Vaela spread a strip of ration cloth across the floor and placed the stolen white edge on it.
The fragment had broken from a Pale Choir Warden’s weapon. It looked like polished bone, yet a faint light moved through the fracture along its center. Smoke curled from the cloth without leaving a burn.
"Everyone stays behind Orrek," Vaela said. "If the glass reacts, I need room to see what moved first."
Orrek looked at his wounded shoulder. "You chose a damaged wall."
"I chose the wall most likely to complain before it falls."
"Reasonable. Cruel, but reasonable."
The survivors moved back. Renn kept Sella and her child near the middle while Tavin supported Dorran on his sound side. Jaro stood as far from the white edge as the passage allowed.
CLINK!
A loose chain struck the ceiling and became still.
DRIP!
A black drop fell beside the edge. It divided into two equal halves before touching the cloth. Vaela watched the pieces crawl away from the fragment.
Orrek leaned closer. The hairs along his forearm rose beneath the broken chain links wrapped around it.
"The edge is still trying to cut something," he said.
"It does not need anger or hunger," Vaela replied. "Give it an angle, and it tries to finish the work."
Jaro swallowed.
GULP!
"Old crews left white-room weapons where they fell. A man in my yard carried one home, and the room took him the next morning."
Vaela selected a long hook needle from her belt. "Did you see what took him?"
"I saw his wife waiting for three days. I had no reason to follow."
The answer silenced the group more effectively than another warning.
Kael stood at the mouth of the lane with one palm against the wall. His reflection widened his shoulders and deepened the wounds across his body. The image was wrong, but the glass had copied one important fact: he held no unallocated shards.
The passage was looking for a weakness it could force him to spend around.
Vaela touched the hook needle to the white edge.
SCRAPE!
The sound ran through the lane and returned from every panel at once. Black veins brightened beneath the glass. A narrow rib snapped from the wall and stopped with its point aimed at Vaela’s throat.
CLACK!
Orrek caught it with his chain-wrapped forearm.
CRACK!
Two links broke. The rib remained whole, and the recoil drove Orrek’s injured shoulder backward. His face tightened before he found his footing.
"Hold it where it is," Vaela said.
"I have one useful arm and several opinions about your timing."
"Spend the opinions later. I need the arm now."
Orrek braced both boots against the warm floor. Sweat ran through the ash on his neck, but the rib stopped moving.
Kael watched where it joined the wall. The rib had not tried to stab through Orrek. It had extended only far enough to correct the angle of the white edge. The lane was protecting a response it did not want them to see.
Vaela turned the fragment by the width of a hair.
The rib shifted sideways. A white line crossed the space where her pulse had been and divided a strand of hair.
SPLIT!
Vaela did not flinch until both pieces touched the floor. "The direction changes when the edge moves. Keep watching the base."
A thin pressure pushed from the rib into Kael’s chest. It tested his bones and the space between one breath and the next.
The Sovereign Root stirred.
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ HOSTILE PRESSURE DETECTED: White Edge Backlash
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +1
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▶ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND: NONE GIVEN
====================================================================
One shard settled inside Kael.
He did not spend it.
The field had shown its direction, but not its speed. A point placed too early could strengthen the wrong answer and leave Vaela facing the real attack without him.
She noticed his stillness. "You earned something."
Kael kept his attention on the rib. Vaela could not see the Root or know the shard, but she had watched his body change often enough to recognize the pause before a decision.
"I am waiting for the next correction," he said.
"Make the choice before the edge takes another piece of me."
Vaela lowered the white edge toward the floor. A ridge rose beneath the cloth and tried to tilt the fragment back toward her hand. She lifted it before the ridge could close around her fingers.
Renn watched from behind Orrek’s leg. "The wall used a rib when the edge pointed across the lane. The floor moved when you pointed down."
"Keep watching the delay between my hand and the answer," Vaela said. "I need to know whether the room follows the edge or predicts where I intend to put it."
Jaro pressed himself against the opposite wall, remembered his own warning, and hurriedly stepped away from it. "Perhaps we could learn this somewhere less interested in our organs."
"Show me the somewhere," Vaela replied, "and I will carry the test there myself."
She angled the fragment toward the crown.
The glass around the floating ring darkened before her wrist completed the turn.
Renn inhaled sharply. "It moved early."
Kael saw the difference. The lane had reacted after the first two angles. Near the crown, it anticipated the third. Something behind the field was no longer waiting for the white edge to touch its defenses.
"The workers are watching through the crown," he said. "One more test, and they will answer directly."
Vaela reset her grip on the hook needle. "One more is all I need."
The rib pushed harder against Orrek.
THUD!
His rear boot slid across the floor. The glass had not grown stronger. A shallow ridge had risen beneath his heel, ruining his leverage while he fought the pressure above.
Renn saw it and crawled forward with the count cloth wrapped around his hand. He wedged a broken route pin behind Orrek’s boot.
"Use this until the floor steals it," Renn said.
Orrek drove his heel against the pin. "I am beginning to like you, which feels medically unwise."
"Vaela can treat you after we survive."
"She charges too much."
Vaela twisted the white edge again.
Three ribs burst from the walls.
CLACK! CLACK! CLACK!
"Down!" Kael shouted.
The survivors dropped together. Knees struck stone, hands splashed through black water, and Sella covered her child with her own body. Renn kept counting while he pulled Dorran beneath the crossing ribs.
"Fourteen. Stay low. Fourteen."
One rib cut toward Vaela’s wrist. She withdrew her hand, but the tip reached her first.
GASP!
A red line opened across her skin.
Kael had seen enough.
The field corrected through speed before force. Core Mass Density would help him break a rib after it arrived. Velocity Movement Authority could put him at its base before the next correction reached Vaela.
He commanded the shard inward.
ALLOCATE!
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND RECEIVED
--------------------------------------------------------------------
▶ SHARD ALLOCATION REGISTERED: +1 TOTAL
▶ ALLOCATION DISTRIBUTION:
- Velocity Movement Authority -> 28
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ POINT IMMENSITY RESPONSE: Motion Surge Stabilized
====================================================================
The world did not slow.
Kael moved sooner within it.
His heel turned before the black water could resist his weight. He passed under the first rib, pulled Vaela backward by the collar, and struck the base of the third with his open palm.
CRACK!
The rib folded into the wall.
The strike sent a hard tremor through the lane. Black water jumped around Kael’s boots, and the floor dipped beneath the sudden weight of him before the old stone caught. The survivors felt the impact through their knees. Sella nearly lost her grip on the child, while Tavin used the wall for balance and snatched his hand away when a reflection reached toward it.
Orrek stared at the footprint pressed into the floor. "You gained speed and somehow became heavier."
"He reached the same weight sooner," Renn said. His voice carried the excitement of solving something before fear returned. "The floor had less time to spread it."
Vaela checked Kael’s stance while tightening the cloth around her wrist. "Save the lesson. His left knee is taking too much of the landing."
Kael shifted before she finished. The new movement did not erase his injuries or make the corridor harmless. It let him place his existing mass where the ribs were weakest, but every turn still pulled at the cut beneath his side.
Vaela landed beside him and covered her bleeding wrist. "My feet were still under me."
"The rib disagreed."
She followed his gaze to the fracture spreading around the base. "Argue with the next one after I find the seam."
Orrek laughed until his shoulder punished him. Renn remained crouched near his braced heel.
Kael tested the new movement through his spine and legs. One point had not made him vanish or outrun sight. It had removed a fraction of hesitation between danger and action. In a corridor where the glass attacked through narrow correction windows, the fraction was enough.
The folded rib withdrew.
HISS!
Cold white vapor poured from the walls. It curled around the stolen edge, tasted Vaela’s blood, and streamed toward a hair-thin opening beneath the crown ahead.
Jaro backed away. "A visible seam means the room knows we found it."
Vaela bound her wrist while studying the opening. "It also means the room cannot hide every part of itself at once."
Kael moved toward the seam. The repaired rib tried to emerge again, but his body reached its base before it extended. He drove it back with his forearm and kept walking.
SCRAPE!
Something tall shifted behind the glass. A polished hand pressed against the other side, followed by a masked face and the dark ring of a floating crown.
Renn rose and gathered the fourteen into one line. Orrek retrieved his broken chain links. Vaela wrapped the white edge and kept it ready in her sound hand.
The test had given them the seam, its reaction, and the speed needed to reach it.
It had also told the waiting figures exactly where to find them.