The witness chamber narrowed into a passage of slanted black bone. Opposing walls left room for only two people abreast, while curved ribs forced the taller survivors to lower their heads.
Kael stopped before the entrance. His ribs still hurt from carrying Yedda's burden, while Renn checked her pulse and Harn kept an arm around her waist.
Vaela crouched beside a shallow groove in the floor. She laid the blunt side of her white edge against it and pushed no harder than she would against bruised skin.
SCRAPE!
The groove slid away from her blade. A second line opened near Kael's boot and curved around the place where his heel rested.
"It moved after you touched it," Renn said. His voice remained rough from the pressure on his throat. "The mark near Kael changed as well, although he never stepped on it."
Jaro stared into the passage without crossing its edge. "I have seen old route drawings of places like this, but the drawings never showed what happened inside. People entered with a familiar walk and came out missing whatever part they trusted most."
Orrek adjusted the chain across his chest. His wounded shoulder resisted the movement, and he allowed it to settle before trying again from a lower angle. "We have enough missing parts already. Give us the useful piece before the walls collect another one."
Kael entered alone, leaving room for the others to retreat if the passage closed. The mark beneath his skin tightened before his first step, warning him only that danger waited.
The floor gave beneath his boot. A ridge rose beneath his third step and forced him toward the left wall, where he pushed off with one shoulder and recovered.
HUM!
The same ridge appeared three steps ahead. A pale scrape marked the left wall at the exact height of his shoulder.
Renn followed the pale scrape with his eyes. "It remembered where Kael put his shoulder, and the next ridge is trying to send him back to the same place."
Kael shifted his weight forward and crossed the ridge without touching the wall again. A narrow hook unfolded where his shoulder should have landed. Its point closed on empty air.
Jaro finally stepped inside. "Angle hunger lane. The white rooms used them to punish trained movement. A person survives one trap, repeats the same answer, and gives the passage everything it needs to prepare the next one."
Vaela rose and studied Orrek's shoulder before looking at the hook. "Your body will favor the same side. Keep changing position. If a limb stops answering, say it."
Renn guided the survivors into the pairs they had used through the witness chamber. Yedda remained with Harn, Old Tam walked between the twins, and Sova kept one hand on the boy's belt. The furnace-scar woman pulled Tavin close enough to catch him without making him stumble.
"Watch the person beside you instead of Kael," Renn said. "His steps belong to his body, and copying them will only teach the passage how to reach yours. Move when there is room, stop when your partner needs breath, and leave every clever experiment to someone who can survive being wrong."
Jaro glanced toward the ceiling and lingered beneath one of the ribs. "I wanted to test whether the hooks follow a thrown stone, although I would need to reach into that crack to find one."
Orrek gave him a tired nod before moving ahead. "Leave the crack alone, because we need your eyes more than we need an experiment. You can throw something after we find a place that is less interested in collecting your hand."
The formation advanced without a shared rhythm. Kael shortened one step, dragged the next, and crossed a rising seam with his hand against the floor. Vaela tapped the wall before each pair passed, sometimes with her blade and sometimes with two wrapped fingers. Renn changed the order whenever one survivor began following the person ahead too closely.
Orrek leaned right to spare his injured shoulder. Ten paces later, another low rib forced him to make the same choice.
The wall opened beside him.
CLACK!
A bone hook caught his sleeve and ripped a line through the outside of his upper arm. Orrek twisted away before it reached his shoulder, leaving cloth and blood on the point. A black seam in the wall drank the first drops.
Vaela reached him and pressed her palm above the cut. "The hook missed the old wound, but the bleeding will loosen your grip if it reaches the hand. Keep your arm close until I bind it."
"I can still pull," Orrek said, breathing through his teeth. "My shoulder found a quieter position, and the wall noticed before I did. I will give it something less comfortable next time."
Kael caught the hook before it folded away. A direct punch would have broken it, but the passage had already watched him break too many things with his fists. He stepped close, let the point scrape along his forearm, and drove his elbow down against the hinge from inside its curve.
CRACK!
The hook snapped. Pale bone immediately thickened around another hinge farther ahead, copying the path of his elbow and preparing a stronger point.
Cold pressure climbed Kael's arm. The passage had taken a successful movement and turned it against the next body.
The Sovereign Root opened behind his eyes.
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
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≫ HOSTILE ROUTE PRESSURE DETECTED: Angle Hunger Adaptation
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +2
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▶ AWAITING HOST COMMAND
====================================================================
Two shards waited while Orrek's arm bled and another hook thickened inside the wall. Kael held them only long enough to choose where they belonged.
Velocity Movement Authority +1. Threat Perception Instinct +1.
ALLOCATE!
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND RECEIVED
▶ SHARD ALLOCATION REGISTERED: +2 TOTAL
▶ ALLOCATION DISTRIBUTION:
- Velocity Movement Authority -> 35
- Threat Perception Instinct -> 27
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ POINT IMMENSITY RESPONSE: Route-angle prediction window widened.
====================================================================
The change reached Kael before the next hook finished opening. Pressure gathered inside the wall, and his body recognized the danger while the point was still buried. He crossed the unfinished attack, set his shoulder beneath it, and drove upward with a movement the passage had not seen.
CRUNCH!
The hook broke inside the wall. Bone fragments struck the floor, and the ridge beneath the survivors flattened for several breaths.
"Bring them through," Kael said. "The wall needs time to copy a new movement, so use the opening before it finishes."
Renn raised the count cloth and waved the first pair forward. "Yedda and Harn first, but do not rush her breathing. Old Tam, keep the twins behind the broken hook. Everyone else can follow the space in front of you without borrowing another person's feet."
The survivors crossed in uneven movements. One woman abandoned the wall when a pale line followed her hand and caught her partner's belt instead. The boy backed away from a ridge until Renn turned him before the passage learned the habit.
Vaela bound Orrek's upper arm while they moved. Her blackened wrist shook whenever she tightened the cloth, but the knot held. Orrek took the chain in his other hand and changed his posture before each low rib reached him.
Jaro survived by moving badly. He ducked too early, stopped to swallow, and nearly walked into Vaela, but none of his mistakes repeated in the same order.
"I have no idea where my next foot is going, but the wall seems equally confused," he murmured. "I can live with mutual disappointment for a few more steps."
Orrek lifted his uninjured hand in tired encouragement. His breath hitched as Vaela pulled the binding tight, and he concentrated on placing his next step without favoring the shoulder again.
The hooks withdrew halfway through the passage. The floor smoothed, the leaning walls opened, and a straight path appeared beyond Kael with room enough for the entire formation to run.
The formation slowed together, and even Jaro kept his feet on the scarred floor.
Threat Perception Instinct pressed cold against the base of Kael's skull. The clean floor held no old scratches, while every safer piece behind him carried marks from frightened feet.
"The open path was made recently," Kael said. "Keep to the damaged floor, because the old scratches show where other people survived."
Renn looked from the untouched bone to Yedda's exhausted face. "We keep the same pairs and take the rough edge. A clean road has done nothing to earn our trust."
Kael placed half a boot on the straight path and stopped. The corridor answered at once.
SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!
Hooks erupted across the center, closing at knee, stomach, and throat height where running bodies would have been. Their points struck only empty air. Kael turned his raised foot sideways and drove it between three crowded hinges.
BANG!
The hooks smashed into one another. Broken points skidded across the floor, and bright protocol ash poured from the ceiling into the space where the formation had refused to run.
Kael held the lane open while Renn moved the last pairs along the damaged edge. Vaela followed with her hand on Orrek's fresh binding. Jaro stumbled through after them and bent over with both palms on his knees, one breath away from vomiting.
Renn counted everyone again, and twenty-one pulses answered, including Yedda's weak one. Orrek's upper arm bled through the first layer of cloth, Vaela's wrist still shook, and Kael's ribs had tightened until every breath burned, but the entire formation had cleared the passage.
The walls closed behind them. Pale marks spread through the sealing bone: Kael's shoulder turn, his elbow drop, the twist of his final stamp, and the places where his weight had struck hardest. The lane had failed to keep a body, yet it had kept a record of how he fought.
Ahead, those same marks glimmered across the floor of a wider chamber.