White fire entered the call arch and closed around the female emperor's voice.
Her low beginning narrowed beneath Jiang. The unfinished space where the injured male should have answered became a clean hard note, held too long by stone that did not need to breathe.
Then the family vanished from the road.
Below him, the armada diver turned its short hook inside the arch.
Curved teeth opened from the shaft and bit across separate water grooves. One carried the rising current. Another had carried sound through the bridge skin. White fire pulled both into the same cut.
Jiang pressed his beak to the dry floor crack.
Below him, the diver fixed a second brace around the hook. More white-armored bodies climbed behind it, using the line they had built from parapet to arch.
A completed call came out of the stone.
A female call began low, reached the second note without interruption, and stopped. Its male answer carried a rough middle. Three chick sounds followed.
