Renn felt the pull in his injured wrist before he saw the white cord. It slipped between the hollow figure’s iron ribs and stopped a finger’s width from his mouth, trembling when he breathed. Its smooth mask faced him instead of Kael.
The buried stonework drew in a slow vibration.
HUM!
Renn closed his mouth. Counting aloud had carried fourteen people across the dark, but the thing in front of him had listened every time he spoke. A number would give it something clean to follow, and silence would leave the survivors blind to one another.
Vaela saw the cord tighten and moved beside him, keeping the damaged white edge low in her hand. "Do not speak yet. Keep hold of the boy, and breathe through your nose if you can manage it."
The boy gripped Renn’s sleeve with one hand and the furnace-scar woman’s fingers with the other. His face had gone gray beneath the dirt. "What happens if it reaches his mouth?"
Vaela checked Renn’s wrist with her free hand, pressing below the torn skin until she found his pulse. "The cord is trying to force its way into his throat. Stay behind me, keep holding his sleeve, and tell me if his hand goes limp."
Jaro crouched behind a chipped stone pillar and studied the three plates turning inside the figure’s chest. "It stopped watching Kael when Renn closed his mouth. The body wants more than a number, because numbers alone did not keep us together."
Orrek leaned against the pillar holding the floor open. Blood soaked his shoulder binding, and his knees still shook. "You sound close to an answer, so please find the rest before the pale cord climbs inside him."
"I am trying," Jaro said. His eyes moved from Renn’s hand to every linked wrist behind him. "Renn remembers who has answered, who has fallen, and where the weak part of the line is. The room wants the habit behind his counting."
The cord touched Renn’s lower lip.
Cold spread through his teeth and down his throat. Faces crowded his thoughts: Dorran spitting blood, Tavin limping, the boy refusing to release the furnace-scar woman, and Orrek pretending his shoulder had not torn again. Renn had kept those details in order because somebody had to know when one living person disappeared from the line.
His vision blurred. Kael turned as the cord pulled harder, and the Sovereign Root opened where no one else could see it.
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
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≫ HOSTILE COUNTERMEASURE PRESSURE DETECTED: Unpredictable Proof Extraction
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +2
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▶ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND: NONE GIVEN
====================================================================
The force moved from Renn’s wrist into the hands linked behind him. Kael felt it tug at the memory of each pulse and injured body, and he refused to let the chamber tear those memories loose.
One command went inward. A shard settled into Mind Soul Anchor, while the other reinforced Metaphysical Resistance.
ALLOCATE!
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND RECEIVED
▶ SHARD ALLOCATION REGISTERED: +2 TOTAL
▶ ALLOCATION DISTRIBUTION:
- Metaphysical Resistance -> 38
- Mind Soul Anchor -> 28
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≫ POINT IMMENSITY RESPONSE: Protected proof line reinforced against countermeasure extraction.
====================================================================
The change stayed inside Kael, but the cord shuddered when his resistance met the force traveling through it. Renn dragged air past the cold in his throat.
WHEEZE!
He could not trust spoken numbers, so he pressed his thumb twice against the boy’s wrist. The boy hesitated before squeezing the furnace-scar woman’s hand once. She understood enough to tug Tavin’s sleeve, and Tavin bumped his shoulder against Dorran.
Dorran leaned aside with blood filling his mouth.
SPIT!
The dark spray struck the stone beside his knee.
A survivor farther back struck his knuckles against the wall.
TAP! TAP!
The signals passed through all fourteen bodies without settling into one rhythm. Some people squeezed, others tugged cloth, and the injured answered with breath or a shift of weight when their hands were occupied. Everyone understood the same simple message: I am here, and the next person is still with me.
The hollow figure stopped moving. Its rib plates turned toward Renn, but no plate could decide which gesture carried the count.
Vaela kept her fingers on his pulse. "Stay with me, Renn. Your pulse slows whenever the cord tightens, so keep squeezing the boy’s wrist even if the timing breaks."
He nodded because speaking still hurt. Fear shook his hand badly enough to spoil the next squeeze, but the boy copied the mistake and passed it onward.
The white cord darted between them. It followed two squeezes, lost the sleeve tug, and recoiled when Dorran’s blood struck the floor. Three plates inside the figure’s chest spun in different directions as it tried to connect gestures that changed from one person to the next.
Kael crossed the short distance while its attention remained divided. He struck the cord with the back of his knuckles.
CRACK!
The cord snapped against his hand like a glass wire, cutting his skin before it whipped back between the iron ribs. The Root had already converted this attack, so the broken cord yielded no new shard. Inside the hollow chest, one plate struck another and threw the mechanism out of time.
CLICK! CLICK! CLACK!
Jaro raised his head above the pillar. "The middle plate has fallen behind the others. It can still move, but it will have to choose which signal to follow."
Orrek pushed himself upright with his uninjured arm and reached for the nearest survivor. "Keep the signal moving while its plates fight each other. I can hold this side a little longer, but someone needs to stay near the pillar when the arm gives."
Vaela tightened two fingers around Renn’s wrist, moved close enough to brace Orrek with her shoulder, and watched his binding darken. "Keep the torn arm against the pillar and use the one that still obeys you." His tired laugh loosened the fear in the line for one breath, changing the pattern again.
The hollow figure opened both arms. Narrow seams split across the floor, and white threads rose beneath every linked pair of hands. Each thread bent toward a different survivor, ready to wall them apart and study their signals one body at a time.
Renn saw the rows forming and forced his damaged voice past the cold. "Cough when I touch your wrist, but do it badly and without waiting for the person beside you."
The survivors answered at different times.
COUGH! COUGH!
One woman coughed too early. Tavin managed only a dry choke, while Dorran kicked the floor because his chest hurt too much. Orrek laughed again when another survivor missed the stone entirely, and the rising threads paused between several conflicting movements.
Kael drove his shoulder into the nearest seam before it reached the boy.
CRUNCH!
Stone folded around his boots. Vaela sliced a second thread with the damaged white edge, and Orrek wedged his heel into a third while his injured shoulder trembled against the pillar. Jaro waved two survivors right, pointed the next pair left, and changed his signal before the ribs could turn toward him.
Renn pressed the boy’s wrist once, dragged a finger across his sleeve, and finished with a clumsy twist. The boy copied him with frightened care. The furnace-scar woman misunderstood it, Tavin copied her mistake, and Dorran added a kick because he had already lost the beginning, yet the signal still reached the next person.
The white threads flickered and sank halfway into the floor. Thin frames remained around several pairs of hands, following each grip and tug as if the chamber could learn their purpose by watching long enough.
Vaela looked from the crooked signals to Renn. "You have turned a bad count into something it cannot predict. Keep changing it before the thing remembers how patient it is."
Renn tasted blood when he swallowed. "Everyone only needs to know who is beside them, and the signal can change each time it reaches another hand."
Jaro crawled from behind the pillar, keeping his head below the turning ribs. "Route crews would throw me into a cistern for recording people this way, although none of those crews had a white corpse trying to steal the work from their hands."
Orrek held out his palm to the survivor nearest him, who caught it before Jaro finished speaking. A quiet, uneven laugh traveled through the line, changing each time pain or fear interrupted it. The chest plates accelerated, yet faster movement only made them strike one another more often.
Kael stepped in front of the remaining frames. Thin white bands closed around his wrists, waist, and ankles, while another hovered between his back and the people behind him. Mind Soul Anchor steadied his thoughts, and Metaphysical Resistance kept the bands from sinking beneath his skin. They bruised him without fixing his body in one place.
He closed one hand around the nearest frame and crushed it.
CRUNCH!
White fragments scattered across the floor. Renn’s changing signal passed through the opening, from wrist to sleeve and shoulder to stone, until the last survivor answered. Fourteen people remained on their feet or in the hands of someone strong enough to carry them.
Renn leaned against the boy, shaking from his throat to his knees. "All fourteen are still here. Keep your hands linked until Kael gives us somewhere safer to stand."
The boy squeezed his wrist twice. Renn answered once, deliberately changing the signal, and the boy altered it again before passing it to the furnace-scar woman. Fear had not left either of them, but they had found something useful to do while afraid.
The hollow figure drew its threads back between its ribs. Its smooth mask turned from Renn to Kael, and the floor trembled beneath the space separating them. Gray fluid pushed through a narrow crack between Kael’s boots.
A black stone tooth rose from the wet opening, angled toward his heel. It had missed Renn only because Kael stood in its path, and the chamber was already lifting a second tooth behind the first.