Renn had fourteen people under his hands. The black-glass wall showed thirteen.
CLINK!
A hard tap traveled through the narrow pocket and stopped where frightened eyes would follow. Renn refused the wall and closed his eyes instead. Beyond the seam, Kael held the Excisors in the lane behind them; here, the count was Renn’s fight.
The pocket was not safe. Every black wall reflected thirteen people, and the longer Renn looked, the harder it became to remember whose body was missing. He could trust the walls and abandon someone, or trust the hands still touching him while the pocket closed. He chose the hands.
Renn looked once and almost believed it. His hand was on a wrist, a sleeve, a shaking shoulder, and a warm cheek wet with tears. His eyes gave him thirteen because the wall wanted them to. His hands gave him fourteen because people were harder to edit when they were touching him.
Renn closed his eyes. "Keep your faces away from the walls. Hold a wrist, a sleeve, or a shoulder, and trust whatever you can feel."
A woman beside him swallowed hard.
GULP!
"The reflections are lying to us," Renn continued. "Your hands are not."
Jaro stared at him as if he had never expected courage to sound so tired. "Did the markets teach you how to beat a false count?"
"The markets taught me to check what I could touch. Help me pass the cloth before I start pretending this is wisdom."
Renn took the count cloth from his belt. It was stiff with dried blood, new blood, ash water, and too much history for a strip of fabric that had started as garbage. He pressed his cut palm to it until fresh red soaked through old red.
DRIP!
The drop hit the floor.
The walls reacted.
A black glass line crawled toward the blood, thin as a hair, hungry as a mouth.
"The wall can find the blood," Jaro whispered.
Renn pulled the cloth tighter around his wrist. "Let it find enough to remember all of us."
His voice shook. He kept going.
He tied the cloth around his wrist and stretched the loose end to the next survivor. "Touch it, pass it, and keep hold unless I say otherwise."
"What happens if the cloth cuts us?" Tavin asked.
"Keep holding, even if it draws blood. I do not have another way to make the count stay real."
Tavin took the cloth without another question and passed it on.
The cloth passed from hand to hand.
One. Two. Three. Four.
Renn counted by pressure on the fabric. He counted by the tremor in fingers. He counted by wetness, heat, grip, and the tiny flinch people made when the black glass reflected them wrong.
Five. Six. Seven.
Behind them, Kael struck something hard enough to shake the pocket.
BOOM!
The wall showed twelve survivors.
Renn’s fingers found eight.
"The wall has lost two more people," Renn said.
Dorran tightened his grip on the cloth. "My hand is still here, and I can feel Tavin beside me. Keep counting us instead."
Eight. Nine. Ten.
The black glass hair reached the blood drop and drank it.
The trapped air went cold.
HISS!
Every survivor’s reflection turned its head toward Renn at once. The black glass attacked the count then.
There was no blade this time, and no song. The wall showed thirteen. The floor reflected thirteen. The ceiling reflected thirteen. Every surface agreed with every other surface until the lie felt larger than the hand beneath Renn’s palm.
Renn’s hand touched fourteen, but he could no longer picture the last person’s face. Every body seemed present while the wall insisted someone had gone, and the contradiction tightened his throat until he could barely breathe.
CHOKE!
Vaela grabbed his jaw and forced his face toward hers. "Renn."
He could barely hear her. "Thirteen?"
"Look at me," Vaela said. "If you trust that wall more than your own bleeding hand, I am going to be disappointed in both of you."
"I can feel fourteen hands," Renn whispered. "Every wall still shows thirteen."
Vaela kept her grip on his jaw. "The wall can repeat the same lie forever. You are tired enough to doubt yourself, so use the cloth and let the rest of us answer."
Renn’s eyes filled. He hated crying in front of people who needed numbers more than tears, but Vaela did not look away or pretend he was unafraid. Kael was fighting beyond the seam, and Renn could still help by refusing to release the hand beneath his palm.
The black glass hair crawled up the count cloth.
SCRAPE!
It scraped against dried blood as if trying to peel witness from fiber. Kael felt the count attack through the protected line. The pressure hit the group, but the burden of refusal ran through him because he had chosen them publicly. The Sovereign Root flared inside the fight behind the seam.
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
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≫ HOSTILE QUARANTINE PRESSURE DETECTED: Tactile Witness Count Suppression
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +2
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▶ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND: NONE GIVEN
====================================================================
Kael’s voice came through the seam, rough with impact.
"Renn."
Renn lifted his head.
"Count what bleeds," Kael said.
Renn bit the inside of his cheek until blood filled his mouth, and he spat onto the cloth.
SPIT!
Fresh blood soaked through the older stains.
"Fourteen," he said.
The word hurt. Pain made it harder for the black glass to smooth the number away. Kael drove the command inward, forcing the shards into Mind Soul Anchor and Threat Perception Instinct so the count suppression could not turn proof into absence.
ALLOCATE!
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND RECEIVED
--------------------------------------------------------------------
▶ SHARD ALLOCATION REGISTERED: +2 TOTAL
▶ ALLOCATION DISTRIBUTION:
- Mind Soul Anchor -> 24
- Threat Perception Instinct -> 22
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ POINT IMMENSITY RESPONSE: Witness Suppression Resistance And Pattern Clarity Surge Confirmed
====================================================================
Renn received no panel and no power. The pressure on his thoughts eased only because Kael had survived the force behind it, giving him enough clarity to start again from the beginning.
One. Two. Three.
He could feel the difference between Tavin’s fever grip and Dorran’s broken-ankle tremor. He could feel Lysa’s palm slick with panic. He could feel Jaro’s hand trying to hover without fully committing, and he slapped it flat against the cloth.
Renn pulled Jaro’s hovering hand flat against the cloth. "Keep your palm here until the pocket opens. Whatever you call yourself outside can wait."
Jaro started to object, noticed the wall closing behind Vaela, and pressed down harder.
Renn continued.
Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.
He stopped, because the cloth should have been warm under one more hand and there was only air.
The reflections folded inward around the missing hand.
The fourteenth hand was not on the cloth. Renn’s eyes snapped open despite his own rule. A child had lost his grip without falling or moving away. The black glass reflection had folded around him, making his body look like an empty wrinkle in the wall.
Renn lunged.
His wrist ring tore skin.
RIP!
He caught the child’s sleeve with two fingers.
"Fourteen!" he shouted.
The black glass tried to close over the child’s shoulder. Vaela’s white edge flashed.
SPLIT!
The reflection wrinkle opened. Orrek’s hand that could still grip reached through, grabbed the child by the back of the shirt, and hauled him into the line with a roar that sounded half human and half falling furnace.
GRUNT!
The child hit the floor.
THUD!
He was sobbing now. Sobbing meant present. Vaela checked his eyes and the cold shoulder that had been inside the wall while Renn wrapped the count cloth around his wrist.
"Keep crying if you need to, but close this hand around the cloth for me," she said.
The child obeyed, tying his frightened pulse to Renn’s.
"Fourteen," he said again.
This time, the wall showed fourteen for one second before a crack split the reflection.
CRACK!
The crack was small, but it was the first proof that the wall could be forced to show the people Renn was holding.
Kael saw it from the lane beyond.
The first Quarantine Crown flickered.
Renn had not broken the field. He had only made it admit the count existed, and the admission gave the others something visible to trust.
Renn pressed his bloody forehead to the cloth and whispered, "Still fourteen."
The narrow pocket answered with a low, angry hum.
HUM!
The Excisors had failed to erase the count. Blood marked the cloth, while fear made every survivor squeeze hard enough for Renn to feel them. Any loose hand would give the black glass another chance to hide someone.
He tightened the cloth until it hurt everyone holding it.
"Hold tightly enough to feel one another," he whispered when they flinched. "Pain is better than losing a hand."
Jaro adjusted his hand on the cloth. "I followed a series of bad decisions into a pipe that sings names. Watching you hurt everyone with a strip of cloth may be the strangest one."
Renn continued counting by touch. "Complain outside. I need your hand here until the wall stops stealing people."
A laugh broke out from one survivor, turned into a cough, then became another laugh from someone else.
COUGH!
The laughter ended when the wall pressed in by another inch.
Renn felt the child’s pulse through the cloth.
The pulse was fast, terrified, and real. Renn kept his hand moving because any pause gave the black glass time to hide another person. He made everyone pass a name along the cloth when they had enough breath. Dorran cursed through his teeth, while Tavin answered twice because the child tied to Renn could not stop sobbing.
Their frightened voices filled the shrinking pocket with fourteen separate lives. The walls pressed closer, but the count did not fall again.