Devika waited until Jiang's breathing slowed before allowing the silver shaving near him again.
The wrapped heat stayed outside one shelter wall. A third strip of fish settled in his stomach, adding fuel without touching the pain beneath his flipper support.
"Your shiver is stronger," Devika said. "That earns a test, not a journey."
Aylin sat beyond the cooler opening with the compass between her knees. After the route released her shadow, she had kept every argument inside. Her silence carried more anger than surrender.
Jiang wanted the Rome road open immediately. Every quiet compass needle gave Gredudande time with his stolen voice, while Jiang's mother still had no call explaining why her son had vanished.
He hated lying under a soup table while the enemy moved. His body answered that hatred with a weak foot tremor and a shoulder that hurt whenever he lifted his head. Wanting speed left his body unchanged.
Ruth set the dark tray within Jiang's reach. "What do you need us to understand?"
In fresh flour, he wrote HIDE BODY.
Aylin read them and lifted her head. "Penguin Camouflage."
Devika glanced under the table. "You are saying the injured bird can disappear."
"He bends how living sight reads his plumage," Aylin said. "The ability spends heat."
"Then the injured bird can disappear briefly."
A clear tap confirmed it.
Devika turned the examination lamp in her hands. "Tell me why."
Jiang pointed his beak at the black-gold mark, then at the shaving. The mark had become visible to the prisoner, the sight rod, and predators he had never met. Camouflage might hide the rest of him and leave that foreign line exposed.
If the route followed it, they could learn what the road actually saw.
Aylin understood first. "You want to remove your ordinary shadow from the test."
One tap confirmed her reading.
"If the shaving falls, it needs the body," Father Matthews said. "If it stays up, it can see his mark."
"And if his shiver weakens, the test ends," Devika said. "He cancels the ability before anyone opens a route."
Another tap accepted her limit.
Ruth spread her blue scarf across the chapel stone behind the lamp. Its cloth created a clear boundary between the shelter and the altar. "Nobody's shadow crosses this until he returns."
Matthews took his place beside her. Aylin moved farther away, keeping her trace out of the beam. Devika stayed at the shelter mouth with one hand on the towel and the other near the lamp switch.
"You stop when she says," Aylin told Jiang. "I stay outside the light even if the route reacts to me."
Jiang studied her face, looking for the urgency that had turned her hands dangerous before. It remained there, fierce and unhappy, but she kept both knees behind Ruth's scarf.
With one last tap, Jiang chose Penguin Camouflage and accepted the cold.
Cold slipped under his feathers before the light changed. His black back blurred into the blanket. White breast, beak, webbed feet, and bound flipper followed until the shelter appeared empty around a shallow dent in the towel.
The ability remembered his shape better than he did. Light curved along each contour while his webbed feet went numb against the towel. Beneath the supported flipper, pain stayed exactly where invisibility had found it.
Devika's hand tightened against her knee, then relaxed.
"He is still breathing," she said.
Under the invisible breast, the towel rose while each exhale shifted flour. Across the chapel floor, his ordinary shadow vanished while the dark silver shaving stayed upright.
Aylin made a sound low in her throat. Through the compass, a black-gold curve hung beneath the invisible body. She alone could see it.
"The mark is bare," she said. "Camouflage hides everything except the prisoner's road."
Fear pushed colder than the ability. Jiang had gained Camouflage by surviving one predator. Now a second kind of hunter could follow the one piece he could never shed from his feathers.
He was afraid of what waited beyond the rod. He hated the thought of carrying a signal that turned every future hiding place transparent, but destroying it now would also abandon their best chance to expose Gredudande's core.
Jiang kept the test open by choice.
Matthews angled the lamp. With no ordinary silhouette to follow, the shaving turned toward the hidden mark. A thread rose from the silver and traced the curve beneath Jiang's breast without touching skin.
The gray slit opened again.
This time it rose only as high as Jiang's standing body. Its ceiling curved over the space where his head had disappeared, and its floor flattened beneath the towel.
"It measured him," Ruth said.
"It measured what the mark occupies," Aylin replied. "That may be worse."
Devika watched the flour tremble with each breath. "That answer is enough. Return now," she said.
Jiang canceled Camouflage at Devika's order.
His body returned from beak to tail. Cold struck the exposed places around his missing feathers. Shivering moved through him hard enough to rattle the tray, and Devika killed the lamp as soon as his shadow cleared the shaving.
The slit folded shut.
Aylin moved to the scarf and stopped there. "I can try to burn the mark before it calls worse things."
Ruth returned the flour tray to Jiang. He drew a line through Aylin's suggestion, then pointed toward the shaving and the east-facing compass.
"You keep it until you judge the rod," Aylin said. "Your fear belongs to you. My hands stay at my sides."
The answer cost her. Jiang heard that in the roughness of her voice. He left the refusal in the flour where everyone could read it.
Ruth pulled the blue scarf around the silver curl without touching it. "One body-shaped door. How does that help four travelers?"
"A processional rod was never carried alone," Matthews said.
He looked at the empty fitted case. "During the vigil, one person led with the cross. Another carried the rod. Others followed with candles. Every shadow crossed the same floor, but each belonged to the person casting it."
"The route demanded one living shadow," Aylin said. "It may mean one at a time."
"May is carrying too much weight again," Devika replied.
Father Matthews crouched beside Ruth. "Then let me prove withdrawal. My hand enters the light. The rest of me stays behind the scarf. If the route holds after I leave, end the test."
Ruth studied the hand that had sealed the rod years ago. "You pull back when I say, not when your guilt says."
"Agreed. Your word controls the test."
Jiang had recovered enough to keep his head upright. He tapped once, granting his part of the test.
Devika restored the lamp at a lower angle. Jiang's ordinary penguin shadow reached the shaving and raised it. The low gray opening returned.
Matthews extended one hand beyond the blue scarf.
Its shadow touched the edge of Jiang's route. Silver divided cleanly. One thread remained beneath Jiang; the other followed Matthews's fingers without joining them.
"Pull your hand back now," Ruth said.
Matthews withdrew before the silver tightened.
His thread retreated across the floor and vanished at the scarf. Jiang's stayed where it was.
Nobody lost a hand. No second opening remained behind.
"Separate shadows," Aylin said. "Separate exits."
Ruth moved a folded towel beside the scarf for each intended traveler. "Then every person stands on their own place and answers for themselves."
Devika looked from the towels to the impossible low door. "You included me."
"Jiang requires medical care," Ruth said. "You can also choose to stay."
Devika checked the support around Jiang's flipper, the shoulder dressing, and his breathing. Her work had been built for roads with traffic lights and hospital doors. None of it prepared her for the candles moving below the chapel.
"If he crosses, I cross," she said. "My choice concerns the patient, not your cosmology."
She rested a hand on the closed transport kit. "Samira called me because he needed an avian veterinarian. I will not hand that patient to an impossible doorway and pretend my duty ends at the threshold."
Father Matthews took the first towel as route witness. Devika chose the second. Jiang's towel remained nearest the low opening.
Aylin stayed behind all three.
"My trace enters last," she said. "If Gredudande pulls, it reaches nobody ahead of me."
Ruth kept the Earth side. Her blue scarf would mark the return, and her hand would control the lamp.
They rehearsed withdrawal once with shadows touching the edge and bodies staying behind the scarf. Each silver thread appeared alone. Each vanished when its owner stepped back.
On the second rehearsal, no one moved forward.
The shaving opened by itself.
The low slit widened into a corridor of dark silver arches. Hundreds of candle shadows passed along its walls, their bearers hidden beyond the silver.
From somewhere beyond the final arch, Gredudande answered with Jiang's contact call.