The false contact call moved beneath the altar from left to right.
Jiang followed it with his beak while Ruth knelt beside the flush service door. A recessed iron ring lay hidden under the edge of the altar cloth.
"This opens toward the old water channel," she said. "I have used it for pipes, dust, and one very lost glove. Never voices."
Aylin held Gredudande's captured fragment inside a narrow green ring. The black splinter dragged toward the door hard enough to bend the light around it.
"The core wants this piece back," she said. "It also wants the nearest living body."
Ruth put her fingers through the iron ring. "Then it will find the door open and my body leaving."
She lifted the panel and stepped backward, keeping the blue scarf tied between her wrist and the maintenance-stair rail. The cloth traced an unbroken path to the dry side exit.
Cold air crawled out from beneath the altar.
The space beyond was an old stone alcove rather than a tunnel. A shallow water channel entered from the cistern wall and passed under a raised iron shutter before disappearing beneath a long wooden case. The dark silver seam ran beside it.
Black water occupied the channel without flowing.
Ruth's face appeared in that water. It smiled while the real Ruth kept her mouth closed.
"Let me hold that for you," the reflection said in Aylin's voice.
A thin shadow reached from the channel toward Ruth's shoe.
Jiang gave his warning call. Ruth backed through the open panel, and Aylin drove her green cord between the shadow and the chapel floor. The borrowed hand flattened against the light.
"It cannot cross while I hold this angle," Aylin said. "I also cannot move the fragment."
Jiang lowered himself into the alcove.
His chest barely cleared the iron shutter. The wheel above had stopped the bell, but Gredudande's copied call still traveled through the silver seam beneath his feet. Each note pulled at the part of him that remembered a colony.
Ahead, black water narrowed until Jiang's body could fill the channel. Between him and that throat sat the shutter's release catch, orange with rust and chipped at one edge.
The core crossed beneath it, retreated, then crossed again toward Ruth's reflection.
Tactical Strike marked the chipped catch.
One clean beak strike would release the counterweight. The iron shutter would drop across the channel, cutting water from the silver seam and trapping the core on the altar side.
It would also drop between Ruth and the open panel.
Ruth stood with one foot inside the alcove because the heavy door kept slipping toward Jiang's back. If he released the shutter now, she would be boxed beside Gredudande with the water at her shoes.
Aylin saw the marked catch in the direction of his stare. "Can you break it?"
Jiang raised his beak to strike.
Ruth's reflected face turned toward him. The real Ruth tightened her grip on the panel but stayed where the failing hinge required her.
Jiang lowered his head.
He barked at Ruth and drove his shoulder against the door instead. Pain burned through the wet gauze, yet the broad curve of his back held the panel open when she stepped clear.
"You had another plan before using yourself as a doorstop, I hope," Ruth said.
Past the release catch, the channel narrowed to Jiang's width. That was the plan.
Breast-first, he entered the gap. Stone pressed both flippers against his sides, protecting the damaged one while denying him any room to turn. His feet remained in the open alcove, braced against the floor.
Gredudande called from inches beyond his beak.
Every note landed true. The pressure behind it remained a hook.
Black water rushed toward Jiang, seeking the wet feathers on his breast. He flattened himself until his white belly filled the channel from wall to wall.
"Now I lose sight of you," Aylin said.
Jiang struck one foot against the stone.
"That means hold," Ruth told her. "He used two strikes when he wanted pulling."
Aylin kept the green retrieval cord loose around Jiang's chest. "I remember."
Across the thin water touching his feathers, the core spread. Beneath his breast, his mother's mouth opened while Samira's voice begged him to turn around. From inside the stone came his own contact call.
Cold and all, Jiang chose Frostwake.
Heat poured out through his chest and feet. A clear skin formed beneath him, fragile as before, but the walls protected it from ripples. Ice closed the only wet gap his body had left.
Gredudande struck the frozen line.
The impact carried no weight, only cold and a burst of borrowed voices. Cracks raced under Jiang's feathers. He pushed his rigid torso deeper into the throat and kept the ice pinned beneath his breast.
"Its route stopped," Aylin said. "Ruth, take the fragment."
"You told me it wants a body."
"Keep the green loop between your skin and it."
Ruth accepted the loop by its bright outer edge. Aylin freed both hands and pressed them against the dark silver seam beside the channel.
Natural Essence traveled along the metal in a narrow line. It touched the trapped reflection from the far side, forcing Gredudande away from Jiang and toward the missing object route.
The black fragment in Ruth's hands began using Jiang's copied call.
Ruth's arms trembled. She looked at the blue scarf around her wrist, followed it to the open panel and the lit door beyond, then kept her grip on the green loop.
"You are a piece of it," she said. "You are not him."
The captured fragment cracked apart.
Aylin closed one hand. Green light burned through the split until the black sliver became gray grit inside Ruth's loop.
Pressure released from one side of Aylin's throat. The other side stayed dark.
Gredudande screamed through the ice and abandoned the water route.
Its remaining core flattened against the dark silver seam. The metal swallowed the reflection and carried it beneath the wooden case, beyond Jiang's body and beyond Aylin's green line.
Jiang let Frostwake go.
The ice broke under his breast. His feet slipped from their brace, and the channel held him when his legs failed.
He struck the retrieval cord twice.
Aylin and Ruth pulled together. Stone scraped Jiang's belly feathers as he slid backward into the alcove. Ruth kept the service door open with her hip until his feet cleared, then lowered it only far enough to stop it striking his injured flipper.
No black water remained in the channel. Ruth's reflection belonged to her again.
The contact call continued inside the wooden case.
Ruth waited until Aylin nodded before raising its lid. Faded red velvet lined an empty fitted slot long enough for a staff but too narrow for a blade. A dark silver shaving clung to one corner.
A stamped tag had been tied through the handle.
`PROCESSIONAL SIGHT ROD - DARK SILVER`
Below it, a second stamp carried a single destination.
The second stamp read: `TRANSFERRED TO ROME`.
"It was gone before I came here," Ruth said. "Whatever promise joins that object to this chapel, your thief just followed it."
Aylin touched the silver shaving with her compass. Its green needle swung east, quivered, and held.
"Gredudande lost the cistern and the fragment," she said. "It escaped without a body."
From somewhere too far for the chapel to contain, Jiang's copied contact call answered her.
He tried to stand. Both feet folded under him.
Ruth drew the dry blanket around him and left his beak clear. Aylin knelt beside his breast, saw the shivering fail into smaller tremors, and put both palms above his feathers.
"He needs heat now," she said.
Green Natural Essence gathered between her hands. Warmth pressed into Jiang through the Spirit Link, shaped for the human body she remembered transforming.
A stranger's voice cut through the link.
"Stop. You are forcing heat through the human pattern. Do that to a penguin heart in this condition, and you will kill him."
Aylin snatched her hands away. Ruth heard only Jiang's weakening breath, but fear crossed Aylin's face at the same instant it crossed his mind.
"Who are you?" Aylin asked.
The answer used no brackets.
"Not the thing that put him here."