The first thing Bai Xueyi smelled was the past. Gasoline. Burning varnish. Fear.
Smoke rolled across the warehouse floor in slow gray waves. She turned toward the door—already orange at the edges. Someone had locked them in.
"Down!" Mo Liuxian grabbed her arm just as the first pane burst, glass raining like knives.
They hit the ground together. Heat clawed at the walls; steel beams screamed overhead.
"There's a back stairwell," Xueyi coughed. "North wall—"
Liuxian's eyes flicked toward the glow. "Blocked."
She crawled to a ventilation hatch half-hidden behind crates. The screws had rusted, but rust yields to desperation. Her hair stuck to her cheeks; every breath tasted of ash.
He came beside her, tearing the bolts loose with his bare hands. Smoke curled around his shoulders; in that half-light he looked less like a CEO and more like a man stripped to truth.
"Move," he ordered.
"You first," she said.
"I don't take orders."
"You just did."
Their gazes clashed—defiance against control—then he lifted her through the gap. She rolled out onto the loading bay roof, coughing, eyes stinging. When she turned back, he was gone.
"Mo Liuxian!"
A burst of flame answered. For one heartbeat panic pierced the calm she'd built since rebirth. She reached down into the vent, fingers brushing fabric—then he surged up, soot-blackened, dragging air into his lungs.
They collapsed side by side under the open rain, the warehouse behind them collapsing in a roar.
"You always appear where the fire starts," he rasped. "Coincidence?"
She met his gaze, voice steady despite the tremor in her hands. "Maybe I'm here to see who lights them."
A siren wailed in the distance—firetrucks, police, questions. She stood, smoothing her ruined dress.
"We should leave before your answers arrive."
He caught her wrist again, softer this time. "If you know something, tell me."
"Would you believe me if I did?"
His silence was answer enough. She freed herself and walked toward the flicker of city lights beyond the dock, rain washing soot from her skin like absolution.
Behind her, Mo Liuxian watched the flames die and realized the same thing she already knew:
The fire that once separated them was now pulling them together.