Chapter 44: Wildstirs!
The service doors did not open when Kael pushed them.
They breathed.
Ash puffed from the cracks. A sour warmth rolled across his face, thick with old stew, boiled leather, fungus rot, and the copper stink of meat that had not come from any beast. The broken teeth around the bowl had been scratched recently.
Fresh ash sat in the cuts.
Vaela stood at Kael’s left, knives low.
"Feeding houses move their marks," she said. "If this one is fresh, someone wanted us to find it."
Renn made a tired noise. "Please tell me feeding house means they feed people."
"Sometimes."
"I hate every answer you give."
"Then stop asking questions that want hope."
Orrek put one hand on the door and shoved.
The metal groaned but did not give.
CLANG!
The sound traveled down the furnace route.
Everyone froze.
A second later, something answered from inside the door.
No voice spoke.
A low scrape.
A wet gear turned behind the metal, and something dragged an oil-slick intake tube closer.
Then the black intake scar in Kael’s palm woke. Black pressure burst through the lines under his skin. His fingers snapped open against his will. The scar burned cold, then hot, then cold again, changing weight too fast for flesh to understand. Kael caught his wrist with his other hand.
His knees did not bend.
The floor did.
Hairline cracks spread out beneath his feet. Vaela moved back fast. "Mark." Renn pulled the nearest workers behind the furnace pipe. Orrek stepped forward instead, chain rising.
"Who is touching him?"
Kael could not answer.
The scar pulled.
The door was the wrong direction.
Down.
Through layers of pit, road, old marrow fossil, and buried pipework under everything like a second skeleton. The Sovereign Root responded with a harsh internal pressure.
====================================================================
[ HOSTILE THREAT PROFILE ]
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≫ SOURCE: Black Intake Scar
≫ PROFILE CLARITY: FRAGMENTED
≫ TIER GAP RESPONSE: Hostile body exceeds current full reading capacity
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● ACTIVE FUNCTION: Scar pulls toward a buried chain-lung
● SECONDARY FUNCTION: black intake heat-trace follows the wound
● BIOLOGICAL ANCHOR TRACE: Knotted flesh membrane around the scar
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[!] SYSTEM WARNING: Analysis pressure may damage Mind Soul Anchor if forced.
====================================================================
Kael’s vision darkened at the edges.
The system did not lie.
He could try to force the scan.
He could break his mind against something built to tether bodies with hooks, chains, and living membrane.
The moment had not arrived yet.
He was strong enough to refuse stupidity.
"Stop reading," he growled.
The pressure eased by a fraction.
The scar still burned.
The service doors began to sweat black condensation. Inside, the scraping grew louder.
SCRAPE! SCRAPE! SCRAPE!
Plain. Patient. Wet.
Della whispered, "What is that?" Vaela’s eyes stayed on the door. "Something below the bowl pipes is still hungry."
The scar pulsed again.
It gave Kael an image he knew could not be his.
A vast chamber of hanging chains.
A floor made from square black plates, each plate carved with names that had been cut out of throats. A girl kneeling at the center with wrists bound above her head, black hair hanging over one eye, blood running from both knuckles because she had been punching the chain post again.
Ivara Thane lifted her head.
She did not see Kael.
Only partly.
But she felt the pulse.
Her lips parted.
------
Far away, inside an intake chamber deep below the furnace routes, a guard with a bone white mask struck her across the mouth.
THUD!
Her head turned with the blow.
Then came back slowly.
She smiled with blood on her teeth.
The guard took one step back before he remembered he had keys. Ivara whispered something Kael could not hear.
The mark translated only pressure.
No words came.
Meaning.
There you are.
The image snapped away.
Kael’s palm split open along the black lines.
Blood ran down his wrist.
Kael kept the order sealed behind his teeth and drove the shards into Metaphysical Resistance and Mind Soul Anchor before the scar tremor could take another piece of him.
ALLOCATE!
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
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≫ HOSTILE PRESSURE DETECTED: Black Intake Scar Backlash
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +2
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≫ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND RECEIVED
▶ SHARD ALLOCATION REGISTERED: +2 TOTAL
▶ ALLOCATION DISTRIBUTION:
- Metaphysical Resistance -> 15
- Mind Soul Anchor -> 10
[!] SYSTEM NOTICE: Analysis restraint preserved core mind integrity.
====================================================================
Kael exhaled through his teeth.
The two shards went in as soon as they were earned. No hoarding. No worship of the reserve.
The pressure in his skull steadied.
The mark still hurt, but pain was an old language.
He understood it.
Orrek grabbed his forearm, careful for once.
"Kael."
"I saw her."
Vaela’s gaze sharpened. "The chained girl?"
Kael looked at her.
"You knew?"
"I knew something lived under the intake pipes. I did not know it could feel you through that scar."
Renn’s voice came from behind the pipe. "Is she an enemy?"
Kael remembered the bloody smile.
The way the guard stepped back.
The way pressure carried recognition through distance.
"No."
Vaela did not look convinced.
"You do not know that."
"I know enough."
"That sentence gets people killed."
"So does waiting until everything is safe to choose."
The service doors bulged outward.
Everyone turned.
The scraping stopped.
A voice came from inside, high and thin.
"Scarred meat at the door. Scarred meat with walkers. Scarred meat with wild sap. Scarred meat with pipe-rot stink."
Renn closed his eyes.
"I miss the root eye."
Orrek smiled and lifted his chain.
"Open up then. We are hungry too."
The voice giggled.
The door seams widened. Not enough for passage. Enough for smell. Inside the feeding house, something dragged metal across stone.
"Warden fed first bowl," the voice sang. "Buried pipes fed second. Chain-lungs fed third. Who feeds fourth?"
Vaela’s face went cold.
"Stay off the seam."
Too late.
A thin iron hook shot through the crack, fast as a striking leech, and caught Tavin’s salvage strap. The boy yelped as the bundle jerked toward the door.
Kael moved.
His foot slammed down on the strap before Tavin went with it.
THUD!
The hook pulled.
The strap cut into Tavin’s shoulder. The boy screamed. Kael grabbed the hook line with his wounded marked hand.
The metal smoked against his blood.
Heat had not made it.
A buried-hook reaction.
He pulled back.
The thing inside pulled too.
For one hard second, the door became a tug of war between hunger and gravity. Kael’s arm muscles bunched. His shoulder wound reopened. Blood and sap ran together down his side.
"Let go of the strap!" Renn shouted.
Tavin fumbled at the knot.
The hook line snapped tighter.
Vaela slid low and cut the strap free at the boy’s chest without touching the hook. Orrek slammed his furnace bone shard into the door seam, widening it by a finger.
Kael saw a white face inside.
Too many teeth.
No nose.
Eyes sewn partly shut with black thread.
A feeding house caller.
Strength had not arrived cleanly.
Weakness did not own it either.
Built for doorways, hooks, and starving decisions. Kael yanked the hook line toward himself. The caller’s face hit the seam.
CRACK!
Teeth burst against iron.
The thing shrieked and released the hook.
Kael did not let go.
He pulled harder.
The hook line came through the door with half a hand still attached to it.
SPLAT!
Tavin scrambled back, sobbing.
The door slammed shut.
Inside, several voices began laughing.
A single caller would have been kinder.
A house.
A full house.
Vaela stared at the closed doors.
"This is bad."
Orrek rolled his wounded shoulder and winced. "I was starting to think that."
Kael looked at his bleeding palm.
The black intake scar had quieted, but not because it was done. It had led them to another mouth. Behind the door, a chorus began tapping hooks against metal.
TAP! TAP! TAP!
The rhythm matched the pressure horn far behind them.
Malrec had not sent men to kill him.
He had pointed hunger at them, warmed the black intake scar, and left a feeding-house door in their path. Kael’s fingers closed over the severed hook line.
"Vaela."
"Yes?"
"Does this house have a waste chute?"
She gave him one sharp look.
Then she smiled without warmth.
"Every place that eats has somewhere to shit."
Orrek laughed once.
"Beautiful. Horrible. Lead on."
Kael turned away from the front door.
Inside, the callers kept tapping. The black intake scar throbbed in his palm, and somewhere below, a chained girl with blood on her teeth had felt him back. For a moment after Kael chose the waste chute, nobody moved. The feeding house callers kept tapping hooks inside the walls, delighted by patience because patience meant hunger had time to grow teeth.
Vaela broke the stillness first. She slid along the service corridor, palms open, knives hidden against her wrists. Her eyes tracked soot, grease flow, nail scratches, old drag marks, and the little clean spaces where feet had avoided filth too often.
"There," she said.
Renn frowned. "That is a wall."
"Walls lie less than doors."
Orrek looked offended on behalf of doors. "Doors are honest. You hit them, they open or do not."
"That is why idiots trust them."
The exchange steadied the group more than comfort would have. Kael stayed near the front door while she worked. The callers could smell him. He wanted them smelling him.
Each hook tapping for his blood kept the fourteen from being hunted in panic. The black intake scar throbbed again, weaker this time. Under it, another person’s memory pressed against the edge of thought: chains, black floor plates, a girl laughing with a split lip, a guard afraid of a prisoner he could still strike.
Kael did not chase the image.
The system had warned him. Some doors inside the mind had teeth. He let the pulse pass and held the shape of Ivara’s bloody smile without pretending he understood it.
Renn noticed his hand.
"Still pulling?"
"Yes."
"Can it find us through you?"
"Probably."
That answer did not help anyone, but it was true.
Renn nodded anyway. "Then we move before it learns the route."
Kael looked at him.
Renn had started sounding less like a frightened worker and more like a man deciding which fear deserved time.
The pause did the rest.
Behind the wall, a caller whispered, "Fourth bowl waits. Fourth bowl waits."
Kael smiled without warmth.
"Let it starve."