The rope snapped— "Stop! Hold her!" a voice barked three breaths before the snap. "Don't—" someone cursed. A gunshot cut the air. "No!" Chujiao's voice broke like a dry reed. She fell, the world tilting, dust in her mouth. The factory ceiling opened into a strip of gray sky. Men shouted. Steps pounded. A hand tried to grab her ankle and missed. "Chen Zhe—" she mouthed, blood hot in her throat. "Quiet," a man hissed. "Shut up and bleed." There was a jar of light, the taste of iron, and then nothing but a tight black push that swallowed all sound. "Three. Two. One." Chen Zhe's voice was close enough to have been a breath. It had been polite and cold. He had said, "Be quiet, or this will be quick." The memory ended with rope fibers snapping at her shoulder and the ground rushing up to meet her. The last thing she saw was Chen Zhe's face, absurdly composed, as if he had ordered a meal and was waiting. A farmhand's shout split the next moment. "She's breathing!" Chujiao gasped. Straw scratched her cheek. Light slammed into her eyes. The world reassembled itself into a haystack and a face bending over her. "You're alive," Zhang Hanye said. He was thinner in this life, his clothes dusty, hair stuck to his forehead. He smelled of sweat and river mud. "You're alive," Chujiao repeated, and the words steadied her. She grabbed his wrist