Chapter 953 - 953: The Reaper Rejects Erebos's Substitute

The five wheeled frame entered Corven's open chest with a bare heel scraping behind it. One wheel caught on the dead man's broken zipper, climbed over his collarbone, and dropped onto Rillhold's white floor.

Jade saw the heel searching through her closed right eye. The person inside could feel every surface offered by the prison rail and could keep none of them. He pressed his toes to concrete, then twisted sideways when his body treated the wall as down.

Both wrists were strapped into iron sockets. Two more held the ankles. The fifth sat above the sternum with its square mouth open toward the yard.

The man twisted his left hand until skin folded beneath the cuff. He had shaved one side of his beard badly enough to leave three raw cuts. A brass cup hung from his belt by a strip of blue cloth and struck the frame whenever his hips rolled.

"My name is Reth Ansel. I asked for fixed ground after a migration fall ruined my balance. I never offered anyone my chest."

The brass cup carried a simpler claim. Somebody expected him to bring it home.

The nailed operator struck the frame with his hammer. Black cords tightened from four sockets to the dead helms walking beside Rillhold's stolen stake.

The chest socket stayed empty.

Its open mouth pulled toward Ty.

Ty's right hand left the Reaper's elbow and caught the frame before its first wheel crossed the white floor. The other four wheels kept turning inside Corven, forcing the front rail against his knuckles. His jaw chain stayed wound around the scythe shaft, but the new angle dragged one crooked rib against the white blade.

"Reth Ansel, keep your head behind that brace while we remove the offer around you."

"Remove the chest socket first. It has started copying the hand you lost."

Jade's deathward showed a black line reaching from the socket, crossing Ty's ribs, and ending at a space beside his present right hand. White collection pressure wrapped around the line and followed it toward the Reaper's scythe.

The two colors occupied the same road without mixing. The black fiber used the white path like a thief walking behind a uniform.

Jade put her living hand on the white self's elbow.

"Black fiber sits inside the collection path. Turn the blade toward the hardware and leave Reth's body outside it."

The white self followed her pressure after a short delay. Its copied right hand moved Nessa's cutter along the scythe shaft while Jade held the elbow clear of Ty. The copy had her height and planted the heel first, a habit Jade had broken during her first month with the Defense Force.

Jade shoved its knee forward with her own. The white foot corrected. Pain crossed Nessa's face behind the gate as her cage paid for the adjustment.

The Reaper resisted through the handle.

Its white fingers tightened above the copied grip. The blade turned toward Reth's chest, and the dark edge removed a sliver from the frame brace.

Reth pushed his head behind the remaining bar. His bare heel kept scraping over the rail, trying to find one direction that stayed long enough to use. The brass cup knocked against his thigh again.

"If I turn over, keep the cup upright. Lysa hates washing grit from her drinking water."

"You can explain the dirt yourself once we get your wrists loose."

Beyond him, the operator drove a short nail through the chest socket's rear plate. The point entered Reth's shirt without reaching skin and fastened the open mouth to the stolen stake.

All five sockets pulled at once.

Reth's wrists flattened against iron. His feet turned in opposite directions while the chest brace forced his spine toward Ty's absent finger.

"I bought one room where my daughter could set that cup down without chasing it across the floor. This frame was never part of the price."

Jade felt the sentence through her living palm on the white elbow. The copy tried to follow Reth's voice rather than her hand and took one step toward Corven.

She caught its shoulder.

"Keep the white body inside the yard because Reth comes out without carrying it."

Ty wound his jaw chain through the frame's front crossbar. His crooked rib pressed against the Reaper's wrist while he pulled Reth and held the collector in the same yard.

The strain moved the rib another finger width below his sternum. Its cracked end caught on the chain and held there. Jade heard the grind through her palm where the white self touched the shaft.

"Jade, the blade chooses the center socket unless we give death a cleaner insult."

"Show it the black nail inside its own white road."

Ty released the Reaper's wrist from beneath the cracked rib.

The white hand reached for Reth.

Jade stepped left. Her white self copied right before correcting, which put its shoulder beneath the Reaper's forearm. Jade drove upward with both legs and used the copy to lift the reaching hand away from Reth's face.

Nessa's cage pulled from behind the maintenance gate. The white self's elbow stiffened against Jade's palm while Todd's staff struck the gate frame on the other side. Todd planted his bad foot against a drainage lip and used the staff as a door brace. The next pull bent it enough to shake rust from the center joint.

"My shoulder still holds the copy, but the next wrong step takes it beyond Todd's brace."

"Keep the elbow for one turn, and let the rest follow my hand."

Jade pushed the white self around the scythe shaft.

The Reaper's wrist turned with it. Its missing eye hollow faced the black nail lodged inside the chest socket.

The scythe stopped moving toward Reth.

White fingers opened and closed once around the handle. The Reaper drew the edge across the first wrist socket.

Iron disappeared around Reth's right hand. The black cord attached to that cuff snapped backward and entered a dead helm beside the stolen stake.

Across the left wrist and then Reth's right ankle, the dark edge removed prison metal while leaving skin and cloth behind; severed cuffs struck the floor with their straps still buckled.

Reth pulled one hand free and caught the chest bar.

The operator hammered the final ankle nail deeper.

Jade's deathward followed that line into the ring of nails beneath his left boot. One sole held the direction stolen from Reth's injured leg. The other remained fixed to the moving rail.

"The last socket ends inside his boot, Ty. Keep Reth above the blade when it returns."

Ty looped two ribs under Reth's free knee and hauled the leg toward the yard. His jaw chain kept the frame crossbar from sliding back through Corven. Reth grabbed Ty's shoulder, recoiled from the cold bone, then locked his forearm behind Ty's neck.

"Sorry. I cannot tell which way I am falling."

"Fall toward me until Jade gives you somewhere better."

The Reaper cut the final ankle cord.

Reth's left leg went loose inside the open cuff. It carried weight, bent at the knee, and answered pain when the edge scraped his boot. The foot found no down. It drifted beside him while every other part fell toward Rillhold's dirt.

The stolen direction ran backward through the severed cord.

Across Corven's road, the nailed operator's left boot tore from the rail and struck the side of the oldest stake. His right sole stayed fixed. The split pulled his legs apart until he cut one wrist cord and let the hammer go.

The hammer fell toward Rillhold.

Cava's recovery jaw caught it at Corven's chest before it crossed the white floor. The impact drove the handle through two teeth and bent the tool against the floor.

"That hammer belongs in my evidence sack, and its owner can complain after I rebuild the jaw."

Ty dragged Reth through the open body. Jade's living hand caught the released wrist, while her white self kept the Reaper's scythe inside the yard.

Ruvan and Meya reached through the maintenance slot with a red belt. They secured Reth above both hips and pulled him behind the gate without asking his left foot to choose the floor. Reth kept the brass cup pressed to his stomach. He checked its rim before he checked either wrist.

"My leg still moves, but it cannot find anywhere to stand."

Talli pressed two fingers against his ankle and kept the foot suspended inside a cloth loop. She turned his boot by the heel. Reth watched it move and guessed wrong when she asked where his toes pointed.

"Then nobody teaches it a direction until your body stops borrowing ours."

Inside the yard, the Reaper ripped its scythe from the white self's copied hand.

The blade turned toward Ty.

The collector abandoned Reth and returned to the person named in its wager.

Ty caught the shaft across his ribs. His right hand closed over the chain above it, and his jaw pulled the lower loop until the Reaper's edge stopped a thumb width from Jade's white shoulder.

The prison rail behind Corven buckled where the operator's boot had lost down. Five square punches opened beneath the stolen stake, each one attached to a different black road.

The empty space beside Ty's right hand knocked once. The sound came through bone rather than air, a small hard tap where no finger remained to make it.

All five anchors answered.