Chapter 726: Bands of the Dead (1)
Steam still hung low like thin cloth, soft and stubborn, turning the slot into a small room that did not want to wake up. The Brake Choir hummed under the stone—a slow, honest note that sat in the ribs. Rodion widened the console with a neat click, and the whole floor unrolled like a clean sheet on bone.
<Whole-floor overlay online. Legend: heatless halos equal Choir Wights. Moving glare pips equal Lantern Lurkers. Chain-scatter traces equal Ossuary Hounds. Fixed, humming nodes equal Reliquary Sentinels. Tremolo threads across ribs equal Gallow Harps. Powdered shadow blooms equal Mortuary Moths. Plate-clatter pools equal Jawbone Carapace Beetles. Long calcium sweeps equal Bone Drake Fledglings.>
"Neat," Mikhailis said, eyes bright like a kid at a market. "It’s like a festival poster, but the bands are all dead."
Thalatha’s mouth almost twitched. She didn’t let it. She folded her arms, chin lifting a hair. "Lanes," she said. "Ribbon-Scout on the left span. Wedge-Quiet at mid ribs. Lattice-Carry two beats behind for salvage."
The workers already moved. No shouting. No fuss. Scurabon clicked once and took point like it was natural. Six soldier-ants fanned out behind, their steps light and even. Eight workers adjusted packs, straps smoothed by habit fingers. One nurse settled at the center and began counting with tiny shoulder twitches—three, two, five—private math that kept the line breathing.
The Hypnoveil let its mantle sink. Corners went boring. Edges lost their shine. The corridor looked like something your eyes would skip without guilt. Skeleton pairs rolled their shoulders and presented their backs to the brood-mouths—quiet promise, no blade forward. Even the way they did that had manners.
"Reminder," Thalatha said, tone calm but with a fine edge that made everybody’s posture better. "Food first. No puppet of living bodies. Skeletons show backs at brood mouths. No heroics."
Mikhailis raised his hand like a student with mischief. "What if I have small heroics? Maybe pocket-size. Travel size."
She didn’t smile. Her eyes softened anyway. "Put them in the bin. We check later."
I like when she is like this, he thought. Straight lines. No sharp pride. Keeps my mouth from running into a wall.
<Goal of sweep: collar what adds control or protection. Cull what is safer to eat. Avoid the rest until we have tools.>
Mikhailis tapped the rim of his cup with one nail, caught himself, stopped the rhythm before it grew legs. "Then we shop," he said. "But with good manners."
They moved.
Air cooled as they left the slot. Stone organized itself into ribs and vaults. The first Reliquary Sentinel waited in a niche half-swallowed by shadow, fused to a plinth like a tree to a rock. Its legs were ribbed greaves; the chest a quiet knight made of bone. The left arm held a coffin-door shield, coil-runes etched around the rim so tight even dust seemed scared to land there.
At two body-lengths the shield swung with clean precision. A cone parry shaved the air. Somewhere inside, a bone bell answered with a single low note—no anger, only policy.
"Polite, but ready to slap," Mikhailis murmured, voice breathed into his sleeve.
Thalatha lifted an open palm. The skeleton pair knelt together, backs shown, blades reversed. They looked like porters in a holy hall at closing hour. The nurse council stood off to the side, not too near, not too far. Eyes down. Respect but not fear.
The Archivist Wretch came on quiet feet, stylus raised like a pen in class. He brushed the rune rim with a soft tool, clearing dust the way a librarian cleans a title before reading it.
The Hypnoveil lowered a curtain of dull over the niche. The air forgot to glitter. The room exhaled.
<Rune lattice visible. Keywords: hold, attend, bar.>
"Counter-rot, then," Mikhailis breathed. He glanced at the Necrolord. She gave the smallest nod—permission and readiness together.
On the floor’s exhale, the Necrolord drew Pin-1 at the shield rim—attend. Her hand did not shake. The line went down like a truth you didn’t need to sell. The statue’s shoulder shifted, not aggressive, just a test of a new schedule. It paused like someone who heard their name behind a door.
"Good boy," Mikhailis whispered, unable to help it. Thalatha’s jaw held steady. She did not elbow him. She let the word pass the room, but her posture stayed strict, a reminder to the world and to him—no games here.
Pin-2 went to the elbow seam—hold. The Hypnoveil tightened the trance for three controlled breaths. No drama. The plinth seam sighed. The statue stepped free with the slow ease of a clerk leaving a desk after counting the last coin.
"Walk for us," Thalatha said, low, not a command, not a request. A job.
The Sentinel obeyed. Shield high, then neutral, then high again—testing the path. Its ribs made small clicks like rain on a far roof. It turned on the exhale. It set down on the half-breath.
<Leash stable. Reliquary Sentinel collared. Shield function: cone-eat. Stored kinetic may be released later as measured shove.>
Mikhailis circled the coffin-door with his eyes like a tailor sizing a coat. "Frontliner for the exit," he said. "Later we paint mirror-dulling glyphs on that lid and make snobs cry."
Thalatha cut him a look that said: later maybe, now no. He nodded like a scolded schoolboy and smiled to himself. Alive and useful, both. Rare and nice.
They moved on.
Gallow Harps crouched across the next gallery—thin spans of dried sinew, wire, and rib stretching from post to post. They hummed a nervous tremble that made teeth feel wrong. The sound pretended to be quiet but tried to live in bone.
"Traps with feelings," Mikhailis muttered.
The Archivist crouched at the nearest post and traced a small clause: play to rest. Elegant handwriting, proper, reasonable. The lattice shivered and refused. One string inverted; two more tensed to balance the insult. The thing had its own ghost logic. It did not want sleep; it wanted to be looked at.
Thalatha lifted both hands, fingers open, wrists loose. A simple sleeve-signal: no rhythm. The team’s shoulders softened. Feet waited for crooked beats only.
Scurabon slid under the lowest span like a shadow that had learned manners. Knees brushed dust, never string. Workers dotted resin on key nodes, not to silence, but to detune the cruel edges. Tiny touches. Patience. A nearby Choir Wight drifted closer, hood turning like a curious heron.
The Hypnoveil exhaled boredom into the corner. The Wight stared at nothing and found that very interesting.
Mikhailis pointed with two fingers at two different strings, careful to not touch—A and C, his sleeve-spoken breath counting time. "A and C," he said, barely air. "Not B. Never B."
Soldier A leaned, snapped the top string with a non-repeat interval—a half-cough sound that refused to be matched. Soldier B cut the opposite string half a breath later. The no-song wobble disturbed the room. Somewhere inside the stone, the Echo-Deacon twitched like a cat’s ear in sleep.
Rodion smeared a lopsided bar across the console—anti-pattern. It blinked with an ugly grace. They matched it. Step on the crook, never on the beat.
The Sentinel flowed in, coffin-lid up. A bell-slam exploded from the harp’s middle, clean and eager to find victims. The shield swallowed it. Stored force ran like trapped lightning under the lid. The Sentinel twisted its stance, angled the lid, and side-vented the blast into a dead corridor. No echo answered. The room had no friend for that noise.
Strings fell in thirds, not like a chorus, more like a building politely choosing to sit. Workers moved in at once, harvesting neat lengths of dry sinew. Bone cleats came out with soft clicks. No one cheered. No one spoke big words. Hands did the expected job because that was the glory today.
"Salvage," Thalatha said. "Sinew to armor lacing. Cleats for veil hems and belays."
"And for music class," Mikhailis said, deadpan, eyes innocent.
She gave him half an eye. "Don’t play here."
He pressed his hand to his heart like a clown knight swearing on a cabbage. I will play later. Quietly. With permission.
They left the last wire humming itself to death and drifted into a chamber cool as a cellar between storms. Powdered shadow hung by the ceiling in slow drifts. When a glowcap bag near Thalatha’s hip warmed a touch, the shadow softened, bloomed, and fell in tiny flakes. The flakes landed on her sleeve and melted into dull.
"Moths," she said, soft.