Chapter 59: Stolen Tally
Renn slapped his own cheek.
The sound cracked through the pipe.
SLAP!
Three mouth scars twitched open.
Kael’s hand rose. Everyone froze. Renn stared at nothing, lips moving fast. Renn had counted all his life because numbers did not pity him.
People did. Badly. They saw his thin wrists, his nervous mouth, his habit of flinching before fists moved, and they decided he was already half gone. Numbers never did that.
Fourteen was fourteen whether the hands shook or not. A wrist was broken or it was not. A food strip fed one mouth or it failed.
Now the pipe was touching that one clean place and smearing it.
That explained why his fear looked like rage.
He was not only afraid of dying.
He was afraid the one useful part of him could be taken and made into another pipe voice.
"One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen."
The pipe sang over him.
"One. Two. Five. Nine. Fourteen. None."
Renn’s face folded.
"No."
The song repeated with his exact ruined rasp.
"Fourteen. None."
Tavin made a small broken sound.
Della grabbed him before he answered the voice. Jaro crouched low, hands over both sides of his head, even the scar where one ear used to be.
"It found the count," he whispered. "Bad. Very bad."
Vaela’s eyes tracked the wall scars. "Explain while useful."
"Old mouths steal order before they steal bodies. Make you forget who is beside you. Make one person think the next is gone. Make the line break itself."
Orrek looked at Renn.
"Can you count louder?"
Jaro hissed, "No!" Renn answered anyway, voice shaking. "If I count louder, it eats louder."
The pipe hummed in agreement.
HUM!
For half a breath, panic almost won in the quiet way, when people begin making private decisions.
Tavin’s hand twitched toward a side scar. Miro angled his bad wrist away from the group like he might run if a gap opened. The twins leaned toward each other instead of the line, making one small knot the pipe could swallow together.
Kael saw it through the new pressure in his mind.
He struck the floor once with his heel.
THUD!
The sound was deliberate, heavy, and owned.
Every head snapped toward him.
He pointed at Renn.
Then at Orrek.
Then at Vaela.
Then forward.
No speech. No comfort. A map made of people. The line remembered itself one body at a time.
The sound pushed into their chests.
Kael felt it this time. More than song: direct resonance through bone, breath, and thought. It pressed behind his eyes and tried to loosen the shape of the line. The old mouths were not asking now. They were taking rhythm from bodies.
The Sovereign Root opened.
The old pipe tightened around the stolen count, pressing through cloth, breath, and bone before anyone took another step.
ALLOCATE!
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ KINETIC FRICTION DETECTED: OLD MOUTH SONG RESONANCE PRESSURE
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +2
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND RECEIVED
▶ SHARD ALLOCATION REGISTERED: +2 TOTAL
▶ ALLOCATION DISTRIBUTION:
- Metaphysical Resistance -> 20
- Mind Soul Anchor -> 13
[!] SYSTEM NOTICE: Immediate allocation completed. Unallocated Existential Shards: 0.
====================================================================
The pressure sharpened into lines.
Kael saw what the song stole.
Memory had not fully returned. It stole sequence. The order that made a group a group. Who stood first. Who needed help. Whose hand held whose shirt. Which name came after which breath. If it broke that, the survivors would scatter inside the pipe and the mouths would harvest panic one body at a time.
Kael did not tell Renn to fight the song.
He told him to change the count.
"Count touch."
Renn blinked.
"What?"
"Not names. Touch."
Vaela understood first. She grabbed Jaro’s shoulder and squeezed once. Jaro squeezed the pipe seam, then Vaela’s wrist because fear made him sloppy. Vaela snarled, "Me, not the wall."
"Sorry. Wall looked calmer."
Orrek placed one huge hand on Renn’s back. Renn pressed two fingers to Della’s sleeve. Della held Tavin. Tavin held Old Noll. The chain moved down the line, body to body, no names spoken. The survivors obeyed badly at first.
Hands found wrong sleeves. Tavin grabbed Sella and got shoved away before she realized he was shaking too hard to stand. One twin held the other too tightly. Old Noll almost reached for the wall when his balance failed, and Della slapped his hand back before a mouth could taste the scrape.
It was messy, human, and still better than scattering.
Vaela moved down the line like a blade with patience, correcting grips, turning shoulders, forcing the chain of touch into something that could survive a panic breath. She did not soothe anyone. She did not have that gift, or maybe she had buried it where the corpse bowls could not reach it.
"Hold skin or cloth," she whispered. "Not wall. Not pipe. Not memory."
Jaro stared at her.
"Not memory?"
"You heard me."
"That is not a normal instruction."
"Normal instructions got eaten five turns ago."
Renn breathed in pain.
"One touch. Two touch. Three touch."
The pipe sang.
"Five touch. None touch. Lost touch."
Kael stepped to the wall and drove his palm flat against the furnace bone.
THUD!
The pipe tried to drink the sound.
He pressed harder.
Gravity Vector Impact gathered under his shoulder, not as a system spend, but as existing force. His palm became an anchor point in the wall’s rhythm.
"Again," he said.
Renn counted.
"One touch. Two touch. Three touch. Four touch. Five touch. Six touch. Seven touch. Eight touch. Nine touch. Ten touch. Eleven touch. Twelve touch. Thirteen touch. Fourteen touch. Fifteen touch. Kael wall."
Renn’s new count was uglier than names. Names had shape. Touch had proof. A hand on cloth. A shoulder under palm. A belt gripped by shaking fingers. The old mouth could forge sound, but it could not easily forge the pressure of Della holding Tavin or Orrek’s huge hand planted against Renn’s back.
That explained why the pipe hated it.
The hum sharpened into a pipe scream.
SKREEEEE!
Jaro winced. "It is angry." Vaela whispered, "Angry things show where the nerves are."
Kael kept his palm against the wall and felt for the angry place.
The song stumbled.
Truth did not matter to it. Touch was simply harder to forge than sound. A mouth opened beside Renn and spat his own voice back at him.
"Renn gone. Renn gone. Renn gone."
Renn shook so hard Orrek had to hold him upright.
"I am here," Renn whispered.
The mouth smiled.
"Answer accepted."
It lunged.
Kael moved across the pipe in one brutal step. His knee slammed into the mouth before it reached Renn’s throat.
CRACK!
Teeth broke inward. Black spit sprayed across Kael’s thigh. The mouth shrieked without air.
SCREECH!
Every other mouth in the pipe opened.
Jaro made a noise like he had swallowed a hot stone.
GULP!
"You hit it."
Kael stood between Renn and the wall, knee wet with black saliva.
"It touched first."
Vaela’s smile was small and sharp. "That is what we are calling a defense?"
"No."
"At least it was terrible."
Orrek cracked his neck, careful in the low pipe. "Are we fighting the pipe now?"
The pipe answered with a rumble.
RUMBLE!
The old mouth chamber breathed beyond the bend. Each breath pushed warm rot over them. It smelled of old soup, wet bone slates, rusted hooks, and something sweet enough to make hunger wake even in frightened bellies. Another cruelty hid in that. The pipe did not only sing comfort. It smelled like food when people were weak enough to follow.
Tavin’s stomach growled.
GRRRR!
He clapped both hands over it, horrified. A tiny mouth near the floor opened and sniffed. Kael crushed it under his heel before it finished turning.
CRUNCH!
No system alert came. The small mouth had not pressured him. He had simply removed a threat before it grew teeth. That mattered too.
Some smart acts earned nothing but another breath. Some only kept people alive long enough to meet the next cost. Ahead, the lower passage widened into a round chamber. Mouths ringed the walls from floor to ceiling.
Some were sealed. Some were open. One at the far end was larger than the others, a vertical slit full of flat old teeth and red furnace glow.
Jaro went pale.
"First old mouth."
"First?" Orrek said. "As in more?"
"Did you think old mouths lived alone?"
"I was hoping they hated company."
The big mouth began to sing.
It used every voice at once. Pell. Renn. Jaro’s sister. Garron Voss. Dead workers. Hungry children. Ivara’s distant cold whisper, too faint to be true, too sharp to ignore.
Kael felt the line shiver.
The old mouth had stopped stealing only numbers.
It was choosing doors inside them.
Kael stepped forward.
Renn caught his sleeve.
"If I forget the count..."
"You won’t."
"If I do."
Kael looked at him.
Renn’s eyes were wet with pain and fury, embarrassed by both. Kael said, "Then we count you back."
The words did not fix Renn. Nothing clean could. But they gave his fear a wall to lean against. In the pipe, it came close to mercy.
Renn breathed once, ugly and thin, then nodded like the motion hurt and let go. His fingers left blood on Kael’s sleeve. He noticed, looked ashamed, then looked angry at the shame. Blood was proof he was still there.
In that pipe, proof mattered more than pride.
The big mouth smiled wider.
Behind them, the remaining witnesses screamed as the lower pipe closed around their lights. Ahead, the first old mouth opened fully.