Not with claws. With shoulder and wing, Virn drives him into the wall hard enough to knock the blade loose. The guard drops. Breathing. Foolish, but breathing.
Sera releases my hand. I hate the loss, but I let it happen.
She angles left toward the table, reading the room before I fully enter it. The proof pieces are separated as we ordered. The map sealed in a stone tube. The healthy strand in Rosalind’s mineral pouch. The blackened sample in a stone-lined box. The broken anchor wrapped in hide at the far edge.
And Adran is not reaching for the glowing strand. He is reaching for the map. Of course. The samples are dangerous. The map tells him where that danger becomes useful.
“Stop,” Sera says.
He does not. I lunge. The floor between us lights white-gray.
A seam snaps open across the chamber, cutting me off from Adran and the table. Heatless light rises from it, sharp enough to make my burned hand ache in response.
Sera skids short on the other side. Closer to Adran. Too close. The red opens. I crush it shut.
“Sera,” I say.
“I see it.”
She does. She sees the seam, the table, Adran, the proof, and the way the map tube trembles before his hand touches it. Her body sways once. She catches herself on the table edge.
Adran’s hand closes around the tube. The chamber pulses. Once. Pause. Again. Every sealed piece of proof answers.
The healthy sample flares blue inside its pouch. The blackened sample twitches. The broken anchor sparks. Sera’s bandage burns bright enough to shine through cloth. She gasps. Adran stares at her arm. Not the map. Her arm.
“There it is,” he says.
Cold moves through me. He did not come only for the proof. He came to see what answered.
Sera straightens. “Put it down.”
“The map reacted to your presence,” Adran says. “The sample reacts to your blood. The system reacts to your bond. We cannot solve this by pretending you are separate from the system.”
“I’m separate from your ownership of it.”
“I’m trying to save the City.”
“You’re trying to hold the key first.”
His face hardens. Truth cuts polish.
The floor pulses again. The seam between us widens. Virn tries to circle right, but another line flashes in his path. Syin curses from the doorway, blocked by shifting stone. Rosalind appears behind him, one hand against the wall, her eyes taking in everything.
The system has divided the room into pieces. Adran by the table. Sera near him. Me cut off by the seam. The proof answering. No accident. The system learns.
“If I am holding a key, then I am holding leverage against extinction,” Adran says, lifting the map tube.
“You’re holding a door handle while the house burns,” Sera says.
He smiles slightly. “Then perhaps you should help me open the right door.”
He reaches for her bandaged arm. My roar shakes dust from the ceiling. Adran freezes. Sera does not.
She grabs the stone-lined box with the blackened sample and slams it against the edge of the table. Not to break it. To make sound.
The chamber flashes.
The system answers the vibration, light darting toward the box instead of her arm.
