The black movement beneath Kael’s forearm cut split the skin from within. A creature no longer than his finger pushed through the blood, flat as wet paper, and more of them rose from old wounds along his ribs, thigh, and shoulder.
Their mouths were rings of tiny white marks. One bit an old cut and sucked until the blood faded from red to gray, although the pain and torn flesh remained.
Vaela swore. "Those are record leeches, and they leave the wound while taking whatever shows how it happened."
Jaro held both hands away from his injuries. "I have reached my limit for creatures coming out of people." Orrek grabbed one from Kael’s shoulder, and it wrapped around his thumb before biting through the nail.
Orrek slammed it against the wall.
SPLAT!
Black fluid streaked the stone, and wall pores began pulling it inward. Renn clutched the count cloth. "The wound stays, but anyone who finds it later will not know what caused it."
Kael ground his boot across the feeding pores. "Keep watching the wounds, and kill anything that changes their color."
The leeches multiplied through Kael’s cuts, and black shapes stirred beneath every bruise. He committed one shard each to Cellular Acceleration, Primordial Marrow Layer, Core Mass Density, and Regenerative Dominion so living tissue and bone could resist the feeding long enough for him to kill it.
ALLOCATE!
===================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ HOSTILE PRESSURE DETECTED: Record Leech Wound-Erasure Feeding
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +4
≫ UNALLOCATED EXISTENTIAL SHARDS: 4
--------------------------------------------------------------------
▶ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND RECEIVED
▶ SHARD ALLOCATION REGISTERED: +4 TOTAL
▶ ALLOCATION DISTRIBUTION:
- Core Mass Density -> 49
- Cellular Acceleration -> 17
- Regenerative Dominion -> 40
- Primordial Marrow Layer -> 33
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ UNALLOCATED EXISTENTIAL SHARDS: 0
===================================================
Cellular Acceleration woke the living edges of his wounds, while Primordial Marrow Layer kept the deeper damage fixed in bone. Core Mass Density hardened the flesh around each bite, and Regenerative Dominion began rebuilding what the leeches stripped away. Another leech bit his ribs.
Kael flexed.
CRACK!
His skin tightened around the creature and crushed it before it could drink. Black fluid burst down his side. The route hissed.
Two more leeches tried the same wound, but the flesh closed hard around their mouths and held them in place. Kael tore both free without widening the cut, proving the new growth had changed more than a number inside the Root.
More leeches rose from the survivors. A worker screamed when three pushed through an old shoulder lash, while another clawed at a bruised neck. The boy with the cracked bowl froze as one climbed from the red line across his palm.
Renn moved toward him, but Vaela caught his sleeve. "Keep your throat covered while you help him. The ceiling already damaged your voice."
Renn pulled his collar over his mouth and kept going. "I counted him, so I am not leaving him alone with it."
A leech sprang from the boy’s palm toward Renn, and Kael caught it in midair.
SNAP!
He crushed it between thumb and forefinger. Black fluid curled into white marks across his knuckles, so he wiped it onto the floor and held his heel over the smear until it stopped moving.
Vaela was already examining the boy’s palm. "There are black seams beneath the old scars. The leeches are using previous damage as doors, so I have to cut the seams before I bind anything."
"Show the others where to cut, and keep them alive," Kael said.
Vaela moved. Her blade did not cut bodies first. It cut the tiny black seams around wounds, the places where the route had threaded ownership into injury. She worked fast and ugly, opening some cuts wider so they could bleed honestly instead of being eaten clean.
SLICE!
A worker screamed. Vaela caught the blood with her sleeve and pressed it over the wound. "Red means we can still see what needs treatment, so do not let the gray spread."
He tore leeches from three survivors with his bare hand, losing skin each time. He did not throw them away. He crushed them against his own forearm until black fluid and red blood mixed.
"The scars stay red, and anyone who looks will know what bit them," he growled.
Jaro found one climbing his own wrist and looked personally betrayed.
"I have barely done anything worth recording."
He bit it before anyone could stop him.
CRUNCH!
Jaro spat black fluid, gagged, and stumbled toward the survivors while Kael searched for the source.
Every small leech pulled toward the same point whenever it fed. Kael followed that movement through the blood.
Behind a curtain of old surgical blades, a swollen leech queen clung to the far wall. It was as long as a man, flat and glossy, with a ringed mouth wide enough to close around a head. Red shapes moved inside it, and every smaller leech bit deeper when the queen opened its mouth.
Vaela saw the smaller bodies turn with it. "The queen is directing the feeding. Kill it first, and the rest should lose their hold long enough for us to cut them out."
The survivors cried out. Kael crossed the chamber in three steps. The queen tried to flatten into the wall.
Kael punched the wall around it.
BOOM!
Stone cracked. The queen peeled loose and whipped toward his face with its ringed mouth open, trying to drink the memory of his first death. Kael caught it by the jaw, but the mouth bit through his palm.
Once his grip closed around its jaw, he drove the queen down onto his knee.
CRUSH!
Its body split along the center. Red and black fluid burst across the chamber, and gray scars reopened as the blood and memories returned. Several survivors sobbed while Renn counted through their cries.
"Twenty-one."
The returned pain struck every body at once. The burned-scalp woman dropped when she remembered a pressure hook entering her ribs, the boy gasped over the mark in his palm, and Orrek’s ruined shoulder gave a wet pop that nearly folded him sideways.
Sova caught Orrek around the waist before he fell and took the weight through her legs. He did not pretend the shoulder was stable, and she did not release him until Vaela confirmed the joint had stayed in place.
Renn counted through clenched teeth while the workers shook. "Twenty-one. Everyone is still here, but nobody moves until Vaela checks the wounds that reopened."
Vaela wiped black fluid from her knife. "Tell me which wound changed and what you remember. I need the cause to treat it."
Jaro kept one hand over his mouth. "My bruise came from a bite servant, and my stomach would like to leave the report there." The ruined queen twitched at Kael’s feet.
The queen’s halves dragged themselves together on thin red strings. Images moved through them: a broken husher mouth, a torn ceiling eye, and Kael’s bleeding hand. He stepped on one half before they joined.
SPLAT!
The other half tried to flatten beneath the wall. Orrek caught it with his boot despite the shaking in his shoulder. "I can hold this piece, but I need both hands to tear it."
Kael leaned harder onto his half and nodded toward Orrek’s hands. "Use both hands on yours. I can keep this one pinned until you finish."
Orrek did not stomp. He lowered himself with effort, grabbed the leech half in both hands, and tore it apart slowly enough that the thing had to remain present for its own death.
RIP!
Black fluid splashed Orrek’s chest, and his hands shook after the effort. Renn kept his damaged voice steady. "I saw Orrek tear it apart, and both pieces are still here where everyone can see them."
Vaela pointed her knife toward the exposed seam. "The wounds returned when the queen split, so say which scars changed while I check them because the wall is already drinking the fluid."
Jaro held up one limp leech. "I will remember the black bodies, the ring mouths, and how terrible they taste. Please trust me and skip the last part."
The boy with the bowl nodded, and Kael drove his fist into the seam where the queen had hidden.
CRACK!
Behind the stone lay empty leech skins and thin translucent veins filled with old red fluid from people who were not in the chamber. Kael tore them out by the handful.
A bronze warning clacked somewhere ahead, and the last leeches shriveled when the final vein tore loose.
Kael looked at the queen’s ruined mouth still clamped around his palm. He tore it free.
RIP!
Blood ran from Kael’s palm. Vaela bound it with cloth from a dead clerk’s robe and watched until the stain remained red. "The wound is open, but the leech took nothing else, so keep pressure on it while I check the others."
She made every survivor uncover old injuries. One man began sobbing when he found a lash mark still gray around the edges, so Vaela explained what she needed to do and waited for his consent before opening the seam. He cursed through the cut, but fresh blood pushed the gray color out.
Renn moved along the line and asked each person the same questions in his own words: where the wound came from, what had changed, and whether the pain felt familiar. Their answers were uneven, yet the wall could no longer replace them with one clean silence.
Vaela cut a simple mark beside the ruined nest so anyone following would know danger had been found there. Kael left the black fluid on his hands, but he kept his injured palm closed over the new bandage instead of treating pain as victory.
The survivors moved with reopened wounds and no false promise of healing. Ahead of them, something wearing a clerk’s robe turned a wet page, and twenty hooked fingers clicked against the stone.
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