A voice rose from the depths, a tremor of definition itself: "Defined One. Your body has more cracks than the Reconstruction Pool can repair."
Lin Ye withdrew his hand and looked at his crack-riddled body. "How much can you repair?"
"Eighty-three percent. There is no record of the remaining seventeen percent. The Reconstruction Pool can only reconstruct beings that are 'fully remembered.'"
"Fill the gaps with the stars on my cloak. Each star holds the complete memory of a civilization."
For the first time, the Reconstruction Pool's voice wavered. "You know the price. You will no longer remember the civilizations those stars represent."
"I know."
"Are you not afraid of forgetting them?"
Lin Ye lowered his gaze to the twenty-five million stars on his cloak. "They don't need me alone to remember them. Three hundred and seventy million civilizations will remember one another. The Ember Era isn't held up by me alone."
The Reconstruction Pool fell silent for a long time before the first ripple appeared on its surface. "You are the first being willing to let go of memories."
Lin Ye took off his cloak and lowered it into the pool with both hands.
The instant the cloak touched the water, all twenty-five million stars lit up at once. The silver water boiled, and liquid definition climbed along the fibers, enveloping every star. Lin Ye's body began to change: it stopped turning transparent, the cracks healed, and his right half solidified again. At the same time, the stars on the cloak began to go dark-roughly three hundred thousand vanished for every one percent restored. Those civilizations had not been erased. Other civilizations in the Ember Era still remembered them. Lin Ye simply no longer remembered them alone.
He watched the stars go dark. At the instant each one faded,