From Human to Skeleton: Revived with Infinite System Crystals

Brinna Solt's receipt needle bent inside the route rail when a green blade punched through the latch beneath her table.

The released spring struck her shin. She trapped it under her boot before it could jump into the sorting gears, then pulled the needle free with its point folded against the shaft.

Across the loft, Varo covered the two breath bells with both hands. One bell rang through his left palm. The other gave a scrape and rocked against the wood without finishing its note.

"Close the lower latch before it eats our table."

Brinna crouched and looked through the opening around the green blade. Black grease coated the drawer on the other side. Blue filings clung to its runners, and a woman's hand held the blade steady beyond a cage of green bars.

The hand belonged to somebody who expected the latch to bite back.

"The spring came from their side. If I close it now, that green blade takes the stranger's wrist with it."

Varo lifted his palms from the bells. "Erebos charges this loft whenever an unauthorized route stays open."

"Erebos billed that dead mason at the breathing rate because his chest strap kept moving. I disputed three coins and paid the rest."

She kept her boot on the spring. A narrow payment rail above the table clicked seven times. The strip that slid from it bore King Griswald's old crown pressed beneath one long cut and six short ones.

Two ground shares waited in the wax fold.

Brinna's room had leaned toward the eastern wall for eleven nights. She had sold her previous share to the family below at four times its printed value, then slept with one foot tied to the bed frame. These two could level her floor for a month. Selling one would cover meals until the next freight season.

Varo saw the wax and moved closer. "You condemn their work while collecting every premium their office sends."

"Disgust has never kept my bed from sliding into the wash bucket."

She opened the order. Griswald had written across the packing side rather than using an office clerk.

Preserve the carrier bound through linked black iron. Keep the east service door unlatched until a true answer returns. Charge the work to my seventh account.

The order left out the other breathing person and set no limit on what the preserved one could be made to carry.

Brinna tucked one ground share under her collar and left the second in the open fold until proof released it. Griswald had learned that habit as a king, before he started cutting his number into cargo.

The weak breath bell rocked again.

She pulled its route cord across the table. Inside the brass cup, a view no larger than her thumb opened on a storehouse patched from mismatched walls. Black iron fixed a man's wrists to a spindle. Under a white tube beside him, the other carrier lay tied to a red stone rivet, the whole crate chained to floor rings while three people worked around it.

Brinna recognized the woman with the shortened hand from the field report. The skeleton divided among shelves required no report.

Ty had reached the supply settlement alive enough to argue with the workers.

"The named carrier has lost three breaths since the field woman cut the first body free."

Varo bent over the cup. "Then Griswald can buy a healer for once."

"Send one through five borrowed origins and we will spend the morning packing that healer around the spindle too."

Brinna turned the breath bell over. Its underside carried two shallow bowls. The black joint filled one with a slow pull. The red rivet filled the other hard enough to make the brass warm against her fingers.

She could move the pressure between them. The order required one carrier alive, and the completed shift would release the second ground share.

The third carrier's bell rang cleanly from Varo's side of the table.

He understood where her thumb had settled. "Griswald named one because two cost him more."

"He named the iron because he wants whatever answers it, while the bodies remain wrapping."

"Knowing that should move your hand away from the balance tooth."

Brinna pressed her receipt needle through the red bowl and bent its ruined point into a hook. "That knowledge tells me exactly which death will be called a handling error."

Erebos's clerks wrote dead freight as reusable material. The worst receipt in Brinna's drawer belonged to a boy whose chest strap kept pulsing after his throat stopped. They billed him at the breathing rate, and Brinna signed beneath the correction because refusing would have cost her two level months. Twenty eight receipts carried the same signature.

The work had purchased six level months and a place in the warm ration line.

Brinna pulled the balance tooth halfway across.

The black iron loosened around the man's wrists in the viewing cup. His chest rose. Across the table, the other bell missed one note, recovered, then rang with a rough edge.

Varo put his hand over Brinna's needle. "You moved his missing breath into the carrier beneath the red rivet."

"I moved enough pressure to keep Griswald's selected person breathing through the next turn."

"The next turn belongs to somebody whose account never reached this table."

Brinna pulled the needle out from under his hand. The second ground share released from the wax fold and dropped beside her thumb.

The green blade under the table shifted. The woman beyond the latch had felt the transfer. Brinna pictured that hand pushing harder while the funeral engine carried it away from any floor that stayed level.

She could close the latch now, keep both shares, and report that the blade had jammed the spring after completion.

Griswald's order required the east door open until a true answer returned.

Brinna crossed the loft to a narrow door strapped with three iron bands. The top band had buckled during an earlier delivery. Its wood opened onto stone on most days and somewhere worse whenever the Cross Link cuts found a mind worth binding.

Varo followed with the two breath bells. "Leave that door closed and tell Griswald his imitation produced no answer."

"The selected carrier stays alive only while the order keeps paying his pressure."

She lifted the lowest band and left the middle one hanging loose. The east door opened the width of her bent needle.

The black joint inside the distant crate pulled first. Its cuts aligned with the door, then slipped past one another without catching. The iron had copied the shape. It carried none of the old weapon's claim.

The door widened anyway.

Cold stone appeared beyond it. A chipped piece of black blade had been driven beneath a restraint ring set into the floor of another world. A large hand twisted the fragment while a prisoner dragged one bound leg away from a line of falling ceiling hooks.

The fragment carried a thought through the open door before Brinna saw the man's face.

Get up. Ty would mock me forever if I let one ugly chain win.

The thought struck the false joint in the supply crate. Every linked cut turned toward the true fragment. The preserved carrier cried out as the iron forced his wrists together, and the third breath bell lost another piece of its note.

Varo reached for the loose band. "That answer can pull our whole loft through the service frame."

Brinna caught his sleeve and drove her bent needle through the band hole. The door stayed open.

On the stone beyond it, the prisoner tried to shove the large man toward a brighter split in the wall. He ignored the route calling through his blade fragment and put his shoulder under the prisoner's arm.

"Curse me later. Put your weight on my shoulder and move."

The fragment bent under his grip. A fresh crack ran from its chipped end toward his thumb.

Brinna fitted the courier clasp around the pull before the crack could break it entirely. One jaw caught the true fragment. The other closed around the false joint beside Ty, leaving Griswald's east door between them.

The large man looked straight through the narrow opening as if he could see the hands on Brinna's side.

"Whoever keeps pulling can wait until this prisoner walks out with me."

He hauled the prisoner toward the bright split. The damaged fragment stayed caught in Brinna's clasp, stretching the open route behind him.

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