Gredudande's stolen call rolled through the open corridor.
Father Matthews stepped onto the first towel.
His shadow reached the dark silver threshold and opened a human-height arch beside Jiang's low one. The two entrances touched without merging.
"I go first," Matthews said. "If my thread closes, everybody stays here."
Ruth held the examination lamp with both hands. Her blue scarf lay between his heels and the route. "Courage changes nothing about our agreement. The road resists, you return."
"I return if the road resists."
He stepped over the scarf.
Silver climbed around his shoes, coat, and bare ankles. His body thinned into shadow without losing its shape. Then the first arch took him.
For several breaths, his separate thread remained stretched across the chapel floor.
Matthews reappeared beyond the nearest silver arch. He looked smaller inside the corridor, surrounded by candle shadows moving in the opposite direction.
He raised one empty hand.
His thread stayed separate.
Devika closed her care kit and took the second towel. "One point before I go. My duty is the injured bird. Spare me every crusade."
"That is clear," Ruth said.
"Good. Crusades have terrible medical planning."
She crossed with the kit held against her chest. Her arch rose around her, carried her shadow into the corridor, and left a second silver thread beside Matthews's.
Inside, Devika opened the kit again before admiring anything impossible.
"Your veterinarian has priorities," Aylin said.
Jiang tapped the flour tray once.
Ruth moved it aside and placed the towel sling around his breast. The cloth stayed loose beneath the chest and clear of his supported flipper.
"I can carry you to the edge," she said. "The road takes you only after you step."
Jiang nodded and flexed his toes.
The blue wool under Jiang's toes made leaving Mercy Street hurt worse than his shoulder. Ruth had offered shelter before demanding an explanation. Samira had chosen the colony and still found him help. Somewhere in the same city, his mother kept receiving silence in place of her son's voice.
He pictured her checking an unanswered phone while her missing son stood in a chapel as a wounded penguin. The absurdity should have made him laugh. Instead, he wanted his human hands back long enough to type three words: I am alive.
He wanted to stay long enough to fix one ordinary thing.
Gredudande called from Rome with the voice it had stolen from him.
Jiang put both feet beneath his body.
Ruth supported the towel while he took the weight. His legs shook, yet they held for the short distance to the blue scarf. He held the supported flipper close to his side and used the good one to balance.
"Come back alive," Ruth said. "That instruction has no hidden theology."
Jiang pressed his beak to her wrist, then stepped across.
The low arch accepted his head and shoulders. Silver closed over his back without squeezing the injured side. Gravity tipped forward, and the chapel floor changed beneath his feet.
Jiang dropped onto his breast.
The corridor was colder than the chapel and smoother than ice. He slid under the first arch, steering with both feet while his good flipper kept his shoulder from turning into the wall.
Father Matthews waited ahead with his back against one silver rib. Devika crouched beside him, one hand extended toward Jiang's towel without grabbing.
"Still alert?" she asked.
Jiang barked once, sharp with offense.
"That sounded offended. I will count it."
Behind him, Aylin stepped onto the final towel.
Her shadow touched the route.
Every candle in the corridor bent toward her.
Gredudande answered from three arches at once. A contact call came from ahead, another slipped from a recessed arch, and the third rose behind Jiang's tail. Every voice matched a real emperor penguin closely enough to tug at the colony-seeking part of him. Nothing living answered, and Penguin Instincts opened beneath the counterfeit chorus.
The call ahead offered distance without safety; from the recess came a repetition too quick for any answer. Behind him, the third pointed through Aylin's trace instead of toward another penguin.
All three were empty.
Jiang flattened his feet and stopped his slide.
"Why did he stop?" Matthews asked.
"The calls are wrong," Aylin shouted from the threshold. "Do not follow any of them."
Her arch began to close around her waist.
The black trace tightened from her throat to the recessed arch. Her silver thread bent toward Jiang's, crossing the open gap between them.
Where the threads touched, their edges softened.
Gredudande was trying to turn two separate travelers into one shadow.
Father Matthews pushed away from the rib.
"Stay on your thread," Jiang tried to warn.
Only a bark left his beak.
Devika caught Matthews's sleeve. "He stopped us before. Hold your own position."
The priest looked at Aylin half trapped in the arch. Fear pulled him forward. Memory held him back.
"Hold," he said, planting both bare feet on his silver line.
Aylin twisted her compass chain around one wrist. Green light struck the black trace and slid off. "I can cut my side."
Jiang barked twice, hard enough to hurt his throat.
Cutting the Spirit Link inside a road built from separate shadows could take her exit with it. Their agreement protected choices. Severing the person who carried the danger would betray the reason they had entered.
He looked for the physical point where the two threads began to merge.
Silver ribs crossed overhead. Each candle shadow moved through a notch before joining the corridor wall. The false call from the recessed arch sounded whenever one narrow catch rotated beneath Aylin's thread.
When the catch turned again, Tactical Strike painted it blue.
The blue mark promised one observed opening. Jiang still had to provide the strength, risk the wound, and reach the target on his own feet.
Between Jiang and the catch, the corridor sloped past a row of low ribs. A human would need to crawl. His emperor-penguin body had been built for a different kind of bad footing.
Jiang lowered his beak and pushed off with both feet.
He slid beneath the first rib. The good flipper corrected his leftward drift. His tail scraped the silver floor, catching at the broken feather roots before he kicked free.
His bound flipper cleared the second rib by the width of its cloth support.
Gredudande used his own warning call from the far wall.
Jiang ignored the sound and watched the blue catch.
The slope steepened. He spread both feet to brake, missed the first angle, and struck the wall with his good shoulder. Pain pulled through the scratch beneath the dressing.
Devika shouted his name.
Jiang folded one foot, let the other steer, and crossed the final stretch sideways. His beak reached the catch as it rotated under Aylin's thread.
Tactical Strike showed the opening.
Jiang supplied the force.
He drove the side of his beak into the blue notch.
The catch snapped back.
Aylin's shadow tore away from Jiang's thread and returned to her feet. Her arch opened around her full height. The black hook recoiled into the recess, carrying all three copied calls with it.
She crossed before it could turn again.
Behind her, Ruth's blue scarf flashed once across the closing Earth threshold. The lamp went dark only after Aylin's separate thread cleared it.
The corridor released them forward.
The floor tilted as silver arches folded in sequence. Matthews snatched Devika's kit, and she hooked Jiang's towel before he slid into the wall again. With both hands around her compass, Aylin followed last.
Faded stars covered the stone ceiling where they emerged.
Cool mosaic met Jiang's breast at the end of the low route. Beside him, Matthews and Devika arrived through taller shadows. Aylin came last, bruised throat first, and the dark silver line closed behind her.
Wax, damp stone, and old paper crowded Jiang's nose. The unfamiliar smells offered no colony, no river, and no trace of Ruth. For one frightened beat, Rome felt less like a destination than proof that home had closed behind him.
Devika knelt over Jiang. The lower edge of his shoulder dressing had turned red. His breathing came fast, and cold shook his feet, but the flipper support remained secure.
"Nobody moves him," she said.
Father Matthews looked around the windowless archive chapel. Rows of covered shelves filled one wall. A narrow stair climbed toward a wooden door marked by daylight.
"This is Rome," he said.
Above them, someone crossed the chapel floor.
Gredudande gave Jiang's contact call from the other side of the door.
It had reached Rome before them.