The lower stair ended beside a room crowded with wet cloth and wooden drying frames.
Vhar stopped before entering the open service lane. The first light of dawn had reached the high vents, and workers were beginning their shifts somewhere ahead.
SPLASH!
Water struck stone beyond the drying room.
TOK-TOK!
Wooden spoons moved against cooking pots.
CLACK-CLACK!
A loaded cart rolled across the lower path as the House prepared breakfast and the morning freight.
Vhar could not join that movement dressed as a failed sacrifice. Blood covered the front of his red ritual cloth, his wrists were swollen, and both ankles had begun to stiffen. The paired execution blades formed a clear line across his back beneath their oilcloth sleeves.
Footsteps approached. Vhar moved behind a drying frame before a branch worker entered with a basket of folded shirts balanced against her hip.
She noticed the wet footprints near the stair and set the basket down without calling for help.
"Come out slowly and keep your hands where I can see them," she said. "These frames fall into the wash lane if anyone touches them, and I would rather hear you explain yourself before thirty people arrive."
Vhar stepped into view.
Her attention moved from his face to the ritual cloth and stopped on the covered blades.
"That bell came from the founder rooms," she said. "What happened upstairs?"
"I was tonight's offering, though the rite failed before House Talvern could finish me, and I reached this stair ahead of the wardens."
The worker stared at him for several seconds, rubbing her thumb across a rough patch on the basket handle.
"Did anyone die?"
"Everyone was breathing when I left, although one warden has two broken ribs and a reason to choose his next doorway more carefully."
Her shoulders loosened. "A dead guard would bring the execution watch into every wash room, while broken ribs will bring clerks first, and they usually waste time deciding who should sign the search order."
The worker saw his expression. "When did they last feed you?"
"I remember a bowl yesterday, but I was unconscious before the rite began."
"You are going to fall if you keep standing there." She picked up her basket and nodded toward the next wash point. "There is broth in the preparation room, and you can explain the rest while I find something that covers the blood."
"Helping me could cost you your place here."
The worker shifted her basket higher on one arm. "Maybe, but right now you are bleeding beside clean linen, and I can live with feeding you more easily than leaving you here. Come quietly."
Vhar followed her.
The preparation room opened behind a communal kitchen. A broad pot of grain broth stood near the service door for workers lighting ovens and moving the first loads. The woman placed her marked breakfast token beside it, filled a clay bowl, added beans from a smaller pot, and pushed the meal toward him with a wooden spoon.
The token carried the ninth branch mark and that morning's punch.
Vhar looked from the mark to her face. "The grain on Tarev's record was meant for your branch."
Her hand remained on the bowl. "Three measures divided among all our households would help, although they would never be enough to make your death a fair bargain."
She let go of the bowl.
That choice belonged to her, not House Talvern.
"Eat slowly," she said. "Your stomach has been empty too long."
Vhar took the first spoonful too quickly, burned his tongue, and put the spoon down.
A small smile touched the worker's mouth. "The broth has already defeated the sacrifice that frightened the founder room, so give it a moment."
"I intend to recover from this humiliation."
He waited for the heat to fade before trying again.
The smell of grain triggered a hunger memory stored in the body: smaller hands around a chipped bowl, each spoonful measured against the mouths waiting for it, thin broth scraped to the bottom before its owner pretended to be full.
The memory gave Vhar no face or name. It held only hunger, while the red robe and swollen wrists supplied the body's recent fear. Vhar's former-life memory remained separate: another world, rain against glass, and the certainty of death.
Vhar ate more slowly. Warmth spread from his stomach into his chest, and his heartbeat steadied under it. He breathed slowly until the broth stopped churning in his empty stomach.
The worker placed clean wrapping cloth beside him. "Your left wrist needs a healer, but taking you to one would put your name on an injury sheet before the bandage was tied."
"Does House Talvern count every strip of cloth?"
"Medicine comes from the work stores, so yes; we are trusted with blood rites but apparently cannot be trusted with bandages."
Vhar rewrapped both wrists. "I need the public road and clothes that will survive the walk."
She looked over the ritual robe. "I can manage one of those before you leave this room, though the road is still behind the lower gate."
From a pile awaiting storage, she pulled a coarse shirt, dark trousers, and repaired boots. "The shirt will hang loose, and the boots need cloth around the heels, but both will draw less attention than altar red."
"The clerk checks this pile at midday," she said. "By that time, I need to be an ordinary worker with an ordinary missing shirt."
Vhar changed behind a hanging cloth. He kept the inner ritual layer holding the death record against his ribs, then drew on the shirt and trousers. The fabric rubbed his waist injury but left room to bend.
She left a work apron and empty basket beside him.
He tied the sleeved blades into one covered load and secured them diagonally beneath a work apron. They remained too long to hide from anyone nearby, but at a distance they resembled bundled tools.
When his palm settled over the metal through the oilcloth, cold pressure pressed back from both blades. The steel carried Vhar's blood and founder residue. A Forge record opened from that contact.
[SSS PRIMEVAL BLOODFORGE: Forging]
[ HOST: Vhar Blackvein ]
[ FORGE STATE: Open / incomplete ]
[ INPUTS: Matched execution steel carrying host blood and founder residue ]
[ REQUIRED BEFORE FORGING: Direct-Slaughter Codice and a complete current body ]
[End Forging]
The pressure faded when he lifted his hand, and the familiar weight settled against his back when he tightened the apron.
After the broth and several controlled breaths settled inside him, Vhar deliberately brought a selective matrix manifest into view.
[SSS PRIMEVAL BLOODFORGE: Matrix Manifest]
[ HOST: Vhar Blackvein ]
[ UVAR RESERVE: 8 / 18 ]
[ RECOVERY: Food, Breath, And Elapsed Circulation ]
[ STATUS: Injuries Active / Function Improved ]
[End Matrix Manifest]
The worker washed his bowl immediately. "Follow the loading lane downhill to the cart shelter. The market junction is five or six kilometers beyond the labor gate, and carts bound for the First Measure Academy leave from there."
"Why would the Academy matter to someone carrying a record of his own death?"
"It is the provincial academy, and House Talvern sends branch children there to have their bloodlines measured in public. Intake staff also hear people who arrive without a House recommendation, provided they can survive the journey and convince someone to examine them."
"How far is the First Measure Academy?" asked Vhar.
"About seventy kilometers, so a loaded cart will arrive tomorrow at the earliest, although House Talvern can send a rider faster."
She nodded toward the folded sheet beneath his shirt. "Keep the original dry. A House message may tell the Academy that you are dangerous, but that paper forces them to ask why a consumed offering is standing at their gate."
House Talvern controlled the rooms, meals, and service passages inside the Hearth. At public measurement, Vhar could put his living body beside the sealed death record before people outside the House.
It would also give him a place to ask why the matrix could identify founder residue in the steel yet offered him no answer about his own origin.
"How do you know the intake road?"
"I load the Academy carts every season, when branch children leave with recommendation papers and workers like me wash what they leave behind."
Voices rose in the service lane. A supervisor warned that an injured boy from the founder floor might be wearing stolen work clothes and carrying two long objects.
The kitchen quieted.
BANG!
A storage door slammed farther down the lane.
The worker dried her hands and kept hold of the empty bowl. "You need to go now because once the loading yard hears about the blades, that apron will fool nobody."
Vhar stood. "You have done enough, and I will not bring the wardens back to your table."
"From here, you travel alone because I still have to report for work tomorrow." She glanced toward the kitchen. "Walk through the cooking lane instead of running. People remember whoever ruins breakfast more clearly than they remember an order."
"That may be the first reliable law I have learned in this world."
The lane widened past repair sheds, stacked timber, and cart yards as dawn spread across the cultivated basin beyond the wall.
At the lower loading area, guards had already driven workers behind stone shelters and overturned carts.
Vhar stopped at the edge of the cleared yard.
A treated restraint line stretched from a gate-side anchor to a spindle beside the record desk. Fresh blood glistened on the metal teeth at its end, while a strip bearing the ninth branch mark had been fixed beneath the turning handle.
House Talvern had prepared the lower gate to recognize his blood and stop his body.