CHAPTER 668: HANDS THAT PUSH BACK (END)

"Only Blight-made," he said immediately. "No named shelves. If there’s a living will, we stop the second we feel it." He breathed once, let the exhale steady his mouth. "I want the Riftborne to parley, not purge. Bind them to rules instead of break them."

Her mouth thinned to a blade, then softened at the hilt. "Witness clause holds." She touched two fingers to her bracer. "One trial."

He nodded, relief quick across his eyes. "Gray circle."

Tanglebeetles hurried forward, their spool-backs humming a modest little work song. Ash-colored thread unspooled in a perfect ring on the floor—unassuming, almost shy. Silk Guards raised a clear null-veil over it, the air shimmering like heat above stone. The Myco-Archivist dusted the space with a fine anti-spore veil until the air tasted like clean rock after storm.

The Riftborne Necrolord entered the circle as if stepping onto a stage it disliked yet respected. Its lattice staff tilted; bone rings rotated and clicked into a new alignment. No voice came, but the contract gathered anyway—lines of frost-light writing themselves into logic between staff and lich. It felt like reading a tidy oath carved into glass.

Three constraints hung in the air, bright enough to see without stinging the eyes.

No harm to named remains.

Obey the witness of Hollowguard Captain Thalatha.

Accept command chain via Prince Mikhailis until release.

The liches looked. The contract looked back. The lotus tucked at Mikhailis’s hip purred a soft, possessive note that seemed to put weight on the words. The liches’ skulls turned a fraction toward that sound without meaning to, like old dogs responding to a command they pretended not to know.

They took the deal. Not with bows or words, but with a subtle change in how their crowns held the air—less flared, more aligned.

Phylactery shards rethreaded, thin light sewing each piece to the knot of terms. The dim glow traveled the loop and settled into the contract like ink drying. The crowns dimmed by a measured degree. Both liches straightened, shoulders back. The posture was not obedience; it was the dignity of a duel moved to negotiation.

Thalatha made the sign of witness—palm to bracer, lift—and watched the Riftborne step cleanly back out of the circle. No lines snaked beyond the border. No greedy fingers tried to claim more than allowed. "Ethics kept," she said, and let some breath go she didn’t know she had trapped.

Rodion’s optic narrowed to a pin, then widened again, satisfied.

Mikhailis laughed quietly, a sound that shook dust off some old worry inside him. "We have summoners now," he whispered, delighted and a little disbelieving, like a child handed a festival lantern and told it was his to carry. Don’t drop this. Don’t you dare.

The liches waited at the circle’s edge like patient clerks. The contract pulsed once—acknowledged—and went still.

"Carefully," Thalatha said. "If we call the dead, we call only those without names."

They obeyed—not because they feared her, but because the contract made disobedience feel like walking into a wall. Their hands lifted in a motion that was almost a benediction. They did not turn toward the ossuary wall; they could not, even if they tried. The null-veil brightened near the nameplates in quiet refusal. Instead, their power reached into the nave’s broken corners and the collapsed side-crypt—places where history had fallen down and never been put back on shelves.

Bones answered like tide reversing at moonrise. Ribs wriggled out of drifts. Femurs found sockets by old memory. Hands assembled hands. Iron buckles clinked against petrified leather. Skulls rolled, bumped, stopped, then lifted as if remembering balance. It could have been grotesque; it felt... practical. A thousand fights had left pieces; the dungeon coughed some of them back up to stand a little while longer.

Fifty skeletons formed, tidy as could be under the circumstances. The mix had sense baked into it. Twenty with spears came together in a jagged phalanx that straightened by degrees as they looked left, right, found rank. Two pairs hefted tower shields big enough to hide a person and learned to hold them in tandem, edges kissing. Six bowmen plucked vine-backed arrows from where there had been none a heartbeat before; thin green tendrils twined the shafts like quiet decorations. Farther back, a standard-bearer found a rib-banner and raised it high. The sigil stitched in fungus on the fabric was not a crest Thalatha knew, but it had weight, the way a story has weight after being told a hundred times around the same fire.

Silence held for three breaths. Even the Whiteways seemed to wait.

Mikhailis tried for solemn and landed on earnest. He lifted his chin, tried not to bounce on his toes. "By the contract and the witness, you march with us," he said. He threw the words forward, steady, so they would be the first thing the bones heard in their new duty. "Hold ranks. No touching the named shelves. Shields left lane. Bows rear arc. Standard in the middle."

The spear line shuffled. It wasn’t random. Each skeleton measured its neighbor’s heel with a glance that somehow had no eyes. They corrected in a ripple until spacing matched the sound of his voice. Thalatha walked that line, boots clicking softly, and tapped one shield rim with two knuckles. The skeleton tilted, adjusted the angle to cover the gap. The motion was clean. Respect sat in the air like a new banner.

She looked up the length of the nave, toward the ossuary niches glimmering in amber. "No names," she reminded the liches without looking back. "No shelves."

They already knew; the contract made their bones ache when their attention drifted that way. Still, both lifted one hand in a stiff, almost courtly acknowledgment.

Rodion broke the hush with the driest possible voice.

Operational note: please refrain from assigning names to all fifty.

Mikhailis didn’t look guilty at all. "I will only name three," he whispered to Thalatha, almost hopeful. "Four. Maybe six." He felt her gaze without needing to see it. He coughed. "Fine. Zero." Temporarily,

he added in his head, traitorous. Maybe the standard-bearer. He looks like a ’Basil.’

He turned to the cohort again, checking lanes as if arranging counters on a strategy board. The chimera ants slid into the familiar diamond around the two humans and Rodion: Scurabons at the points, Silk Guards in the seams, Crymber Twins anchoring center. Hypnoveils took the rear like soft doorways, their mantles already lifting a thin curtain to catch whispers before they could form. Mothcloak shadowed the flank where the light stuttered. Tanglebeetles fanned to either side, blue spools ready, gray spools already lazily unwinding a safety grid. The Aeriform Striders’ plumes hummed, a soft chorus pitched just under thought, mapping the Whiteways’ breath.

The liches took their places like casters in a proper column, one on each side, crowns low, shards dim. They had the air of old archivists who would be offended by sloppiness and pleased by discipline. The skeleton screen fanned ahead, spears leveled, shields fussed with until the lines kissed. The bowmen tested draw with no flesh to do the work and somehow found a way; vines along the arrows tightened, a green creak that smelled faintly of sap.

Thalatha stepped along the front rank, adjusting stances with small taps and brief words. "Left toe. Closer. Spear lower. Yes." She paused at the standard-bearer and studied the banner’s tilt. "Center your weight. Good." The bones obeyed without flinching, like recruits hungry to pass inspection.

Mikhailis watched her shape the line and kept his jokes in his cheek where they couldn’t escape. She does this well, he thought, warm respect threading the humor. I could live in a world where she doesn’t have to, but while we’re in this one—I will make sure she has the tools.

Rodion took the far edge, eye drawing a chalk-thin pace line on the floor that pulsed in time with the Whiteways’ lung. The pulse wasn’t angry anymore. It was still not friendly, but it recognized something organized and hesitated to crush it.

March cadence synchronized. Maintain interval. Tea reserves at sixty-one percent.

"Bless you," Mikhailis murmured automatically. Thalatha’s mouth tipped, and he pretended he hadn’t seen it.

They stepped as one. The first motion always felt like breaking a spell. Boots, then bone, then the soft clatter of carapace joined the tune. The sound braided together without tripping: the dull thud of leather on stone, the clink of old iron at a dead belt, the faint tick of Scurabon blades knocking off chips that wanted to become traps. The Hypnoveils’ curtain breathed with them, a shimmer in the corner of the eye that made the hairs on the back of the neck lie down instead of rising.

"This would have saved three outposts," Thalatha said, half to herself, half to the ribs overhead. The statement didn’t accuse. It marked a ledger.

Mikhailis looked at the hard line of her jaw, at the place grief sat and did not speak, and chose a reply without sugar. "We’ll save the next three," he said. Plain. A promise he intended to owe until paid.

Rodion’s optic clicked once, a quiet punctuation.

Acceptable objective.

They moved deeper. The floor sloped; the light thinned; the air wet itself with the memory of a river that used to run here. A low, clean smell cut under rot—stone rinsed a thousand times. Far off, something dripped in three beats, then paused, then started again, as if the dungeon had learned new music and was trying to hum along. The lotus at Mikhailis’s hip purred, greedy and content, tugging his belt like a compass that finally found true north after wandering in iron.

He couldn’t help himself. He turned his head, voice set to carry without shouting. Joy did that—it gave the throat better aim.

"Fifty—forward. March."

The order rang down the nave and came back dressed as echo. The skeletons answered with a clack and set their spears like teeth. The liches drifted in place, crowns low, shards obedient. The cohort diamond tightened and breathed. Boots, bone, and carapace answered in time. The Whiteways breathed, and for once the breath felt like it belonged to them too.