The first frost step held until Ty put weight on it.
Then it complained through a thin cracking sound.
The sound ran through the shaft in a thin crackle that made Blue grab his hair and JJ grab his coat. Ty froze with one foot on the lip and one foot on the step, arms spread against wet stone.
"That step gets one complaint before I lose patience," JJ said. "Move slow and keep your weight near the wall."
"My weight is currently negotiating with terror right now," Ty said.
"Tell terror the wall has better footing today."
Ty shifted toward the shaft wall with care.
The step held under his borrowed balance barely.
He hated how much relief hurt. His ribs pulled tight around the old bruise from the frame’s hook. His burned palm had wrapped itself around a crack in the stone and reopened again. Blood mixed with cold water, then froze in a thin pink line along his knuckles.
Blue leaned over his shoulder and looked down.
"The steps are forming from the case, not from the wall," she said. "That feels important in the way bad news feels important."
JJ tested the next step with her sword.
The blade tapped frost and came back with white crystals clinging to the edge. The step held under the steel, but the first step behind Ty had already begun thinning where his foot had left it.
"They are temporary and already thinning behind us," JJ said. "Move before the stairs regret our weight completely."
Ty went down because upward had vanished behind him.
Each step formed just before he needed it. Frost crawled out of the shaft wall, thickened under the water, and shaped itself into a ledge wide enough for one boot. Some steps leaned outward. Some had cracks through the middle. None looked interested in mercy.
JJ stayed one step above him with her hand on the back of his coat.
Blue kept low against his collar because the shaft carried cold air upward in pulses. Every pulse made her shiver. She tried to hide it by glaring at the walls.
"If the corpse is making stairs, it has terrible manners," she said. "A railing would show basic care in this shaft."
"I will note that for the complaint we file with my old bones."
"Use stern language. Bones respect firmness from living people."
The shaft curved slightly as it dropped. Old stone blocks gave way to smoother walls with carved grooves for water flow. Rusted brackets stuck out at intervals, most broken, a few still holding scraps of chain. Ty saw marks cut into the wall near one bracket.
Anchor maintenance numbers marked the wet wall nearby.
He understood none of them in context here.
JJ did, which made the marks useful there.
She leaned close and wiped water from the mark with her thumb.
"This line feeds lower storage under Anchor proper," she said. "Heavy goods were dropped down the shaft and caught by a brake frame."
"That sounds useful if we ignore everything else."
"It sounds old, wet, and likely broken too."
"Useful is having a difficult morning down here."
A scrape came from below and traveled upward.
The case moved again below them with force.
Ty felt it in his teeth before the sound reached him. The heavy volume dragged across stone, stopped, then dragged again. Each scrape pulled at the injured place inside him. The old body gave him no clean call. Calling had shape. This felt like a hook sunk through distance.
He kept moving because stopping made the pull louder.
The fourth step below him formed at a sharper angle than the others.
JJ caught his shoulder before he tested it.
"Skip that one before it takes your foot," she said. "It wants your bad foot first today badly."
"The stairs are developing preferences about victims now."
"Everything around you develops preferences. That is part of the problem."
Ty braced both hands against the wall and lowered himself past the bad step. His injured foot brushed the frost anyway. Cold shot up through the bandage and turned the whole leg useless for one breath.
JJ held him until the tremor passed steady.
Blue stopped talking, which made the shaft worse.
That silence told Ty more than a warning would have.
"Still here and still losing arguments badly today," he said.
"You sound like a man arguing with gravity," JJ said.
"Gravity keeps involving itself without permission down here."
They reached a narrow landing after twenty steps.
It had once been a service notch for workers to stand in while moving heavy loads. Now it held standing water, a rusted hook rail, and a carved arrow pointing down. The frost steps continued below, but the landing gave Ty enough room to put his back against stone and breathe without pretending it was strategic.
Blue climbed out of his collar and sat on the hook rail.
She hugged herself tight on the hook rail.
"Your old body is cold in a way bodies are not supposed to be," she said. "Even dead things usually know how to be finished."
Ty looked down the shaft again toward scraping.
"This one was never allowed to finish anything."
JJ wiped her sword with the edge of her sleeve.
"Then do not let pity pick your next step. Pity is bad at floors."
"You keep saying true things like insults today."
"It saves time when the floor is bad."
Water struck the landing from above and ran past their boots. Behind them, the steps they had already used thinned into clear ice, then into wet air. Retreat was closing one ledge at a time.
Ty pushed away from the wall slowly again.
JJ held up a hand for silence first.
"Thirty breaths before you pretend again at me," she said. "You get thirty without pretending you are fine."
"The case is moving while we breathe here."
"It has a box and gravity. It can wait thirty breaths."
He wanted to argue, but his legs took the offer before his pride formed words. He counted badly. At twelve, the case scraped below them. At fourteen, frost spread across the landing floor around his boots. At eighteen, Blue stood and pointed down the shaft.
"The next steps are wider than before now," she said. "That either means we are close or the trap wants confidence."
"Assume both before either one gets clever first," JJ said.
They descended again with slower feet and hands.
The wider steps felt worse. The narrow ones had demanded care. These pretended to be safe, broad enough for both feet and close enough to invite speed. Ty trusted none of them. JJ trusted them even less. She made him keep one hand against the wall and tested every other step with her blade.
Halfway down, Blue slipped on meltwater underfoot again.
It happened without drama. Her foot hit meltwater, her hand missed a seam, and she slid from Ty’s shoulder toward the open shaft. Ty moved before thought found language. His bad foot hit frost. His burned hand caught her dress.
JJ caught him before the shaft did again.
For three breaths, all three hung in a crooked line against the wall, Ty bent forward, Blue dangling from his fist, JJ’s arm locked around his waist.
Blue looked up at him from his fist.
"I have decided against becoming a shaft decoration," she said. "Please complete the rescue before my courage expires."
Ty pulled her up against his chest hard.
His palm left a red smear on her sleeve.
"Rescue complete. Complaint pending once we breathe again."
JJ hauled both of them back against the wall and pressed her forehead to stone for one breath.
"If either of you does that again, I am leaving my body from irritation."
"That would create paperwork we cannot carry today," Blue said.
"I will haunt the paperwork out of spite."
The case slammed below them against stone hard.
The sound cut through every joke at once.
They moved faster after that without arguing further.
The shaft opened into a lower brake chamber after another dozen steps. Ty reached the last ledge and stopped because stopping was the only choice that kept him from walking straight into the drop.
The chamber below felt less like a room.
It opened like a stone throat below them.
Four sloped channels met over a circular pit. Broken brake arms jutted from the walls like ribs. The heavy volume had lodged against one arm, half on stone, half over the pit. Its sled brace was gone. Three chains trailed from it, each pulled tight in a different direction.
The case rocked once on the broken arm.
Frost poured from the glass around the old body’s hand and formed new steps along the chamber wall. The steps led down toward the case, then stopped where the pit began.
JJ crouched beside Ty at the ledge carefully.
"That case is balanced on a broken brake arm," she said. "If we touch it wrong, it drops down."
"If we leave it there, it drops when the arm gives."
"Then the next attempt needs to be less honest than the last one."
Blue crawled onto a dry patch of stone and stared at the case.
"The old body moved again inside the case," she said. "It put its hand toward you through glass."
Ty had seen and wanted to deny it.
He wanted the memory gone already from him.
The skeletal hand pressed against the inside of the glass. Two missing fingers made the gesture crooked. Frost spread from the palm in lines that looked almost deliberate, reaching toward the ledge where Ty crouched.
JJ put her hand over his wrist before he leaned.
"Your living hand stays here until we know why that one wants you close."
"It may be trying to stop the fall."
"It may be trying to make you part of the weight."
Ty looked at the case, the broken brake arm, the pit, and the thin frost steps leading nowhere useful.
The heavy volume shifted again over the pit.
Stone cracked under it in two places nearby.
The case settled one inch closer to the drop and stayed there, poised over the dark.
Ty swallowed and tasted cold water again hard.
"We need a better anchor before this drops," he said. "And this time, we plan before the old body votes."