The pyre was cold.

  Cold pressed through the tattered tunic against my spine, an itch I’d normally scratch if steel hands weren’t kissing bone.

  The steel clamped my wrists, ankles, throat. Icy, precise.

  In another setting, I might have enjoyed it. But my skin stuck where the metal bit; the slightest movement felt like it was peeling away. If ever it was a time to drift away to another world…

  Not today, though.

  Every few seconds, a soft current rippled through the post, a gentle warning of what was coming. The clamps hummed together like a choir. Their little reminder: don’t move, don’t faint, don’t forget where you are. They want you present.

  The post wasn’t wood. There would be no actual fire here. The HighBorn don’t like a mess.

  Keep the execution tidy. This was supposed to be clean. Everything here is…clean.

  Spoiler: too late.

  They built this thing from surgical steel, polished so bright I could see the crowd warped in it when they dragged me up.

  It rose out of the plaza like a phallic reminder of who’s in charge.

  Ash swirled around my bare feet in lazy spirals. Not ceremonial ash. Real ash. District ash. Burned houses. Burned bodies. Ash.

  An ash that couldn’t touch the plaza stone underneath. HighBorn white that refuses to stain; self-cleaning in never-ending cycles. A bright, shining reminder of this ghoulish monument.

  A warning.

  HighBorn perfection. Sterile and merciless.

  The HighBorn ringed me in white robes and mask-screens, hoods edged in gold script. Their faces weren’t faces, just projected expressions: disapproval, revulsion, bored piety. Judgment, out of the box.

  I caught their tags in my HUD as it flickered in the corner of my vision. A carousel of uniformity:

  [ORDER ACOLYTE]

  Level: Unknown

  Emotional Output: Simulated

  Threat: Low

  “Low threat?” I couldn’t help but snicker inside, “I’m chained to a damn pole, they look pretty fucking threatening to me…”

  The crowd radiating beyond them was a blur of AshBorn, Vein workers circling the edges, corralled behind static barriers. Some stood on vendor carts. Some craned their necks. They weren’t organized outside of gathering in the same place to drink in the scene.

  No one shouted. No one begged for my mercy. There would be no champion for me. You don’t last long in the Ashes doing that.

  My body wanted to shake. I was trying to play it off like I was the toughest bastard in the Ash.

  I refused to die looking like some scared little bitch, but I was certain my body had other ideas.

  Korran Vale stepped out of the eastern archway like the scene had been blocked for him. High Architect. HighBorn golden boy. High asshole.

  He walked inside a shimmer-field that kept the ash off his boots. Tall, all clean lines and cold silk. His coat was embroidered with silver script, some purity-law nonsense, and his eyes were the exact color of the steel pole holding me up…storm metal.

  The acolytes bowed as he passed. The crowd leaned in, hoping to catch whatever bullshit he was about to spew at me.

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  My HUD tagged him, then glitched:

  [KORRAN VALE]

  SCAN ERROR: Insufficient Clearance

  Of course, AshBorn aren't meant to lay eyes on HighBorn. Only on special occasions like tonight. If you’re this close, they’re usually the last thing you see. And this one was getting really close…

  He stopped just short of the ash at my feet, like standing too close might infect him.

  “Lexi Leigh,” he said, soft, smooth, like anesthesia right before the knife. “You stand accused of breaching the HighBorn Archive Sector. Physical trespass. Unauthorized contact with restricted data. Possession of a genetic anomaly. Most heinously, threatening systemic integrity.”

  I hadn’t come easily when they dragged me out here. Made a few of their goons dirty their hands. They cleaned me up a little when they stripped me of dignity and threw what I imagine they consider gutter rags on me. The uniform of the vein. But I had a split lip, the blood staining my teeth and mouth.

  I made sure to show it when I smiled.

  “And that’s only the shit you know about!” I said. “Maybe check your wife for anomalies. I left plenty last night while you were waxing your little pole with your HighBorn sycophants. I bet it’s as shiny the one you got me strapped to...”

  I’ve never really known when to shut up or where the line was, but at this point it was all I had left to keep from crying, “…which is tickling my ass, by the way. Is it supposed to do that?”

  An acolyte’s mask flicked to “outraged” for half a second, then reset. The rest remained steady and quiet.

  The air sucked out of the crowd. I thought maybe a laugh, or a few smiles, but not this lot. Tough crowd.

  Korran didn’t blink. I wasn’t sure he’d been printed with that function. He leaned forward, enough that I could smell his breath. Antiseptic.

  “You were not authorized to enter the Archive sector,” he said. “Your presence there is… inexplicable.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I get that…a lot.”

  His gaze dipped to my left wrist, where the Order’s brand sat under the steel cuff, raised flesh, black-iron circle. Property marker.

  Later, they would incinerate me and log the ashes.

  “Breeding stock, no less,” he said quietly, just for me. “You fascinate me. Were it up to me, you would be in my lab for further evaluation.”

  “We could do that,” I couldn’t figure out if he was serious or sadistic, offering a last glimmer of hope before dooming me. “Just undo these shackles and we’ll head on back to your place. It’ll be our little secret…”

  He lifted his head briefly; maybe he was actually considering it. Then he turned to the crowd and every word he spoke repeated from a drone that came out of fucking nowhere.

  “Lexi Leigh, you are nothing more than a blight on this world. Chattel who strayed beyond the fence. A disgrace. An abomination.”

  He returned his attention to me again, “You have been judged.”

  There it was. The real verdict.

  He raised one hand.

  The clamps tightened. Fear brings out the best jokes in me. I wanted to tell him not to make it too tight or I might get turned on.

  No words would come out, only a tightening around my neck.

  My hands instinctively pulled, but only more pain as skin tore.

  The pole hummed.

  And my HUD lit up with a system flag:

  [EXECUTION PROTOCOL: BURN v1.7]

  Pain Dampening: Disabled

  Witness Mode: Enabled

  Data Retention: Full

  They were recording the whole thing. Of course they were. This sick fuck is going to add my death to his spank bank.

  He turned back to watch me. He hadn’t changed his expression once. From what I hear, emotion isn’t on the genetic menu in the Towers.

  I tried to spit on him, one last act of defiance. A petty violation of their perfect ritual.

  No such luck…

  White light crawled up the pole, thin as a blade, then thicker, then blinding.

  Heat slammed into my spine, arched through my ribs, flooded my skull.

  Every nerve lit up.

  Every bone sang.

  I bit through my tongue. Hard.

  Blood exploded in my mouth…hot metal, thick, and smothering.

  My HUD started dropping numbers like a bad joke:

  VITALITY: 100 → 71 → 43 → 19 → 7

  [WARNING: CELLULAR INTEGRITY FAILURE]

  SOULFLAG: CIVILIAN → HERETIC

  It felt like my entire bloodstream turned to ice and fire at the same time.

  I couldn’t scream. My jaw locked down, muscles seizing against the restraints.

  Tears burned the corners of my eyes and evaporated before they could fall.

  I didn’t want it to be like this. I always assumed I’d die in some back alley in a deal gone wrong, not with the whole world watching.

  Voices came in chopped, like someone was dragging sound files over broken glass.

  “…will… be… purified…”

  “…example… to the stock…”

  “…mutation vector… must be erased…”

  I smelled my own hair burning.

  I smelled my skin cooking.

  I smelled the ash under my feet, welcoming me.

  The world narrowed to heat, white light, and the thud of my own heart screaming at me to stop dying.

  Then my good-for-nothing HUD snapped a new line over everything:

  [CRUCIBLE PING DETECTED]

  Source: UNKNOWN

  For a second, just a second, the pain flickered, like a bad connection. “Clarity before death?” I thought.

  The last thing I saw was Korran’s eyes widening with excitement. My last thought was how bad I wanted to call him out for it. To scream at him, “I see you, bitch!”

  Then the pole flared brighter.

  The crowd vanished.

  The plaza vanished.

  Korran’s face stretched and burned and folded in on itself like someone had dragged it into a black hole.

  Darkness came down, a guillotine severing my body from soul.

  But then...

  In the nothing, a woman’s voice slid into my head, pulling everything back like a mirroring unshattering from a million pieces into one glimmering spark.

  “Wake up, Lexi,” she said. “You’re not done yet.”