Chapter 241: Jiang Refused to Feed on a Living World

The choice waited while the Bellmother breathed around him.

The System had offered a living catalyst and named its price. Whatever entered Jiang would be drawn out of flesh that still belonged to the animal around him.

Jiang could still feel her blood pulsing against the open channel below his flank feathers. Warmth entered on each beat and eased when the living wall relaxed. If he accepted, the System would not be drawing from a dead spill on the floor.

It would bite deeper through him.

Behind the wall lay the brood saddle his partner had chosen for her dead mate. Below it, two wounds leaked because Jiang and the others had torn the armada’s barbs free.

He wanted the power.

His failed wing trembled against the floor. The straight leg hurt where the wakehound’s teeth had clipped it. Cold air already found the water beneath his feathers, and the Bellmother’s blood offered the first warmth that had not needed another body to hold him upright.

Wanting made the answer harder. It did not change it.

Jiang fixed his attention on `Refuse`.

The chosen word darkened beneath his stare.

[Living Catalyst Refused]

The remaining interface vanished without a reward.

Warmth left his flank with them.

Jiang’s breast struck the old red floor before he understood that he had fallen. Cold moved beneath his wet contour feathers, reached the thin Wake Scar, and turned the muscles along his ribs hard enough to steal his next breath.

Valea slid an arm beneath his sound side without loading the injured shoulder. "What happened?"

"I refused the blood."

"What did the blood offer?"

"A faster way to make this worse."

Hest knelt beside the dismantled harness. "I am encouraged by your recent interest in slower disasters."

Jiang tried to laugh and produced a dry cough instead.

One clean fish remained in his crop.

He had kept it available through the heart chamber because the chick might fail again. Its small body was standing now, pressed beneath its mother’s breast on the far side of the cold road. The female saw Jiang touch his beak to his chest. Her head lowered.

Jiang expected hunger to turn the moment ugly.

Across the road, the chick had eaten. Jiang had not, and the living blood he refused had left him shaking.

His partner stepped around the chick and came to him. She smelled his beak, then the wet feathers over his crop. Her gaze stayed on him while he worked the fish past the place where an emperor could bring it back.

Swallowing pulled at the cut in his tongue. Salt and old blood mixed with the fish as it slid lower.

Once swallowed, the meal stopped being something he could give away.

No warmth returned at once. His body had food to break down, not a miracle.

His stomach cramped around the unfamiliar weight. A month of molt fasting had taught his body to guard every reserve, and the few meals since had not restored what the new coat consumed. Digestion promised strength later. For now, it demanded heat he did not have.

Jiang pressed the broadest part of his breast against the red floor. The posture protected his wet flank from moving air, but cold still entered through the Wake Scar. His breathing shortened until he forced each inhale past the tightening muscles.

Refusal did not feel noble from down there. It felt like lying on his belly while everyone else remained standing.

His partner struck the side of his neck once with the flat of her beak. Then she returned to the chick and called it closer.

"I think she approved," Hest said.

"That was not approval."

"Then I am relieved she was gentle in her criticism."

At the entrance, Bellwyrm lifted its head.

Its jaw shook each time the cold air moved through the road. One forelimb lay folded beneath its breast, burned claws curled away from the floor. The creature had been watching the upper passage instead of Jiang.

Now it looked toward Hest.

Something moved beneath the white armada casing.

Hest let go so quickly that the shell hit the floor. The old red yoke remained in his other hand, separated from the white plate by the catch Jiang had opened in the blood.

A seam on the casing widened.

Pale tissue pushed through it.

At first, the growth was thinner than root cord and slick with the Bellmother’s blood. It had been folded inside the shell between metal layers, dry enough to look like packing fiber until air reached it. The tip opened into four soft hooks.

It touched the red floor.

Every hook bent toward Jiang.

Valea unwrapped one of the extracted barbs. "Move the shell away from him."

Hest caught the split ring with the saddle pin and hauled it across to the far wall. The pale filament stretched after Jiang instead. Its hidden length slid from the seam until more than the casing could reasonably have held lay across the floor.

"That was inside the hunter?" Hest asked.

"Inside the plate," Valea said. "Not inside the old yoke."

That distinction kept Red Aeries metal from becoming guilty by proximity. It did nothing to stop the living thread.

Jiang pushed himself backward using his good foot.

Pale tissue followed the wet mark his belly left behind.

Bellwyrm’s sound claw struck it first.

One claw pinned the pale tissue against the floor. The hooks folded, then opened against the creature’s burned skin. Bellwyrm jerked its forelimb away before they found purchase.

The thread snapped toward Jiang.

His partner arrived from the side.

Her beak closed behind the four hooks. She tore her head once, but the tissue stretched instead of breaking. Jiang shoved his body between her and the root before it could curl around her tongue.

Valea brought the extracted barb down.

White armada metal entered its own living filament. The first stroke flattened it. The second opened a clear jelly around a darker inner cord. On the third, the cord parted.

Its severed tip stayed between the female’s beak and Jiang’s breast.

Its hooks kept moving.

Jiang crushed them beneath his sound foot. The pale tissue tightened around his toes, found no open skin, and slowly lost its grip.

Across the road, the longer half recoiled.

It did not return to the casing.

Something hidden beyond the breathing fold pulled the thread toward the upper passage. Its cut end left a clear line across the red floor. Bellmother cilia flattened away from it wherever the graft passed.

Valea turned the extracted barb and lifted a smear of clear jelly from the cut. Tiny dark rings crossed the inner cord. Each ring tightened a moment after the Bellmother’s pulse, drawing the jelly toward the retreating end instead of letting it spill.

Hest brought the old red yoke close enough to compare without touching the two materials. Its leatherlike arms held scars, old grease, and places where living flesh had grown around metal. No pale cord slept between its layers. The graft belonged to the newer white casing.

"It was feeding while the shell was inside her," Valea said.

Jiang watched the clear smear creep off the barb. "It still is."

Valea stared after the retreating cord. "The casing did more than restrain it."

"A leash?" Hest asked.

"A living root cutting."

Jiang smelled the crushed hooks beneath his foot.

Grease came first. Hunter grease, bitter and white, worked into every surface of the old shell. Beneath it lay Bellmother blood and an oily trace so close to his own coat that his body reacted before his mind did.

It was not his exact scent.

Something had learned the shape of it.

The chick cried out in fear.

Its mother left Jiang immediately and closed her body around the smaller bird. That choice settled their order more cleanly than any argument. Chick first. Jiang when she had room.

Cold air thickened along the road.

Around them, the Bellmother inhaled.

Dry sacs opened ahead, drawing the severed root into a passage ribbed with red breathwood. Hest tied the old yoke across his back with a strip from the carrier. Valea wrapped both barbs separately and kept their points behind her. Neither reached for the white casing.

"Leave that thing behind," Jiang said.

Hest glanced down at the shell. "Happily."

Without anyone touching it, the split ring lifted from the floor.

Pale fibers had grown from its underside into a Bellmother seam. They worked the casing onto one edge and pulled it after the severed filament.

They could leave the plate. The plate did not intend to leave them.

Jiang rose onto his sound foot and failed to keep his chest off the floor. The right wing opened halfway, shook, and closed again.

His partner placed her flank against his wet side.

She had the chick beneath her lower breast. Sharing the outer edge of her warmth did not make Jiang its father or take anything from the male in the sealed saddle behind them. It meant the cold was here and she had chosen where her body stood.

Jiang accepted the support.

Bellwyrm went first into the breathing road. Its long breast pushed against one opening while Hest and Valea followed around the sides. The female moved when the chick moved. Jiang crawled last, low enough that the breathwood scraped water from his belly feathers.

Behind them, the casing dragged itself across the floor.

Ahead, the severed filament disappeared beneath a red rib.

Jiang could not feel it through direct current. The road was dry. He had smell, sight, the pressure of his belly, and the sound of roots shifting where no root should have been.

Around them, the Bellmother exhaled.

White points broke through both walls.

They emerged soft, lengthened in the cold air, and hardened only after turning toward the wet trail beneath Jiang’s body. One root crossed another. A third opened behind the chick and tasted an empty patch of floor where Jiang’s tail had rested.

Farther up the road, dozens of pale tips unfolded.

None reached for Hest.

None reached for Valea.

Together, the white roots bent and began growing toward Jiang’s new coat.