Chapter 181: Skykeel Fell Sideways Beneath the Sea

The floor became a wall before Jiang could swim again.

Warm channel water struck him from the side and drove his injured shoulder into root bars. Kesta caught a crosspiece with her brass hook. Her remaining half-wing frame opened by reflex, filled with water, and nearly tore her loose before she folded it against her ribs.

Skykeel kept turning beneath them.

Overhead, the ceiling ocean did not spill all at once. Its lower skin bowed between chain roots, sagging toward towers before drawing back. Each sag drenched a different street. Wing-sails opened to catch falling people, then collapsed when sideways rain struck the cloth. Across Skykeel, the copied city chorus broke into mismatched notes as bells on tilted towers lost sight of one another.

Kaul’s single low call could stop his hunters. It could not tell a whole city how to stand on a wall.

Through the grate above them, hanging towers swung out of line. Bridges no longer stretched level between their chains. People slid toward rails that had become floors, while winged riders fought air currents coming from directions the city had never asked them to fly.

Above them, the Bellmother moved again in the ceiling sea.

Jiang felt the broad pressure through ordinary water before he used anything. Every brood channel surged. Pale juveniles struck cage roots, changed their trills, and scrambled toward whichever wall had become highest.

Kesta pointed through the bars.

One nursery bridge had lost its ocean-side chain.

Its deck carried padded shell cradles, baskets of warm stone, and perches low enough for hatchlings. Nothing on it had been built to hang from one rail. Cradles slid against one another while parents used bodies, tails, and folded wings to keep the smallest shells from striking bare wood.

A green-sailed rider Jiang had seen earlier hung beneath the upper rail with both boots locked around a post. Two workers passed her the young wyverns in careful succession. A copper-backed adult braced its neck under the tilting deck while an old man crawled after a food basket that had wedged against a cradle wheel.

Hook Choir riders circled above them.

One could have reached Jiang’s grate. Instead, a dark-winged hunter dropped onto the nursery bridge and drove a shoulder beneath the failing rail.

Not every choice waited for Kaul’s bell.

Kesta pressed her palm to the wet root beside Jiang. "Chain caught in sea root. Where?"

Jiang could not answer with a direction he did not have.

He wedged his belly into a narrow pocket where three roots met. His good foot locked behind one rib. The bad leg hung uselessly in the current. He tucked both flippers close and waited for his own disturbed water to pass.

`Pressure Wake` opened across his body.

What came first was not information. It was too much water touching him at once.

Juveniles made quick folding wakes inside nearby cages. Kesta’s body pushed a broad drag beside him. Hunters crossing the upper spill cut through both. Beyond them, water poured around tilting towers, flailing sails, frightened wyverns, falling tools, and the immense slow turn that bent every smaller movement toward the Bellmother.

Jiang knew none of their names through the ability.

He could not tell fear from attack. He could not separate a child from a hook. The crowding pressure drove into the break along his beak until fresh blood warmed the water.

Worse, the Bellmother’s turn curved the smaller wakes. A hunter and a falling tool could touch Jiang with the same bent pressure if they crossed her movement at different depths. The new sense did not fail. It gave exactly what water carried, and water carried no obligation to be simple.

Jiang needed a movement someone living could confirm.

Kesta struck the root beside his breast.

The impact gave him one wake he could confirm.

Jiang followed its fading shape through the connected water. Farther along the same root, something dragged in short violent jerks whenever the nursery bridge tilted. The movement might have been chain, trapped animal, or torn sail. `Pressure Wake` did not decide for him.

He released the ability and moved.

Kesta went first through the grate. One half-wing could not hold her in open air, so she crossed hand over hand beneath a chain while the brass hook took each new link. Jiang stayed in the water channel running along its upper side.

Their chain led into a pale growth under the ceiling sea.

Broken root had folded around one link. Each bridge swing cinched the living fibers tighter, trapping the chain instead of letting it feed through its suspension ring.

Jiang bit the thinnest root.

It stretched and slapped him across the face. His shoulder failed when he tried to pull with both flippers. He changed position, set his good foot against the chain, and worked the chipped beak back into the wet seam.

Below, the nursery bridge dropped another handspan.

One boot slipped from the green-sailed rider, and she caught the rail by both hands. Beside her, the dark-winged hunter abandoned a clear launch to take the post she had released. Neither looked up at the penguin chewing through their suspension root.

Kesta reached the outer link.

She drove her brass hook beneath the folded fibers and twisted. Jiang pushed from the water. The bad leg shook against empty space, but the good foot moved the chain far enough for Kesta’s hook to bite deeper.

The wet root tore open.

Freed at last, the trapped link jumped through the suspension ring.

The nursery bridge swung hard, leveled, and threw everyone on it toward the opposite rail. Riders caught the first two bodies. The copper-backed wyvern spread one wing over the smallest cradle. The old man let his food basket fall and grabbed the wheel instead.

No bell had told them which thing mattered most.

Only then did the dark-winged hunter look up.

Silver stitching crossed one shoulder of the sail. Kesta saw it from beneath the chain and missed her next handhold. Recognition hit her harder than the city’s turn. The hunter saw her half-wing, saw Jiang in the water above, and still kept both arms around the nursery post until the last cradle stopped sliding.

Only after the bridge held did that silver-stitched wing turn toward them.

Jiang lost his footing when the chain ran free.

Current carried him back through the root channel. Kesta kept pace beneath it by hook and hand until the city rolled far enough to make her route a climb.

At the Red Aeries, the smallest escaped juvenile came through the thin wound mouth-first.

It struck Aylin’s wrapped fish, recoiled from the chorus leech, and scrambled up Valea’s side groove on four gripping limbs. The Bellwyrm lowered its wounded head but did not bite. Mottle answered the juvenile’s changing trill with one soft beak tap and changed before the leech could repeat it.

Water swelled around the second living-bell body.

The narrow wound opened past Aylin’s wrist.

Valea started to pry the stone wider and stopped when the juvenile screamed. The wound followed living water, not the amount of rock exposed around it. Hest shifted his bar only enough to keep its edge from cutting Aylin’s arm. Nobody forced a shoulder into an opening that had not chosen its size.

Aylin removed the plain cloth from one hand and tested the current with bare fingers first.

She pushed one hand into the current.

Jiang returned to the brood channel with Kesta close behind and saw human fingers break through dark water ahead of him.

He swam to them.

Aylin’s fingers settled into wet feathers beneath his eye, safely behind the bleeding tip. Her thumb moved once.

"You found another city under a puddle." Her voice blurred in the current.

Jiang closed his beak gently around the plain cloth at her wrist.

For one breath, neither side pulled.

Then Kesta struck the channel wall.

A second main chain had begun moving through the roots beside them. It did not feed back toward Skykeel’s center ring. Every link drew away from the city and deeper into the ceiling sea.

The Bellmother was pulling it from the other end.