The return seam narrowed behind Jiang.
Ruth's voice still reached him through it, roughened by distance and anger. She called his name again, honoring no prisoner's schedule.
"My terms begin with my body," Jiang said. "It stays mine. Your mark moves nothing, speaks through nothing, and chooses nothing."
The prisoner remained beneath the twelve golden roads. "A mark that moves nothing cannot carry me out."
"Good. We understand each other."
Jiang lowered his beak to the white floor and dragged the tip across it. Resistance caught like hard ice. He put his rigid torso behind the motion and scored a short dark line between them.
The dark line remained scored between them.
"Repeat the term," he said.
"Your body remains yours. The mark grants me no movement, voice through you, or choice over you."
Gold passed over the prisoner's throat. The dark score on the floor took a thin golden edge.
Jiang had no proof that the change enforced anything. He had proof that the prison reacted when both of them named the same limit. In a place built out of hidden rules, visible reaction was worth keeping.
"Second term. Everyone connected to me stays outside this bargain. Aylin, Ruth, Samira, my mother, and anyone the Spirit Link touches."
"I need the Link to hold the seam."
"For the return only. Then it closes to you."
The prisoner's covered head turned. "You spend one of your terms protecting the woman who forced you into this body?"
Jiang's claws flexed against the white floor. Aylin had stolen his shape, his voice, and every ordinary way of reaching his mother. The anger had not softened merely because she was frightened now. It sat under his breastbone with the heat of the fresh mark waiting to happen.
"I haven't forgiven her," he said. "She stays outside your reach. My anger belongs to me. Keep your hands off it."
He thought of Ruth refusing the angel's easy miracle and Samira sending help without demanding proof that either impossible woman deserved it. If this prisoner could use the Link, he could reach everyone who had chosen to keep Jiang alive. That fear gave the next words their edge.
"Nobody outside this room pays for a choice I make in it."
The prisoner tilted his covered face. "You arrived through that Link. Closing it may also close your access to me."
"That sounds like your problem."
Jiang cut a second line with his beak. The motion tugged at the remembered wound below his shoulder, making one foot slide on the white floor.
He recovered without asking the prison to steady him.
"Repeat every word of it," he said.
"The people connected to you remain outside the mark. I use the Spirit Link only to return you now. Afterward it carries none of me."
The second line gained gold.
"Memories stay untouched," Jiang said. "Mine and theirs. I remember this place, your claims, and every word we set here."
"Memory can be damaged by crossing without my intent."
"Then you keep the crossing clean or the mark dies before it reaches your rod."
The prisoner gave a small nod. "Agreed."
Jiang scratched the third line. By then the tip of his beak ached in both worlds.
"The rod looks once," he said. "It opens nothing. It releases nothing. I help you reach no second place."
"The rod may reveal an opening neither of us creates."
"Then we stop before using it."
"Gredudande may force the choice."
"If looking helps Gredudande, I refuse."
The prisoner's bound hands closed. One golden road brightened across his palms, hiding the fingers entirely.
"You leave me every risk and keep every decision," he said.
"You approached a penguin bleeding in a church and asked for freedom. Your bargaining position has character."
The prisoner's mouth was hidden, but Jiang heard a tired laugh.
"Once," Jiang continued. "The rod looks at your prison once, if I judge the act safe enough. That is the whole promise."
The fourth score took more effort. Jiang braced with both feet and kept his injured flipper tucked while his good flipper balanced the pull of his beak.
After a long silence, the prisoner repeated the limit.
Gold edged the fourth line.
The white seam behind Jiang thinned until Ruth's voice became a vibration in his breast. Warmth remained beyond it, along with the weight of the blanket and Aylin's fear pressing through the Spirit Link.
"Now tell me the price you avoided," Jiang said.
The golden roads carried lights through the prisoner's body. A coast, a falling tower, and a pair of moons vanished into him one after another.
"The mark will be visible to anything that retains true sight," he said. "The rod. Core beings. Some priests. Some predators you have never met."
"So carrying it paints another target on me."
"Yes. Every true-sighted thing may notice it."
Jiang imagined Gredudande looking through the sight rod and finding a fresh road under his feathers. He imagined something worse noticing him from a world he had never seen. The chapel blanket felt impossibly far away.
Fear urged him toward the seam. It offered sensible reasons: his body was cold, his shoulder was torn, and Ruth was calling. It also wanted him to leave without learning whether the mark could expose the creature hunting them. Jiang let the fear speak, then made it wait.
"What else rides inside the mark?"
"When your synchronization crosses a new threshold, the System opens your soul to measure it. The mark can carry one sentence through that opening."
"One sentence, and the voice belongs to you."
"One. You remain free to ignore it. I gain no reply unless you seek this seam again."
"No commands hidden as pain."
"The sentence carries language only."
"No punishment if I refuse the rod later."
The prisoner hesitated. The seam behind Jiang lost another sliver of white.
"If you refuse, the mark dies," he said. "I lose the path. You keep whatever your own System gives you."
"And you take nothing with it."
"Nothing returns with the dying mark."
Jiang cut three smaller lines across the first four: visible to sight, one sentence at thresholds, refusal kills the mark. The prisoner repeated each phrase. Every score gained the same narrow gold.
"What keeps you from lying about the rules?" Jiang asked.
"Nothing you can trust yet. The mark will carry these lines under your feathers. Let the sight rod judge whether they continue through it."
That was the first answer the prisoner had given that made verification part of the promise instead of asking Jiang to replace evidence with faith.
"You get my word to carry it toward the rod," Jiang said. "You get no promise that I use it."
"Your word is a poor key."
"It is the only one offered."
The prisoner stood silent beneath his roads. His need showed in the angle of his bound head, stripped of the amusement he had used when Jiang first heard him.
"Accepted under every named limit," he said.
All seven lines rose from the white floor.
They crossed the space as threads no thicker than cracks in ice. Jiang held his ground as they reached the white feathers below his breast and slipped beneath them.
Pain followed, hot enough to feel wrong in a cold-stressed body. A black line traced itself across the skin under his feathers. Gold lit its edges, then dulled until only the foreign shape remained.
No strength arrived. His left flipper still hurt. The shoulder still bled in the chapel, and the feet beneath him remained webbed.
"Hold the seam," Jiang said.
"I am holding it. Your people must bring the body the rest of the way."
The white return had shrunk below Jiang's standing height. An emperor penguin could fit if he lowered himself; a human body would have lost time crouching.
Jiang dropped onto his breast.
The floor offered almost no friction. He kicked with both feet, used the good flipper to correct his angle, and slid toward Ruth's fading voice.
One golden road swept low behind him. It stopped at the scored lines and bent upward rather than touching his tail.
One success was enough. Jiang drove his beak through the seam.
Warm cloth replaced the white floor. His body lay where Ruth had kept it, chest still moving in shallow rises. Aylin pulled the Spirit Link toward her while Ruth kept the shelter open and the wrapped heat outside one wall.
Jiang dragged in a stronger breath.
His eyes opened on the underside of the soup table.
Aylin saw the black-gold line beneath his white breast feathers before either of them could pretend the crossing had left him untouched.
"What did you agree to?" she asked.