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My vision blurred, the world graying at the edges. I couldn’t see anything but the blood on the stairs and the soul tag at my feet.

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So Zilan.

Just a useless merchant girl from the dirty south who could have lived if she’d been smart enough to stay there, if she hadn’t mistaken herself for someone great. I stared at the name I’d always hated, unable to look anywhere else, the characters mockingly sharp even as the rest of my vision had gone hazy. Everything began and ended with my ridiculous flowery name and the surname that wasn’t even mine.

I choked on a breath. I didn’t know I’d been breathing at all, but the thought slammed into me so hard that it forced the last bit of air from my lungs.

That’s not my name.

I had been born as So Zilan, but that was a name with no hopes attached, a pretty flower who was meant to die in winter. The name painted on the list of victors at every round of the royal exams was Fan Zilan. The name the other alchemists had laughed at, that the Empress had banned after giving me my title, that my brother and sister yelled when they were angry with me—it was Fan Zilan. For so long, I’d thought that using the name Fan was a privilege that could be revoked at any moment if I wasn’t a good daughter or sister, if I shamed my family, if I failed. But even now, in the darkest moment of my life, alchemy unveiled the truth.

The Moon Alchemist had said my soul was “loose” but hadn’t known why, hadn’t been able to fix it just by carving the same characters deeper into my skin. For years, I’d caught glimpses of my death, been wrenched between the two planes as I grew out of the soul tag meant to bind me to my body, as So Zilan became further and further from who I was.

Get up, Zilan, my father’s voice said again.

I wheezed out a thin breath and threw an arm in front of me. It felt like I was dragging a thousand iron bricks, but I hauled myself across the floor until my numb fingers closed around the Empress’s knife. None of the guards noticed me, all focused on the Empress as Zheng Sili worked on her.

My vision flickered, but I held tight to the hilt and pressed the blade to my arm, carving a new soul tag into my skin.

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All at once, my sight cleared, my body shocked awake with burning blood beneath my palms and the sharp scent of iron knifing up my nose and the sting of torn skin on the back of my neck. I gasped, feeling like I’d been clinging onto the edge of the earth my whole life and had only now found solid footing.

The guards finally noticed me, one of them catching my gaze and backing up, slapping the other on the arm.

“I thought you cut out her soul tag?” he said.

“I did!” he responded, jabbing a finger at the discarded skin on the floor.

“That’s not mine,” I said, my voice oddly steady. Zheng Sili hesitated where he bent over the Empress, looking over his shoulder.

“Then who the hell are you?” the guard said.

I rose to my feet, steadying the blade in my hand, no longer trembling.

“Fan Zilan,” I said, and stabbed him in the chest.

The other guards didn’t even try to fight. They grabbed their fallen friend and scurried like rats out of the throne room. I whirled around to face Zheng Sili, who knelt pale and frozen before the Empress.

“Did you save her?” I asked, gaze sliding to the Empress, whose throat was now whole and unharmed, though she lay unmoving.

He shook his head quickly. He looked pale and dirty, trembling like a newborn calf. I wondered what the guards had done to him, but it wasn’t my problem.

“I didn’t finish,” he said. “She’s dead.”

I raised my blade and he flinched away, but I only cut the drawstrings on his satchel, spilling gemstones across the stairs. I grabbed a handful of chicken-blood stone as he fled the throne room.

On the stairs, I saw my cousins’ soul tags in my childhood handwriting, marked with bloody footprints.