Chapter 708: A Small Blessing in a Cruel Vault (1)
Mikhailis woke because the Lux ember stopped pretending to be a star and decided to be a rind of light. The slot held their heat like a cupped hand. His arm was half-numb where Thalatha lay tangled against him. He did not move at first. He listened.
The Brake Choir hummed in the stone, low and steady, like a cat learning to purr again after winter. Dust rested. No scrape. No teeth. Good.
He let his eyes adjust and felt a small worry cut across his chest. She was lighter. His forearm could tell. Less weight on the hip buckle. Less push where the shoulder strap usually complained.
She’s getting thinner.
He studied her face. The cheek hollows were a little more honest than yesterday. Her lips were dry in the center. A soot-brown streak wandered through her dark-blonde hair, caught by the marsh gel in an unruly curl. He filed the list where he kept urgent things that were still fixable.
We don’t stay here. Not like this.
His breath wanted to match the Anchor’s faint tick. He broke the habit on purpose, slow, so his ribs wouldn’t jolt hers. With two fingers he eased the marsh cradle, sliding a soft line under the armor edge at her back so it would stop biting. She didn’t wake. Good. He leaned and put the lightest kiss to her temple. It was not a claim. It was a steadying hand on a rail in a bad stairwell.
The slot cooled a finger-width as air fell down the shaft. Ribs in the wall answered with a small shiver and then forgot him. He tapped his thumb twice on the chair rail to remind himself: no heroics. Ask permission before every cut. Eat. Move. Live.
Stone growled. A low rumble came from below and through their bones. The Brake Choir dipped, lost its note, and found it again. Dust fretted down in little silver.
He didn’t talk. He tapped two knuckles against the shield back: stillness. Counted in his throat, quiet as a moth—hold, hold, slide—and let the slot forget they existed. When the tremor passed like a bored thought, he signed to the veil-mouth with two fingers: open a thumb-width, close. The shimmer obeyed and settled, bored again.
He kept his mouth near still. "Spin up recon. Food is now a primary objective. Quiet routes only."
<Copy. Scurabons deploy ×4 teams. Skeleton patrols staggered. Photoperiod window: -7%. Edibility filters on.>
The answer wrote itself across his lens and somewhere behind his eyes. Shrinking day. Of course.
He looked back at Thalatha. Her breath had found a calmer rhythm. The last two days had taken too much. She needed twenty honest minutes. Not the kind of sleep where the body fights stone. The other kind that mends small things you do not notice until they fail.
He touched two fingers to the Hypnoveil waiting like a folded curtain near the chair. The veil lifted its edge. He signed the old agreement, the one they had made when rooms were safer and still mean: rest veil only, wake on danger, noise, or skin-cold. The veil understood. It lowered itself over her like a soft thought. Her breath deepened. He watched for any flinch. None.
He kissed her brow once, a small blessing for a day that didn’t deserve big ones, and worked his arm free. Two skeletons already knelt with careful knees. He nodded. They answered by turning their skulls a fraction and presenting the litter. He sat into the skeleton chair—shield back, silk rails. The lift was smooth and noiseless. The chair learned his weight and liked it well enough.
He kept the whisper-roll short, because short was kind in bad places.
"Necrolord and librarians?"
A lich’s crown tipped in a pulse, worklight steady. The Necrolord’s cloak did not stir, but the air around it remembered the old word for present.
"No flashy summons," he breathed, voice low. "Hide in this site. Shelve your books. Be closed."
The crowns dimmed in agreement. Good.
"Skeletons?"
A tap-tap from bone fingers. Pairs only. Patrol lines would weave with ant routes. No clatter, edges taped down with marsh. Spears turned to walking poles, blades to backs.
"Ants?" He did not say the word out loud. He kept the thought under the tongue the way you keep a coin secret in a market.
<Chimera variants present. Scurabons on scout/camera. Fire Scarabs on hold pending air checks. Hypnoveils screening. Slimeweave Ants with seal kits. Crymber pair warming and cooling on your tick.>
"Status on the handshake?" He still hoped, even if hope here felt like reaching into cold water for a rope that was probably a snake. "Supercomputer. Queen-link."
"So no help yet," he whispered.
He nodded. He already knew it. Saying it made the air stop lying.
He lowered the glasses feed. Scurabon eyes cut the dark in neat wire. Corridors appeared as silver ink. They sketched and folded and lied. One rib spindle carried hairline fractures you couldn’t see if you wanted to, only if your teeth told you first. Another hall wore erased chalcography, lines wound like rivers and scraped away by hands that didn’t hate beauty, only wanted it quiet.
"I never exhale dramatically," he murmured.
He made a small shape with his mouth that would be a smile later when there was a table. For now it was just breath moving in a better way.
One Scurabon froze. The feed tilted. Space changed scale. Something big breathed with numbers.
The silhouette stepped out with the pride of a judge. Bone. Cloth. No face. Or too many. A cowl that drank light. Its hands carried a staff that was not a staff but an argument with gravity. When it moved, the air behind it tried to prick up like fur.
Do not be clever at it, Mikhailis told himself. Do not try a joke on a judge.
"One Scurabon tails," he breathed. "Only one. No heroics. I want gait, loops, when it listens versus when it performs. Then vanish before the second verse."
<Directive logged. Scurabon #3 in shadow.>
He watched the tiny feed flow after the thing at a respectful distance. The Deacon drifted past a basilica rib and paused at nothing, as if to hear a choir that used to exist. Its staff tapped a beat that pretended to be gentle. The stone flinched where the tip touched.
"Food," he said. Saying the word made his stomach feel both more empty and more useful. "Filters ready."
<Problem frame: Undead environment. Toxin risk high. Looking for living herbivore profiles, low bile lattice, low rot signatures.>
"Use the ants’ nose. Spread quiet. Fan the scent lines. If it’s edible, I want it. If it’s edible and docile, I want it more."
He let the chair move. The skeletons carried him along the edge of the shelf, just inside the veil of absence, to where the wind turned a corner and told secrets to itself. He watched through other eyes. Dead ends with friendly warmth. Ribs pretending to be bridges. Niches that hummed like mouths.
A warm-water seam breathed out. The Scurabon feed shimmered and swung low. The camera settled behind a rib and peered into a hollow set with old moss and small, clean droppings. Fur moved there—soft shapes the size of fat dogs. Gentle noses. Ears like little boats. Their fur carried tiny dots that pulsed blue like low stars. The air smelled of wet reed, old leaves, and that animal hay-sweet that meant herbs and not meat.
The feed tagged: herbivore. Heartbeats slow. Not undead. Not cursed. Curious, not brave.
"Perfect," Mikhailis whispered. "Quiet plan. No scream, no chase. Veil soft. Slime pads for paws. Skeletons for rails."
<Executing.>
Hypnoveils drifted like half-thoughts into the hollow, widening their mantles until edges blurred and kindness felt cheaper. Slimeweave Ants smeared a thin pad across the stone where a scramble might slide. Skeletons set two silent barricades—no slam, just a presence that told the animals the path was not a path.
The herd looked up with round eyes. One yawned. A mother nosed a juvenile forward and then back. The closest veil let out a breath that suggested the thought of sleep without any mean hooks.
The Scurabons dropped nets like shadows. The animals went still because stillness had suddenly become sensible. The nets closed. No bleat. No panic. The Hypnoveils pulled back as soon as the knots took weight.
<Yield: eight animals captured. Two juveniles released to maintain seed population.>
"Don’t salt the earth," Mikhailis said out of habit. "We’re not bandits."
<Edible. Low toxin. High fat. Safe.>
"Bless you," he breathed, and meant it.
Rodion opened a pocket in his round chassis. Gel sleeves blinked awake and glowed a calm green. The first animal slid in and slept in a small winter. Skeletons lifted two more on a balanced pole, legs tied loose to keep circulation, heads covered so eyes would not learn fear. Ants dragged scent threads like thin invisible ropes toward the slot. The path would smell like home to anything that already loved them.
He looked back at Thalatha. The veil breathed slow. Her face had the peace that comes when a room finally behaves and you do not trust it but your bones are too tired to argue.
Out. Soon.
He signed to the chair. They carried him back to camp.
They set the kitchen the way you set a prayer—carefully and without expecting applause. The door stayed sealed to a thumb-width. The veil hummed absence over the mouth of the slot. Inside, Ember warmed a ring of stones until heat settled in without smoke. Silk pulled three cones thin as eggshells and set them above the ring to gather steam. Slime pressed a neat gasket along the lip of the stew stone, so smell would think twice before it became an invitation. A Hypnoveil held a low umbrella over it all, turning scent into a rumor not worth chasing.
He rolled out his small kit. Ash-salt. Mint-paper folded in wax. Two glowcap gills, flat and patient. Neutral glaze in a little tin. A thumb-grater. Bone spoons rubbed smooth by years.
"Okay," he whispered to the meat that would become less problem and more help. "We do this politely."
Humane dispatch had already been done by veil, as gentle as this place allowed. He started the work along cartilage seams with the backs of sickles the Scurabons stacked for him. Wrists loose, elbows tight. No saw. No metal song. The sound was cloth on wood, soft and clean.
"Understood."