"It is playing again," Nerea whispered.
Out of the open shaft climbed Jiang's own call, both voices crossing in the rough beat he had made during the fight, complete with the cold rasp, the strain in his throat, and the point where pain shortened the final note.
Without drawing breath, the recording began again.
Ash lifted from Monsignor Elias's ruined stole. Every grain drifted toward the broken tile until Aylin stamped a green boundary across the seam.
"Close the room," Lucia said.
She moved first, shutting the court door and dropping its inner cloth. Nerea turned the two lamp hoods toward the ceiling. Matthews gathered the torn containment wraps with his shoe rather than adding his hands or shadow to the floor.
Devika remained beside Jiang.
"You stay down," she told him.
He pushed one foot beneath his belly.
Her palm waited in front of his breast without touching. "That was a medical stop, clearly stated."
Jiang pecked once toward the shaft.
"I know where the danger is. I also know where the blood is."
His shoulder dressing had darkened along its lower edge. Cold tile pressed through his belly feathers, and each breath caught on the sore place where he had forced the living call. The new adaptation waited somewhere around his heart, useless unless he chose it and dangerous if he chose badly.
Aylin crouched across the green line. "I want to follow it too."
Devika glanced at the black pressure beneath Aylin's collar. "Both of your bodies need time."
"It is using my trace. Waiting gives it more of me."
"A rushed descent hands it an injured bird plus you."
Aylin's jaw tightened. She looked to Jiang rather than arguing over him.
"I can hold this edge while you recover," she said. "I will tell you if the trace changes. I will not decide that fear makes your body expendable."
The last sentence hurt more than Jiang expected. In New York, she had made exactly that decision when she forced him into feathers. Now she was offering to stand near the same consequence and wait for his answer.
He lowered his foot.
Jiang wanted the shaft, the core, and one clean action that would end Aylin's danger. Instead, his body offered shaking toes and blood beneath a bandage. He hated the delay. Hating it changed neither his temperature nor the distance he could cross before someone had to carry him.
Devika slid a folded towel beneath his breast, then moved him only after his beak touched her wrist. His injured flipper stayed supported against his side. Another wrap covered his feet without trapping them.
Below the tile, the breathless call started for the fourth time.
Jiang listened past its accuracy.
An emperor penguin's contact call made room for an answer. It reached into colony noise, declared one living position, and waited for another bird to choose whether to respond. This sound filled every gap with itself. It asked for nothing because the object playing it could receive nothing.
Penguin Instincts pressed the difference through his breast as social emptiness rather than words.
Jiang gave one short call toward Aylin, then turned his beak away from the shaft.
"A recording?" she asked quietly.
One tap answered her.
"And is it accurate?"
A second tap answered yes.
Matthews shifted the ruined cloth under his shoe. "Then the vessel learned nothing from losing its voice."
"The vessel is gone," Nerea said. She knelt beside the broken tile with her padded fork held sideways. "The core is using what it retained through a different route."
With the fork braced beneath the tile, she lifted. Cold air struck the ceiling hard enough to make the hooded lamps swing. Their shadows swept across the walls and snapped toward the opening.
Nerea let the tile fall.
Stone landed over the shaft with a flat crack. The copied call continued beneath it, muffled but unchanged.
"I sealed that after my hand was cut," she said. "Slate, lime, and more confidence than craftsmanship."
Lucia brought two narrow stone weights from the wall bench. "At last, an honest account of restoration work."
Nerea almost smiled. Together they laid the weights over the tile while Matthews fed the black cover beneath them. Aylin kept her Natural Essence around the outer edge, cool enough that the cloth never smoked.
Cold stopped breathing through the room, although every shadow kept pointing down.
From Devika's care roll came the smell of fish. Hunger tightened Jiang's throat before he saw the strip between her fingers, followed by shame at wanting food while Aylin's life pulled toward the floor.
She caught the hesitation. "Feeding is part of pursuit."
Jiang accepted the strip and swallowed it whole.
"Again," Devika said after his throat cleared.
The second piece carried salt and enough oil to remind his body how much heat the fight had spent. It offered fuel, not forgiveness. His shoulder still burned when Devika replaced the wet outer layer without peeling away the pad beneath it.
Aylin watched from the shaft edge. Both hands rested on her knees, with Natural Essence held away from the wound.
"Three strips look like judgment," she said. "Four begins to resemble greed."
Jiang answered with a rough complaint.
"Your objection has been recorded," she added, and Lucia's mouth twitched.
Across the room, Matthews looked away from the floor long enough to breathe through his nose. Jiang settled the matter by taking the third strip and making certain Aylin saw him swallow it.
Warmth returned unevenly, first beneath the breast towel and then into his toes. The injured side remained stubbornly cold, and the shiver around his tail exposed every missing feather.
Devika rested two fingers below his jaw. "Better. Still not descent better."
Jiang pointed his beak toward Nerea's fork.
"Observation only?" Nerea asked.
One tap accepted the limit.
She slid a clean white cloth under the nearer stone weight. The strip crossed the sealed seam without opening it. For several breaths, nothing touched the fabric.
Black dampness appeared at its center.
Nerea drew it back with the fork. The stain formed one narrow line along the weave, then turned sharply toward Aylin.
Her green boundary tightened.
The line stopped at the cloth's edge. Beneath Aylin's collar, the old pressure mark darkened in reply.
`[CORE TRACE CONFIRMED: BELOW | LINKED SOUL AT RISK]`
No new clock appeared. Jiang already knew what delay could cost.
Aylin touched two fingers near the mark without covering it. "The pull changed. It was around my throat before. Now it feels lower, behind the breastbone."
Devika rose and crossed to her. "May I examine it?"
"Without Spirit Link contact."
"Agreed. I will keep clear."
Devika checked the skin above Aylin's collar and watched her breathe. Nerea held the stained cloth away from every cast shadow. Lucia shifted the lamp hoods until the stain lost its line to the floor.
Matthews looked at Jiang. "If we wait until you are ready, can it finish whatever it is doing to her?"
The honest answer sat badly in Jiang's belly.
He tapped once for yes, then once for uncertainty.
Aylin understood. "It can hurt me. We do not know whether it can finish the trace from here."
"Then we learn before we descend," Lucia said. "Courage without a return route is merely a gift to the thing below."
Jiang remembered the counterfeit wearing his old face. Gredudande chose bodies, voices, and rooms that made urgency feel like proof. Throwing himself into the shaft would let it choose the pace again.
He touched Devika's wrist with his beak, then pointed toward the sealed floor and back to the towel.
"Recover while we map it," she said.
One firm tap made the choice his.
Nerea prepared another cloth strip. Lucia tied it to a short line so nobody's hand had to cross the seam. Matthews moved the ruined stole farther from the lamp and accepted the work of holding the upper room.
Aylin remained inside the green boundary. Her breathing eased under Devika's attention, but the black pressure behind her breastbone continued to pull.
The copied call below stopped.
Silence held long enough for Jiang to hear the soft click of his claws against the towel.
Aylin turned toward him. "Did it move?"
Her body faced Jiang.
On the wall behind her, Aylin's shadow lowered its head toward the sealed shaft.
Then it began climbing down.