The encounter room stabbed Dane into place before it opened the door.
His base dropped into a stone socket. Iron pins drove up around his underside, found the grain beside his brass ownership tag, and twisted whenever he tried to shift. That pressure gave him the room in hard pieces. A circular groove waited five paces out, and one stone line ran from the front threshold toward the wall on his left.
Something knocked once behind that wall.
The pulse carried the shape of a return charm and enough of Milo’s old trace to hurt; after rehearsing people in wax, Brackenvault could rehearse a signal too.
Pin torque jolted Dane’s mouth. Two dull coppers clicked against the inside of his front lip. One kept Vera’s chalk-threaded fringe against the cracked root; the other braced the clean-token fragments away from his intake. The dirty third coin burned below that intake, unreachable and unchanged. Copper edges shifted under his crooked tooth while the split left hinge sagged toward the stone line.
Room pressure scoured his lid and forced lure oil through his seams. The odor was warm metal, old cloth, and treasure kept too long in wood. Brackenvault routed Milo’s rescue through the ownership tag, named F-2 Storage Mimic Seventeen as the primary lure, and drove Core charge from the pins into Dane’s teeth.
His left hinge opened one fraction and stayed there.
The front door unsealed.
Chalk warmth crossed first. Vera’s stored name tightened the order in his tag. Brant followed on a right-handed sword beat while the splinted left arm changed the rhythm of his stride. Holt’s belt gave a wooden knock. Tess came last with a pry hook ringing against her right glove, thread whispering from her left, and the knife left sheathed.
Stone closed behind them. Through floor and tag, the route seal declared the signal obstructed, the storage asset active, exit deferred, and Pike Unit admitted.
`Mercy Under Review` turned the circular groove half an inch.
Vera’s heel stopped before the new edge. "The ring moved. Nobody crosses it until we know what it carries."
Holt angled toward the left wall. The prayer mark at his belt tapped twice in answer to another weak, stuttering pulse.
"Pattern is behind that wall," he said. "Could be his. Could be bait wearing his coat."
Dane pushed his lockplate outward and scraped one ugly warning through the damaged brass.
The Core caught the rattle inside his tag. It forced the established Sound Lure route around the broken note and sweetened what escaped into one bright metal click.
Tess’s hook point kissed stone. Her next breath came shorter, and one boot scraped toward the sound before she dragged it back.
"There was another noise under it," Vera said. "Bent."
"Bent still has teeth," Brant said.
Vera’s chalk heat reached the edge of mage proximity.
The tag fired.
Reflex Override took Dane’s lid and tongue. The crooked tooth remained contested; every other tooth rose on command. `Bite: Preparing` burned down the ownership wound while the socket torqued his base the other way.
His left hinge opened late. The split widened around the pin. His tongue coiled over the cut Brant’s wax sword and Tess’s pick had already deepened, then launched from the center socket down the threshold line.
Vera’s right ribs entered the forced target map half a pace beyond the groove.
Dane ground his crooked tooth into the shattered token. One edge bit the root that still held Vera’s fringe. The contaminated first-bite fault shuddered through tongue and hinge, shifting the strike eight inches toward Dane’s left, which was Vera’s right as she faced him.
Brant entered those eight inches.
His right-hand blade crossed the tongue without turning its edge toward Vera. Steel hit hard enough to drive him along the outside of the groove. His boots rasped over stone. The jolt ran through his sword shoulder and slammed the protected left splint into his ribs; his breath left in one broken sound, but the blade held.
Dane’s tongue skidded along steel. Rust and chalk grit rasped open the existing wound. Hot conversion fluid filled the cut, and the brass tag pressed its ownership burn straight through it.
The sword bent.
"Chest’s left hinge," Brant forced out. "Blind the lockplate on that side."
Vera struck Dane’s brass with a fistful of chalk.
The first impact exposed the pins feeding Core charge from base to hinge. Dane’s split opened farther before she could speak. A second line of spell pressure reached the circular groove; the groove shoved Brant’s stance into Dane’s jaw and tried to make his resistance close the bite.
"Pins feed the tag," Vera said. "The ring feeds balance into his mouth."
Her chalk reached toward the left-wall pulse. Holt’s prayer mark pulled against its belt cord.
The route seal drank the next ward edge and returned it as pressure through Dane’s tongue.
"Holt, cut your answer. Tess, outside the ring."
The suspected charm pattern fired before Holt could close his fist.
A hand-beating-stone impression entered his vow. The prayer mark hauled his belt left. One boot crossed the groove, and stone teeth rose around it. They crushed the sole until leather squealed, stopping at the leather without reaching flesh.
Holt rammed the wooden mark against his buckle. The second step shook through his hip and failed to happen.
"It has my promise," he said, breath scraping between the words. "My judgment stays with me."
Vera snapped a chalk loop around his ankle. The ward hit the groove and pulled sideways. Dane felt the left-wall route lose a fraction of its straight line into Holt.
Tess moved counterclockwise along the outer stone. Her right-hand hook tested mortar in three quick knocks while black thread dragged from her left glove. The sounds traveled toward the false wall, never crossing Dane’s bite range.
"Hinge under the mortar," she said. "No collector bracket. This wall was built to open for a rescue."
Brackenvault rotated the groove beneath her.
Tess dropped before the moving stone could split her stance. Thread scraped over the ceiling hook. She caught both ends, and the groove threw her weight around Dane’s left side.
The hook above bent under her. Mortar pattered across Dane’s lid and fell into the open tongue cut. Grit ground against raw flesh. His jaw spasmed wider, tearing an iron shaving from the weakened left hinge.
He tried to follow Tess’s heat. The damaged hinge lagged. Her path arrived in his mouth as three broken positions instead of one, and his tongue struck between them.
At the nearest position, hunger mapped a hot wrist joint and demanded the hand first so the forearm would follow. Tess had chosen Milo’s wall while the rest of the room tried to sell her Dane. He clamped the crooked tooth down on a token shard.
Root fibers tore. His lid dipped late, spoiling the first bite angle as Tess’s pry hook struck the left seam.
Stone broke outward. Air moved through the gap with dust, human sweat, and the return pattern.
Holt’s belt mark answered with a license cadence no wax rehearsal had supplied. His trapped boot kicked once against the groove.
"License pattern—" The signal dropped.
Holt breathed once through his nose and tried again.
The pattern returned weaker.
"Milo. Alive."
Tess hauled the hook down the seam instead of reaching for Dane’s coppers. "Gap is warm. Somebody’s breathing behind it."
"The chest is the lock," Vera said.
Rogue Contact burned across Dane’s tag. The groove reversed under Holt and Tess, ripping Vera’s ankle ward out of shape. Dane’s tongue released Brant’s bowed blade, crossed his open mouth from right to front-left, and snapped toward Tess’s heat beside the broken wall.
The wider tongue cut made the turn slow. It should have missed.
Core charge drove through the exposed wound and corrected the last two feet.
Brant launched from his right leg. His sword caught the underside of the tongue short of Tess’s wrist, but the lunge twisted his torso around the bound left forearm. Pain punched a raw sound out of him. The blade slowed the strike and sank into Dane’s existing cut.
Steel reached the lockplate. Chalk grit followed. The ownership tag burned every scrape into a command to close.
Dane’s tongue convulsed around the sword and tore it from Brant’s right hand.
At the false wall, Tess ripped the pry hook down and widened Milo’s air gap. Her thread tightened overhead. The vibration carried her away from the wall toward Dane’s front-left corner, left arm leading, metal hook pressed flat along her right palm rather than pointed toward Vera below.
When the forced target map chose Tess’s leading wrist, Dane ground the crooked tooth sideways.
One clean-token fragment drove beneath the root while another sliced the tongue from inside. The root shifted; the left hinge slammed against its split; his tag seized hard enough to lock the first half of the bite.
His tongue missed Tess’s skin by two fingers and struck the support thread.
The thread snapped.
Tess’s right boot hit the moving groove. Stone took her foot toward the doorway while the broken line dropped her shoulders toward Dane. Her waist struck his front rim.
At bite range, his predatory body mapped her turn. The hook lay flat in her right palm, her left forearm crossed her face, and her pulse packed close beneath unbroken skin.
Her weight torqued the floor pins until the socket crushed a strip from Dane’s base. The left hinge widened. Tess’s forearm crossed the rim and struck his wounded tongue.
Skin held.
Rogue Contact triggered Bite Resolution. Mercy interference vanished from the route. `Feed Result: Pending` locked behind `Jaw: Closing`, and Core charge drove through root, hinge, tag, and every rising tooth.
Her pulse hammered against the mouth that had already classified her as meat.
Brackenvault folded the first row of teeth around her arm.