Chapter 226: Jiang’s First Meal Woke the White Tooth

The first fish struck Jiang squarely in the split beak.

He opened on instinct. The fish turned against his burned tongue, slapped one gill across his eye, and escaped beneath his breast before the two damaged halves of his beak could close.

Jiang nearly followed it backward.

Around him, the flooded road had narrowed against his shoulders. Broken shutter shell pressed the injured wing to his side, while the other wing could open only far enough to scrape its tip along stone. His straight leg trailed behind him and caught whenever he tried to reverse.

That small body found every space Jiang’s did not.

It flicked past his bad hip, vanished toward Cairnspire, and left the taste of scales in his mouth.

Hunger woke all at once.

His stomach clenched so hard that his good foot lost the wall. The current shoved his breast into a shell edge, cold went flat through the Wake Scar, and a month of fasting became one furious demand with teeth.

Every nerve in his body screamed for fish.

Jiang held himself between the walls until the cramp loosened. He could not turn. He could not chase backward without feeling for every piece of rubble with his tail and the toes of a leg that no longer bent properly.

A second disturbance moved somewhere ahead.

Direct-current sensitivity gave him no image. Water slid around two small bodies somewhere beyond his beak. One displacement came in quick, clean beats. The other fluttered, stopped, and lurched as if the current kept striking it sideways.

Beneath both movements, the white fragment drove the same hard pulse through the route.

Jiang forced himself to wait through it.

Its pressure hit his scar, crossed the new feather field, and passed behind him. When he pushed too early, his own body filled the tunnel with a broad surge that hid everything else.

He stopped again and flattened his tail.

Water settled around his belly. The two fish returned as separate disturbances, and the tooth remained a deeper blow beneath them.

That was not a map. It was enough to know he was about to be struck twice.

Jiang braced his good foot against the lower wall and tucked his chin.

A ragged swimmer appeared first.

White light crawled beneath the scales along one side of its body. Its tail beat normally until the glow reached the base, then folded against the current. One eye had clouded over. The fish opened its mouth without changing direction and drifted toward Jiang’s breast.

His body begged him to bite.

He made himself let it pass untouched.

Letting it go hurt more than the cold. Jiang lifted his injured wing just enough to make space, and the burned fish slid under it. White heat brushed the feather tips. It continued toward Cairnspire with the current carrying half its body.

Close behind came the clean swimmer.

Its clear eye found him immediately.

It bent so sharply that its silver belly flashed against the living black wall. The turn would have carried it over Jiang’s back if the route had been wide enough. Instead, its tail struck the roof and kicked it down beside his good foot.

Jiang pinned it against the wall with the side of his beak.

Pinned silver thrashed against him. His cracked beak would not meet cleanly around its middle, and every movement dragged a scale across his tongue. He shifted his grip toward the head, closed on the sound side, and felt the small body weaken.

He had eaten fish before. His new body knew the motion better than the human part of him wanted to admit.

Head first. Keep the fins folded. Do not let go merely because swallowing hurt.

One last kick carried the fish into his throat.

Pain opened behind Jiang’s breastbone. He gagged, struck the wall with his crown, and almost lost the meal back into the current. His stomach cramped around something solid after a month of emptiness.

He kept his beak shut.

Still, the fish stayed inside him.

Nausea rolled up before strength had any chance to follow. Jiang pressed the sound side of his beak against shell and kept his throat lower than his breast. The swallowed body shifted in his stomach. Bitter water escaped around his burned tongue, but the fish did not return with it.

His appetite answered the sickness by demanding the first swimmer too.

That was almost insulting. Jiang had spent a month unable to want food while it lay beside him. Now one fish was trying to climb back out, and his body was offended that he had not caught two.

He waited until the worst contraction passed. A narrow red thread leaked from the scale cut inside his beak and disappeared into the water ahead. It brought no warmth with it, only the smell that made his empty stomach tighten again.

For several breaths, Jiang could do nothing except hold the passage and wait to learn whether his body would reject the first thing he had asked it to digest.

No System notice appeared. No warmth spread through his injuries. His leg remained straight, his shoulder remained torn, and the tunnel did not become considerate.

His stomach cramped again, then kept the fish.

"Good," Jiang tried to say underwater.

His word became a blunt trail of bubbles. It sounded stupid enough to help.

Jiang pushed forward before hunger cramped again.

In open water, an emperor penguin’s wings could turn its whole body into a swift black spear. Inside the passage, Jiang had the grace of furniture being forced through the wrong doorway.

His good wing scraped. His injured wing trembled where he held it shut. The sound foot pushed from one wall, his tail corrected, and the straight leg dragged until a broken shell lip caught between its toes.

Jiang pulled until his hip protested.

Pain answered from deep in the hip. He stopped before panic made him tear the leg against the stone.

Water moved around him in layers. His own wake pressed outward. The white tooth struck from ahead. Farther beyond it, the narrow current widened briefly around something alive and large enough to displace more water than a fish.

He could not tell whether that body belonged to the female, the Bellwyrm, the injured male, or an enemy diver.

Knowing that something lived ahead did not tell him whether it wanted him alive.

Jiang folded his tail toward the trapped foot and drove his good toes backward along the shell. The straight leg could not twist. It could slide if he brought the rest of his body lower.

Lower meant pressing the Wake Scar against the current-facing wall.

He lowered his body against it anyway.

Cold drove through the sparse coverage. The shell lip passed over his toes, caught one claw, then released it. Jiang surged forward farther than he intended and scraped his flank along both sides of the tunnel.

Two short black barbs came loose in the water.

They were not whole feathers. Their loss opened no gap he could feel, but oil from the new coat spread around them in a dark sheen.

Ahead, the current carried both barbs.

White light met the first barb.

It did not swallow the material or speak through it. A pale line simply brightened along the embedded fragment, following the oily trace until the water tore it apart.

One barb vanished past the bend. The second touched something hard.

Somewhere ahead, a damaged hinge moved.

Jiang felt the change before he saw it. The repeating pressure widened, split, and returned from two surfaces instead of one. Water that had passed through the route began folding back toward his breast.

He held still until his own wake disappeared.

Both white surfaces kept moving.

Far ahead, the female emperor called.

Her two voices crossed through water and living scar with the middle worn thin by distance. The injured male answered through a rough break. No chick followed them this time.

Jiang pushed his beak into the next bend.

Beyond the bend, the fragment came into view.

One broken tooth remained buried in red-black tissue along the upper wall. Its point faced away from him. Beneath the point, the damaged hinge had opened a second white blade downward across the tunnel.

Before his dark barbs reached it, the lower blade had lain close to the wall. Now it opened through the space his breast needed.

Jiang tried one careful backward stroke.

His tail struck the bend. The straight leg would not fold beneath him or yield to the current. Reversing would mean dragging himself blind until the service mouth gave him room to turn, if the loose rubble did not take his bad foot first.

Retreat remained possible, if barely so.

He pushed backward until the shell lip found his straight toes again. This time a loose piece shifted above the leg. Grit rolled along his belly, crossed the cold hollow of the Wake Scar, and vanished toward the open water he had left.

Jiang froze before the piece could settle across his ankle.

Behind him, direct-current sensitivity found only the broad pressure of open water and his own tail disturbing it. The trait did not tell him whether Aylin still knelt at the shelf. He knew she did because he had left her there with wrapped hands and no road that fit.

Backing out would return him to her alive. It would also leave the tooth inside the only current carrying his family’s voices, and the shifting shell might close that current before his body could survive another attempt.

He drew himself forward until the loose piece stopped touching his leg.

Beyond the tooth, the female called again. This time the injured male did not answer.

Jiang looked at the narrow gap beneath the opening blade.

His body had regained exactly one fish. It had not regained the month.

He pressed his good foot to the wall and waited for the next white pulse to pass.

His meal stayed down. Ahead, the awakened tooth opened wider.