Chapter 175: The Penguin Rang No Bell

The first storm bell tore half its crown out of Widow’s Needle.

Red stone split around it. Its anchor dropped, caught on three storm chains, and swung over the nursery road with Mottle still clinging to the outer copper.

Ilex slapped both palms against the bridge.

Mottle answered by driving one rear claw into a crack. The other foot slipped. Her bleeding mouth opened around nothing, and the flight feather torn from her wing spun below her into cloud.

Rill and Slate emerged through the red dust.

Slate caught the highest storm chain with both rear claws. His reopened flank painted one dark wing. Rill hooked the chain above him and took the return through his bleeding hand.

They could keep the bell from falling straight down.

They could not move the nursery out from under it.

Along the lower road, wyvern parents rolled their own shell cradles toward the inner chambers. A rust-throated mother shoved her gray hatchling ahead. No rider touched either body. Cradles scraped, shells knocked against padding, and every parent chose a different path through the dust.

Bracken limped alongside the pale parent guarding Harrow’s egg. Harrow called from somewhere above them. Bracken put his good wing between the egg and the falling stone and kept moving.

On the cold ledge, the emperor female gathered her chick over joined feet. The injured male dragged himself to her outer side. Neither waited for Jiang.

Inside the anchor chamber, Jiang watched the feeder pull toward the world seam.

Black-green fiber passed through the split storm bell in a braid thicker than his body. Every strand ran into the Bellwyrm’s jaw before returning to the upside-down sky beyond the break.

Choice had nothing to do with why the creature guarded the root.

Each time the feeder shortened, broken copper between its teeth cut deeper. Pain made the Bellwyrm tighten around the spire and hold harder to the thing that caused it.

Aylin reached the chamber crack behind Jiang. "Can it let go?"

Jiang pecked the braid, then the Bellwyrm’s bleeding jaw beyond it.

Valea looked through the gap. "Not while the root owns the pressure."

Hest wedged his iron bar beneath a cracked copper rib. His arms shook under the anchor’s weight. "The west chain is carrying the nursery side. If it breaks now, the bell goes through the egg road."

"If it opens instead?" Aylin asked.

Valea studied the old copper grooves. "The east chains swing it into the cataract. Somebody must keep those chains alive until the west eye releases."

Nobody in the chamber could reach the east chains.

Far across the open bridge, Cress pressed her uninjured shoulder beneath one of them.

Eda stood beside the copper-backed neck. She changed from a palm touch to the edge of her forearm. Cress leaned harder. Riders on the next ledges saw the movement and made their own choices. One wyvern took the chain in her jaws. Another braced it with a folded wing. A third refused the damaged link and found a lower one with both claws.

No bell told them when to pull.

East-side stone rose by the width of a chain link.

Mottle found stone under one rear claw.

Ilex held up the loose climbing line. She did not throw it around Mottle. She fed it through an empty bridge eye and laid the end across the red ledge below the wyvern.

Mottle could take it or leave it.

The anchor dropped again.

She jumped for the ledge.

Her front claws struck first. The injured wing hit stone and folded beneath her. Mottle slid until her jaws found the loose line. Ilex let the rope run through both hands, slowing her without closing it around her body.

Mottle stopped against the upper ledge.

She released the rope.

Ilex released with her.

Nothing living now clung to the falling anchor.

Jiang stepped deeper into the chamber.

A flooded throat opened beneath the feeder. Water from every rain run entered there, crossed under the old bell, and flowed toward the cataract instead of falling through it. No vertical drop waited inside. `Stormdive` had nothing to offer.

Aylin showed him the wooden toggle.

Jiang looked at the braid, the Bellwyrm, and the water passing beneath both. He took the bar crosswise in his beak.

She looped the flat line below his bad shoulder. "When your mouth opens, I bring you out."

Jiang entered the flooded throat.

The current rolled him onto his side. He corrected with the working flipper and spread both feet against the narrow walls. New feathers kept water outside his skin. Hunger and old injuries still lived beneath them.

He swam under the feeder.

Above him, the Bellwyrm’s jaws filled the throat. Broken bells had been woven through natural teeth with black-green fiber. One copper tongue pierced the soft corner of the mouth and pinned the braid whenever the creature tried to open wider.

Jiang could not carry the jaw. He did not need to.

Both webbed feet pressed into the copper tongue.

His first push moved nothing. The bad leg folded, driving his hip against stone. Water left his beak in a burst around the toggle.

Aylin felt the line jump and began to take slack.

Jiang kept his mouth closed.

Mottle struck the outer storm bell from the ledge.

Her beak impact traveled through copper into the Bellwyrm’s jaw. The creature flinched. For one instant, the pierced mouth corner loosened around the tongue.

Jiang shoved with both feet again.

The copper tongue slid out through the black-green braid.

Bellwyrm blood filled the water. Its jaws opened with a roar that carried no stolen voice.

Broken bells spilled from its mouth.

Freed at last, the Bellwyrm unwound from Widow’s Needle. The feeder tried to follow through its teeth and found nothing left to hold. One bare scaled jaw snapped at the braid, not at Mottle or Jiang, and tore a mouthful of black fiber away.

The Bellwyrm fell into cloud.

For several breaths, its long body did not return.

Then a bell-less head broke through the white below the nursery road. The creature looked once at Widow’s Needle and vanished toward open storm.

Alive, and carrying no bell.

The feeder was no longer anchored to its jaw.

It recoiled toward the world seam.

Jiang released the toggle from his beak.

Aylin pulled before the current could turn him under the braid. Valea caught the flat line behind her. Hest kept the chamber rib from closing while Jiang scraped through the narrow gap and struck dry stone breast-first.

There was no time to breathe properly.

The black-green root had reached the seam. Across the opening, the upside-down ocean churned above the chain city. Enormous wings turned toward Widow’s Needle as distant living bells opened under them.

Valea pointed with her bent knife. "West eye. Now it has no animal holding it."

Hest shifted the iron bar beneath the cracked copper eye.

Aylin put both hands beside his.

Together, all three pushed the bar.

Outside, Rill changed his hook scrape to a heel strike. Slate felt the new movement and released the upper chain. Eda changed her forearm contact before Cress let the east line run. Every other pair chose its own release in the same falling breath without matching either signal.

The west eye opened.

The first storm bell swung away from the nursery.

Its broken crown crossed the world seam with the feeder trapped through its throat. The enormous weight carried both toward the cataract. Black-green fibers stretched across two skies until the sound they made stopped resembling any living call.

The seam tried to close.

Copper, root, and the edge of another world met at once.

The feeder snapped between worlds.

Widow’s Needle lost its crown into the cataract. The old storm bell fell through red cloud and disappeared beneath the Aeries without striking a bridge, cradle, rider, wyvern, or penguin.

Across the region, stolen homebells went quiet.

One by one, living pairs answered the silence with choices nobody else could repeat. A claw scraped, changed, and stopped. A rider laughed against one neck instead of ringing copper. The unnamed carrier pair crossed below with no filament on the wounded wing.

No System reward appeared over Harrow’s grave.

No point rose for Slate or Mottle destroying the voices that had once brought them home.

Jiang lay on wet stone while Aylin listened to his ragged breathing. He had no homebell, no guild rank, and no intention of accepting either before someone found him a third fish.

The world seam narrowed to a black-green line.

For one final glimpse, Jiang saw the aerial city beneath the upside-down sea. A shape larger than any Red Aeries wyvern turned under the towers. The living bell beneath its breast opened like a throat.

Jiang’s own two-voice cry came back from the other sky.

Then the road closed.