Chapter 65: Dead Song!!
The three route eyes watched without blinking. They were not true eyes. Kael knew that. They were packed dead marks arranged by old hands, old fear, or old pipe pulse into a shape that made bodies understand they were being measured.
Black furnace bone formed the lids. Sealed mouths made the pupils. Broken teeth lined the edges like lashes.
The lower crawl packed dead song between close walls, bad footing, and ribs that could close without warning.
SCRAPE!
Dead song pressed the noise down until only practical sounds survived: cloth, breath, blades, and hurt feet.
The left route smelled of cold ash.
The middle route smelled of blood that had dried too many times.
The right route smelled of soup.
Everyone looked at that one first. Hunger made people stupid before fear could finish the job.
Vaela clicked her tongue once.
CLICK!
"No."
One worker flinched. "You don’t know what I was thinking."
"You were thinking the nice smelling road might be kind. That’s how passages catch fools."
Orrek wiped blood from his nose with his wrist. "I was thinking about soup too."
"You’re also a fool. Just louder."
"Fair."
Renn crouched near the center of the chamber with both hands shaking. He looked from route to route, lips moving without sound, counting people, eyes, marks, exits, breaths. His face had gone waxy from pain, but his stare stayed alive.
"Middle one counts back," he whispered.
Jaro shook his head quickly.
"All three count. Middle one admits it."
Kael stepped closer to the eyes.
His body wanted to fall. He could feel the zero shard state like an empty hook inside his ribs. The dead-song hook had fed him, and he had spent everything it gave. Right, necessary, and still brutal. But necessary did not mean easy.
There was no spare power waiting.
Only the power already burned into flesh. That had to be enough until the world made the mistake of pressing him again.
The right route released a warm breath.
HAAAH!
It smelled of broth, marrow, salt, and cooked root. The fourteen survivors shifted as one wounded animal. One man’s stomach growled so loudly even Orrek looked offended.
GRRRR!
The right eye widened.
Jaro slapped both hands over his own stomach as if hunger could be muffled.
"Don’t feed it wanting."
"How do you not want food?" Tavin rasped.
Vaela’s face tightened. For once, she did not answer fast.
Kael did.
"You want it. You don’t walk into its mouth for it."
The dead song began under the floor.
It carried neither true song nor voice. A pattern of pressure tapping through bone, matching heartbeat, hunger cramp, throat swallow, wounded pulse.
TUM! TUM! TUM!
The three route eyes moved in time with it. Renn’s head jerked.
"It is reading our wounds."
"By what?" Vaela asked.
"Need."
The word landed badly.
Need was everywhere in the chamber.
Need for food.
Need for rest.
Need for breath that did not taste like old teeth. Need for Kael to keep standing even when his body had started sending small warnings through his knees. The dead song found those needs and played them back softer, sweeter, closer. The right route showed a bowl at its first bend.
It was only partly real. A pressure image shaped from memory and hunger. Steam rose from it. A woman near the rear sobbed without sound. The middle route showed a clear black road with no marks.
The left route showed nothing.
Jaro stared at the left route and began to cry.
Vaela saw.
"Left."
"No," Jaro whispered.
"Because it’s wrong?"
"Because it’s honest."
That decided it for Kael.
"Left."
The dead song changed.
The crawl made dead song physical: bad footing, close walls, tired lungs, and hooks waiting wherever a body slowed.
It became a pull.
The right route tugged at stomachs. The middle route tugged at tired legs. The left route tugged at wounds.
Kael took one step toward the left.
Every open cut on his body flared.
The left opening offered pain instead of false food.
Let that stand.
Pain was at least honest enough to hit back. He moved first. The left eye lowered its lid and opened a narrow crawl opening beneath it. The passage beyond sloped down, rough with cracked bone ridges. The air smelled of old iron and dead ash.
The survivors followed.
The dead song struck the group from behind.
TUM! TUM! TUM!
The middle route tried to make their knees bend toward it. The right route warmed with false food. Two workers stumbled. Orrek caught one with his uninjured arm and snarled into the man’s ear.
"You die for fake soup, I’ll drag your corpse and complain the whole way."
The man choked on a laugh and kept moving.
The right route hissed.
HISS!
A hook of song shot from its eye and caught the man’s ankle.
This time it was direct.
Kael pivoted.
His body objected. His calf nearly buckled. He drove his opposite foot into the floor, caught the hook of pressure with his marked hand, and felt dead song bite through skin into nerve.
The Sovereign Root answered.
Kael drove the command inward, forcing the shards into Velocity Movement Authority, Regenerative Dominion, and Core Mass Density.
ALLOCATE!
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ HOSTILE ROUTE PRESSURE DETECTED: Dead Song Hunger Hook
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +3
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND RECEIVED
▶ SHARD ALLOCATION REGISTERED: +3 TOTAL
▶ ALLOCATION DISTRIBUTION:
- Core Mass Density -> 21
- Velocity Movement Authority -> 17
- Regenerative Dominion -> 16
[!] SYSTEM NOTICE: Emergency Route Adaptation Completed.
====================================================================
Speed returned first.
Comfort and healing stayed far away. A sharper force inside his legs. Recovery followed as heat sealed the worst of the fresh scalp tear and tightened the bite wound along his thumb. Density settled last, turning his grip from wounded hand to living clamp. Kael pulled the dead song hook toward him.
The right route resisted.
He stepped into the pull instead of away from it, closed distance with the pressure line, and slammed his elbow into the air where the hook joined the eye.
CRACK!
The sound came from the right route’s lid.
The false soup vanished.
Fourteen hungry bodies groaned like the loss was real.
Kael did not mock them.
Hunger did not become weakness because a mouth lied to it. Hunger became weakness when a man let the lie choose his road.
He crushed the hook in his fist.
SNAP!
The right eye shut.
The middle eye opened wider, offended by the loss of option. Vaela had already moved. She grabbed Jaro by the back of the neck before he could freeze and shoved him into the left opening.
"Honest road, route boy. Cry while walking."
Jaro stumbled forward, sobbing and furious. "You’re mean."
"Alive people can complain."
Renn passed Kael and touched the worker whose ankle had been hooked.
"Still here," Renn whispered.
The man nodded, shaking.
"Still here."
The left-route floor took their weight one by one.
It did not make the walk easy.
Bone ridges scraped knees. Low ceilings split old scabs. Ash dust filled mouths. Twice the passage pinched so tight Orrek had to turn sideways and let Kael brace his ruined shoulder through the gap.
Orrek hissed through his teeth.
"If I die in a crack, tell people I was killed by something with a better name."
"No," Vaela said from ahead.
"No?"
"I’ll say you lost to a hallway."
Renn made one breathless sound.
It might have been a laugh.
The left route shuddered around them.
Behind them, the middle eye began to sing louder.
TUM! TUM! TUM!
Hunger no longer drove the dead song. It wanted attention now.
Far above, in Lower Ash Bowl, smokehouse cutters would be gathering bait weights. Pell would be pointing cutters at fresh bait. The buried pipe-lung beneath his cellar would be working its chain rings. The left route opened at last into a slanted chamber full of old black gate ribs. Each rib had a dead singing mark nailed into it.
Jaro stopped crying.
That frightened Vaela more than his tears.
"What is it?"
The boy looked at the gate ribs.
"Dead Song Gate."
Orrek leaned against the wall and shut his eyes.
"Of course there’s a gate."
Renn counted silently, then looked at Kael.
"All alive."
Kael stood before the gate with fresh power spent and zero shards again. The gate ribs began to open their mouths.
One by one.
No song came out yet.
Only breath.
Worse after everything the route had taught them. Song announced hunger. Breath meant something had woken enough to decide what kind of hunger it wanted to be. Jaro backed into Vaela and did not even pretend it was an accident.
"That gate isn’t for passing."
Vaela kept her blade low. "Then what’s it for?"
"It is built to hold whatever it catches."
Orrek rolled his neck and winced. "I vote we insult it."
"You don’t vote," Vaela said.
"I keep hearing that."
Renn stared at the gate ribs with his lips pressed tight. His count stayed inside. Kael could see it moving behind his eyes, not as numbers now, but as positions. Bodies. Gaps. Limping feet. Which survivor would fall if fear hit from the left. Which one would break if the route demanded a name.
Renn was still afraid.
Dead song had made Orrek angry enough to be useful; his anger always looked for something solid to ruin.
Fear was honest when it stayed and worked. Kael stepped closer to the Dead Song Gate. The survivors did not cheer him. They were too tired for that kind of lie. They tightened the line instead, one hand after another, making a ragged chain of hunger, blood, and stubborn breath behind his back.
Better than cheering.
Zero shards waited inside him.
The gate breathed again.
HAAAH!
This time, every dead mark on its ribs turned toward him.