The second bell sounded while Lobai was still breathing in ragged, uneven pulls.
It came from the Academy carriage.
Not loud.
Worse than loud.
A single metallic note pressed thin and sharp against the night, like something inside wood forcing its way against a hanging strip of bronze.
Reale's head snapped up at once.
The pork leg on his own table.
The one he had left half-cut, black liquid swelling from the flesh.
He was already moving before anyone asked why.
Garxiu seized the lantern and followed. The Academy envoy hesitated only long enough to curse, then came after them too.
They reached Reale's house to find the kitchen unchanged in every way that mattered—except the meat.
The black liquid had spread into the grooves of the cutting board.
The sliced flesh had swollen.
The cut edge looked wet, then wrong, then almost alive.
Reale stepped inside and the smell hit him like a slap.
Sweet.
Cold.
Burnt.
Now with another layer beneath it: stale fat trapped under ice, and a metallic chill like rust scraped across the tongue.
Garxiu didn't waste time.
"Clear the shelf," he ordered.
The envoy stayed in the doorway, one hand on the bell at his waist, eyes fixed on the cutting board.
Reale set the iron pan over the stove flame and forced himself to breathe through his mouth until the nausea backed off by half a step.
He hated this.
The thing in Lobai's wound had been attached to a living man.
This was worse.
This was dead meat trying to continue.
"Don't put the salt on it first," Garxiu said suddenly.
Reale looked up.
The old cook unwrapped the charred page and flattened it on the table.
Purify before salting.
If the meat carries a sweet wrongness, do not seal it with cold water.
Force it to the surface first.
Salt steadies.
It does not attack.
Reale understood at once.
If he salted the pork first, he might lock the thing inside.
So he changed tactics.
He trimmed the outer fat and heated the pan just enough to wake the grease.
He let old lard melt along the rim, then fed in the fatty strip instead of the core.
The smell changed.
The blackness inside the meat wanted warmth.
Not because it loved heat.
Because heat made it move.
"That's it," Reale murmured. "Move."
He added bitterleaf at the exact moment the oil thickened and became hard to stir. Then salt—around it, not over it.
The bubbling surface shuddered.
A black filament rose.
Reale hooked it with the tip of the knife and snapped it into the fire.
The main slab on the board convulsed.
Not metaphorically. Not in his imagination.
The slit flesh twitched toward the door.
The envoy's face finally changed.
"What is that?" he demanded.
"It's answering," Reale said.
"To what?"
Before he could answer, the bell rang again.
The pork on the cutting board shifted half an inch toward the sound.
Everyone in the room saw it.
Garxiu looked from the meat to the wooden case in the village square and back again.
Then he folded the charred page once, very carefully, and handed it to Reale.
"You're in now," he said.
"Take it."
The next step wasn't a theory anymore.
Clean Taste wasn't luck.
It was a path.
And something in that sealed Academy box was listening for it.