Chapter 68: One Arm Left
The strip of pipe skin slid from the gate ribs and lay flat on the floor.
HUM!
It was black on one side and pale on the other. Small sensory knots opened along its length, pressing against ash, boot leather, blood drops, and the frayed hems of the survivors’ clothes. Each knot closed before the next one opened. The motion was slow enough to watch and wrong enough to make everyone hold still.
Tavin’s old strap fibers drew the first two knots.
Renn’s bruised wrist drew the third.
The strip crossed Jaro’s boot, paused at the soot packed in its sole, then moved on.
It reached Orrek and stopped.
A low click passed through the ribs.
CLINK!
Orrek looked down at the black strip curled around his uninjured boot.
"Why am I the interesting one?"
Jaro pressed his bad ear to the wall. His face tightened.
"It found the iron hook scar in your shoulder. The gate can feel old metal through the pipe skin."
"Of course it can. Everybody likes my hook except me."
His joke came out thin enough for everyone to hear the pain under it. The ruined shoulder had never stopped hurting. It had only changed kinds: dull during walking, hot during climbing, sharp when he laughed too hard, and sickening whenever old metal scent crawled through the air. Orrek had been carrying that pain like a bad tool because throwing it away was not an option.
The strip rose.
It wrapped Orrek’s uninjured forearm before he could tear away
CLAMP!
His body slammed toward the gate. His ruined shoulder jerked so hard that three of the survivors turned their faces aside. Orrek caught himself on one knee, boots skidding through ash, but he kept his chained forearm up instead of giving the pull his throat or spine.
"No," he barked.
The gate ribs twitched.
Vaela hissed through her teeth. "Do not shout at the machinery."
"It started it."
A second strip slipped from a seam beneath the ribs and laced around Orrek’s wrecked shoulder. The old wound opened under his shirt. Blood ran down his side in dark, steady lines.
Kael moved beside him.
The first strip tightened around Orrek’s arm, then leaned toward Kael’s chest. It had found a bridge: old hook scar, warm blood, a man close enough to pull. Kael caught the strip with both hands before it could reach farther.
It burned like wire pulled from a furnace.
The Sovereign Root opened behind his eyes.
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ HOSTILE GATE HINGE PRESSURE DETECTED
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +2
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND RECEIVED
▶ SHARD ALLOCATION REGISTERED: +2 TOTAL
▶ ALLOCATION DISTRIBUTION:
- Regenerative Dominion -> 17
- Primordial Marrow Layer -> 15
[!] SYSTEM NOTICE: Structural endurance reinforced.
====================================================================
Heat drove into Kael’s torn palms and up both forearms. Fresh skin tightened over old cuts. His bones did not become painless. They became harder to split while the gate pulled.
Orrek gave a cracked laugh.
Pain had filled half his chest. Anger filled the rest. The sound that escaped him belonged to the Chain Yard, where men were beaten for standing too slowly and beaten again for standing too straight.
The gate pulled harder.
Orrek’s knees bent. His uninjured hand clawed at the black strip. His ruined shoulder hung at a bad angle, blood darkening his shirt. He looked close to folding, and he hated that sight more than the pain.
Vaela took one step toward him.
Orrek’s glare snapped to her.
"Do not make that pity face."
"This is my annoyed face."
"Keep it ugly."
She did.
Renn crawled to the survivors and lifted the hand that still answered him. His fingers shook, but his voice found the edge it needed.
"Hands on cloth. Hands on skin. Keep the line."
The people behind him obeyed in pieces. Sella grabbed Dorran’s sleeve. Old Noll caught the twins by their belts. Tavin pressed one palm against Renn’s shoulder, then reached back until someone caught his wrist. Fear passed through the chain of bodies. So did warmth.
Jaro slid behind Orrek and stared at a rusted floor ring half buried in ash.
"Bad idea," he said.
Vaela did not look away from the shoulder strip. "Does it keep him off the ribs?"
"Maybe."
"Then move."
Jaro looped a length of salvage fiber through the ring. He tossed the other end toward Orrek.
His fingers fumbled the knot twice. The tunnel did not care. The black strip kept pulling, and the gate ribs clicked faster with each lost heartbeat. Jaro swore soundlessly, spat ash from his lip, and used his teeth to tighten the loop. The ring held when he yanked it once. It held when he yanked harder.
"It will either brace him or rip out of the floor," Jaro said.
Vaela crouched beside the buried ring and scraped ash away from the base. Rust flaked under her nail. The ring had been hammered into old black stone, not newer brick. Deep, then. Ugly, but deep.
"It holds long enough," she said.
Orrek caught it in his teeth.
"Bite and lean back," Jaro said.
Orrek stared at him around the fiber.
"That is the whole idea?"
"You have one arm. I have one ring. Work with me."
The answer earned a brief flash of teeth from Orrek. He bit down harder and leaned his weight away from the gate.
Kael planted his feet behind him. One hand locked around the strip at Orrek’s forearm. The other braced between Orrek’s shoulder blades.
The gate ribs inhaled.
HAAAH!
The breath pulled loose ash into thin lines across the floor. Each line pointed toward a different wound: Tavin’s shoulder, Renn’s neck, Vaela’s wrist, Orrek’s torn side, Kael’s palms. The gate did not choose like a person. It tasted damage and followed the strongest shape.
Jaro saw the ash lines and went still.
"It is mapping us."
"Then stop looking interesting," Orrek said around the fiber.
"You are the one bleeding like a full bucket."
"I am wounded with style. Different problem."
The joke shook because his jaw shook. The salvage fiber creaked between his teeth. Blood from his side ran over his belt and made the ash beneath him darken in little spots the strip kept trying to taste.
Kael felt every tremor in Orrek’s body. The bigger man shook, bled, cursed under his breath, and held. His body had been ruined in places where most people would have stopped trusting it. Yet when the pressure found him, he did not wait for strength to arrive. He looked for an angle and made himself the ugly thing in the way.
Kael recognized the shape of that refusal.
He did nothing with it.
The moment belonged to Orrek’s hands and teeth, not to a gift.
Vaela cut the second strip where it crossed the old shoulder scar.
SNAP!
Orrek roared through the salvage fiber. His ruined side dropped free. The first strip tried to recoil toward the ribs, still trapped around his forearm.
Kael stepped forward instead of back. He drove his knee onto the strip where it touched the floor and pinned it.
THUD!
Orrek twisted his forearm outward.
Bone shifted under skin.
CRACK!
He did not let go.
He pulled with the arm that still worked and with his teeth locked around Jaro’s fiber. Kael held the other end of the pull through the strip. The floor ring groaned. The gate rib bowed.
Then the black strip tore loose.
RIP!
Dead marks along the ribs opened and snapped shut without sound. Jaro fell backward into ash. Orrek dropped to one knee, the torn strip twitching in his fist.
He looked at it, then at Kael.
"Can I keep it?"
Vaela stared at the blood running from his side. "You are bleeding through your shirt."
"I did not ask about that."
Kael watched the strip writhe like a severed tendon.
"Leave it."
Orrek sighed. "You people never let me have anything interesting."
Renn’s voice came thin from the touch chain.
"Fourteen. Still fourteen."
The count hit Orrek harder than praise could have. He looked back at the survivors. Their faces were pale. Their hands were still locked. They had stayed close enough to be caught after him.
Old Noll had one arm around the twins and one hand hooked in Dorran’s sleeve. Sella’s mouth trembled, but she had not let go. Tavin, still shaking from the scar hunt, had crawled close enough to press his shoulder against Renn’s knee. None of them looked brave in the clean way songs liked. They looked exhausted, filthy, frightened, and stubborn enough to make the gate work for every inch.
Orrek looked away before anyone could see too much.
"The count holds," he muttered. "Would have been annoying to bleed for a bad count."
The Dead Song Gate changed its angle.
The shift ran through the chamber like a bad thought. Ribs that had leaned toward Orrek straightened. Sensory knots flattened against the ash and dragged themselves away from his blood. The gate had tasted the large wound, failed to take it cleanly, and chosen a smaller place to hurt.
Renn felt the attention before anyone named it. His fingers tightened around the count cord. The cord was filthy, frayed, and spotted with dried blood from other tunnels, but the survivors had learned to watch it like a lamp.
His injured throat bobbed once. The motion hurt him. Everyone saw that too. The gate had chosen a wound that did not bleed much but held the whole line together.
"No," Tavin whispered.
Renn did not answer. His throat had already started to close.
The strips withdrew from Orrek’s arm. Every dead mark on the ribs turned toward Renn.