From Human to Skeleton: Revived with Infinite System Crystals

The missing seventh bowl left a white circle in Jade's damaged eye.

Her left eye saw clean wood where the bowl had protected the cart from oil. The right saw a line leaving that circle, crossing the lane, and entering a house whose numbered strip lay beside its door.

Three other lines ran from three other houses.

They met beneath the handcart.

Jade crouched far enough away to keep her white hand behind her knee. "Someone under this cart carries the routes from four cleared houses."

Nessa put the flat of her cutter against the axle. "Then the cart moves after we separate the load from whoever is carrying it."

Ty reached for the handle. Jade caught his forearm with her living hand before his ribs moved.

"The person under there needs our help, and the route wants your help to arrive first."

Ty left the handle where it was. "Tell me which part I can lift without borrowing the decision."

A nail struck stone behind them.

A woman in a gray work apron knelt at the next doorway with a pry bar under its number strip. She pulled two nails clean, placed them in a wooden case, and rubbed soap into the holes until the white lines disappeared from Jade's right eye.

The woman saw the cutter and reached for a bell tied beneath her apron.

Nessa pinned the bell cord with her boot. "Ring that after you tell me where the people from these houses were taken."

"Your cutter carries stolen cage work, so you already know what happens to people who follow the freight."

"I know where the hardware went. I asked where the residents went."

The woman kept both hands on the pry bar. Work had split the nails of her first two fingers. A round brass disc hung from her wrist beside five empty loops.

Jade pointed at the disc. "You have been paid for one house and still need five more."

"I need six cleared origins before my son's transfer stays permanent."

Nessa kept her boot on the bell cord. "Give me both names because a family bargain without names is only a threat."

"Sela Marr removes the routes. Olan Marr fits freight joints and earned transfer on the hook line."

"Did Olan choose the work before the clerk priced his return against yours?"

Sela put the next clean nail into her case. "He chose wages. The clerk chose what those wages had to purchase."

Ty moved closer to see the payment. The woman turned her wrist away, but the disc had already caught the light. One side carried a crown pressed over an old scar. The other held a long line above six cuts.

Ty's hand stopped beside his sickle.

"That crown belonged to Griswald before Erebos gave him another title."

Jade shifted her cloth away from the white piece. "Was he already working for Erebos when you knew that crown?"

"He wore it while promising a broken world he would protect them. Erebos knew which promise to bend until Griswald called the leash a duty."

Ty had spoken about enemies with less anger. Jade stored that difference beside the crown instead of trying to fix it in the street.

Jade watched his shoulders rather than the disc. He carried recognition there, along with the anger he usually tried to spend before anyone asked what it cost.

The worker looked from Ty's bones to the chained rib. "Seventh Captain Griswald pays one disc after every origin is erased from the return road."

The name changed the mark. Palla had been right to leave it unnamed until somebody supplied a hand, a wage, and a reason to hide it.

Nessa removed the disc from the worker's wrist without cutting the cord. "Why does erasing your son's origin keep his transfer permanent?"

"The route can send him forward as skilled cargo. It can send him back as failed cargo while his house still knows where he belongs."

"Who promised the erased house could never call him back?"

"The pay clerk who moved him ahead of the food count."

Jade looked at the six bowls. The seventh had traveled with someone, either as proof of a place or because a hungry person refused to leave it.

Under the cart, a heel scraped stone.

Ty knelt on the far side and waited for Jade to release his arm. She did. He moved the cart only after Nessa set her cutter against the opposite wheel.

The axle rose enough to expose a man strapped inside a freight frame. Four wooden house strips crossed his chest. Iron nails passed through each strip into sockets along the frame, holding the numbers above his ribs.

His face had gone dark around the mouth. A leather band beneath his sternum tightened whenever one of the empty houses settled on its foundation.

The man's lips worked against the frame. Jade leaned close enough for her left ear to catch him.

"Cut the upper strap because the frame has already taken three breaths from me."

Nessa touched his shoulder. "Give me your name before I cut anything attached to your houses."

"Daro Pell carried the doors because my wife was promised the next clean transfer."

Sela looked away from him. Her work case held the same empty loops waiting for five more payments.

"His breath ends before our ten minute check," Ty said.

Nessa put two fingers against the man's neck. "The upper strap keeps his chest from expanding, but these four nails carry the house load. Pull the nails before cutting leather."

The route worker tightened her grip on the pry bar. "Removing those nails writes all four origins back onto the lane."

"Then your son's return protection depends on another person carrying houses until his body fails."

"It depends on everyone finishing the work they accepted."

The carrier's chest moved less on the next attempt.

Jade's right eye saw the lines thicken around the four nails. Her borrowed hand rose toward them. She pressed the wrist beneath her thigh and kept watching.

Nessa locked her cutter around the first nail. Her shortened ring finger slipped from the handle, so she reset the brass catch and used her forearm to close it.

"I need four cuts, and each loose strip gets tied to the return fiber before the next one leaves."

Ty watched the carrier's mouth. "You have time for two at his current breath."

"Then lift the frame from his sternum while I cut all four."

Ty put both hands beneath the upper bar. The chained rib pulled toward the house strips. Jade saw his left shoulder dip and called their command.

"Borrowed means release the frame and move sideways now."

Ty released it. The frame dropped against the carrier's chest.

The man's next breath stopped halfway in.

Ty's sickle came out before Nessa's cutter closed on the first nail.

He cut the upper leather strap.

The carrier inhaled. All four house strips snapped away from his ribs.

Weight struck the lane.

Nessa's cutter hit the stone and buried its edge through the floor. Her damaged forearm followed until the brass lock stopped against her bandage. Ty's feet broke through two paving blocks while his loose ribs flew toward separate doorways.

Jade's right eye pulled her face toward the handcart. The white piece behind it found every erased hole at once, using her open lid as another clean edge.

She dropped onto her left shoulder before the route could turn her head farther. Her white hand caught Ty's belt, and his chained rib dragged both of them toward the four house strips.

"Borrowed means release my belt and move sideways now," Ty said.

Jade opened the hand. Gravity took the arm toward the nearest doorway while she rolled the rest of her body in the other direction.

The route worker stayed upright. Her brass pay disc held her shoes against the lane.

Nessa saw it too. "Your wages exempt you from the weight you leave on carriers."

"The disc means my work remains counted and paid."

The three field fingers climbed from beneath the cart and entered the empty nail sockets one by one. The fourth socket pulled at Ty's missing finger as if expecting it to complete the hand.

Across the supply platform, Nessa's return fiber went straight.

One held pull came from Meren. Two followed.

Nessa tried to answer with her cutter. Borrowed gravity kept the blade inside the floor.

The fiber tightened around her left elbow and began sliding into the lane. On the other side of the road, Palla and the black knuckle moved with it.

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