Chapter 286: Six Wounded Beasts Answered the Same Red Seed

The first of six roads struck the confluence before Jiang’s beak stopped bleeding.

Dead road bone jumped beneath Maelin’s hall.

The detached keeps drifted toward one another. Families who had survived Bone Orchard grabbed unfamiliar rails as the open starwater between them narrowed into white seams.

Beyond the hall, the shed branch seed beat red.

Six reflections bent around it.

Each reflection carried a wounded beast. Each road moved at a different angle, but the black seeds beneath their scars pulled toward the same dead dorsal plate.

Raska watched stone wings fold inside one distant body.

Another reflection showed a pale serpent running on legs that bent against its spine.

Farther left, a shelled crawler dragged a burning sail grown through its back. Beneath the confluence, white burrowing claws closed around a moth body that had never belonged underground.

The final reflection showed only a huge eye beneath ice. A black seed beat behind the lid whenever the dead seed answered.

The nearest road held water.

It came down from above.

Saltglass bridges hung beneath a green flood. Houses, ropes, and riders moved inside the water as though the road had forgotten which side deserved air.

At its front ran a horned beast.

The brinehart had the shoulders of a land animal and the wide split hooves to prove it. Branching black antlers carried bells, torn reins, and a seed lodged where skull met horn.

Gills opened along both sides of its neck.

Dry air passed over them.

The membranes fluttered without taking anything in.

Blood darkened the pale folds.

"That one is drowning," Jiang said.

Raska looked from the charging animal to the water hanging above its back.

"It brought an ambitious amount of water."

"The gills are in air."

"And the rest of it is aimed at our hall."

The brinehart struck the edge of its own flood.

Water stopped at its shoulders as if a glass wall divided one body in half. Its gills remained outside. Broad fin tissue opened beneath its belly and beat inside the hanging road.

One forced body tried to swim.

The body that owned the hooves kept running.

Salt-Suture riders clung to harness rails along the beast’s back. Some hauled the antlers away from Maelin’s hall. Others drove hooked poles into the saltglass road to keep its flood from spilling.

A red lantern floated above them.

Light ran from the lantern into the black seed beneath the antlers.

The brinehart lowered its head.

Every road joint between it and the confluence locked straight.

"Impact path!" Hest shouted from Maelin’s roof.

He shoved refugees away from the cracked brace.

Valea hacked apart the fresh founder roots trying to close the doors around them.

Kessa climbed onto the dead rib that supported the hall.

"Myrn, can you move the joint?"

Myrn tested her folded front leg.

The road-beast put weight on it, stopped, and chose not to lie.

Sivra saw the answer.

"Not while the hall is on her."

"Then the hall moves first," Kessa said.

No one had a road wide enough to receive it.

The six approaching reflections had eaten every open direction.

Jiang pushed himself upright.

Cold starwater ran from his breast feathers. His unstable leg trembled under half his weight, and the failed wing remained pressed against his side.

Aylin crouched beside him with her cut palm wrapped in a strip of Maelin’s roof cloth.

"You cannot reach the first road before it reaches us."

"I can reach this road."

He put one webbed foot against the wet joint beneath the hall.

Splitflow answered through contact.

Six road pressures crowded the bone.

Jiang received no names and no map. He felt the dead joint squeezed from six sides, the branch seed pulling at its center, and one heavy body striking the same pressure over and over.

Water pressed above the nearest impact line.

It wanted to fall.

Red pressure held it against the brinehart’s back.

Jiang opened the System.

[STARCURRENT KEEL I LOCKED | EP AVAILABLE: 1]

One point did not mean one answer.

No new branch appeared.

The System had not seen him survive this pressure yet.

Jiang could spend nothing on a name the System had not earned. One blind point would not warm his coat, mend his beak, or teach six wounded bodies to refuse the same hand.

He closed the panel.

The brinehart’s next failing breath mattered before any evolution menu.

"The flood is restrained," Jiang said. "Cut the red hold and it falls around the gills."

Raska drew her short blade.

"Where is the hold?"

"On the charging road."

"Excellent. I will ask the charging strangers to make a small repair."

The first Salt-Suture bridge reached the confluence.

Raska jumped the narrowing gap.

Her bare foot landed on wet saltglass. The booted one slipped, and she caught a hanging rope before the bridge carried her beneath Maelin’s hall.

Bone Orchard fighters threw a pruning line after her.

A woman on the flooded road cut it out of the air.

Salt-white hair had been braided tight against her head. A narrow coat clung to her shoulders, dark with brine. She held a hooked knife made from translucent shell.

Raska swung from the severed line and struck the bridge on one knee.

"You could have left that attached."

"You tied it around my host’s throat."

"I tied it around your bridge."

"The bridge is attached to its throat."

Salt-Suture did not move as one body behind her.

One rider cut two children out of a flooded roof net. Another ignored them to hammer the bridge seal deeper. A third kept hauling the black restraint even after the brinehart’s blood reached his gloves.

Whatever command had brought their road here, the people on it had already begun choosing different losses.

Behind the woman, three Salt-Suture riders hauled on black restraints crossing the brinehart’s antlers.

One restraint ran beneath the bleeding gills.

Every pull lifted the beast’s head farther into dry air.

"Tavra!" a rider shouted. "Keep the road sealed!"

The woman looked back.

The red lantern tightened its light.

Saltglass whitened beneath her boots. Flood channels along the road closed one after another, holding water above the charging body.

The brinehart tried to breathe.

Its gills opened wider and tore along the black restraint.

Tavra Sehl cut that restraint.

The loose end whipped through two riders and snapped a roof rail from the bridge.

The brinehart’s head dropped.

One gill reached the hanging water.

The animal dragged in a shuddering breath through the wet fold.

Its other gill remained in air.

"Seal it!" the rider shouted.

Tavra put her shell knife against the nearest flood channel.

"It breathes before the bridge does."

Raska reached for her wrist.

Tavra turned the knife and caught Raska’s blade against its curved back.

"Open that channel and your road hits my people," Raska said.

"Keep it closed and my host dies on top of them."

"Those are unusually poor choices."

"Then stop offering me only two."

The red lantern pulled.

The brinehart charged again.

Raska and Tavra were thrown apart. Raska caught a rail with her cut hand. Tavra slid beneath the hanging flood and vanished to the shoulders.

Jiang saw the gap under the brinehart’s throat.

Between both gills, a wet passage opened into the forced swimming scaffold. It was low, narrow, and blocked by white seed roots whenever the animal raised its head.

A human shoulder would never pass.

Jiang’s breast might.

He moved toward the edge of Maelin’s road joint.

Aylin caught nothing this time.

Her hands stayed beside him, ready without closing on his coat.

"You will be under its hooves."

"Only until the road falls."

"That is not reassuring."

"It was not meant to be."

Kessa heard them from the dead rib.

"If you are planning to drown my hall, use the lower door."

She kicked Maelin’s old blade free and drove it into the sealed undercroft.

The lower wall opened over starwater.

Hest took the upper brace. Valea cut every root that tried to grow across the new gap.

Displaced families moved higher without waiting for one guild to name the danger for another.

Myrn stepped away from the hall.

Her injured front leg dragged.

She could not catch Maelin’s home again.

Instead, she put her good shoulder under the empty road joint beside it and shoved.

The joint tilted toward the coming flood.

Sivra ran along its blank edge and cut the dead hooks holding it level.

They did not move the hall.

They gave the water somewhere else to go.

On Salt-Suture’s bridge, Tavra surfaced inside the hanging road.

Riders reached for her.

She kicked away from them and drove the shell knife through the red-veined saltglass.

The first flood channel broke.

Water fell across the brinehart’s neck.

Both gills opened wet.

The beast drew water through both gills.

Its charge became a leap.

Hooves left the road.

The black seed under its antlers pulled toward the dead dorsal plate. The red lantern tried to keep the body level.

Tavra cut a second channel.

Half the Salt-Suture bridge collapsed into its own flood.

Riders, roofs, ropes, and water rolled around the brinehart.

"Tavra!" the rider screamed.

"Swim!" she shouted back.

Raska jumped from saltglass to the road joint Myrn had tilted.

Bone Orchard fighters caught her by the coat and dragged her clear.

Jiang reached the edge.

The brinehart’s shadow covered him.

Its gills were wet now. Its hooves were not.

The animal kicked at empty air while the forced fin beneath its belly drove into falling water.

Maelin’s lower door opened directly below its chest.

Jiang saw the narrow throat passage.

Then the entire Salt-Suture road broke loose behind the host.

Green flood struck the confluence.

The tilted dead joint took the first weight and split.

Starwater rose over Jiang’s head.

He kicked with his stronger foot and let the water take his keel.

Above him, the brinehart plunged beneath Maelin’s hall.

Saltglass, riders, and an entire guild road followed it down.

Through dark water, Jiang saw five more red reflections lengthen over the drowned bridge.

The first road had arrived.

The other five kept coming.