The second shadow raised one empty hand toward Jiang.
Its fingers lengthened across the wall. Gredudande's stolen contact call came from the darkness behind its bowed head, clean enough to pull Jiang's sore body toward an answer.
Devika caught the towel before his feet moved. "Your enemy may whistle. You stay here."
Aylin lifted her palm. Green light gathered beneath her skin, warming toward flame.
"Keep fire away from the stole," Lucia said. "The last time its edge burned, the shadow reached the next wall."
Aylin closed her fingers around the heat. "Then give me a rule that hurts it."
"I have rules for preserving cloth. This is why I wanted Nerea."
The silhouette turned its head toward Lucia's voice. Its shoulders narrowed, then copied the stoop beneath her archive apron.
Father Matthews stepped between Lucia and the wall. "Elias, if any part of you remains--"
"That thing bowed for his name and reached for yours," Lucia cut in. "Grief has given it enough shapes."
Matthews swallowed the rest.
Jiang stayed low in Devika's shelter and watched the shadow's feet. One belonged to the human silhouette. The other tapered into the narrow strip cast by the hanging stole. Its hands stretched wide while the cloth-shadow held it to the stand.
The desk lamp held both shapes on the wall.
Jiang wanted the lamp gone. He also remembered the silver road opening when its light changed and the shadow hook reaching for Aylin. Darkness could hide the threat as easily as light displayed it.
He tapped the towel, then pointed his beak toward the lamp and back to the stole.
"He wants the light left on," Aylin said.
Her reading earned one tap.
"You may observe from the towel," Devika said.
Jiang pushed both feet beneath his breast.
Pain tightened around the reopened shoulder scratch. His left flipper stayed bound to his side, and the broken tail shafts caught in the towel when he shifted his weight forward.
Devika placed the loose sling beneath his chest. "Near edge of the mosaic. I carry the weight when your feet fail. One stumble ends the experiment."
Jiang tapped once, accepting the limit instead of pretending he needed none.
Aylin moved to lift him, then stopped with both hands open. "Do you want me on the sling?"
He studied her face. Urgency still lived there, but her hands waited where he could see them.
One tap gave consent.
Aylin took the opposite end of the towel while Devika kept the injured side. Together they let Jiang place his own feet on the mosaic. The cloth carried part of his weight without turning him into luggage.
The human silhouette leaned down.
Gredudande played Jiang's warning call next. It was the same stolen sound that had crossed the silver arches, complete with the rough edge his throat had carried after cold and blood.
Penguin Instincts stirred beneath the recording.
The call had an identity, but it belonged to a finished moment. Its rhythm could only repeat. A living emperor penguin found its partner or chick through a denser beat, two voices meeting inside one throat and changing together through the call.
Until now, Jiang had never understood what his new body did when it called. Beneath his beak waited both sources.
Every public bark had seemed proof that his human voice was gone, yet the pressure waiting here belonged to choice. Gredudande kept a recording. Choosing the next note belonged to Jiang, and he answered the shadow.
The first note came rough from his sore chest. A second voice crossed it, close but distinct, and their interference trembled through the archive chapel. The sound carried no human word. It carried the fact that this bird stood here now.
The silhouette recoiled from the wall.
Its stolen mouth opened. Jiang's recorded contact call spilled out again, both voices preserved from the original sound.
Then the shadow tried to alter the ending.
One voice bent toward Jiang's new note. The other vanished.
The borrowed shoulders pulled apart as though two people inside them had chosen different directions.
"What did he do?" Lucia asked.
"He made it answer instead of replay," Aylin said.
The effort scraped Jiang's throat. He tried another short call, changing its final beat as his body demanded.
The shadow followed with a flat imitation. One half arrived late. Its arm split at the elbow, joined again, and reached lower across the wall.
The human outline gave it reach while rejecting Jiang's complete penguin identity. Its fingertips touched Father Matthews's shadow, and his outline on the mosaic jerked toward the wall while his bare feet stayed planted.
Matthews grabbed the nearest shelf. "It has me."
His knuckles blanched against the wood. Jiang heard fear beneath the priest's steady voice and saw the old guilt trying to turn capture into punishment. Letting Matthews surrender would give the shadow a body and make every promise about separate choices worthless.
"It has your shape," Lucia said. "Keep your body where it is."
Aylin drew green light along the floor between his heels and the wall. She kept the Natural Essence cool enough to leave the old paper untouched. The line pushed at the reaching fingers without burning them.
They flattened, slid around it, and stretched toward Jiang.
Devika tightened the sling. "Back to the shelter."
Jiang refused with one hard tap of his beak against the cloth.
The next call hurt more, yet the wrong answer tore the borrowed hand away from Matthews. With each exchange, the shadow learned; its flat second voice lasted longer than before.
He had bought an opening. Victory already felt too expensive for his throat.
Lucia understood when he pointed at the cabinet of clean covers. "Layer the stole while it is divided."
Aylin shifted one hand from the green boundary. "I can hold the corners."
"Cotton first," Devika said. "Your magic stays outside the cloth."
Lucia pulled two pale conservation wraps from the cabinet and a black cover used to shield pigments from light. Matthews released the shelf only after Aylin's boundary pushed his shadow back under his feet.
"Tell me where to stand," he said.
Lucia handed him the black cover. "Beside me. Your guilt gets no vote. Your hands do."
The silhouette gathered itself for another reach.
Jiang called from the near edge of the mosaic. The doubled living beat struck the human shape and forced its shoulders apart again.
Lucia threw the first cotton layer over the wooden stand.
The cloth's narrow shadow vanished. Its bodyless companion sagged but remained on the wall, joined now to the light passing through the pale weave.
Matthews added the second wrap. Aylin caught both lower corners in cool green loops before the reaching fingers could lift them.
When the silhouette shrank to a head and one arm, Jiang changed his final beat. One voice answered, and Matthews dropped the black cover.
Human shape, stolen call, and empty hands disappeared beneath it.
Lucia pulled the cover tight around the stand and tied it below the hanging stole. Aylin anchored the knot without scorching a thread. Only then did Devika and Aylin carry Jiang back into the shallow shelter.
His feet shook too hard to take another step. The shoulder gauze showed a fresh red line, and every breath dragged at the chest that had forced out the doubled call.
Losing his human voice had felt like erasure. Spending this new one by choice felt frighteningly close to ownership, even while Devika's gauze reminded him what the choice had cost.
"You won the argument and worsened the patient," Devika said, pressing clean gauze around the edge. "Both facts are allowed to exist."
Jiang laid his beak along the towel. He felt no stronger, and the pale percentage in the corner of his sight remained at fifty-two. The mark under his breast stayed cold.
Aylin knelt outside the shelter. "You let me help carry you."
He gave one tired tap.
"I know that was permission for one crossing," she said. "I will ask again next time."
The black-covered stand rocked behind her.
Everyone turned toward it.
The bundle was too narrow for a man and too tall for Jiang. Something inside lowered the cloth until a blunt beak pressed from one side. A round belly followed, then two short feet that leaned away from the injured left.
Under three layers of cloth, the stolen-name shadow practiced Jiang's wounded waddle.