Three collection beacons pulsed beneath the refuge floor.

Kest had named what waited beside them: Marda and the little ones.

“How do we reach the western burrows?” I asked.

Greymarrow pushed a broken route into my awareness. The restored vein extended only to the refuge wall. Beyond it, the map dissolved into cold gaps, collapsed galleries, and one steep line descending behind the sleeping niches.

Kest followed my attention. “Ash chute.”

“Is it large enough for me?”

“It was built for furnace waste.”

“That does not answer the question favorably.”

She limped to the center niche and dug her claws into its lower seam. Tallow helped from the other side. The stone bed folded upward, exposing a square shaft that smelled of old soot and wet limestone.

The third beacon moved again.

Slowly. A few feet at most. Then it stopped.

Whatever carried it was hurt, trapped, or both.

Tallow climbed into my hollow without waiting for permission. Kest studied the chute, then my cracked boards.

“You go first,” she said.

“So my remains can improve the landing?”

“So I know where not to land.”

I lowered myself over the edge. Pale fibers caught the stone lip while my weight hung beneath them. They were not designed as arms, a point they communicated through immediate pain.

I let go.

The chute dropped sharply, turned once, and demonstrated why furnace ash required no comfort. I struck one wall, gathered force through Stored Tension, and released a shallow burst against the next bend. It kept me from tumbling, though not from reconsidering every professional decision that had brought me here.

Tallow clung inside my hollow. His horn painted brief amber circles across the stone.

The shaft ended in a mound of packed soot. I hit base-first, sank several inches, and remained upright.

A small victory. I was learning to set reasonable standards.

Kest tucked the severed pry-bar tip from the refuge beneath her good wing, then descended backward using her claws as brakes. Her injured wing dragged despite her efforts to protect it. When she reached the final drop, I opened my lid beneath her. She landed across my rim, hissed, and immediately climbed off.

“Mention that to no one.”

I answered with a dry clack. She seemed to understand the spirit of it.

The western service tunnel stretched ahead without light. Signal Recognition gave me three cold directions but no map. Two beacons remained together. The third pulsed farther west, moved once, and became still.

We followed it.

The tunnel changed as we descended. Greymarrow’s fitted limestone gave way to raw grey rock scored by broad digging claws. Support arches appeared every twenty feet. The first three were old but sound. The fourth had been split outward by a controlled blast.

White Guild powder clung to the fracture.

Kest touched it with one claw. “Collectors.”

I traced a fiber through the powder and drew the expanding shape of the blast against the floor. A low-flame reclamation charge: heavy pressure, intended to open a wall without burning what waited behind it.

“It burned enough.”

Grey feathers stuck to the rock. Farther on, dark blood marked the floor beside a set of broad, dragging tracks.

Marda had fought her way away from the blast.

The passage narrowed where the ceiling had fallen. A slab blocked most of the route, leaving a triangular gap near the floor. Kest squeezed through. Tallow followed. I measured the opening and found it smaller than my least negotiable dimension.

“Keep going,” Kest called from the other side.

The moving beacon pulsed once.

Stone groaned ahead.

I answered with one hard knock and pressed my lid against the slab.

The rock weighed several times more than I did, but it rested on loose rubble rather than solid floor. I charged Stored Tension carefully. My strap tightened over the waxed split.

The slab shifted a fraction.

Kest reached back through the gap and pulled stones from beneath its far edge. Tallow heated a narrow seam until trapped moisture snapped into steam. I released a measured burst.

The slab rolled six inches and settled.

Enough.

I scraped through, leaving a strip of wax on the stone.

The chamber beyond had once been a burrow nursery. Low alcoves ringed the walls, and smooth channels crossed the floor to carry mineral water. A reclamation blast had opened the ceiling and buried half the room.

At the center stood Marda.

She was longer than a draft horse and lower to the ground, her body wrapped in overlapping plates of grey-brown stone. Shovel-shaped foreclaws had torn trenches through the floor. One eye fixed on us, black and bright. The other was clouded white beneath a line of fresh burns.

A cracked lintel rested across her armored back.

Beneath her, two children of different species huddled in the space she had refused to let the ceiling take. One was covered in rust-colored fur and held six digging fingers over its face. The other had blue scales, translucent ear-fins, and a tail wound tightly around one ankle.

Brass tags had been fixed around both of their necks.

A third tag had been hammered between Marda’s shoulder plates.

All three pulsed inside my awareness.

Marda saw me and bared mineral teeth.

“Guild sends a box now.”

Her voice sounded like two millstones disagreeing.

Kest stepped between us. “He is not Guild.”

“Smells of their marks.”

“He was their appraiser.”

“That is worse.”

I could not fault her reasoning.

The lintel cracked above her. Pebbles fell between the children. I struck my lid against the floor and pointed toward the failing ceiling.

Marda’s good eye narrowed. “Chest speaks?”

“Not here,” Kest said. “The stone is dead. But he can write.”

She dropped the pry-bar tip in front of me. I caught it between two fibers and scratched a short reply into the dust.

CEILING FIRST. PROFESSIONAL FAILURES AFTER.

Kest read only the first two words aloud.

I moved closer and pressed my base to the floor. Vibrations resolved the buried load. Marda held the broken lintel, but the real weight came from a ceiling slab leaning against the western wall. If she moved, the slab would rotate down through the nursery.

A rectangular Guild blast baffle remained wedged beneath one corner. Its layered black metal had absorbed the first explosion and bent into a shallow curve. Two mounting pins had failed. The final pin was tearing free.

When it broke, Marda would not be strong enough to hold the new load.

I touched the baffle with one fiber.

Three useful properties emerged through appraisal: a ceramic mesh that spread impacts across its surface, channels that shed heat into the mounting frame, and angled layers that turned fragments aside.

The baffle could reinforce the slab for another hour if we reset it.

We did not have an hour. The Guild knew where the tags were, and the workers’ receiver had already begun descending from the tollhouse.

Signal Recognition felt its distant pulse above us.

I scratched our first instruction into the dust: CHILDREN THROUGH GAP.

Marda’s foreclaws dug deeper. “Ceiling falls if I move.”

I scratched: NOT YET.

I drew the load path: lintel, western slab, failing baffle, eastern notch. Kest checked the diagram, translated it to Marda, and tested each point herself. Marda listened without trusting me, which was the appropriate response to both strangers and structural advice.

Kest traced the diagram as she translated. “The baffle fails first. When it does, the chest takes its position. You lift. I pull the children clear. Then we drive the lintel into the eastern notch.”

Kest looked at my split board. “You cannot hold that slab.”

I opened my lid around the edge of the baffle.

Kest understood first. “No. You don’t know what its property will do to Stored Tension.”

I scratched two words.

ESTIMATE. CHECK.

“Is that what you called the white mark?”

The question landed cleanly.

I knocked once for yes and pushed the pry-bar tip toward the diagram.

I showed her the failing pin, the bent layers, and the eastern notch. She climbed the rubble, tested each point, then returned.

“The notch will hold,” she said reluctantly. “If Marda can lift high enough.”

“I can,” Marda growled.

“And if you don’t split,” Kest added to me.

I closed my lid around the baffle. That variable had already received all the analysis it deserved.

The final mounting pin squealed.

I wrapped my fibers around the blast baffle and invoked Claim Property.

Black metal dissolved into red-blue light. The corner it supported dropped an inch before Marda caught the added weight with a roar.

[CLAIM: GUILD BLAST BAFFLE]

Impact Damping: Disperse a portion of sudden physical force across your structure.

Heat Shedding: Release accumulated heat through your exterior surfaces.

Fragment Deflection: Turn aside small, fast-moving debris at favorable angles.

Choose one.

Heat Shedding would work well with Tallow and future forge work. Fragment Deflection offered protection against arrows, chips, and shrapnel. Both were valuable.

Neither would keep a ceiling from turning me into kindling.

I chose Impact Damping.

[COMPATIBILITY WARNING]

Impact Damping opposes Stored Tension during simultaneous activation.

Pattern Vault: 3 learned | Active slots: 3/3

Instability: Strained

The new property entered my boards like cold oil.

Stored Tension pulled force inward. Impact Damping spread it outward. My body tried to obey both instructions at once.

The result was immediate disagreement.

My iron bands twisted. The crack in my left board opened, closed, then opened along a second line. Pale fibers spilled over my lower lip without command.

Every tag in the chamber smelled suddenly exquisite.

“Calder,” Kest warned.

The ceiling shifted.

I drove myself beneath the falling corner.

Stone struck my lid.

Impact Damping hurled the force across every board. Stored Tension seized what remained and packed it into my hinge. Pain became directionless. One rear corner flattened against the floor while my lid strained upward.

The fibers inside me snapped toward the nearest child’s brass tag.

I could not stop them.

Kest could.

She slammed the severed pry-bar tip through my open hinge. My lid caught against it inches above the blue-scaled child. The fibers recoiled from the iron.

“You said you couldn’t eat living things,” she hissed.

I struck one fiber against the brass tag, trying to show her what the hunger wanted.

“I know the tag isn’t living,” she said. “The neck under it is.”

Instability crawled through my grain, turning hunger into a physical tremor. Willpower did not dismiss it. The conflicting properties continued to grind against each other.

I struck the floor twice and jerked my lid toward the passage.

Kest dragged the furred child out first. Tallow guided it toward the passage with quick amber gestures. The scaled child clung to Marda’s foreleg until Marda lowered her head and touched its brow with hers.

“Go, Pebble.”

Kest pulled Pebble clear.

I knocked three times. Kest shouted, “Now!”

The stonejaw rose.

The full weight struck me. Impact spread across my body while Stored Tension accumulated beneath it. My straps screamed. The pry-bar tip bent between my jaws.

Marda drove both foreclaws under the broken lintel and lifted. For one instant, the eastern notch stood open.

I released everything.

Stored force erupted through my lid. The slab rose just enough. Marda twisted, shoved the lintel sideways, and buried its end in the notch.

The ceiling dropped onto the new brace.

Stone thundered. Dust erased the chamber.

When it cleared, the lintel remained in place.

So did I, though one corner no longer agreed with the others about what shape a chest should be.

Kest pulled the pry-bar fragment from my hinge. I closed my lid before my fibers could reach again.

The strain did not vanish. Stored Tension and Impact Damping sat inside me like two surveyors issuing opposite instructions to the same crew.

Marda stepped away from the brace. Without the ceiling on her back, she seemed larger.

She lowered her blunt head until her good eye aligned with my keyplate.

“Box held.”

“Temporarily.”

Kest translated my click as, “Yes.”

I chose not to correct her.

The Guild receiver continued descending. We still had three tags announcing our location.

Up close, the tags differed from Kest’s. No chains connected them to cages. Instead, three enchantment lines met at a grounding dimple beneath each Guild seal. Break the outer casing and the suppression line would discharge into the wearer. Press the dimple first, and the lines would collapse safely.

I scratched the removal sequence around a drawing of the tag. Kest read it aloud. “Tallow heats the seal. I press the dimple. Marda breaks the clasp. One at a time.”

Marda’s tag came first. Then the furred child’s. Pebble trembled when Kest approached, but Tallow tapped two fingers against its hand.

Tok-tok.

Pebble held still.

The final clasp broke. Its beacon vanished from my awareness.

The distant receiver stopped descending.

Three residents recovered. Three signals gone. A clean success, except that the inside of Pebble’s tag carried a fourth enchantment line.

Kest saw me inspecting it. “What?”

I touched the line. It held no restraint command and no ownership mark. It had recorded pressure changes, opened passages, and every pulse of dungeon recognition surrounding its wearer.

The other two tags carried the same hidden line.

Greymarrow opened doors for frightened children. Shifted walls to shelter them. Woke failing veins when they passed.

The tags had recorded every response.

The Guild had not marked the children merely to find them.

It had used them to teach the heart crew how to find Greymarrow.