Dimitri’s smallest finger split across three upper gallery beams.
The black fiber beneath his wrist wanted five directions. He gave it three and used the remaining two fingers to hold a patient rail against the floor. Twelve beds rested behind his changed hand. Their wheels had stopped turning, yet every bolt carried the weight of the roadback beneath it.
Below Tower Five, address bells fell past his bare feet.
He tried lowering one finger toward them.
The upper gallery moved with it. A bed climbed out of its floor cups, taking an old woman’s breathing hose tight across her mouth. A ward worker caught the frame while Dimitri returned his finger to the beam.
As the bed dropped into place, the woman’s hose loosened. His answer felt worse than ignorance.
Jade stood inside the tower mouth with one hand around Ty’s ankle. Her cold arm remained driven through an iron rung behind her.
"Your hand is on the upper gallery. What are you doing for the people below it?"
Dimitri pushed his thumb wider beneath the patient rail.
"Keeping twelve beds attached while I learn whether touching the lower road kills everyone above us."
The ward worker still held the old woman’s bed. Soap marked both sleeves, and one knee had bled through her trousers.
"He caught our beds when the gallery broke. Nobody orders him to release us."
Iri Tolland climbed over the bent stair rail with an injured clinic worker across her shoulders.
"Nobody asked for your beds. We asked him to stop dropping ours."
The ward worker looked toward the falling addresses. Her grip stayed on the old woman’s frame.
Dimitri understood both women. That made his wrist hurt worse.
During the long climb from the Angelic fountain, he had crawled past bodies that decayed on the stairs. He survived by finding the next firm step and refusing to test the ones already moving. Masabi later called that cowardice, then taught him the weaker fighter had to be smarter.
The upper roadback was the firm step. People lived on the ones moving below it.
"I can move once, and your ward pays first."
He let the words carry farther than his voice wanted. Workers along the upper gallery stopped pulling loose beds toward the inner wall. Lera Kott came through Tower Five with the Lower Eleven address rope wrapped around her waist.
"Name your terms before your silence becomes another public order."
Dimitri’s cracked band turned around his wrist. One white ring ran through the upper roadback. Another circled Ty’s chest without touching bone. The band found the skeleton it had been assigned to measure. Beneath Dimitri’s skin, the black fiber pulled elsewhere through his misshapen hand.
Ty looked smaller than the measurement.
His left arm ended without a hand. Four fingers remained on the right. Chain crossed his jaw and ran down to a medicine rail where six pack beasts kicked inside a broken pen.
The soul inside that damaged frame pressed against Dimitri’s band hard enough to whiten every crack.
He aimed the offer at Lera because she wore council keys. Angelic procedure preferred an authority that could surrender what stood inside its borders.
"Place Ty Hockenson’s soul inside my return band. I will hold common down until every upper address has new bolts, the ward beds have fixed floor cups, and your council can keep the weight without my hand."
He widened the outer ring around Ty and opened a smaller ring inside it.
"The lower roadback receives evacuation access, not permanent attachment to this direction."
Jade pulled her cold arm free from the rung. The metal kept the shape of her elbow.
"You charge his soul for the upper roadback, then call everyone below an evacuation route."
"I am naming the number of people this damaged band can keep alive. My orders call that mercy even when the count leaves bodies outside it."
The answer sounded like Masabi on a bad day. Dimitri felt that before Jade’s face changed.
Lera removed one council key from the rope at her waist and held it where the white ring could see the old vote cuts.
"The council votes on rails, work, and public rope. We do not own his soul."
The band searched her key, found no surrender authority, and moved back toward Ty.
Vask waited beside Tower Five’s empty cuff with his metal cap wired above one folded ear. Common down had driven both of his boots square against the iron.
"Then let the holder bargain while the council uses the time."
Ty pulled the medicine rail one link higher before looking up at Dimitri.
"The holder has a name, and he would like the inner ring kept away from it."
Dimitri’s palm slipped across the gallery beam. Three patients cried out when their beds rolled the width of a thumb. He spread his changed hand farther until the wheels stopped.
"The inner ring carries your soul without making your damaged body cross."
"My damaged body is keeping your evacuation line from becoming a funeral."
The word landed where Dimitri’s black fiber entered his wrist.
Four workers remained inside the burning prison room because his old extraction cut carried one body. Darel, Miri, Ossan, and Keth had struck the west door together. The carrier he saved still wore their names against his chest.
The band had carried one body across while the chest strap carried five people’s work.
Dimitri looked toward the lower roadback again. A house struck the end of its address rope and broke around it. Three people remained tied to the sleeping wall. Lera’s workers hauled the rope toward Tower Five while Jade counted each person aloud.
The outer ring around Ty bent toward them.
Jade tightened the strap around her damaged eye.
"Ty, buy me time, and keep every part you brought."
Ty released the medicine rail into Holl’s hands. His present right foot entered the outer ring. White pressure climbed his shin and stopped beneath the knee.
The inner ring turned toward his ribs.
He kept the rest of his body outside it.
"I stand inside the outer measure while Jade empties the lower roadback. You hold both until she returns."
Dimitri’s short sword pressed against his hip when the band tightened. Ty stood within one step of the amber hilt. A skeleton with chain teeth needed less distance than that.
"The outer measure leaves you close enough to attack me."
Ty tested the ring with one foot. A crack opened across his ankle bone and closed when he reduced the pressure.
"You arrived for my soul, so I believe I own the larger worry."
Dimitri almost told him Angelic custody protected valuable souls. The sentence died when he remembered Miri pumping air into the man his band had called stable. Protection had left four workers under fire and brought their labor across on scraps of paper.
He changed his index finger around a fourth gallery support. The black fiber turned beneath his skin and drove one knuckle against another. His hand shook. The twelve beds held.
Above the lower roadback, he opened three white rope lanes through common down. Each lane reached Tower Five without changing the pull on the upper ward.
They were narrow enough for people and medicine. Houses would never fit.
"I hold the upper plane and open the lower ropes until the last council line clears. Then you answer again."
Lera handed two address ropes to Jade and kept the third around her own waist.
"Lower addresses leave in order, and nobody cuts ahead with a title."
Vask touched the wire above his folded ear. Lera put the free end of her rope in his hand before he could object. He wrapped it around Tower Five’s base.
Iri shifted the injured worker onto the ward floor and took the rope marked Lower Nine. Jade chose Lower Eleven, where the broken house still held three people against its sleeping wall.
Dimitri watched her step over the edge.
On Earth, she had pulled him away from Kieran’s blade before asking his name. He had spent years filing humans beneath worlds that needed supervision. Jade had saved him while angry, busy, and under no order to preserve his soul.
The outer ring brightened around Ty’s leg.
The inner ring waited at his ribs.
Dimitri kept his damaged hand inside the upper gallery and left the extraction ring open while Jade descended after the falling bells.