The white floor had no horizon, but it was hard beneath Jiang's feet.
His emperor-penguin body had crossed with him. Wet breast feathers clung together over Ruth's gauze, the left flipper hung low, and every missing tail feather left a tender line above the white ground.
The prison had given him no borrowed human dignity. Jiang was grateful for the honesty.
"You expected hands," the stranger said.
Jiang opened his beak. His own human voice came out, clear and furious, though his throat still shaped the sound like a penguin call.
"I expected a liar to pick a more flattering room."
"This is not my room."
The speaker stood far enough away to make distance difficult to judge. Twelve bands of gold crossed the white space above and below him, each broad as a road seen from the sky. Tiny lights moved along them, vanishing when they reached his body.
One band covered his eyes. Another passed through his open palms. The rest pinned his throat, chest, knees, and shadow beyond Jiang's sight.
His body remained solid beneath the restraint, stripped of smoke and theatrical light. What little remained visible looked human, bruised, and old enough to have healed badly more than once.
Whenever a moving light crossed one of the roads, an image flashed inside it. Jiang saw a black coast beneath paired moons, a city built down the walls of a chasm, and a field where tall grass bent away from an unseen traveler.
The glimpses lasted too briefly to prove whether the roads carried places, memories, or bait. They did prove that the restraints were doing more than holding one body still.
Jiang waddled sideways to change the angle.
The white floor offered less grip than chapel stone. He used his good flipper for balance and let the injured one rest against his side. From the new position, the bands still hid the same features.
"You can speak here," the prisoner said. "Ask what matters."
"Can you touch me from there?"
The prisoner raised one bound hand.
Every golden road tightened. His fingers stopped before they cleared his chest, and a dark line opened across one knuckle.
"No. The roads stop me," he said.
Jiang slid closer on his belly, using the good flipper to keep his bad side clear. Before the prisoner's bound hand moved again, the road across his palm tightened and forced his fingers shut.
The cage reacted to Jiang's distance rather than the prisoner's stated intention. That distinction mattered; a promise could change, while a restraint had just repeated its rule.
Jiang approached until his beak met the nearest strip of white between them. Cold bit through the tip before contact. He backed away without pretending curiosity had made the warning harmless.
"Can you heal the body outside?"
"No. Your wounds remain outside."
"Can you restart its heart?"
"No. I can keep this seam near you while the women keep your body alive. Those are different acts."
The direct answers earned less trust than they might have if the prisoner had tried harder to sound kind.
A beat passed through the floor.
Ruth's voice reached Jiang from beyond the white, carrying his name. Warm air moved over feathers that were both here and somewhere else, then the prison closed around him again.
One outside heartbeat had passed.
Behind Jiang, the white seam had narrowed to the width of his breast. Ruth's care reached him through it as a diffuse warmth rather than a hand. Aylin's Spirit Link pulled at one edge, proof that the prison had not replaced the world where his body lay.
Jiang backed toward the seam until his tail met resistance. The way home still existed. The prisoner controlled how long it remained near, which was leverage enough.
"Who are you?" Jiang asked.
"A prisoner. Once, enough people called me a god that I made the mistake of listening."
"That is a confession, not a name."
"My name is held under the band across my throat. Giving you a false one would be easier and less useful."
Jiang disliked the answer and believed the restraint more than the speaker.
"Did you build the Soul Evolution System?"
"Your Soul Evolution System came from elsewhere. I carried a System of my own before this prison. It left after I failed the mission that mattered most."
"Systems leave people after one failure?"
"Mine did. Whether yours will behave the same is a question, not a promise."
The prisoner's refusal to universalize his experience sounded careful. Careful people could lie better than careless ones.
"What mission did you fail?"
The band over the prisoner's throat brightened. His next words came around it with effort.
"Earth once held magic openly. I tried to strip it away. I believed power that answered blood, inheritance, and violence created more suffering than it prevented."
Jiang stared at the hidden face. "We built guns without it. Bombs too. People never needed magic to make suffering efficient."
"I learned that after the stripping began."
"And then you stopped willingly?"
"I was stopped before I chose."
"What did your attempt take from everyone else?"
The road across the prisoner's eyes dimmed. "Open paths between worlds. Inherited rites. Creatures sustained by ambient magic. Some deserved the ending I gave them. Others died because I treated every kind of power as the same disease."
"How many others died?"
"Enough that the number would become a hiding place if I gave it to you."
Regret could be rehearsed. Jiang stored the answer beside the rest of the prisoner's claims and refused to turn tone into evidence.
The golden roads carried another stream of moving lights through his body. This time one light went dark as it crossed his chest.
"By whom were you stopped?" Jiang asked.
"A being who named itself Supreme. It left me under these roads and left Earth with wounds neither of us repaired."
"A jailer can lie about being Supreme."
"Agreed. Titles prove very little."
Jiang had expected outrage or persuasion. Agreement made the claim harder to dismiss and no easier to verify.
"Why did you warn Aylin about warming me?"
"Because forcing her human pattern through your cold-stressed body would have broken the heart we both require."
"You require me alive for this."
"Yes. I prefer honesty where self-interest already explains the act."
The answer stripped charity from the warning without making the warning false.
Jiang shifted his weight. Even here, the injured footwork pulled at his shoulder. The prison copied pain but offered no blood on the gauze; it seemed to preserve his soul's understanding of the body rather than the body itself.
"What does the sight rod have to do with you?"
The bands around the prisoner's hands stopped carrying lights.
"It was made to reveal what shares a space without being seen. Cores. Possessions. Buried doors. Prisons, if the person holding it retains enough sight."
"You want me to point it at your cage."
"I want you to carry a mark to the rod and let the rod look through it once."
"What does the mark do to me?"
"It joins your path to this prison long enough for the rod to see."
"That is its function. I asked for its price."
The prisoner waited beneath the moving roads. His delay answered more honestly than the description had.
"What happens when it looks?"
"I do not know. It may show you the bars. It may show you the jailer. It may burn the mark away."
"Or open the prison instead."
"Looking alone leaves the prison closed."
"That sentence leaves room for somebody else to open it afterward."
The prisoner lowered his bound hand. Gold slid through his palm without blood this time.
"Then help me break whatever the rod reveals," he said. "Carry my mark, survive your hunter, and return when you are strong enough to finish what I began."
There it was: one limited request hiding an entire future inside the word help.
Jiang's body reacted before he chose a reply. His breast lowered, feet widened, and beak aimed toward the prisoner's legs. A threat posture built for a colony member he could protect, even in a place with no colony.
"No. I reject that bargain."
"Your body is waiting on a fragile seam."
"Urgency changes the clock, not my answer."
"Gredudande is moving toward the same rod."
"Then I have a reason to reach it without owing you everything afterward."
The prisoner went still beneath the golden roads.
"You argue like a man," he said.
"I said no like a penguin. You should learn the difference."
Something close to laughter moved behind the band across his face, but it carried no mockery.
The white floor beat again.
Ruth's voice reached Jiang through the seam, counting neither seconds nor prayers, only calling him home. The second outside heartbeat had passed.
The prisoner turned his hidden face toward the narrowing white line behind Jiang.
"Then name the terms you would accept before the final anchor closes."