from the blade, voice colder than the steel, "either take my hand, or don't stand behind me."
I nodded. Something flickered in her eyes, then settled into deeper silence. As her silhouette vanished into the firelight again, my following steps faltered for the first time.
A strange ache spread in my chest. Not fear. Not confusion.
Something sharper. Like losing something I'd never actually had.