Moments before the explosion, Amy paused at the edge of the palace grounds and took in the view that contrasted her small, peasant town of Sunji.
The tiled roofs were dark in the night. The wooden pavilions cast long shadows across the courtyards. Lanterns swayed on their cords in the crisp night air as pine drifted through the air, mixing with the last traces of incense from evening offerings to the empress of Sunji.
Beyond the walls, the markets slept in their rows as shrines crouched in dim corners, cracked stone and burned-out incense bowls waiting under the Empress’s name.
She had lived here half her life, though in the smaller village on the coast.
And yet, for the first time, she really saw Sunji.
The version she shared with Kristo felt like something far away now. Something edited, or softened, or filtered through someone else’s hands. She didn’t know if it was loss or perspective that had changed her viewpoint.
“What now?” Princessa asked quietly.
She stood just behind Amy, looking smaller than usual. Out of place. Her eyes scanned the rooftops, searching for meaning in a city she barely understood.
“You… have a plan? Know anyone here?” Princessa asked, voice trembling softly. Amy could understand her only by concentrating.
Amy let her gaze travel down into the darker layers of the city, to the crooked side streets, the older neighborhoods where the lanterns thinned out and the glow turned uneven.
“I have a thought,” Amy said softly. She didn’t know what prompted her to think of it. Perhaps it was instinct.
Princessa tilted her head.
“When I was a kid,” Amy went on, “there were stories about people who slipped messages under floorboards and painted warnings against the empress on temple stones before dawn. Adults in my village called them traitors.”
Amy huffed once, though it was not quite a laugh. “But now it’s ironic because liar just means someone who doesn’t agree with the Empress. And I… guess I’m one of them.”
Princessa blinked. “There are resistance people here? Like Karl’s rebels but… Sunji’s?”
Amy said nothing, but her silence was answer enough.
“And Mel is like—” Princessa hesitated.
Aurora.
Amy didn’t answer. She knew her mother was the monster, so she didn’t have to.
They stepped off the palace platform as the night inhaled—
and
BOOM.
The shockwave rolled through Amy’s bones before her ears caught up. Heat pulsed against her face. A column of fire and smoke climbed above the lower districts, bright as sunrise and black as ink.
Lanterns jerked and swung wildly, scattering broken light across stone. Somewhere below, glass shattered. Screams broke open the silence. Soldiers’ voices cut through the noise in sharp bursts as alarm bells joined in, loud and metallic.
Princessa grabbed Amy’s sleeve so tightly her knuckles went white. “What was that? Amy—what—”
“It has to be them,” Amy hissed, already moving.
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“Wait!”
But Amy didn’t.
Princessa’s voice got swallowed by the clanging bells. Amy’s feet were flying.
Princessa stumbled after her. “Amy—your mom will go straight there. Shouldn’t we—”
She kept running. The smoke pulled at her like something alive.
Don’t look away, Milo’s voice murmured from some corner of her memory. That’s how you control people. Make them afraid to turn their heads.
Amy clenched her jaw and pushed the echo down. Milo’s voice didn’t even faze her anymore. He was irrelevant.
Behind them, the palace was waking in full. Boots thundered while orders snapped out. Amy pictured Aurora calm, already thinking three moves ahead and Mel shouting for soldiers to “contain everything,” which meant punishing everyone.
And that was wrong.
So Amy didn’t look back. She couldn’t.
Though she couldn’t explain why, something in the smoke felt like a calling.
Princessa’s fingers clutched Amy’s arm again. “Amy—please—what if they’re killing people down there?”
“If they are, I have to be there,” Amy said.
Princessa’s breath caught and whimpered a bit.
“That’s why we’re going.”
They sprinted down the palace tiers and into the sloping streets as marble gave way to packed earth. Smooth lantern rows shifted to cluttered clusters straining against their hooks. People stumbled out of doorways. Voices rose around them in Sunji dialects, thick with panic. Princessa tried to follow, but the clipped syllables slipped too fast for her.
As they ran, the city changed.
But not from the fire.
“They’re opening the stores—”
“The grain?”
“I can keep my children,” a woman cried, voice breaking mid-sentence.
Amy felt the words hit her like cold water.
The resistance wasn’t just hitting Mel.
They were feeding people.
Saving the poor and discarded.
And Amy refused to watch from Aurora’s shadow anymore.
The warehouse emerged through the haze: a giant storehouse, royal property. Amy knew it. Everyone did. She remembered Kristo paying the taxes. The quotas. The food that rotted behind locked doors while the poor starved.
Its stone ribs had collapsed inward as a section of wall belched flame. Villagers flooded into the street carrying sacks of grain, hands bloody from cracked pots and splintered crates. Their fear mixed with relief.
Soldiers were already pushing toward the blaze.
Amy’s chest tightened.
They’ll kill them, Cerceras whispered, slick and cold.
The spears are for examples, not order.
Amy’s fingers curled. Frost pricked at her palms.
This is the moment, the voice urged.
End it. Use me. Domination is mercy.
Amy’s jaw locked as she tried to breathe.
A child stumbled in the smoke.
Amy lurched forward—but Princessa grabbed her. “Amy—stop. We can’t—”
Before Amy could pull free, someone moved against the crowd.
A girl their age.
Ash streaked down her face as her braid had fallen loose, strands sticking to her cheek. She dragged a smaller child from beneath a fallen beam, and coughed once, shoving the dizziness away with a roll of her shoulders.
“Take the rice,” she ordered. “Leave the jars. Move.”
People listened immediately.
“Not all of it,” she snapped at a man grabbing another sack. “We’re not thieves—leave enough so they can’t claim we emptied it.”
A woman steadied another’s hands. “Shh, take this quickly. You’re not stealing,” she murmured. “You’re eating.”
A guard stepped forward, spear shaking.
The girl stepped between him and a man struggling under a too-heavy sack.
“This is royal property!” the man barked, voice stumbling.
“So are we,” the girl said simply. “And you’re starving us.”
A ripple passed through the crowd as if something had cracked open.
“They’ll arrest you,” the man warned.
“I know,” she said quietly. “And if someone has to fall for this, let it be me.”
She had said it as if muttering to herself. Amy felt something in her chest twist.
Another controlled blast collapsed the far wall of the warehouse, sending debris into the street. Smoke thickened as Princessa grabbed Amy’s shoulders and dragged her back into the crowd.
The rebel girl glanced back once, her calm expression freezing Amy cold.
Then she vanished into the smoke as soldiers closed in.
Princessa tugged her frantically. “They’re going to start arrests. Come on! We have to go!”
Amy let her feet back up, noting the desperation in her companion’s voice, but her eyes stayed on the blaze until they stung.
The words of the girl. The sad clarity in her eyes. Something deliberate shifted inside her.
Destiny didn’t feel heroic. Instead, it felt like a quiet, sinking clarity. Somehow she knew that if she walked away now, she would lose something she didn’t know how to name.
And, in truth, the girl hadn’t looked powerful. She didn’t try to look victorious or fearless. But she did look like someone who had prayed for help — and then showed up anyway.
Amy had spent too much of her life standing beside stronger people and hiding in their shadows, hoping they’d make the choices she was afraid to make.
But no more.
Princessa was still talking when Amy ran.
Toward the rebels.
Toward the girl.
Toward a choice she wasn’t letting anyone else make for her.
