At the entrance to the next passage, Renn still had the count cloth tied around his wrist and the furnace-scarred woman’s fingers. Fourteen pulses had moved through its stained knots only a moment ago. He pressed his thumb into the fabric out of habit and felt nothing.
The clay bowl ahead of them shifted by itself and struck the wall.
CLINK!
Renn stopped walking. He rubbed the cloth between his fingers, searching for the warmth and faint movement he had learned to recognize, but the fabric felt cold and stiff. Blood remained in the weave. Every sign of the people who had held it was gone.
"Renn?" Tavin asked.
Renn tried the cloth again. His burned palm trembled hard enough to shake the nearest knot. "I cannot feel anyone."
The survivors crowded closer before fear could scatter them. Sella pulled her daughter against her side, while Dorran leaned more heavily on Tavin and watched Renn’s hands. The cold cloth and Renn’s face gave them the answer before anyone asked.
Tavin looked down at his own wrist. "Are we still fourteen?"
Renn raised his head so quickly that pain crossed his face. "We are still fourteen. The cloth has lost us, but everyone is here, so keep looking at the person beside you."
Vaela came to him and took his injured hand before he could scrape it raw against the weave. "Let me see."
"It was working at the last turn." Renn opened his fingers, although every part of him wanted to close them around the cloth. "I felt all of them. The bowl moved, and everything vanished."
Jaro backed toward the wall. "The fog found another way to clean the room."
Pale light spread through the scratches cut into the mirrors.
SHHHH!
A thin white mist slipped from the lower frames and moved across the floor. Wherever it passed, bloody footprints faded. A handprint vanished from the wall beside Orrek. Even the sweat on Renn’s cloth dried without leaving a stain.
Renn stared at the clean fabric in Vaela’s hand. During the escape, he had used its knots to find missing people, hold frightened workers together, and prove when a white room had changed their number. He had known it was only cloth. Losing it still felt like losing the one useful thing he had made for them.
The furnace-scarred woman reached across him and caught Tavin’s hand. "I am here."
Tavin squeezed back. "I know. I can feel you."
The mirrors brightened at their voices. A narrow frame opened beside them, and two pale strips pushed out of the glass toward their throats.
CLACK!
Vaela cut the first strip before it straightened.
SCRAPE!
Orrek swung his chain into the second. The pale strip shattered, but the blow pulled at his damaged shoulder and dropped him to one knee.
THUD!
Pain drained the color from his face. He gathered the chain anyway and tried to stand.
Vaela pointed her knife at him. "Leave the next one to someone whose shoulder is not held together by stubbornness."
"Stubbornness has carried it farther than medicine," Orrek said. His breath came short, and he allowed Jaro to help him up. "I will keep the chain low until you stop looking at me like an unfinished burial."
The mist reached Kael’s boots. Cold spread through the leather and climbed into his wounds, dulling each ache until he could no longer tell which injury came from the crown, the hook in his calf, or the rooms behind them.
Kael moved between the fog and the survivors. "Touch skin. Do not trust the cloth or anything reflected in the walls."
Renn slapped one palm against his chest.
THUMP!
He caught the furnace-scarred woman’s wrist, guided her hand to Tavin, and reached for the next survivor. The others followed without grace. Fingers slipped on blood, frightened children held too tightly, and wounded adults had to change hands when pain weakened their grip. The line was clumsy, warm, and alive.
The fog climbed Kael’s legs. It could not cut him, but it made his body feel unfamiliar. The hook wound in his calf seemed to belong to someone else. For one dangerous breath, the hands behind him felt too distant to protect.
The Sovereign Root flared.
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
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≫ HOSTILE TRIAGE PRESSURE DETECTED: Witness Proof Decay Fog
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +2
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▶ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND: NONE GIVEN
====================================================================
Two shards burned inside him. Kael gave them both a purpose before the fog could reach his thoughts. One went into Metaphysical Resistance. The other went into Mind Soul Anchor.
ALLOCATE!
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
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≫ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND RECEIVED
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▶ SHARD ALLOCATION REGISTERED: +2 TOTAL
▶ ALLOCATION DISTRIBUTION:
- Metaphysical Resistance -> 35
- Mind Soul Anchor -> 26
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≫ POINT IMMENSITY RESPONSE: Witness Proof Decay Rejection Surge Confirmed
≫ UNALLOCATED EXISTENTIAL SHARDS: 0
====================================================================
The numbness stopped below his knees. Kael felt the hook in his calf, the cuts across his hands, and the weight of every person holding the line behind him. Pain returned with brutal clarity, but it belonged to him again.
Heat spread through the stone beneath his feet. The mist recoiled from his legs and divided around him.
CRACKLE!
Kael lowered his weight and planted both hands into the white streams. His fingers caught nothing solid, yet the pressure beneath his palms flattened the fog against the floor. Several pale strips collapsed inside their mirrors before they could emerge.
Renn watched the mist pull away. A rough breath escaped him.
WHEEZE!
"Fourteen," he whispered.
Every mirror flashed.
Kael glanced back at him. "Keep the number in your hands. The room is listening for your voice."
Renn nodded and pressed his thumb once against the wrist he held. The furnace-scarred woman passed the touch to Tavin, who passed it onward. One tap became two, followed by a pause. Renn changed the rhythm before the mirrors could follow it.
He struck the next wrist three times with the tips of his fingers.
TAP! TAP! TAP!
The mirrors brightened too late.
The count moved from palm to wrist, shoulder to sleeve, and hand to hand, but the pattern broke often. Sella’s daughter forgot it and squeezed twice. Dorran missed a touch when his injured leg failed beneath him, so Orrek caught him and pushed his hand back into Tavin’s.
Renn altered the pattern around every mistake. Instead of correcting the survivors, he used their uneven timing to confuse the mirrors.
Jaro watched three failed rhythms become one moving count while he helped Orrek keep Dorran upright. "Every pipe crew I knew would have thrown you out for counting like this, although most of them could not escape their own supervisor. Continue embarrassing the profession."
Renn’s voice still shook, but his hands remained steady and the next rhythm reached Sella without repeating the last.
Vaela checked the cut in Renn’s palm as they moved. "Your hand has opened again, so use your fingers gently unless you want me to bind them together."
Renn flexed each finger once. "I still need all of them, but I can slow down."
The exchange settled him more than praise would have. Renn kept the contact chain moving while Kael forced the mist back into the lower mirrors.
A wider chamber waited beyond the passage. A black platform stood in its center, polished clean enough to reflect the scarred ceiling. Fourteen pale shapes hovered around it at chest height.
The survivors slowed.
Each shape had the height and width of a person in their line. One matched Dorran’s bent posture. Another stood at Sella’s daughter’s height. A broader shape carried the outline of the furnace-scarred woman’s shoulders, although its surface had no face, wounds, clothes, or breath.
Renn understood what the mirrors had been measuring. The room had copied their size and the places they stood, but it had removed everything that made one person different from another.
"Do not step near them," he said. "They were shaped from us."
Tavin stared at the blank made for him. "Can they take our places?"
"Only if we help the room forget who belongs here." Renn took his wrist and placed it against Dorran’s palm. "You know his pulse. He knows yours. Hold on even if the glass shows you something cleaner."
The count cloth grew hot inside Vaela’s hand. Smoke rose from its knots, and the fabric broke apart before she could throw it away. Grey ash fell between Renn’s bare fingers.
RUSTLE!
He reached for it, stopped, and let the last pieces fall. A bead of blood followed from his split palm and struck the black floor.
DRIP!
The ash began crawling toward the pale shapes. Kael stepped in front of it, and all fourteen blanks turned toward him together.
Renn looked at his empty hands. The left shook more than the right, and dried blood filled the spaces beneath his nails. Neither hand felt important enough to replace what he had lost.
The furnace-scarred woman touched her palm to his. Her pulse answered beneath his burned skin.
"You found me before the cloth did," she said quietly. "It only helped you remember where to look."
Renn swallowed. He closed his fingers around her hand and reached for Tavin with the other. Their pulses reached him at different speeds, while pain and fear kept changing the pressure of every grip.
Tavin kept his other hand locked around Dorran’s wrist. "I can feel both of you, even without the knots. My hand is tired, but I can keep holding on."
Renn tried to answer and had to clear his throat first. "I thought losing the cloth would make me useless. Give me a moment to hate being wrong."
Dorran shifted his weight against Tavin and managed a tired smile. "Take your moment while we walk. My leg has already voted against standing here."
The small laugh that passed through the line did not remove anyone’s fear. It gave their fear familiar voices, which was enough to keep the pale shapes from becoming the only thing in the chamber that mattered.
"Stay connected," Renn said. "We carry the count ourselves from here."
The others tightened their grips, adjusted the wounded between them, and faced the fourteen empty shapes without wasting breath on a promise.