Gate Spur emptied before the hall learned morning had arrived.
No one called it dawn under that old stone. There was no sky, only colder air pushing down the stair cracks and a faint grayness where the outer seams had failed. The Black Bulls moved through it with packs, stretchers, wrapped weapons, and the grief roll tied across the scarred Bull’s chest.
Ty carried a coil of wire because Milo had handed it to him with a wounded expression and disappeared before refusal found words.
Blue slept under his collar again, tucked close against his throat.
JJ walked two paces behind him with one hand near her sword and the other near the small satchel where she had hidden medical cloth. She had said nothing about the storage room. Ty had said nothing either. Silence worked better when both people understood where the line had been.
Osalf led them toward a maintenance gate sunk behind a row of cracked storage tanks.
The gate looked like it had teeth waiting in the frame.
Not real teeth, but metal ridges along the frame where the old locking bars had warped. When Rosana pushed Vellor’s stretcher through, one ridge caught the blanket and tore a long strip from it. Vellor sucked air through his teeth and tried to sit up.
Rosana pressed him down by the shoulder. "Save your dignity for terrain that cares about witnesses."
Vellor stared at the torn blanket. "Your road is trying to eat me before soldiers get their chance."
Milo walked past with two coils over his shoulders. "That is why locals call it road bite, probably."
Osalf looked back. "No one calls it that outside your imagination."
"They will after I survive and improve your culture."
The drainage road began beyond the gate and sloped into wet dark.
It sloped downward between walls slick with mineral crust. Old rail plates ran under the mud, cracked in places where water had frozen and split them. Every few steps, a metal tooth jutted up through the path. Some were dull. Some were sharp enough to cut boots.
Ty understood the route’s name before anyone explained it.
The road bit anything careless enough to trust old metal.
Ronnick sent three spider constructs ahead. Each was no larger than a hand, built from black wire, brass joints, and thin red lenses that clicked as they turned. They moved lightly over the plates, finding weak spots before bodies stepped there.
Xuan Wei walked behind them with one hand braced against the wall.
He looked worse than the night before. His skin had gone gray around the mouth, and the broken spectacles from the grief roll had been replaced with nothing. He kept blinking as if the world had edges in the wrong places.
Ty slowed until he fell in beside him. "You should be on a stretcher with the others."
Xuan Wei gave him a tired look. "The stretchers are occupied by people with fewer useful ghosts."
"That sounded like a medical excuse invented by pride."
"Most battlefield medicine is pride with cloth wrapped around it."
Tressa laughed from the other side of the path.
Ty had seen her during the escape only as moving black liquid and a voice giving orders. In the road light, she looked younger than her control made her sound. Her hair had been cut close to the jaw on one side and tied back on the other, and her sleeves were stained at the wrists from whatever her portal work cost her.
She rolled a black bead of liquid across her knuckles. "Leave him walking. If he falls, his wraiths complain before he does."
Xuan Wei looked ahead. "They complain because you give them names before work."
"Everyone deserves names, even dead things that carry boxes."
Milo lifted one hand without turning around. "I am alive and still object to carrying boxes."
"You object to weather whenever weather gets ambitious," Tressa said.
"Weather started it long before I made comments."
Ty almost smiled, then the road caught his boot.
A metal tooth cut through the sole and scraped bone along the side of his foot. He caught the wall with one burned palm and paid for that choice immediately. Pain jumped through his hand, foot, ribs, and shoulder so fast his body lost track of which injury had spoken first.
JJ reached him before he fell. She stopped short of grabbing him.
"Your foot is bleeding through the bandage again," she said.
"The road introduced itself through my boot and bone."
"That answer lacks the detail needed for treatment."
"The road has opinions about where bones belong."
Rosana looked back from Vellor’s stretcher. "Wrap it now or bleed into every track we leave."
Ty sat on a broken rail plate because arguing with her felt inefficient. JJ crouched, took the bandage from her satchel, and waited until he put his heel where she could reach it.
Blue stirred under his collar. "If the road is eating people, I vote we stop feeding it."
"Motion carries the vote against staying here today," Milo said. "We abandon infrastructure before it develops appetite for soldiers."
Osalf returned from the front with the map tucked under his arm. "We keep moving after the wrap is tight."
Ty looked up at him. "You timed that like a man hoping to start another argument."
"I timed it like a man who needs you angry enough to listen."
JJ wrapped the cut with efficient hands. The pressure hurt, but it stopped the bleeding before it reached the mud. Ty watched her fingers because looking at Osalf would invite his face to do something stupid.
Osalf crouched across from him. "There is one more reason the king wants the arena in three days."
Ty exhaled through his nose. "That sentence has become a doorway to bad rooms."
"Your original body is missing from our vault."
JJ’s hands paused on the bandage before she pulled it tight.
Blue lifted her head fully. "Define original before I start screaming at everyone."
Osalf looked at the road behind them before answering. "When you arrived in this world, another body appeared separately. Bone. Empty. Heavy enough that two Bulls dragged it with chains before Rui-Chai ordered it sealed."
Ty’s skin went colder than the tunnel air.
The skeletal body from Earth had been a problem he still failed to understand. He had lived in bone. He had died wrong. He had crossed wrong. Hearing that a second version of it had been dragged around like cargo made his stomach twist.
"You had it locked away from me, Osalf," Ty said.
"Rui-Chai had it guarded under sealed orders."
"That correction is cowardice with polish on top."
Osalf accepted the hit. "Yes. We had it under Black Bull guard."
Tressa came closer, her black liquid bead disappearing into her sleeve. "Erebos came to Rui-Chai for it personally."
Ty looked at her. "Of course he did, because old signatures follow old trouble."
"He said the body mattered when Vishu’s name returned. He called it an anchor, then refused to explain whether anchors hold ships or drown people."
Blue folded her arms against Ty’s collar. "That sounds like Erebos earned several small bites."
"The body was stolen one month before you appeared," Osalf said. "Vault breach. Clean entry. No random theft. Whoever took it knew exactly which sealed room to open."
Ty pushed his heel into the mud and winced. "You think Threxian has it in his transport."
"I think the king is moving something under heavy guard along a supply route that crosses the drainage road before noon."
JJ tied the bandage off. "You brought this up after we entered the route."
"Because turning back gives us patrol teeth and no lead."
"You used the road to choose for us."
Osalf’s eyes stayed on Ty. "I used the road to force the question before fear made it theoretical."
Ty stood too fast and regretted it. "Everyone here keeps finding new ways to call me important while hiding the part where they touched my body without asking."
Ronnick’s spiders clicked ahead, all three at once.
The sound cut through the argument before Osalf answered.
Ronnick raised one hand. His fingers twitched in small commands, and the spiders froze along the track. Their red lenses blinked in rapid patterns.
"Heavy movement ahead, and too much metal for this road."
Milo lowered the coils from his shoulders. "Define heavy before I make an emotional decision."
"Armored transport. At least one walking frame. Multiple escorts. They are early."
Tressa looked at Osalf. "Your route just bit back harder than expected."
Osalf folded the map without looking down. "Positions before the transport reaches the bend and sees us."
The word moved through the group faster than panic. Rosana pulled Vellor’s stretcher behind a broken support wall. Xuan Wei pressed his palm to the tunnel stone and released three pale wraiths that crawled along the ceiling rather than floating. Tressa’s liquid spread at her feet in a dark sheet thin enough to hide in the mud.
JJ stepped beside Ty. "You are hurt badly enough to be slow."
"That keeps being true without stopping the frame."
"It should stop stupidity eventually if pain does its job."
"Your faith in injury is touching and poorly timed."
The tunnel ahead shook with the first step, then another followed through the plates.
Mist rolled through the drainage road, pushed by old pressure vents and the movement of something large. Ronnick’s spiders retreated under the rail plates. One came back with half its legs missing.
The walking frame emerged first, filling the narrow road.
It was shaped like a man only because someone cruel had started there and lost interest. Dark armor plates hung over a thick engine spine. Its arms ended in hooked braces built to lift cargo or crush bodies, and a royal seal had been bolted to its chest with fresh gold nails.
Behind it came three officers in kingdom colors.
The first wore red armor built from jagged plates that looked designed to catch blades and hold them. He had wild red hair tied back with wire and a grin that treated the tunnel like a private joke.
The second wore green, smooth and close to the body, with a mask covering everything below the eyes. Tubes ran from the mask into a tank strapped to her back.
The third wore gold trimmed in white, too clean for the drainage road and too comfortable with that insult.
Ty felt JJ’s breath change beside him before she named them.
"Give me names before they reach knife range," he said quietly.
"Red is Carden, and he enjoys public work," she answered. "Green is Vaela. Gold is Sir Iven Marr."
Blue’s voice came small near his ear. "I dislike knowing they have names this early."
Carden lifted one hand, and the walking frame stopped.
His grin widened when he saw Osalf in the tunnel. "The road really does cough up old criminals when kicked."
Osalf stepped into view with both hands empty. "You are far from your parade route, Carden."
"Parades lack mud. I came for the cargo thief."
Ty’s hands tightened around pain he had nowhere to put.
JJ’s fingers brushed his sleeve once. Warning. Not comfort.
Iven Marr looked past Osalf, eyes moving over the broken supports and the hidden bodies too accurately. "Rui-Chai’s people are wounded. Spread pressure, no clean line, no heroic charges."
Vaela touched the tube at her mask. Green vapor pushed from a side valve and rolled low over the mud.
Rosana cursed from behind the stretcher. "Acid breath. Keep blankets over exposed skin now."
Osalf’s voice cut through the tunnel. "Tressa, open a drag route. Xuan Wei, ceiling cover. Ronnick, blind the frame."
Ty stepped forward before the plan reached him.
Osalf caught the movement without looking. "You stay captive until their assumptions become useful."
Ty stared at the back of his head. "That plan keeps getting worse every time you say it."
"They believe you are leverage, not a fighter. If you expose yourself here, Threxian stops inviting you to the arena and starts cutting pieces off everyone nearby until you answer."
The green vapor reached the first broken rail and began eating the metal.
Tressa’s shadow pool opened under the supply crates at the rear of the group. Xuan Wei’s ceiling wraiths dropped behind the walking frame and clawed at its head casing. Ronnick’s remaining spiders shot forward and threw themselves into the knee gears.
The frame stumbled hard enough to scrape both walls.
Carden laughed and drew a serrated red blade. "Good. Make the road loud enough for witnesses."
Ty took one step before JJ blocked the next.
JJ put her body in front of him. "Captive does not mean useless. It means waiting for the moment that costs them more."
He hated that she sounded right while the road cut him again.
The road bit again under his injured foot.
Ahead of them, Vaela opened the second valve on her mask, and the drainage tunnel filled with green vapor.