The crown above the passage rotated once, and Tavin stopped breathing.
CLINK!
TAP! TAP! TAP!
His hands flew to his throat. His mouth opened, but his chest did not rise. Panic widened his eyes before anyone else understood what the black glass had taken.
Renn caught him under the arms and lowered him before his knees struck the floor. "Stay with me, Tavin. Put your hand here and feel my wrist."
Tavin clawed across Renn’s forearm.
"You can be angry later. Find the pulse first."
Kael turned toward them.
CRACK!
The ribs along the corridor folded inward. Stone vanished beneath their edges, shortening the passage by a full pace and throwing the survivors against one another. Orrek caught two people with his unwounded arm. His injured shoulder twisted under the load, and pain pulled a curse through his teeth.
Vaela loosened the cloth around the stolen white edge. Its pale fracture line brightened near Tavin. "The passage has trapped his breath somewhere inside the glass. His lungs are still trying to work."
Kael crouched beside the boy. "Can you release it?"
"I need to find where the pressure closes. Cutting without looking would be faster, but Tavin might lose more than the trap."
"Take the time you need. I will keep it from closing farther."
The black ribs leaned toward Kael as he reached for Tavin. Their reflections showed the same movement from several angles, each ending with the boy disappearing behind a polished wall.
Pressure entered Kael’s chest.
His lungs locked. The grip reached deeper than air, trying to convince his blood and muscles that the breath inside him no longer belonged there. His throat hardened, and the wound beneath his ribs pulled open against its dressing.
The Sovereign Root answered.
Kael gave the command inward, cold and exact, sending the shards into Metaphysical Resistance and Mind Soul Anchor while the threat still thought his body could be priced.
ALLOCATE!
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ HOSTILE QUARANTINE PRESSURE DETECTED: Breath Seizure Corridor
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +2
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND RECEIVED
▶ SHARD ALLOCATION REGISTERED: +2 TOTAL
▶ ALLOCATION DISTRIBUTION:
- Metaphysical Resistance -> 31
- Mind Soul Anchor -> 23
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ POINT IMMENSITY RESPONSE: Metaphysical Resistance and Mind Soul Anchor surge confirmed within current pressure bracket.
≫ QUALITATIVE EFFECT: Breath ownership pressure resisted. Identity anchor stabilized under quarantine seizure.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
[!] SYSTEM NOTICE: Quarantine breath seizure rejected.
====================================================================
The new points struck through him like iron braces driven between his ribs. Panic lost its grip on his thoughts. His lungs still hurt, but the pressure could no longer tell his body to surrender the breath.
Kael dragged air into his chest and forced it back through the corridor.
The glass shuddered.
Tavin inhaled.
GASP!
He collapsed across Renn’s arm and coughed until spit ran from his mouth. Renn held him upright while the boy tried weakly to shove him away.
"Easy," Renn said. "Your legs are not ready for pride."
"I was trying to stand."
"You opened my arm from wrist to elbow. Hold my sleeve and pretend it was your plan."
Tavin stopped pushing. His fingers remained locked in the cloth until his breathing settled.
Vaela covered the white edge without taking her eyes from the ribs. "The trap became stronger when Kael moved toward him. It chose Tavin because it expected a rescue."
Jaro wiped sweat from his upper lip. "Dead people do not need quarantine rooms. The glass wants everyone alive enough to carry away."
Orrek looked across the narrow passage. "Where does it carry them?"
Jaro took a moment before answering. "Somewhere clean. I never met anyone who returned as themselves."
The survivors heard him. A mother pulled her child close, while the man with burns along his jaw touched his mouth several times to make sure he could still breathe.
Kael rose. "The passage wants us separated and frightened. Keep one hand on the person ahead of you, and walk before it learns another way to stop us."
Comfort would not keep them alive. They needed a direction that remained possible.
The group moved.
Fourteen narrow lanes opened beside Kael’s path. Black partitions rose between them, thin enough to show what waited inside. Each survivor saw a private corridor where walking looked easier. Their reflections appeared rested, clean, and alone.
Renn tightened his hold on Tavin. "Nobody enters a lane. Keep your hands on one another."
A woman stared at the reflection offering her an empty stretch of floor. "It looks wider."
"It also shows you without the rest of us. Keep walking before it improves the lie."
Orrek laughed and immediately coughed blood into his beard. "The little counter finally learned how to threaten people."
"I learned from you. Most of your threats are complaints with larger shoulders."
The laughter behind them was brief, but several frightened bodies stood straighter afterward.
Kael walked beside the formation for three steps. Every private lane shifted toward him, searching for a gap between the person marked as contamination and the people he protected. He returned to the front, and the partitions adjusted again.
Vaela watched the movement. "The glass has not decided whether you are the danger or the reason the others remain dangerous."
"Its uncertainty gives us time."
"Only until the workers behind that crown arrive. We need to know what controls the lanes before they do."
The crown pulsed above them. A smooth black shape unfolded beyond it, followed by two more. Jaro smelled the change before the figures became clear.
His face lost what little color it had.
"Glass workers," he whispered. "The old service rooms used them when a passage could not clean itself."
The word workers should have sounded ordinary. Nothing waiting behind the crown moved like a person with a home to return to.
SCRAPE!
The partitions shifted again, shaving a pale curl from the stone. It floated long enough for Renn to see it turn black and join the nearest wall.
"It used the stone," he said.
Vaela pulled him away from the growing partition. "It will use anything we leave within reach. Keep Tavin moving and save the lesson for later."
Kael pressed his palm against a divider. The surface showed him a version of the passage where every survivor had already been sealed away. He leaned harder until the image warped around his hand.
No alert came. The glass was arranging the next attack, not delivering it.
A man with burns along his jaw reached toward a private lane. His reflection held a steaming bowl in both hands. Fatigue softened his face as he leaned closer.
Vaela struck his wrist aside.
SNAP!
He recoiled, more shocked than injured.
"Food does not wait inside a wall," she said. "Look at me and remember where your body is."
The man blinked until the false bowl disappeared. "I could smell it."
"Hunger remembers better meals than we have eaten. The glass found the memory, not the food."
Orrek moved beside him, chain dragging from his sound hand. "Survive this place, and I will find you a real bowl. It will taste awful, but nobody will seal you inside it."
The man gave a weak laugh and returned his hand to the shoulder ahead.
The crown opened wider.
Dark figures waited beyond it, tall and narrow, with polished faces and rings floating behind their heads. Their shapes remained partly hidden by the glass, but their attention had settled on Kael’s cut hand.
Jaro stopped walking.
GULP!
Vaela nudged him forward with her shoulder. "You can explain while your feet are moving."
"They do not chase people through tunnels. They build a room first, close every exit, and remove whatever the room rejects."
The survivors looked at the partitions surrounding them. A place to stand had become more frightening than open pursuit.
Renn kept Tavin’s hand around his sleeve. "How long before the room closes?"
Jaro watched another panel rise behind them. "It has already started."
Kael placed both hands against the nearest divider. Metaphysical Resistance held his breath steady while Mind Soul Anchor kept every false reflection outside his thoughts. The two points had changed what the corridor could take from him. They had not changed what would happen to the others if he let the lanes finish rising.
He pushed until a fracture appeared beneath his left palm.
CRACK!
The partition did not break, but every private lane flickered.
Fourteen survivors saw one another again.
"Close the gaps before the walls return," Renn called.
Lysa reached across the fading divider and caught Dorran beneath the arm. His injured ankle folded when the floor shifted, but Tavin braced him from the other side. Tavin still wheezed with every breath. He could barely support his own weight, yet he refused to release Dorran until the older man found his footing.
The mother passed her child forward to Vaela before squeezing through the narrowing space. Fear had made her cling too tightly earlier. Trusting another person with the child frightened her more, but it freed both hands and kept the divider from trapping them apart.
Vaela settled the child against her sound side. "Keep your eyes on me. Your mother is one step behind us."
"I can hear her."
"Keep listening. The glass has copied faces, not voices."
Jaro shook his head while he helped the burned man across. "Do not promise it cannot learn."
"I promised nothing. I gave the child something real to follow."
The partitions recovered from Kael’s push. Their edges rose again, slower now and no longer aligned with the survivors’ bodies. The corridor had lost its clean arrangement. Kael watched the delay move from one wall to the next and understood what his resistance had changed: the glass could still close, but it had to measure him again before every attempt.
"Keep moving," Kael said.
Behind the crown, the first glass worker lifted its head. The room had found the body it intended to remove first.