The first white drops rose from cracks in the floor.
They drifted past Kael’s boots and gathered near the ceiling, thin as needles and bright enough to show every stain on the stone. One curved over his head and fell between his palm and the wall. His hand remained against the stone, but the support vanished as if he had tried to brace himself against smoke.
His balance went with it. Kael drove his shoulder into the wall before the floor could take his feet.
THUD!
Pain spread through his ribs. Behind him, twenty-one protected people crowded the narrow passage while more drops climbed around their ankles. The pale rain slipped between hands, tools, wounds, and the people holding one another upright before it ever cut skin.
Vaela caught an older woman’s wrist before her fingers opened. "Keep hold of someone or something you trust. The rain is making your own arm feel strange, but your hand still belongs to you."
The woman stared at her fingers as if they had come from another body. She bit the edge of her mask, held Vaela’s sleeve with her free hand, and refused to let go.
Orrek wound his chain around his forearm and offered the loose length to the three people behind him. His injured shoulder shook under their combined weight. "Three people need the chain, but this shoulder is shaking already. Keep every grip low near my hip."
Vaela moved the rear survivor’s hand lower on the chain, taking some of the pull away from Orrek’s shoulder. "Keep the loose length near your hip. The joint is shaking, and another high load will tear it wider."
Orrek adjusted his stance until the pain eased enough to breathe. "The load is better there. Warn me if the cloth slips again."
The pale drops reached the ceiling and came down harder.
HISS!
One passed between Renn’s count cloth and the old woman beside him. Her grip loosened at once. Renn pressed the cloth into her palm and wrapped her fingers around it with both hands.
"Hold this instead of looking at your arm. You are the eleventh person in my count, and I need you to keep carrying the cloth until your fingers remember you."
Her teeth drew blood from the mask. She nodded anyway.
The drop hovering over the cloth divided, unable to choose between the woman’s hand, Renn’s record, and the blood soaking through both. Jaro watched it hesitate. Fear drained the color from his face, but his eyes sharpened.
"Smear the clean things," he said. His whisper barely crossed the rain. "Blood, ash, dirt, anything. These rooms separate whatever they can understand quickly."
Vaela kept her arm around the older woman. "Show us what you mean before the next drop reaches her."
Jaro wiped his bleeding palm across the wall, rubbed black ash into the streak, and pressed two fingers through the mess. A white needle struck the mark. It spent several breaths tracing blood away from dust, dust away from stone, and Jaro’s touch away from all three.
"It has to work through each part," he said. "We can make every part harder to read."
Kael saw another drop divide above Dorran. Half drifted toward the boy’s mouth while the rest followed the hand resting on his shoulder. The rain meant to separate the child from the person keeping him calm.
Kael moved before it fell.
His first foot lost its grip when a white needle crossed the space beneath his sole. He drove the second down with more force than the passage expected.
CRACK!
A plate of stone broke beneath his heel. Kael kicked the fragments through the falling rain. Blood from his boot, black ash, and dust clung to every piece, forcing the white drops to follow several different trails at once.
The rain faltered for three breaths.
"Take Dorran through first," Kael said. "Everyone else should follow inside broken dust, and leave anything the rain pulls from your hands."
The survivors moved before the white fall recovered. Dorran stumbled between two adults, breathing through his teeth while Renn counted each person who crossed the fractured stone.
The rain thickened above them.
RUSTLE!
White needles brushed coats, masks, hair, and exposed skin. A hammer strap slid from one man’s chest even though its knot remained tied. The tool no longer felt like his, and he lunged after it before Vaela caught the back of his coat.
"Leave the hammer," Vaela said, keeping both hands locked in his coat. "I know you carried it from the furnace yard, but the floor is waiting for your hand. Hold Orrek’s chain until we reach the other side, and I will remember where the tool fell."
The man looked sick as the strap slid lower. "It belonged to my brother before it belonged to me, so please remember the iron head as well as the handle."
Vaela pushed his hand toward the chain. "I saw both pieces. Move while the rain is still busy with them."
The hammer fell. A white drop split the iron head from its wooden handle, and a seam in the floor swallowed both pieces.
CLATTER!
The man watched the floor swallow his hammer. Orrek pulled the chain once, and the man finally looked away. He closed both hands around the offered links and helped the wounded woman behind him cross the broken stone.
Kael stepped beneath the heaviest part of the rain.
Needles struck his shoulders and slid away from the dense muscle beneath his skin. Others found older wounds. A drop crossed his ribs, and his left side forgot how to follow the breath entering his lungs. He bent forward as blood climbed into his mouth.
COUGH!
The rain turned toward the sound. Every nearby needle narrowed upon his chest, seeking the space between breath and the will forcing it to continue.
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ HOSTILE ROUTE PRESSURE DETECTED: Severance Rain Relation Cut
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +2
--------------------------------------------------------------------
▶ AWAITING HOST COMMAND
====================================================================
Two shards burned awake beneath his sternum. The pressure had made his ribs stop following his lungs, just as it had loosened fingers from sleeves, tools, and injured bodies. He sent the command inward.
Metaphysical Resistance and Mind Soul Anchor.
ALLOCATE!
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND RECEIVED
--------------------------------------------------------------------
▶ SHARD ALLOCATION REGISTERED: +2 TOTAL
▶ ALLOCATION DISTRIBUTION:
- Metaphysical Resistance -> 41
- Mind Soul Anchor -> 30
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ POINT IMMENSITY RESPONSE: Relation severance pressure resisted.
====================================================================
The change struck through his chest like two nails driven inward and locked in place. His ribs remembered the work of breathing, while every old wound remained part of the body that had survived it.
A white needle dropped between Kael and Dorran. It bent around the pressure clinging to Kael’s skin and passed harmlessly beside the boy’s cheek.
Dorran stared at the empty space.
"Keep breathing and look at the people beside you," Kael said. "Draw air even when it hurts. Holding it will put you on the floor."
The boy swallowed. "I can keep doing it if someone tells me where to put my feet."
Renn lifted the count cloth from the older woman’s hand and pointed to the dusty trail. "Follow the broken stone. I will stay close enough for you to hear the count."
Dorran’s next breath shook, yet it came easier.
The rain began choosing people by their work. Drops gathered above Vaela’s wrapped wrist, Orrek’s damaged shoulder, and Renn’s count cloth. Another hovered beside Marit, following the strap of a pack she carried for a man whose fingers had gone numb.
Vaela noticed the cluster above her wrist and dragged the wrapping across the wall. Ash, old blood, and grit covered the cloth until the white edge beneath it no longer looked like a single tool.
SCRAPE!
The falling needles spent themselves pulling cloth away from ash and blood away from metal. Vaela crossed while they were busy, bringing the older woman with her.
Jaro followed and glanced at the ruined wrapping. "I was hoping the mess would slow it. I did not expect anyone to trust the idea with a hand they still needed."
"I trusted what you showed me," Vaela said. Her wrist trembled when she adjusted the cloth. "Keep watching the rain, because I cannot afford to test every idea with the other hand."
Orrek limped after them, supporting two survivors with his chain. "Jaro found an answer before the rain cut the line apart. I owe him a drink. My shoulder will have to postpone the dancing."
Renn’s mouth twitched despite the pain in his throat, but he kept touching shoulders as they passed and finished the count without joining the joke.
A few survivors laughed, quietly and without much breath. White drops gathered above their open mouths, divided into smaller needles, and hung there trembling while the uneven sound continued.
Kael saw the opening. "Keep moving together. Smear the straps, trade hands, and speak if someone beside you starts to feel unfamiliar."
The twenty-one crossed in a disorder the passage could not divide cleanly. Blood stained the cloth while ash covered tools and skin, and people changed grips before the rain could settle on one hand. Renn touched every shoulder at the far mouth and found all twenty-one waiting.
The remaining drops struck the pressure around Kael.
SPLIT!
Some burst into white grit. Others bent aside or carved shallow lines across his skin, painful but no longer able to take his breath or his purpose from him.
One final drop hung above the passage. Twenty-one tiny reflections floated inside it, each person standing alone.
Kael closed his fist around the drop.
CRUNCH!
White grit spilled between his fingers.
Renn checked every face before he spoke. "All twenty-one made it through, although I would prefer never to count anyone inside rain again."
"Keep them moving," Kael said. "The next room already knows we carried one another."
The lower route stayed quiet for two breaths. Their strained laughter returned from the next chamber, and pale knots tightened along the walls each time the echo reached them.