Chapter 729: Bands of the Dead (End)
"Signed, a former idiot."
Thalatha’s mouth twitched. "Former?" she asked, dead-dry.
"On probation," he said, and looked away so the smile wouldn’t get ideas.
Rodion dimmed his panel a shade and began stitching separate feeds into one picture. He did it without flourish, like a librarian building a card catalog.
They moved toward the turn that smelled of old brass. The air shifted from chalk to metal; the floor gained a faint polish like many careful feet had tested it and lived. Rodion collected angles, echoes, a glint that didn’t behave like light, and built the boss as a careful rumor that became true while you watched.
"Pretty," Mikhailis said when the image settled. "Like a peacock made by a blacksmith who hates people."
The thing in the throat had mirror-wings that fanned like pages, each vane edged in old silver, each panel too eager to be looked at. Beneath its chest, ribs hung like bells waiting for a conductor’s stick. Three iron anchors pinned it to the stair plate—the runed kind that told a body when to stand and how much pride to keep.
<Mechanics: mirror wings punish gaze and reflect veils. Require moth-net plus resin smear to dull. Bell ribs convert foot cadence into cone shock. Require anti-pattern gait and Sentinel shield to eat cones. Anchor pins in floor—three clusters—control posture and reset. Counter-pin two safe. Third is risky and unnecessary. Echo band around stair plate magnifies repeating actions. Prime-step or die.>
Thalatha’s mouth went thin. "We stage like this," she said, already pointing. "Front: Sentinel and Hound. Mid: me, Mikhailis, Hypnoveil, Necrolord, Scurabons, Archivist. Rear: workers with nets and smears, cartilage wraps; skeletons backs-turned at the brood distance." She added, softer, "No one stares at something that wants to be stared at."
Mikhailis rolled his shoulders and tried to be smaller without being weak. Don’t let the floor think you want to impress it. We do the job and go upstairs like normal people who love tea, he told himself, and for once the thought obeyed.
They slid down the last lip and saw it in the bone: the Gate-Seraph stood from stair to ceiling, mirrors half-folded like a noble deciding whether to stand. One rib chimed by accident because someone’s boot scuffed stone a little too honestly.
Rodion flashed the anti-pattern bar, a crooked pulse that refused to be a song. Everyone lowered their eyes and let the bar be the only conductor.
Workers split into two files with moth-nets slung ready and resin pots capped with bone lids. The Seraph woke at their presence. Its wings flared to catch gazes that never arrived. The first flash of punishing light swung and found only helmet brims and the dull hem of a veil.
Hypnoveil oozed a boredom droplet across the Seraph’s chest. Not much. Just enough to turn a sharp reflex into something you would do later.
The first bell cone slammed. It came off the ribs like a shaped slap. The Sentinel raised its coffin-door and took the cone square. The shock ran under the lid, the way river water runs under good ice. The wood-and-bone face of the shield hummed and held. A vein of light traced the edge like a polite warning: full.
The Hound moved in a lazy crooked arc, tail muffled, chain scrawling ugly figures on the stair plate. The non-rhythm dragged one wing wide as the Seraph searched for a clean beat to punish. Scurabon darted into that tiny window and flung a moth-net at the inner vanes. The net kissed the mirrors and clung. Workers followed with resin smear—no clack, just a careful palm, then a second, offset, like patting a sleepy horse. Shine went down like fever cooled with cloth.
"Odd-count push," Thalatha signed with two fingers. "Never on the third."
"Now—half," Mikhailis breathed, timing with Rodion’s crooked flash. Two soldiers pressed and peeled a mirror panel slow as a bandage off a sleeping child. No scrape, no song. They handed it back to a worker who wrapped it fast in net and turned it to dull.
The Seraph answered with another bell cone, harder, angry that the rules had changed. The Sentinel staggered one step, caught, then turned and side-vented the blast into a dead shaft Rodion had already marked as a safe grave for sound. The echo went in and did not come out. The team did not smile.
They repeated on the other wing—net, smear, peel. This time the Seraph feinted a cadence, trying to teach them a three-beat lesson around the second peel. Rodion spiked the anti-pattern. The crooked bar flashed uglier. Thalatha lifted her hand and killed a motion before it could grow. The team held uneven timing like people who had learned to dance on broken music.
Mirrors dulled or netted. No more glare. No easy punish.
"Cut the bell," Thalatha whispered. Her voice carried like a good rule—soft but obeyed.
The Archivist slid along the base post and brushed grit off a small anchor rune with lover’s care. He exposed a clean slash of hold under bar. The Necrolord stepped in and drew Pin-1—attend—on the seam, her line thin and exact. One breath. Two. The rune drank it without spitting.
The Seraph stomped a 2-2-1 cadence, mean and pretty, to teach the stair its favorite song. The Echo band leaned in, greedy.
"Prime-step only," Thalatha said. "Two, three, five. Never two twice."
The Hound slipped under and nipped the load ankle—nothing theatrical, just a tug that ruined the third stomp. The cadence stumbled. The band’s mouth shut.
The Sentinel took another cone and vented left on Mikhailis’s small hand cue. He did not say the word; the shield understood the tilt.
Rodion posted a green tick in the corner.
<Pin-1 landed. Bell resonance reduced fifteen percent.>
The Seraph swung a tail rung like a metronome, trying to grow a choir. Hypnoveil poured boredom over it. The metal went dull. The urge to clap died like a bad joke in a cold room.
Scurabon cut two short vents in two bell ribs, offset, never rhythm, the way a careful carpenter makes relief cuts so the wood won’t split ugly. Shock lost its snap. The next cone came soft as a pillow thrown by a tired aunt.
"Anchor pins next," Mikhailis said, voice even, like he was telling someone which shelf the cups lived on. Stress the joint, keep the band asleep, he ran under his breath, and he liked how non-heroic it sounded.
The Archivist chalked the seams around Anchor B: hold, bar, return—big, legible strokes even a stubborn machine would read. The Necrolord approached with her crown-light dimmed to respect. Hypnoveil pulled the trance down for the first breaths so pride wouldn’t kick.
Thalatha flicked her eyes at the crystal light high in the stone. Photoperiod had narrowed earlier, but here it held. She weighed it like a coin and gave the smallest nod. Safe.
Pin-2 set with a soft click Mikhailis felt more than heard. The Seraph’s stance sank a finger-width. The weight shifted forward to the wing roots. A new path of force opened, the kind you can see if you look with your knees.
Right then the Crymber pair slid into position like a rumor arriving exactly on time. One carried heat the way a candle carries attitude. The other wore frost like a scarf. Neither spoke. They didn’t need to.
Rodion counted in a crooked whisper only Mikhailis could read from the corner of his panel.
<Heat... hold-half... frost... hold-two... step. Do not make it pretty.>
Hot kissed the shoulder joint; cold followed like a polite insult. The bone sighed and opened a hair. Workers were already there with resin heavy with calcium sap from the drake. They pressed it into the new crack, not with fists, with palms, like smoothing a blanket on a child. Drake wraps banded the workers’ wrists so the kiss of heat didn’t bite.
The Seraph got angry the way an old bell gets angry—by vibrating too much. It tried a full-body ring to shake them off. The anti-pattern gait refused to catch. The team moved on ugly half-beats. The Sentinel ate what was left and leaned like a tree that has decided it will bend before it will break.
"Watch the glare," Mikhailis warned softly. He felt it more than saw it—the old instinct in his neck that meant mirror-trick incoming.
The Seraph tried to throw it—one last bright slap from the dulling wings. Moth-nets dropped on command, not in a tangle but in neat, overlapping fans. Resin veils followed, a smear that turned shine into a sleepy face. The slap died before it learned anyone’s name.
The Hound dragged its chain again, ring still muffled. The line it wrote on the stair plate looked like a child’s bad drawing of a river. The Echo band, bored or offended, turned its head away.
Rodion’s panel dimmed another shade, then spoke with formal calm:
<Photoperiod safe—window open.>
Thalatha’s shoulders lowered half a thumb. She did not smile. She didn’t need to. "Finish," she said, not loud, not hard. Just complete.
Hypnoveil folded a deep trance over the Seraph’s chest. The Archivist stood by with the soft-invert muffler clause, not laid, only ready. The Necrolord stepped through a hole that was not there and became present in a way that made the air choose to make room.
"One cut," Mikhailis whispered. "No trophy. No second strike."
The blade moved along the core seam like a truth being told in one sentence. No drama. A counter-rot thread went in. The body swayed once, not in pain, only in agreement. The reanimation window opened like an eyelid.
<Window 2.8–3.6 breaths.>
Mikhailis leaned toward the leash with a permission set that he kept small, like putting words on a note you stuck under a door: stand, heel, gate.
The raise took. Pride flickered in the room like a candle told to be a lantern. Hypnoveil whispered the mantra over the first breaths: witness and obey the regent. Do not issue commands. Hold the name; release the will.
Anchor C stayed unpinned on purpose. No triple pin. No choke on dignity. The Seraph’s body learned a new job: Gate Warden. Symbol only. No voice. A door that remembers how to be a door.
The stair sighed as if a muscle unknot had gone right.
They made a circle that was not a ceremony and also was. Workers with nets and smears stepped back. Soldiers kept odd-step. The Hound lay with its ring quiet. The Sentinel set the coffin-door down with respect. The Necrolord dimmed. The Archivist closed his book.
Mikhailis rubbed his thumb across his cuff and let himself grin a little. "We hired the door," he said.
"We made it work," Thalatha corrected softly. "Important difference."
"Important," he agreed. Don’t fall in love with the feeling. Fall in love with the rule that got you there.
They took stock without wasting it.
Mirror shards, dulled, went into the lining of the Sentinel shield to drink glances. Bell rib slivers became tuned chimes for quiet alarm, offset so the Echo would not sniff a pattern. Anchor chalks were copied to bone tabs—bar, hold—as emergency tools. Cartilage wraps were already in soldiers’ joints. Moth-nets got patched and folded. Pods took their meat. Soldiers first, then workers. Nurses watched and nodded. No gloating. No story about glory. Only a short placard tied at the stair, written in plain script: backs turned at brood mouths. food before orders. no living puppets. prime‑step zone.
The nurse council watched the way Thalatha’s hand made the knot and the way Mikhailis’s mouth didn’t make a joke where a joke would have been easy. Trust did not spike. It held. Sometimes that is better.
"Rodion," Mikhailis said, too cheerful because his heart wanted to run. "Say something mean so I don’t get proud."
He laughed under his breath. "Yes, Professor."
Thalatha took one step toward the turn that smelled of roots and wet stone. The blue breath ribbon on the console pulsed slow, friendly. The Gate Warden looked straight ahead, proud and quiet. No preening.
"Up," she said.
Mikhailis looked at the dim stair behind them. We left the slot cleaner than we found it. We left the house better. Elowen will like the report, he thought, and for a second, Lira’s calm face and black ponytail passed across his mind like a soft shadow. And Serelith will make a joke I should not laugh at. Cerys will roll her eyes and pretend she does not care. He smiled anyway. "Up," he echoed.
They climbed with prime-steps, eyes down, pockets heavy with bone tabs and nets and the stubborn rules that had kept them breathing. The choir under the stone hummed on. The dungeon did not sing back. It let them go.