The sight rod finished turning toward Jiang.
Inside the black-covered stand, the stolen-name shadow struck the floor.
Nerea shoved her reflector between the two objects. White light filled the rod's dark aperture, and the covered bundle collapsed into stillness.
"Nobody touches either one," she said.
Aylin's compass pulled toward the rod. "We crossed a world for that object."
"Then you can wait while the penguin stops shaking."
Devika gave Nerea a quick look of approval and lowered Jiang's towel shelter beside the inner wall. The reflected court light had warmed his outer feathers, but Camouflage had taken heat from beneath them. His feet curled weakly against the cloth.
"Breathing first," Devika said. "Argument afterward."
Jiang wanted the dark aperture turned away from him. He also wanted it to strip Gredudande of every hiding place before another call stole a body. Fear pulled both ways: toward refusal and toward the dangerous relief of finally seeing what hunted them.
Nerea angled a padded screen around the shelter without closing it. Paste stained the screen's wooden edge, and its white cloth sent daylight toward Jiang without placing his shadow near the covered stole.
Few objects occupied the conservation room: rod and cradle on one worktable, shrouded stand near the door, jointed lamps facing a bare testing wall, and plain cotton curtains over every shelf.
Nerea took a padded fork from beneath the table and nudged the cradle without placing her hand in its line. The shaft resisted the tool, turning back toward Jiang until wood creaked against silver. She let go before the cradle tipped.
"It has never chosen a person by itself," she said. "Before today, light and a spoken name had to wake it."
Jiang noticed exits before relics. The court door stood behind Lucia. A narrow side door opened into a sunlit workroom. A third panel near Nerea's table had been sealed with fresh boards from the inside.
"What is behind that one?" Matthews asked.
"The room where I learned sight can look back."
Father Matthews stared at the rod. "Did it show you Elias?"
"It showed me a shape that answered when I said his name. The shape changed when I tried another."
"You have left Elias unanswered," Matthews said.
"It is the answer I possess."
Matthews looked ready to approach the cradle. Lucia placed one paste-marked hand across his path.
"A shadow that borrows grief will tell you whatever keeps you near it," she said.
Matthews's hand fell away from the cradle. "I was the first person to say Elias's name during the vigil. The second shape turned when I called him. If names taught it how to answer, then I helped teach it."
Lucia kept her hand between him and the rod. "You called to a dying friend. Today you know the answer can be copied. Knowledge changes what you owe next."
"Elias still deserves an answer."
"Then owe him caution instead of another body."
Jiang rested his beak on the towel while warmth returned by degrees. He understood Matthews's hunger. A rod that could prove Elias remained inside the second shadow might turn an old failure into a rescue delayed rather than a death accepted.
That same hunger could make Matthews open anything that called itself a trapped friend.
Jiang tapped twice against the cloth.
Aylin looked from him to the priest. "He says belief remains a human judgment."
"Did he say all of that with two taps?" Nerea asked.
"The Spirit Link carries pressure and intent. I supply grammar."
"That interpretation favors you," Nerea said.
"Frequently inconvenient for both of us."
Nerea took a square of unprinted conservation board and a stick of charcoal from her table. She placed them within Jiang's beak reach, then withdrew beyond the shelter edge.
"Let him supply his own grammar."
Jiang waited for Devika's nod before lifting his head. The charcoal tasted of dust when he caught it sideways in his beak.
He wrote slowly across the board.
`ONE LOOK, CHOSEN BY JIANG`
The next line pulled at his shoulder.
`LOOK OPENS NO ROAD`
He shifted his feet and added a third.
`LOOK RELEASES NO PRISONER`
For the final line, he drew an eye, a moving shadow, and a heavy slash between them.
Using a beak for written terms still angered him. The letters leaned, charcoal marked his white chin, and every stroke reminded the room that somebody else had chosen this body. The ugly board also carried his meaning without borrowing Aylin's voice.
Nerea crouched outside the towel. "Stop if any separate shadow moves."
One tap confirmed her reading.
"Those are already the prisoner's terms," Aylin said. "The mark agreed."
Jiang drew the charcoal through her sentence.
The prisoner had agreed to limits. Jiang still judged whether the look was safe. Aylin's urgency, Matthews's grief, and Nerea's apparatus could inform that choice without owning it.
Aylin watched the black line cross the board. "Your judgment remains yours. I remember."
The words sounded practiced because she was practicing them.
Devika checked the movement beneath Jiang's breast and offered a strip of fish only after the shiver eased. He swallowed without throwing his head back. Fuel entered the same injured body; the shoulder still burned where the charcoal had strained it.
Nerea turned to the rod. "It arrived wrapped in the stole and pointing at an empty wall. I treated it as contaminated metal."
"You locked up a miracle," Matthews said.
"A miracle with a direction is an instrument. Instruments receive tests."
She indicated the scar across her near hand. "On the first test, the aperture revealed a second human shape beside Lucia. When I moved the lamp, that shape turned toward me instead of following the light."
"It cut you?" Devika asked.
"The rod stayed on the cradle. My own shadow closed its hand around a blade."
Nerea had reached for the light switch. Her shadow had reached somewhere else. The blade opened her palm before Lucia broke the beam with a coat.
The wound closed. The memory of watching her own hand obey a different intention stayed raw. Nerea rebuilt the room so every beam ended where she chose, then mistook control of the light for control of everything revealed by it.
After that, Nerea had separated lamps, screens, work surfaces, and exits. She believed physical isolation could make sight harmless if every shadow stayed in its assigned patch.
Jiang looked at the boards sealing the third room.
Containment had protected Nerea. It had also left the stolen shape enough years to learn spoken names.
He tapped the drawing of the eye, then pointed his beak at each living person.
"He wants every exit stated," Aylin said.
Nerea frowned. "The screens already separate us."
Jiang struck the board harder.
"Screens do not choose," Devika said. "People do."
Lucia took the court door. "If my shadow moves toward the rod, I step into the sun and leave it behind."
Matthews moved beside her. "I withdraw with Lucia. I do not answer any voice using Elias."
The promise hurt him enough to sound honest.
Devika kept one hand beside Jiang's towel. "I end the test for breathing, bleeding, cold, or loss of alertness. I move him only under the consent we already established."
Aylin stood beyond the shelter with the compass lowered. "I keep the Spirit Link one-sided. I send no Natural Essence into Jiang, the mark, or the rod. If my trace moves, I step away from all three."
Nerea looked at her own scarred hand. "I control the reflector. If my shadow changes before I do, Lucia kills the light and I leave through the workroom."
"And the covered stand?" Matthews asked.
"It remains behind two screens. Movement ends the look."
Jiang tapped once for each choice. Nobody had offered a body, a shadow, or a future promise. Separate exits left open floor around every person, placing the relics at the room's edges rather than its center.
Nerea rolled a second white screen between the covered stand and the cradle. Aylin watched through the compass while Lucia shifted the work lamp until each human shadow ended in its own patch of floor.
Only Jiang's low outline touched the padded table.
The rod rotated away from the reflector.
Its dark aperture found the black-gold curve under his breast feathers.
Cold gathered along the dormant mark. No strength, voice, or command entered him. The System offered only the choice required by his own bargain.
Refusal would preserve the prisoner's distance and leave Gredudande ahead of them. Permission could expose the core route, yet one mistaken assumption might turn a look into another bridge. Jiang felt Devika's fingers beside the towel, heard Matthews breathing near the court door, and watched Aylin keep both hands empty.
`[SIGHT REQUEST: ONE LOOK | ALLOW / REFUSE]`