Chapter 29: Proofscar
Orrek hated crawling more than he hated most people. The maintenance slit was too narrow for his shoulders, too wet for grip, and too full of old pressure oil to breathe properly. Brak dragged himself ahead with little choking sounds. The fever girl crawled between Renn and the old woman. Vaela moved behind Orrek, cutting wires as she went, muttering numbers and insults under her breath.
The ash road shelf sagged lower around injured bodies first, the way a cruel hand tests a cracked cup before deciding where to squeeze.
Kael’s answer stayed simple. If the road hooks reached for a body, they would have to come close enough for his hands to matter.
THUD!
Cripple proof lived in the scrape of knees, in Orrek’s hands refusing to close wrong, and in the price marks gathering around injured bodies as if damage made them easier to sell.
Behind them, Kael fought alone.
They could not see most of it.
They heard enough.
BANG!
Stone shook dust into the slit.
A worker ahead of Orrek began whispering that Kael was dead, then stopped when the next impact came from the wrong direction. Dead men did not keep moving the walls.
BOOM!
The slit roof shivered hard enough to knock black oil from the seams. It fell across Orrek’s knuckles like the road was trying to sign him too.
BOOM!
Something heavy hit the throat wall.
CRACK!
A retrieval mask broke or a bone did. Orrek could not tell. His hands dug into the wet floor until his nails filled with black oil.
He wanted to go back.
His shoulder told him he was an idiot. His lungs agreed. His head did not care.
Vaela shoved his boot.
"Move."
"He is alone."
"He chose that."
"Bad choice."
"Yes. He collects those. Crawl."
Another impact came, deeper than the others.
THOOM!
The whole slit bucked.
Brak screamed ahead. The fever girl started crying again. Renn’s voice cut through the dark.
"Keep moving! Hands and knees! Do not stop in the oil!"
Orrek crawled three more body lengths, hating each one.
Then the wall beside him split.
CRACK!
A viewing cut opened, no wider than his hand. Violet light poured through. Orrek turned his head and saw the throat chamber beyond. Kael stood in the middle of it with the abandoned cart wheel in both hands.
Two retrieval bodies circled him. One crawled low, broken knee dragging. One climbed along the wall with hook limbs punched into stone. The first body, the one Kael had thrown into the false exit, was gone except for twitching pieces near the chewing wall.
Kael looked worse than he had any right to look and better than any man should. Blood soaked his side. Black pressure webbed his marked hand. His back wounds had reopened.
But his stance had changed after the shard spend. He carried weight differently now. Not like a laborer bracing for pain. Like a post hammered into the world.
The wall crawler dropped.
Its hook arms came down together toward Kael’s spine. Orrek’s breath stopped.
Kael turned too late.
The hooks hit his back.
BANG!
The blow drove him to one knee. Stone cracked under him. The retrieval body’s chest mouth opened over his shoulder, trying to drink the force that had just landed and feed it into the ownership seal carved inside its ribs.
That blow should have crippled him.
Orrek knew bodies. He knew what shoulders did when weight came wrong. He knew what spines sounded like when a man stopped being a man and became something carried on a door. The hooks had landed with enough force to fold a Chain Yard crusher.
Kael did not fold.
He put one hand on the ground.
The stone under his palm sank.
Then he stood up under the hooks.
Slowly.
Not cleanly. Not painlessly. Blood ran from his mouth. His back shook. His knees trembled once.
But he stood.
The retrieval body’s arms rose with him because the hooks were stuck in his flesh and newly hardened density.
Orrek stared.
Something inside him answered.
Not a system block. Not a voice. A pressure in his ruined shoulder, his broken pride, his chain wrapped fist. A recognition that did not ask permission from fear. Orrek remembered every man who had not stood.
Chain Yard taught memory through absence. The empty sleeping hook where a loud worker used to snore. The blood patch under a press bar. The debt mark crossed out when a body was sold in pieces.
Orrek had learned young that people did not rise because they wanted to. Want was cheap. Rising required something meaner.
Kael had that meaner thing.
It made Orrek angry because anger was easier than awe.
He was not ready to belong to anyone.
That mattered. If a lesser man had offered him power in that moment, Orrek would have bitten the hand just to prove his mouth still belonged to him. Kael did not offer. Kael did not ask. Kael simply stood where a body should not stand and made Orrek’s excuses feel smaller.
That was more dangerous than a command.
He had not sworn to Kael. He did not want a master, a crown, a leash with prettier metal. He had spent too many years watching men call chains by better names. But the pressure crawling through his fist did not feel like a leash. It felt like a question.
Can you stand too?
Orrek pressed his forehead to the slit floor and laughed once into the oil.
"Shut up," he muttered to the question.
Vaela heard him.
"You talking to me?"
"No. Worse."
"Good. I was about to be offended."
That is what standing means.
The thought was not in words at first. It was weight. It settled in him and made his pain smaller without healing it.
Proof was not victory. Proof was a body still arguing after the pit had already written the ending.
Vaela grabbed his ankle again.
"Orrek!"
He did not move.
Kael reached back, grabbed one hook embedded in his shoulder meat, and pulled the retrieval body closer instead of away. The wall crawler’s mask tilted, confused by prey that dragged the butcher in. Kael hooked both hands under the cart wheel and wrenched it up over his shoulder.
CLANG!
The rim smashed backward into the mask.
Again.
CLANG!
The nearest shadow did not move. Kael watched it anyway. Shadows near machinery often belonged to more than light, and the rust bead under it trembled once before the dark shifted.
CLANG!
The mask split. Kael twisted, tore the hook free from his back with a wet ripping sound, and slammed his elbow into the exposed throat under the mask.
CRUNCH!
The retrieval body’s head snapped sideways. Black fluid sprayed across the wall cut and splattered Orrek’s cheek.
Orrek smiled without meaning to.
"Mad bastard."
Vaela squeezed into the gap behind him and saw through the cut. For once, she said nothing. The low retrieval body lunged at Kael’s legs.
Kael stomped down.
BANG!
The stomp missed the head but crushed one hook hand flat. The body twisted and drove its remaining hook into Kael’s thigh.
CHUNK!
Kael’s leg buckled. He caught himself on the cart wheel and bared his teeth.
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[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
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≫ KINETIC FRICTION DETECTED: Retrieval Spine Hook Impact And Thigh Anchor
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +2
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[!] SYSTEM NOTICE: Reinforced Biological Matrix Holding Under Retrieval Force.
====================================================================
Orrek felt the resonance again.
It came through the blood on his cheek, through the broken chain residue on his fist, through the sight of Kael standing where every old rule said he should be down. It did not link. It did not claim. It knocked. The Sovereign Root was a door somewhere far above him.
Orrek was not through it.
But now he knew where to hit.
He slammed his chain fist into the slit floor.
BANG!
Vaela flinched.
"What are you doing?"
"Making room."
"For what?"
Orrek hit the floor again.
BANG!
The old pressure oil rippled. The maintenance slit floor was thin over the throat chamber. Not enough for a man to drop through. Maybe enough to send something down. Orrek unwound the chain from his fist with shaking fingers. His ruined shoulder screamed at every movement.
He ignored it.
He looped the chain through the wall cut and let it drop behind Kael.
"Kael!"
Kael looked up once.
Orrek threw the loose end.
The chain slid across the floor. Kael caught it with his marked hand. Black pressure flared where his blood touched Orrek’s chain. For half a breath, the chain went dark red, black, violet, then a thin flash of gold.
Vaela saw it.
Renn, farther ahead, shouted, "What happened?" Vaela whispered, "Something expensive." Kael wrapped the chain around the low retrieval body’s hook arm and yanked. Orrek braced inside the slit with both feet against the walls and pulled from the other side.
His ruined shoulder nearly failed.
He roared through it.
Together, they tore the retrieval body sideways.
Kael stomped again.
BOOM!
This time the skull mask shattered against the floor. The body spasmed, chest mouth clicking uselessly.
No node formed.
No oath passed.
But Orrek’s chain smoked with a pressure it had not carried before.
Kael looked through the wall cut at him.
"Still standing?"
Orrek’s laugh came out broken.
"Still hating orders."
"Good. Pull them through."
Orrek pulled the chain back through the slit and wrapped it around his fist again. It felt different now. He told himself that was blood, oil, and imagination. He was a liar, but at least he knew it. The chain had remembered the pull. So had he.
The throat chamber groaned around Kael.
The wall cut began to close, slow as a jaw. Orrek shoved one boot into it and held the gap open until black oil squeezed around his ankle.
GRRND!
The dead road was not done.
Neither was Orrek. That was the part he did not know how to say without making it sound like a promise, and he was not ready for promises yet. But Orrek had seen the blow that should cripple. And the shape of his future loyalty had become harder to deny. The chain stayed warm against his palm, waiting like an accusation he almost welcomed.
Orrek crawled forward anyway.