Chapter 920 - 920: Elithira Receives The Demon King's Bad News

The coffin came back breathing.

Elithira heard it beneath the scrape of iron wheels and slapped the return stamp out of the vault clerk's hand. His brass seal struck the floor beside the coffin rail. One more inch and he would have marked the box empty, cleaned, and ready for another dead body.

Something kicked the lid from inside.

The clerk reached for the alarm chain. Elithira caught his wrist before he could ring every guard below the palace.

"Bring cutters and two healers before you bring frightened soldiers down here."

He ran, leaving his seal where it had fallen.

The coffin had been built for a broad demon with horns. Whoever had packed the living passenger had solved the extra room with quarry cloth and a broken shovel handle. Red wire circled the lid through six iron eyes. Each eye carried a little skin from hands that had tried to pry it loose.

Elithira drew her knife.

A woman's voice pushed through the wood.

"If you mean to open this, cut the ankle wire before touching the lid."

Elithira lowered herself beside the left wheel. A separate strand ran under the coffin, entered through a drain hole, and tightened whenever the lid shifted.

"You have excellent timing for somebody packed as an empty vessel."

"Mine improved after the third person opened one wrong."

The answer came rough, but the woman had enough air to be annoyed. Elithira liked her chances better for it.

She fed the knife beneath the drain strand and turned the flat of the blade against the wood. The wire snapped. A barbed loop whipped out through the hole with a strip of trouser cloth caught on it.

The woman inside exhaled through her teeth.

"Now take the lower hinge before the red knot tightens again."

Elithira cut the hinge pin, then the other five wires. She left the lid where it was until the returning clerk brought two cutters and a healer carrying a leather case. A stretcher waited upstairs with another healer. At least one person in the palace understood narrow corridors.

They raised the lid together.

The woman lay on her side with both ankles bound to the shovel handle. Her hair had been cut close enough for old scabs to show. A red line crossed her throat and continued down her chest beneath a quarry shirt. The line copied the contract pattern Elithira had seen inside her father's shield when the soul door knocked.

Ty's old mark sat inside it, copied backward.

The healer reached for the woman's neck. She drove one knee into his forearm before Elithira could warn him.

"Ask before your hands start deciding which pieces belong to you."

The healer backed away and showed both palms.

"May I check whether the wire damaged your breathing?"

"You may check my neck after someone frees my ankles."

Elithira cut the bindings herself. The woman's left boot came away with the cloth, revealing four punctures around the ankle and the severed red wire buried beneath the tongue of the boot.

The healer kept his hands visible this time.

"What name and work should I write on your treatment card?"

"Yara Venn, quarry winch operator, and never your empty vessel."

Sanguina entered while Elithira was easing the wire free. She took in the copied mark, the quarry cloth, and the finger scratches inside the lid. Her face gave away nothing until she smelled the blood on the coffin rail.

"This box crossed more than one border while she remained alive inside it."

The woman caught the healer's shoulder and pulled herself upright.

"Twelve closures, eleven other people, and three handlers who changed their masks."

She pointed at the coffin lid. Short cuts ran through the wood beside her head. Elithira had mistaken them for claw marks. They came in groups, each group starting lower as the woman lost room to move.

"Were the others packed alive when their coffins left you?"

"Every one of them complained until the red wire taught them otherwise."

The Demon King arrived before Elithira could ask where the route had begun. His bare palm was already bleeding.

He stopped beside the copied mark. A matching line pushed through the skin of his hand, followed by the faded red shape Elithira had seen inside his shield when the soul door knocked. His fingers closed around the pain until blood ran between them.

Yara watched him with the flat attention of someone deciding which captor owned the cleaner room.

"You know the person whose mark they used on us."

"I know the man, and he never agreed to this use."

Her gaze shifted to Elithira.

"Kings always say consent matters after somebody finds the packing room."

Elithira could hardly blame her. The clerk's empty stamp still lay beside the rail.

She picked it up and pressed it against his chest hard enough to leave a round bruise through his uniform.

"Take this upstairs and break it before another clerk inherits the habit."

He accepted the seal with both hands and left.

Her father knelt by the left wheel. He turned it until a red chip appeared inside the axle. The chip carried three shallow grooves and one burned notch. Elithira remembered the coffin that had accepted Ty only after her father took half the curse's pain into himself.

"This rail should carry a soul toward an unused body, never a living body as freight."

Sanguina pulled the axle free with her boot braced against the frame.

"Erebos reversed the road and taught it to call breathing people empty."

Yara pushed the healer's blanket away from the copied mark.

"Can your road find the eleven people who left before me?"

Her father studied the red chip and spared them a court promise.

"It can follow the next transfer if the original contract recognizes its vessel again."

Elithira understood the bad news before he reached inside his coat.

He removed a narrow strip of red metal wrapped in black cloth. Contract writing shifted under the cloth when he set it across the coffin. Ty's soul mark rose on the surface, clear enough that Yara recoiled and the severed ankle wire pulled toward it.

"You made an authority seal from his original bargain without asking him again."

"I made it after the soul door named the conflict, and I have not invoked it."

Elithira kept her hands away from the cloth.

"Tell me exactly what the route takes when someone uses it."

"The seal gives its bearer standing to stop one transfer on the old vessel road. It also records Ty as the living vessel attached to my crown until the challenge is resolved."

"That sounds like ownership to every office paid for reading badly."

"Ty remains free, though I agree the distinction will fail outside this room."

Her father had chosen honesty. Elithira resented him less for it and the seal more.

Inside the coffin, someone had scratched two words beneath Yara's shoulder. KEEP COUNTING. The second word had taken several attempts because the writer's fingers had slipped.

Eleven people remained ahead of her.

Yara leaned toward Elithira despite the healer working at her ankle.

"Use the ugly thing after you find where they unload us."

"The ugly thing would put another person back inside their paperwork."

"Then carry it until the paperwork becomes cheaper than a coffin."

Sanguina gave Yara a measuring look.

"You survived twelve closures and still found energy for royal advice."

"I saved it by biting anyone who offered reassurance first."

Elithira took the black cloth by its clean edge. The mark beneath it tugged toward her palm. She wrapped the strip twice more, slid it into the hollow behind her sword guard, and locked the guard with the severed ankle wire.

The mark stopped moving.

Her father watched the improvised lock.

"Carrying the authority near your blade will make the route notice you."

"Then it can watch me refuse to spend Ty for directions."

She handed Sanguina the red chip from the wheel.

"Take her to the upper infirmary and keep every stamp outside."

Yara caught Elithira's sleeve before the healers lifted her.

"The third handler wore a crown under his mask, and the others called him Seventh."

Griswald. The copied mark, quarry cloth, and crown handler now shared one road.

Elithira pulled the left runner from the coffin. Its iron curve jerked east as soon as it cleared the floor groove.

The old vessel road remembered its next turn.

She rested the runner across her shoulder and walked after it with Ty's unopened contract authority locked behind her blade.