**When the flames licked the sky, Xu Wu vanished.**
The molten giant's fingers pierced through the ruins like divine retribution, the heatwave tearing the air apart. My vision flooded with violent orange-red, my ears filled with nothing but the roar of fire. My skin registered no pain—this body was immune to scorching heat—but something deeper burned inside my chest.
For the first time, I understood what it meant to *lose*.
*Why?* I wondered.
*We barely knew each other for a few days.*
The ruins crumbled beneath me. Before darkness swallowed my consciousness, the shape of Xu Wu's final words lingered on my retinas:
*"This time… take my hand."*
But I hadn't.
---
When I woke, the world was silent as a grave.
The fires still burned in the distance, reduced to faint red flickers on the horizon. I lay sprawled across cracked earth, my silver hair caked in ash. Raising my hand, I found a twisted shard of metal lodged between my fingers—a fragment of Xu Wu's sickle, its edges stained with dried blood.
*"Survive."*
The command echoed again, not from outside, but from some awakened protocol deep within my consciousness.
I staggered to my feet and found three charred corpses fanned out nearby. They wore fire-patterned robes, each with a fatal wound in their chest—the edges of their injuries laced with faint blue crystals. The mark of Xu Wu's sickle.
She had been here.
And then she was gone.
The night wind carried a faint tremor. Following the sound, I spotted a figure perched on a broken wall a hundred meters away. Gray cloak, silver-white hair—but slimmer than Xu Wu. When she turned, her face was eerily similar, except for her right eye, replaced by a mechanical one, its gear-like pupil glowing faint red.
"Purifier A-09," she announced, her voice like two old radios speaking in unison. "Assigned to retrieve the Prime Construct."
My throat spasmed—not from fear, but from my body resisting some hidden directive.
"Where is Xu Wu?"
The mechanical eye whirred as it focused. *"The deserter has been marked KIA."* She raised her wrist-guard, projecting an image of Xu Wu collapsing in a sea of blue flames. *"You've been reassigned to me."*
In the projection, Xu Wu's lips moved. Through the silent words, I read:
*"The Water Nation."*
---
The border of Isia was shrouded in damp mist. Unlike the scorching heat of the Fire Nation, breathing here felt like swallowing liquid. I followed A-09 through the reeds, our steps sinking into mud where translucent, jellyfish-like creatures floated, their bodies pulsing with fluorescent blue blood.
"Memory Jellies," A-09 said, lifting one with her sickle. *"They feed on human memories. The people of Isia call them 'God's Blessing.'"*
When the jelly burst, my vision flooded with unfamiliar images—
A little girl crouched on a beach, writing in the sand, only for the waves to erase her words. Over and over, she wrote the same name:
*"Xu Wu!"*
A-09's mechanical eye contracted violently. She seized my throat and slammed me into the swamp. *"What did you see?!"*
Before the mud could fill my lungs, three silver streaks shot from the reeds. A-09's mechanical arm was severed at the root, green coolant spraying from the stump. A figure cloaked in waterweeds lunged from the marsh, sickle carving a familiar azure arc.
Xu Wu was alive.
Her left arm hung limp, a fresh gash split her brow, but her gaze was as sharp as ever. As A-09 stumbled back, she stepped onto a cluster of Memory Jellies—the shockwave of a hundred exploding memories froze her for a single second—
Long enough for Xu Wu's sickle to kiss her throat.
*"You took someone else's hand."*
Xu Wu crouched beside A-09's corpse, prying out the mechanical eye with her blade. When she looked up at me, blood from her wound dyed half her vision red.
I didn't answer. A strange emotion swelled in my chest, like rusted gears finally locking into place. I reached for her injury, but she caught my wrist mid-air.
*"We leave. Now."* She shoved me away, pointing into the mist. *"Isia's High Priestess monitors the entire territory through the jellies. We need to—"*
The swamp erupted.
Thousands of Memory Jellies surged upward, coalescing into a humanoid shape. As the water curtain fell away, a woman in a flowing liquid robe emerged, her face hidden behind a crystal mask. Droplets of memory fragments fell from her sleeves with every step.
*"Welcome home, Xu Wu,"* the priestess said, her voice like a million whispers. *"And welcome… Prime Construct Zero."*
Xu Wu's sickle hummed with high-frequency vibrations. *"High Priestess of Isia… You stopped being human long ago."*
*"Of course."* The mask cracked into a smile. *"I am the incarnation of memory—the last vessel of Water God Isia."* She pointed at me. *"And he was made to kill me."*
The water's surface rippled, revealing a grotesque vision—me driving a sickle through the priestess's ches