The dark thread vanished beneath the silver-bound door.
Cardinal Martelli's blood kept moving after it.
A drop stretched from his palm across the threshold, thinning into a black feeler that searched the chamber floor. Another crept from the red sash at his side. Both angled toward Aylin.
She stepped over Martelli before the door could close.
Jiang tried to rise after her.
His feet scraped stone and folded. The hard return of his heartbeat had left both legs cold and unreliable, while his belly seemed to weigh more than the rest of him. He gained no height at all.
Devika's hand appeared beside his breast. Her spread fingers left his chest free while blocking the first shove, making the floor impossible to ignore.
"Your heart just finished arguing with that room," she said. "You are not starting a second fight on legs that cannot hold you."
Aylin looked back. Green light burned along her fingers, cool rather than hot, but the pull beneath her collar kept turning her toward the lower dark.
"The core is within reach," she said.
"So is the man bleeding between your boots," Devika replied.
Martelli opened one eye.
The bruised chain pattern crossed his cheek and disappeared beneath his collar. Gray hair stuck to his forehead. When he found Aylin above him, he caught her wrist with two weak fingers.
"Door first," he whispered. "Do not answer me."
Nerea swung the hooded lamp away from the threshold. Martelli's shadow shortened, but the blood feelers lengthened across the floor.
"You are the only Cardinal here," she said. "Who else would answer?"
His voice came from below the door.
"Sister Lucia, cut the return line. Thomas, bring the rod down to me."
Martelli's rasp carried every word, down to the injured catch between names. Behind Nerea, the line jumped against stair stone.
Jiang answered with a low warning note. Shape, pain, and command filled the imitation, while no living person waited behind it for resistance.
"That is not an order," Martelli said from the floor. "Anything wearing my voice gets refused."
Above them, rope scraped stone.
One hard pull came down the line. A pause followed, then two shorter tugs. Matthews and Lucia were still holding the upper return under the pattern they had rehearsed.
The thing below tried again.
"Thomas, this is obedience. Cut it."
Lucia's answer carried down the stair. "The Cardinal has never met my rope. The rope answers to my hands."
Martelli shut his eye. Relief touched his face for less than a breath, followed by shame that looked older than the wound.
Devika opened the compact care roll against her thigh. "Nerea, I need him fully inside and every new drop kept off those silver strips."
"Dragging him joins the trail," Nerea said.
She snapped the thermal sheet open beside Martelli. Its crumpled surface broke the hooded light into crooked pieces. Each blood drop cast its own warped mark instead of one continuous shadow.
"Then we do not drag him on stone."
Devika looked at Jiang, then at Aylin. "I need both hands on the Cardinal. Move Jiang one body length away from the blood. Keep his breast free and his feet visible."
Aylin crouched outside Jiang's feathers. "The retreat sling, only to the wall?"
He pressed his right foot once against the floor.
Nerea took Devika's front loop. Aylin kept the rear support she had already been granted for retreat. Together they raised the cloth enough to clear Jiang's chest without asking his left flipper to open.
Cold pins ran through both feet as they moved him. Claws dragged over one seam, then another, before the late left foot struck the right.
The black feeler changed direction.
It left Aylin and followed Jiang's moving sling.
"It wants whoever is carried," Aylin said.
"It wants care to become ownership," Nerea replied. "Set him down."
Jiang's belly met stone beside the curved wall. Aylin released the rear loop as soon as his feet found the floor, then returned to Martelli without touching the blood.
Devika cut the sash away from his side. Beneath it, cloth had been packed into a narrow wound between two ribs. The pressure chamber had soaked the outer layer, but the flow beneath came in slow, heavy pulses.
"Who packed this?" she asked.
"I did," Martelli said.
"You packed this alone?"
He showed her the other palm.
A straight cut crossed it beneath dried blood. It looked deliberate. Dark bruises circled the wrist like links pressed into flesh from the inside.
"Keep the fresh blood from silver," he said. "It answers there."
Devika replaced the ruined cloth while Nerea and Aylin worked the thermal sheet beneath his shoulder and hips. Aylin's cool essence stiffened its far edge. Nerea drew from the near side, moving Martelli without smearing him across the threshold.
Pain emptied his face.
He made no sound, which told Jiang more than a shout would have.
The copied Cardinal laughed behind the door.
"You prayed louder than that."
Martelli's fingers closed around empty air. Devika caught his wrist before the wounded palm reached the silver binding.
"Whatever you want to hit can wait until you have enough blood to miss it," she said.
"I was not going to hit it."
"Good. That saves us time."
Nerea pulled. Martelli's shoes cleared the threshold, followed by the dark hem of his clothes. Aylin guided his head without covering his mouth, then lowered him onto the folded side of the sheet.
One blood drop remained on the stone beyond them.
From Jiang's height, it was obvious. The droplet hid beneath a buckle in the silver strip, where the lamp gave it a clean path to Martelli's heel.
His beak rapped twice against stone.
Aylin turned toward the sound. Jiang pointed at the buckle and opened his beak over the edge of the thermal sheet.
"I see it," she said.
She reached with green light. The droplet drew back beneath the strip before her essence arrived.
Jiang caught the sheet in his beak.
The pull bit through his shoulder. He kept his left flipper closed and dragged the crumpled silver across the hidden drop. Its shadow shattered into bright folds.
Aylin sealed those folds to the floor with a cool green line.
Nerea drove the padded fork against the door.
The silver-bound wood moved one handspan, then stopped. Something on the other side had placed its weight against it.
"Lucia, open the upper lamp," Nerea called.
Light strengthened down the stair.
The copied voice answered first. "Leave it dark. That is my command."
Three pulls moved through the return line. Lucia had heard Nerea, judged the living position, and opened the lamp without granting the voice below a vote.
Martelli watched the bright edge crawl beneath the lower door.
"It knows my rank," he said. "Disobedience confuses it."
"That makes two of you," Nerea said.
His bruised face turned toward her.
"Good," he murmured. "Keep that suspicion."
Aylin planted both palms against the wood. Cool essence traveled through the grain and avoided the silver bands. Nerea shifted the fork lower. Together they forced the door across the last gap.
The blood feelers on the thermal sheet whipped toward it.
Devika covered Martelli's palm with plain gauze. Aylin closed her fist. Jiang pressed both feet flat, though the left barely obeyed.
The door struck its frame.
Nerea twisted the fork through a recessed iron loop and trapped the handle beneath the lamp base. Nothing about the arrangement looked permanent. For now, the silver strips held still.
Devika leaned close to Martelli. "Tell me what the voice learned. Short version. Your blood gets the long version later."
He looked toward the sealed wood.
"There is an old chain prayer," he said. "Not a rite I was ever taught to use. I found it where the lower room had cut the pages out of their bindings."
Nerea kept one hand on the lamp. "You tried it alone."
"I thought being alone meant nobody else would pay."
Aylin touched the dark line beneath her collar. "What does the prayer do?"
"One breath opens. Another living breath witnesses what should be held. Silver and blood give the answer weight."
Devika glanced at the cut across his palm. "And you supplied both."
"One breath cannot become two. That is the rule." Martelli swallowed against a dry throat. "I spoke the opening below. The room answered in my own voice. The chain formed around me instead."
Jiang looked at the bruises on his face and wrist. Gredudande had not merely learned a prayer. It had tested what happened when copied sound pretended to be an independent life.
"Did it work?" Nerea asked.
"Long enough to teach it the first half."
The hooded lamp dimmed.
No hand had touched its shutter.
Aylin drew a sharp breath. Her Spirit Link scar pulled downward, through the door rather than toward it. Green light flickered between her teeth.
Martelli pushed against Devika's hand. "Do not let her answer."
From below, his stolen voice began the prayer.
"Let no borrowed mouth become a witness."
Aylin clamped both hands over her throat.
Her lips still opened.
"I answer only for--"