Stone began turning under Dane’s full base, and the movement reached him through every carrier at once.
The borrowed shield ground harder beneath his left end. Brant’s splint knocked its binding while his wounded right hand fought the rim; on Dane’s opposite strap, Holt’s tightening prayer cord pulled its cracked bead against iron.
Wet air opened somewhere to the left. Cistern water breathed from the right. Beneath the scrape of boots, a thin blue scent touched the floor groove and drew Dane’s hunger leftward.
Vera stopped ahead of his front lock. Tess’s next step almost struck his rear corner.
"Red is the cistern on the right," Tess said. Her bound left boot dragged on the rotating stone. "Green is laundry, left. Laundry should be asleep."
"Blue scent is moving left," Vera said. "The red light has the official claim and none of the blood."
The slab carried Dane’s long side toward the drier echo.
Brant breathed through a shift of weight that made his right shoulder tremble into the shield. "Seven breaths. Then red owns the angle."
Two hard rod tips struck the floor near Dane’s rear. The third landed with a split rasp and skated toward the service arch.
"Green is closing with us outside it," Ada said. "Turn him before the next tooth moves."
Leather whispered inside the rear wall.
A knee or elbow struck stone. The narrow scout came through the fixed crawl seam on three quick contacts, close enough that Dane felt each impact through the groove under his base. Ada swung rod three. Cloth swallowed the blow instead of flesh, and the captured shaft pulled the scout the rest of the way in.
"Stay shut," he whispered at Dane’s rear seam. Breath shook on the last word. "I only need the mark."
Wooden punch met leather.
The black-wax nail drove through Dane’s already bleeding upper rear root. Heat followed pressure into living fiber, reopening the path the recovery hook had torn earlier. The point entered the floor groove with a wet mineral click.
Claim-fire heat raced along the strap and found older wounds beneath Dane’s brass. As the slab kept turning, the nailed root stayed behind. His front swung right. Holt’s cord snapped taut, the cracked bead chipped lacquer, and Brant’s shield shoved up hard enough to fold Dane’s left corner against his own inventory.
"The groove has his old claim," Holt said. Prayer cord creaked between blood-wet palms. "It is pulling through the strap."
Rod three bowed behind Dane. Ada’s breath came short beside the scout’s.
"Promotion takes one clean mark," the scout said. The wooden handle ground deeper. "I bring back proof, they stop calling me runner scrap."
"Keep your hand on it," Ada said.
The split rod changed angle around the punch.
At the front, Vera’s boots scraped near the blue-scent groove. "The left trail is live. The red one is shouting because it needs us to believe it."
The slab turned another handspan.
Tess dragged the metal head of her glass cutter across the wall. Dust pattered onto Dane’s rear corner. She scraped again, lower, then stopped at a clean stone socket.
"Maintenance moved the green peg," she said. "The laundry throat is awake."
Brant’s right knee hit stone and recovered by pushing off the shield. "Who moved it?"
Tess took one breath too long.
"Someone low enough to know where supervisors don’t fit. Left."
The nail dragged Dane’s root open another fraction. Black wax climbed into torn leather. The scout’s wrist worked close to the long seam, and his pulse traveled down the punch with every desperate twist.
Warm tendons waited within reach.
Hunger lifted Dane’s delayed flap a finger’s width. His reduced tongue dragged over the inner seam and pushed toward the scout’s hand. The scout stopped breathing and clung to the punch.
Eating the arm would cut weight. It might pull the hand from the tool. Dane’s body offered both results without caring that the scout was afraid, bleeding into the punch, and trying to survive the same dungeon.
Dane rolled his two free coppers toward the rear-left corner instead.
They struck each other on his wounded inner floor. Everything packed beneath the crooked root stayed snagged and silent, including the dirty copper. These two alone rolled.
They were nothing beside a chest. Crude Drag made the lie useful: with outside force already wrenching Dane, their combined weight could buy one degree, paid for in leather.
Dane pressed his rear corner down. The front pulled left against the slab. Instead of ripping straight away from the nail, the strap began sliding along its shaft.
Brant felt the first change through the shield. "Same corner when I drop my shoulder."
Dane dragged his tongue back from the scout. The split tip caught behind a crooked tooth before he forced it fully under the seam. His delayed flap lowered around it. At the front, he canted the lockplate away from his handle and held the mouth to a crooked slit.
Vera’s wand shaft clicked beneath her belt ring. She tightened the chalk pouch cord, leaving both tools against her hip.
"Dane. May I brace the front handle until we clear the turn?"
He drove the loop toward the heat of her burned hands and kept the lock turned away.
Both palms closed on iron. Vera pushed his front left rather than pulling him toward her. Holt’s cord took the opposite rear strain. Brant dropped his wounded right shoulder into the shield, and the two coppers collided again inside Dane.
Ada twisted rod three.
The wooden punch turned in the scout’s grip. Skin came loose with a wet rasp. Blood smell reached Dane’s seam, and the scout cried out without releasing his mark.
The nail bent one degree, and Dane spent it. Crude Drag bit into the pinned root until leather peeled fiber by fiber, slow enough that every separation carried claim-fire heat deeper before releasing. The old feeding groove tugged at the strap, still trying to make a lead of him.
Copper crossed copper behind his rear corner. One rolled a thumb’s thickness farther back and changed the shear.
Then every carrier committed. Brant drove the shield forward; Vera shoved the handle left. Holt hauled until blood slicked each knot, while Ada folded rod three farther around the punch.
The nail head rang once and broke free, but its shaft stayed in the groove. Dane’s upper rear root ripped across the exposed metal, opening a wet notch and leaving a hot thread of claim-fire wound around the spike.
The scout lost the punch handle. His palms struck stone with a raw sliding sound. "My mark!"
Dane dragged left.
The hot thread snapped.
Released weight hit every carrier out of order. Vera’s pressure slipped off the front handle. Holt’s cord burned through both palms. Brant took the rearward jerk through his wounded right shoulder while the shield remained wedged under Dane’s left end.
Cartilage popped beneath Brant’s mail.
His breath leaked once. The right arm stopped lifting; its pressure vanished from the shield rim.
"Five breaths," he said.
"You counted through that?" Vera demanded.
"Four."
Rod three came free of the scout with its split tip folded closer to the shaft, still in Ada’s hand. Rods one and two struck opposite walls and checked Dane’s rear swing.
Cold, wet air rose from below the left lip. Root-deep stone teeth began closing out of sight, each contact sending a blunt knock along the slab.
Tess pressed the handle of her glass cutter against Holt’s prayer bead. "The loose strap catches the first tooth. Cut after I call the long edge."
The cutter clicked into Holt’s bloody hand.
The rotating floor dragged Dane’s rear toward the embedded shaft again. He shifted both coppers against the same corner. A tremor ran from Vera’s wrists through the front handle, but she kept it driving left. Brant used his shield and legs now; the strap across his mail held his dead right arm close.
The first laundry tooth descended close enough to push cold water across Dane’s iron corner.
"Long edge left," Tess said. "Let the drop take the weight."
Holt cut.
The ragged strap end slapped the wall, then rasped tight in the scout’s grip. His breath broke into a laugh that hurt.
"Still counts," he gasped.
Shield pressure rolled Dane onto his long edge. The cracked sword at Holt’s belt struck the shield once and stayed in its scabbard. Ada jammed rods one and two into the narrowing walls while the folded third guarded Dane’s rear from the punch shaft.
Vera forced the front handle through the green throat.
The slab vanished beneath Dane. Vera’s grip left the handle, and his front dropped without dragging her wrists into his mouth.
Brant and Holt followed the rear end. Holt knocked the glass-cutter handle against Tess’s belt ring as the lip took them. Her injured right hand closed around it and kept the metal outside the falling bodies.
Tess pushed off last. Her bound left boot struck the lip. Fresh ankle pain tore through the damaged Party Link, and her cry chased them into the throat.
The scout’s gasping stayed above, bloody leather rasping in his grip. The black shaft scraped in the ownership groove. Skarn’s surviving runner shouted from the rear arch as chain raced over stone.
The laundry throat swallowed Dane sideways.
Bodies struck his base and long flap. He pulled the reduced tongue fully behind his teeth and pinned it against his inner floor. A boot caught the delayed flap; he forced it down as far as the crooked seam allowed and held it there while elbows and heels hammered around his teeth.
Skarn’s hook entered the bend above.
The point hit living stone. Chain snapped taut. The throat tried to close while Skarn hauled from the far side, and the hooked molars answered through Dane’s whole frame with three tearing root-screams.
"Three roots!" Ada shouted over the fall. "Two caught on the hook. One loose!"
The free molar struck the chute wall above Dane and began falling after them. Two root-screams stayed fixed higher in the bend. Stone ground on Skarn’s crosswise chain, and the hook stopped gaining on them.
The next pursuing foot hit the obstruction alone.
The loose molar hit the wall again, closer.