The hook lifted Ty high enough that his feet left the frozen rail.
Pressure closed around his ribs and upper arm. The walking frame held him like cargo, not a prisoner. Metal dug through his coat, found bruised bone, and squeezed until his breath came out thin.
Blue flattened herself against his shoulder, one hand buried in his collar.
"Your ribs are making choices I do not approve of," she said. "Make the machine regret touching you soon before I start panicking professionally."
"Working on a complaint with several injuries attached," Ty said.
The frame turned with Ty caught against its hook.
That turn mattered more than the lift. It moved him over the gap where the green vapor rushed through the broken cold strip. Acid climbed in the hollow under his boots. His injured foot hung close enough for the bandage to smoke again.
JJ started toward him before Carden shifted left.
Carden put his serrated blade between them and struck the ice at her feet. Red force cracked through the frozen crust in branching lines. She jumped back before the split opened under her boots. The move saved her leg and cost her two steps.
Those two steps felt like a room closing.
Ty tried to twist inside the hook. The frame answered by tightening around him. His burned palm left streaks on the metal where skin had opened again.
Iven Marr stood behind the attendants with one hand raised.
"Keep the captive high and clear of the rebel guard," he said. "Value drops when desperation reaches him first today."
JJ looked at him over Carden’s blade without blinking.
"Your market language makes me want to remove your teeth one policy at a time," she said.
Carden laughed and moved with the sound. He cut low first, then reversed high toward her shoulder. JJ caught the second strike on the flat of her sword and let the force slide down into the frozen road. The ice cracked under both of them.
Osalf stepped into the frame’s path like he owned it.
He looked smaller from Ty’s height. That annoyed Ty more than it should have. Osalf’s coat was torn at the sleeve, acid mud marked his boots, and one side of his jaw had already begun to swell from Carden’s knee. He still stood like the road owed him attention.
"Three plates, Ty, and the middle one lies," Osalf said. "Make it step where the road rings hollow."
The order made no sense until Ty looked down.
The rail plates under the frame sat unevenly. Some were sunk deep in mud. Three ahead of them had clean rust lines around the edges, as if water moved below. Osalf had walked through that center lane during the first exchange.
He had been planting something under their feet.
Ty felt anger sharpen into something he could use.
"You could have mentioned the road was loaded," Ty said.
"You were busy freezing it and bleeding on public property."
"That answer gives me less comfort than you think."
The frame carried Ty another step toward the plates.
One plate rang under its left foot and held.
Osalf’s fingers made one brief twitch at his side.
Nothing happened yet because timing still mattered more.
Timed force, Ty realized. Osalf had set the plate to wait. The old Bull wanted the frame deeper before the road bit back.
Vaela saw Osalf watching the ground too closely.
She closed one valve and opened another at her shoulder. The vapor changed direction, lifting higher around the frame’s knees. It reached the hook and began to smoke along the edges near Ty’s coat.
The metal warmed against his ribs through the coat.
Blue made a strangled sound near his ear.
"If the hook softens, it crushes unevenly at the hinge," she said. "That is a terrible kind of opportunity for ribs."
"You have been waiting all morning to say that."
"I prefer opportunities that involve snacks and fewer broken ribs."
Ty jammed his good foot against the frame’s chest plate.
The machine dragged him anyway toward Osalf’s trap.
Its engine spine pulsed with each step. Ty felt the rhythm through the hook. Heavy, pause, heavy, pause. The pilot or control charm inside favored the left leg. The right leg corrected late every time the road shifted under it.
That rhythm was usable if pain left room.
Ty waited for the left foot to lift.
Waiting hurt. His body hated stillness when the hook pressed harder with each breath. His right shoulder burned where metal trapped the joint. His numb foot swung above acid and gave him nothing useful from below.
The left leg rose with its usual pause.
Ty kicked hard into the chest plate with his good foot.
The strike barely moved the frame. It moved the timing. The right leg corrected too early, hit a rail tooth, and scraped sideways. The frame’s left foot came down on the second hollow plate rather than the solid strip beside it.
The road rang under the misplaced weight below.
Osalf snapped his fingers before Carden recovered balance.
The plate punched upward through mud and acid.
Force burst from underneath, not bright, not clean, just hard enough to throw mud, rust, and acid slush into the knee joint. The frame lurched. The hook loosened for half a breath.
Ty sucked air through his teeth and slammed his elbow into the inner hinge.
Pain flared from shoulder to wrist. The hinge shifted.
Blue crawled forward before he could stop her. She grabbed the wire of a loosened rivet with both hands and wedged her tiny body against the hook’s catch.
"Blue, move before it snaps shut on you," Ty said.
"I am small enough to be useful and angry enough to be stupid," she said. "You are not allowed to waste either quality."
JJ saw what Blue was doing from below.
Her face went hard in a way Ty knew.
Carden saw it too and changed targets. His blade angled away from JJ, toward the frame and the small shape on Ty’s shoulder.
JJ hit him before the cut traveled farther.
The impact sounded ugly. Sword met serration, shoulder met armor, boot met ice. Carden slid back a step, laughing through clenched teeth.
"That little thing matters to him more than orders, good to know," Carden said.
"Everything matters to someone if you are not empty enough," JJ said.
Carden’s expression shifted when the words landed cleanly.
JJ used that twitch. Her knee drove into his thigh, and her sword pommel cracked against the side of his helmet. He stumbled into the edge of Vaela’s vapor and swore as acid licked at the red plates.
Tressa’s shadow pool snapped open behind the support wall.
"Last wounded through before the road turns into soup," she shouted. "Anyone choosing heroics can carry their own missing limbs."
Rosana dragged the second stretcher across the safer strip. Vellor reached out from under the blanket and grabbed a supply strap with his good hand. Milo shoved from the rear with his shoulder and cursed every crate by name.
Xuan Wei stayed near the ceiling line with one palm against stone. His wraiths pulled at the frame’s head casing, forcing it to look away from JJ whenever Carden tried to press her toward the acid.
Ronnick crouched over the remains of two spiders and pulled a red lens free.
"Osalf, third plate is unstable under the right foot," he called. "Break it early and the whole frame falls toward Ty."
"That is why I am waiting for the proper weight," Osalf said.
"Waiting is less elegant from below the machine."
"Most correct timing is unpleasant for witnesses below."
Ty almost laughed. The hook stole most of it.
Iven noticed the exchange and gave a small nod to the veiled attendants. They moved forward with their metal fans, not toward Iven this time. Toward Osalf.
Workers again, because Iven spent people before metal.
Ty saw one attendant’s hands shaking around the handle. Acid had eaten through the fan edge. The person kept walking because Iven had nodded, and orders from clean men had weight.
Ty kicked the frame again, weaker this time.
The machine turned enough for the hook to swing. Blue held the catch. Ty’s ribs paid for the change, but the hook dragged him near the nearest attendant.
"Drop the fan and get behind the wall," Ty said. "Iven can replace metal faster than hands more easily."
The attendant froze with the ruined fan shaking.
Iven’s voice sharpened from behind the vapor immediately.
"Forward means forward until I say otherwise under my contract."
The attendant moved again because fear had a chain.
Ty hooked his burned fingers around the broken fan rim and yanked. Skin tore open across his palm. The fan came loose. The attendant stumbled back empty handed, staring at him through the veil.
"Run while confusion is doing the heavy work," Ty said.
The attendant ran without waiting for another order.
Iven watched that happen without moving his hands.
His face gave nothing away, which made Ty trust the next order even less.
"Vaela, higher pressure on the captive before he pulls loose," Iven said. "If he wants to buy workers, let him pay in skin."
Vaela touched the tank controls with careful fingers.
Osalf moved before she finished the adjustment fully.
His first timed pocket detonated under Carden’s rear foot. The blast threw the red officer off balance and opened JJ’s lane. The second detonated beneath Vaela’s left side, not close enough to break her, close enough to shove her shoulder into the tank harness.
The third charge waited under the road still.
Ty felt the frame lift its right foot.
The engine paused between one mistake and another.
Osalf looked up at him through green vapor.
That look had a clear command inside it.
Ty drove both knees toward the frame’s chest and pulled against the hook. Blue screamed near his shoulder, more anger than fear. The catch slipped one tooth. The frame corrected hard with the right leg and planted exactly where Osalf needed it.
The third plate rang like a struck bell.
Osalf closed his fist around the waiting moment.
The road burst under the frame’s right leg.
Mud, ice, acid, and old rail teeth shot upward into the leg assembly. The right knee buckled. The frame dropped fast, taking Ty with it. The hook opened as the catch finally broke, and Blue tumbled into his collar when he hit the frozen road.
JJ reached him first through the broken slush.
She grabbed his coat under the arm and hauled him out from beneath the hook before the frame slammed sideways. The impact smashed the broken rail where his legs had been.
Ty’s injured foot hit the ground and folded.
He stayed upright because JJ refused to let gravity finish the argument.
"You are making a habit of being under large things," she said. "That habit is cancelled before it becomes a religion."
"File the complaint after we stop breathing acid."
The fallen frame blocked half the road. Vapor pooled against its metal body and rolled around both sides. Tressa’s route flickered behind the support wall, still open, still waiting, but thinner now.
Rosana shouted from the far side of Tressa’s route.
"We have the wounded through, but the route is shrinking faster than Tressa can hold it."
Osalf backed toward Ty and JJ, one hand raised toward Carden, the other toward Vaela.
"Move now before Iven changes the price again," he said. "I bought seconds with the road, not victory."
Iven stepped away from the fallen frame and brushed mud from one sleeve. The gesture looked ridiculous in the acid road, which made it worse. He had lost a machine, workers, position, and time. He still looked like a man balancing expenses.
He turned toward the armored transport behind him.
"Bring the heavy volume forward before they recover footing," he said. "Open the rear locks and prepare the sealed chain."
The transport answered with a deep internal scrape.
Ty felt it through the road and his teeth.
The sound came through restraints, not an engine.
Something inside the transport shifted against heavy restraints.
Osalf went still in a way soldiers noticed.
That scared Ty more than the acid around them.
The rear doors of the transport cracked open, and cold air rolled out with the smell of old bone.