“Done.”
“Dastian,” she says without turning, “if he pushes, send it sideways along the channels, not into us.”
“Already set,” he says, voice clipped.
“Voren.”
“I’m on the latch,” he replies. His focus narrows further. The drowned press against him, ready to move if I give them a way.
Nyssa touches the black seam with two fingers. “You ran here because you thought old work would hide you. It doesn’t. Present.”
The seam tightens. He pushes pressure through the crack in a slow, testing thread.
“Don’t,” I warn him, not because he can hear the word but because the room can. My shadows climb the ring of blocks and fix there, a black net laid flat against old law.
The seam answers with a thin pulse. He is cautious now. Good. Caution cuts his weight into slices I can manage.
“Voren,” I say, and press my palm to the ring Nyssa woke. “On my count.”
“Ready,” he replies, voice far.
Nyssa sets her hand to the floor cut in front of the seam. She doesn’t look back. “He tests. He will try to flood sideways first.”
“I’m on the walls,” I tell her. My shadows sink into the joints and hold each block true. If he pushes, he will meet refusal in stone and in me.
Dastian flares both hands. The channels across the floor light in faint red threads. “If he surges, I’ll throw it along these and bleed it out to the back wall.”
“Do not clip me,” I add.
“Please,” he mutters. “I like you the colour you are.”
Pressure tickles the seam. He tries a narrow probe, then another. He is mapping the room and our responses. He touches the channels and pulls his touch back. Learning again. He hates how fast we learn him in return.
The seam tightens another hair. A column forms, thin as a rope. He will not give me a knot yet. He wants to stay fog. He cannot be fog in a room with rules.
“Now,” I say.
Voren threads his net through the gap. The line hums through my teeth. Drowned souls press against the slit like foam, then slip out in twos and threes. A diver with a torn strap. A monk with seaweed caught at his belt. A boy with a broken oar. They lift and go, quick and clean. The pulse at the seam jerks. He notices and pushes back.
He tries the ceiling.
I slam shadow up the joints and press the roof stones down until the hum evens. “No.”
Dastian catches the shove that ricochets off my constraint and curves it along the red-lit channels. It races the ring like water in a shallow ditch and kills itself at the far wall. He grins, tight. “Stay tidy.”
Nyssa narrows the floor cut by a finger-width. The column compresses. He gives a thicker rope in response. Better. He can’t spread without losing grip on his press.
“Define,” she commands, and the Crown in her chest answers with a pressure that rides my shadows. The rope hardens a fraction. Not a name. A line I can hold.
I pull shadow thinner and score another ring across the inner circle of stones. I finish the circle and straighten. Nyssa plants her palm. Light threads the groove, shadow locks, death hums through the block. The inner ring wakes, and the chamber’s note tightens until my teeth ache.
“He’s pushing to split the line,” Dastian warns, eyes on the floor threads.
“I see it,” I say. The rope at the seam frays into three thinner strands. He wants reach.
“Define,” Nyssa commands again. The Crown bites. The three snap back into one like a strap pulled straight.
“Take them,” I tell Voren.
