CHAPTER 670: A UNIT THAT BREATHES TOGETHER (2)

"Cores," he said, holding his bag. The satchel’s lattice rippled as if pleased to be useful. "Sorted, then bring."

Liches moved with librarian grace. They avoided bones with names carved somewhere higher, stuck to Blight-castings, to Hounds’ cores, to drummer hearts that had forgotten rhythm. They handed each to Mikhailis like a clerk presenting a document to sign.

He felt the tug in his palm with each one. Power gloated in small things. He swallowed greed like a pill and nodded to the Archivist instead. "Left pile, clean. Right, questionable. Anything that talks goes in a jar."

The Archivist did not deign to answer. It had already jarred three with thin, annoyed motions.

A spear kissed Thalatha’s greave and scraped away. She didn’t jump. She set the toe of her boot, lowered her weight, and pressed her shield skeleton an inch forward with her hip. Confidence flowed down a line and made it real.

"You’re vibrating," she said out of the corner of her mouth.

Mikhailis forced his shoulders down a millimeter. "Professionally."

"Coach," she warned, dry, but the corner of her lip tipped.

Rodion’s tone stayed maddeningly calm.

Front hedge reduced by thirty-eight percent. Maintain lanes. No victories inside someone else’s job.

"Copy," Mikhailis said, which pleased Rodion more than any thank-you ever could.

A Resin Hound slipped a cone by angling under, smart and mean. A Tanglebeetle’s blue line flicked its foreleg. The line stretched, hummed, and slung the beast backward so hard it yelped in a voice it didn’t have. It landed inside a fresh net with an offended thump. Crymber Frost kissed; Ember tapped. The cone set hard with a crack like sugar glass breaking.

"Polite," Mikhailis noted, absurdly delighted that execution could be elegant.

The last shields of the phalanx tilted and then lowered, not surrendering, losing argument. Scurabons took wrists clean. Skeleton swords moved up, not to glory—just to keep pressure honest while the spears reset. The Wight Drummer on the right tried to find a new rhythm. Mothcloak brushed a rune on the drum head as it passed; the next strike came out a puff instead of a bang. Even echoes with no lungs looked offended.

Silence arrived in slices. First the hounds’ hiss ended. Then the drummer’s stubborn beat unraveled. Then the small ring of spear on bone dwindled to careful repositioning. The enemy didn’t collapse in spectacle. It stopped being a problem.

Rodion’s beam traced a short checkmark on the floor.

Harvest window. Thirty seconds.

Mikhailis turned, held up one gloved hand. The line of bones and ants curved toward him like water toward a drain. He exhaled to flatten the flutter in his throat, aware of Thalatha watching not his hands but his restraint.

"Tag, sort, bring," he repeated, quieter. "Same rule."

The liches filtered, crowns dim as worklamps, no hunger in the angle of their hands. Clean cores left. Sour right. The Archivist sniffed, agreed or refused. The cohort waited, ants clicking soft, respectful.

Mikhailis glanced at Thalatha, found the hard line of her jaw easing a hair. Proof, not speeches. Good.

He opened his palm to the waiting unit, voice firm enough to be heard and soft enough to feel like trust.

"Okay," Mikhailis said. "Taste small."

A Scurabon took a flake the size of a fingernail.

It didn’t crunch; it softened. The shard became a clear smear that ran along the sickle’s bevel and vanished the way a drop of oil disappears into thirsty wood. The blade did not gleam brighter. It felt brighter—intent sharpening, a will coaxed awake. When the Scurabon tested the edge against a rib nub, the cut whispered instead of squealed. The sound stayed tight, and the edge held through the second slice... the third.

A Silk Guard pinched dust between twin spinneret tips. The grains clung as if magnetized. Tiny knots set a blink faster; cross-threads hugged a hair tighter. The next net blossomed in the air with the confidence of a trick practiced a thousand times and finally done in public.

Crymber Ember breathed. Heat rolled off in a cleaner line and left no scorch stink. Crymber Frost breathed. White spread a thumb longer across stone. Small additions, snap-fit improvements. Enough to feel in the wrist, not enough to make the soul feel thin.

Thalatha said nothing.

Her jaw sat hard. She watched the liches’ hands as much as the enemy’s—finger angles, the looseness at a wrist before a split, the modest way the crowns dimmed afterward. She did not trust necromancy. She did trust patterns. Those hands worked like a surgeon’s, not a glutton’s.

Mikhailis noticed and did not push. She needs proof, not speeches, he told the part of himself that adored explaining. He smoothed a seam on the lotus sling instead.

The phalanx didn’t fail in a single heroic moment. It lost arguments, inch by inch. A wrist mis-timed. A knee lost conviction. One shield slid half a hand; a spear found a seam and took the breath out of the rank behind it. No roar, no rout—just a better formation eating a worse one.

When the last Hound cracked inside its ambered cone, the sound was almost polite. Silk sighed; frost dusted the floor; bone tapped bone as it settled.

They moved before the quiet could become an invitation to think about everything else.

The next chamber rang like a bell if you breathed wrong.

Ribs latticed with glass climbed both walls. Every footfall sent a thin, sustained note along the bone—bow on edge. Air wavered above the stones, a heatless shimmer that made whispers behave like shouts. Even Rodion reduced his fan to a nearly silent wheeze.

Shardstorm Wights slid out of rib-niches as if the stone itself exhaled them. Their sternums wore polished shards like medals. Each shard split into smaller plates that orbited like cold bees. A gesture—two of those bees fired outward, and knee-wrist-shoulder skeletonlets spun themselves messy and mean in midair.

"Bloom," Mikhailis said, pointing at the splits rather than the casters.

Silk threw cones high and wide—flowers opening mid-flight. Frost kissed the mesh; Ember tapped the same places. Cones fell as rigid bells over swarms and the sound that came back was a brittle tinkling. Newborns went to dust against their own cold cages.

Four Scurabons ran a pinwheel around the lead Wight. Tap at wrist—tap—tap—tap. Such petty touches, but the spell fingers stuttered. One newborn arrived crooked, half a femur missing; it collapsed back into the mother shard with a hiss like steam forced through a needle.

The floor tried to betray them.

Bone-Merrows oozed under nets like thick milk. White, wet, crawling for ankles and spear shanks. Slimeweave didn’t wait for a call. It rolled low, laid tidy gel dams in seamlines, and the Merrows pooled and slowed as if bored by the lack of drama.

The Myco-Archivist marked tiny chalk dots where the room sang too much. It tilted its head like a maestro shushing a brass section. Gills flared at a rib that rang a fraction sharp; Slimeweave smoothed that surface with a finger of gel. The bell note cut off. Split rhythms lost their helper. The chamber grew less eager to cooperate with the Wights.

Rodion’s voice stayed metronome-calm.

One-two, one-two. Corner hinge.

Two shield skeletons stepped wide and made a bookend between pillars. They didn’t slam their edges together; they kissed them. Spears tucked behind that bookend stabbed on the second beat. Bowmen lofted on the fourth and let arrows fall with patient gravity.

Mothcloak rose, a tilt of night in a room of amber. One soft brush of a pinion across an orbiting shard blurred glyphs by the width of a breath. The next newborn blinked in wrong, flickered, and snuffed itself like a bad candle that never wanted to be lit.

Cores rolled freely here. Little hearts of glass and marrow tumbled like marbles across stone.

Mikhailis planted himself as the polite drain. His satchel drank each with a ripple; he handed them back out in fair measures. "Glass left, marrow right," he said, not raising his voice. "Ants—taste. Liches—one each."

The Scurabon who had tasted before grazed its blade with another flake and tested again. Clean whisper. The edge sang true through three cuts, then four. Silk nibbled dust at cone knots and their nets set without that split-second sag that had annoyed them all shift. A Hypnoveil let a speck melt along its mantle’s hem. When it lifted, the curtain’s reach felt a half-pace wider; the shimmer had authority.

Each lich took a single small heart. Crowns dimmed—not from hunger, from investment. No swelling, no gloating. Five skeletons each came obediently up out of compliant debris. No plaques clung. No names. The line stepped aside and accepted the additions the way a city accepts rain. The muster ticked to sixty without wobble.

Thalatha stood beside Mikhailis and watched the new ten find their marks.

"My people do not like bones that rise," she said. The words were flat, carried like a helmet she’d worn for years. "We hate it, most days."