CHAPTER 737: WHEN A FLOOR WANTS TO HUM (1)

The lift steadied like a breath held by a careful chest. The Ascensorium Heart, all ribs and hidden mirrors, kept its voice down at last and did its job. Steam hung low, catching the console glow and folding it back into the bone. Rodion widened the board with a neat click; a white wireframe of the floor slid open, safe-dots blinking green like calm fireflies, no‑arc zones shaded in modest orange, and the breath ribbon pulsing crooked along the bottom to remind feet not to grow proud.

"Noted," Mikhailis said, lips tugging. "But if the dungeon asks for an encore, I’m charging admission."

Thalatha stood straight, shoulders low, eyes scanning. "Roll call."

Mikhailis pointed, counting like he liked to count, simple and neat. "Necro‑ants approximately four hundred. Workers two twenty. Soldiers one twenty. Nurses forty. Wardens and artisans twenty. Variants all green: Scurabons, Slimeweave, Hypnoveil, Crymber pair." He tipped his cup toward the tamed shapes in the perimeter. "Allies on leash: Reliquary Sentinel, Ossuary Hound, Gate Warden holding station, posted Choir Wights at choke points, and moths in their little pajamas."

"Thank you, Professor Marshmallow," he said. He’s prickly because he cares. File under: useful.

Thalatha lifted her palm; the team’s noise settled to that soft workshop hush she liked. "We do this by the book. Food before orders. No living puppets. Backs shown at brood mouths. Prime‑step only. One yawn‑pebble per five breaths. A repeat is a sin."

The queen‑to‑be padded forward, small for a royal, antennae quick. She traced rota marks in resin dust: three on, two off, one hovering by the tight turn. The nurse council read it and clicked approval, a tidy little chord. Workers laid the start node with tri‑scent braid—mint dust thin as breath, a bone‑meal ring, the ghost of glowcap air. Rodion’s anti‑pattern bar blinked its stubborn, ugly beat across the bottom edge and kept time the way a good enemy keeps time for you.

They moved when the floor sighed. The first fork came on honest ground, three lanes opening like choices laid on a table: resin arches to the left with dead harp strings hung between ribs; a slick ironvine sluice ahead where old Carapace trails had polished the stone; a narrow archive ramp rightward, marked by Wight signifiers and low resonance.

Ribbon‑Scout drifted like a polite spill: Scurabon at point, one nurse counting shoulders, two workers taking the temperature of the room with their legs. Rodion made thin halos blink over small tremors; heatless ghosts pooled where old choirs had passed. The Hound lowered its skull and tasted the symmetry in the air. The Hypnoveil tasted aura and declared it dull with a small push of boredom that made even Mikhailis’s eyes refuse to stare.

"Choose the quiet," Thalatha said. No fuss.

"Archive ramp it is." He gestured for the Archivist. The Wretch stepped up and wrote on bone with careful pride:

NO CALL‑AND‑RESPONSE • PASS IN ONES • NO TWIN SHADOWS

The Wights read the placard with relief you could hear in the angle of their hoods. They stood straighter and less angry. The path opened like a door that had always wanted to be polite but needed you to ask first.

They took the right and found the floor pretending to be easy—pale plates the size of hands, each giving off the smallest whisper when a step landed just so. Rodion’s bar twitched when two soldiers in the middle matched ankles without thinking.

Thalatha’s fingers moved close to her thigh: crooked gait. The nurses’ shoulders ticked primes: two, three, five. Feet loosened and forgot to mirror. A juvenile worker, proud and bright, fell into the exact rhythm of the soldier in front of her; the nurse beside her bumped antennae to elbow in the ant way and added a tiny third tap to break the mirror. Culture held.

The skeleton pair reached a brood‑mouth recess and turned their backs, blades reversed, the way they did now without asking. The Hound scribbled a lazy S down the center line, the muffled ring under its scarf keeping time wrong on purpose. The plates never finished their thought. The whisper never became a word.

"Feels like walking across people who want to hum," Mikhailis said under his breath. When a room wants music, give it coughs.

Rodion stamped soft green on the path behind them.

The corridor opened on a catwalk over silent water. Jars hung above like sleepy moons, then flared in a rude blink. Light wanted eyes. The Hypnoveil dropped its mantle and the world remembered boredom; workers were already smearing resin on visor slits and along the brightest lip of glass. The Sentinel lifted the coffin‑door shield and angled it so any splash of glare would drown itself on wood and bone.

"Eyes down," Thalatha reminded. "Half lids."

Scurabons threw moth‑nets in clean arcs. Nets kissed mirror vanes and clung; inside, gray moths folded and began to drink the shine like tired aunts dealing with a lantern. One Lurker pushed hard into their quiet as if it had waited all year to be dramatic. The Hound ran an ugly figure‑eight under it, chain scribbling a child’s bad river across the catwalk; the Lurker lost the straight line and drifted away, insulted.

"Exhale only," Mikhailis said, counting the ribbon. They crossed with no step on the inhale. The water stayed a mirror that refused to gossip.

Three routes rose like a puzzle next: the Bone Spiral Lift coiling quick and tight with a mean pinch mid‑landing; a set of threaded rib switchbacks broad enough to turn a litter; a crawl vein thin as a letter slit.

Scurabons tested the switchback handholds, fingers silent. The Crymber pair fogged a seam, then warmed it, reading expansion. Slimeweave palmed a lip and judged the tackiness a friendly kind. Rodion ran his breath ribbon over all three, and it sang with the switchbacks, stayed in tune; over the spiral landing it fell out of phase and came back wrong.

He spoke lightly anyway. "Spiral looks like a date with someone beautiful who keeps your knife afterward. Crawl is a love letter from a paper cut. Switchbacks are a good stew." He lifted a brow at Thalatha. "I vote stew."

"Slow is smooth," Thalatha said. "Switchbacks."

"Slow is also less embarrassing," Mikhailis added. "And I only packed one dignity."

A few soldiers chuckled under their breath. The sound was quick and harmless, like dust brushed off a table.

They got to work. Scurabons moved first, heads bowed, thumbs testing edges the way a tailor tests a seam.

"Two ticks," said the lead Scurabon, tapping the tightest corner. "Here and here."

He drew the shear-scribes like tiny smiles and stepped back. A worker followed, pressing resin into the cuts with the heel of her palm until the shine dulled.

"Seals clean," the nurse beside her murmured, antennae flicking. "Hold’s good."

The Reliquary Sentinel paced to a blind shaft off the landing. He lifted the coffin-door and did a small practice vent. The shove went into the dark and stayed there.

Dead pocket confirmed. Acoustic appetite: low. Excellent place to dump your problems.

Mikhailis grinned. "Finally, somewhere to put mine."

Neat corners. Honest cuts. This is the kind of room that keeps you alive.

He walked the edge of the first turn with the queen-to-be trotting at his heel. She tapped the stone at each marker the Scurabons left, then drew a tiny circle in dust: ready.

"Tri-scent here," she clicked to the nearest worker pair.

Mint dust fell in a dotted line, just crooked enough to refuse a song. Bone meal traced a thin crescent at the inside rail. A breath of glowcap air wafted over the outer rim and disappeared.

The guard line shifted. Shoulders dropped a finger’s width. The long stair felt less like a climb and more like steps in a familiar house.

"Okay," Mikhailis said softly. "Lids half, feet rude, feelings tidy."

They took the first switchback on the exhale. Boots touched down with a soft scuff, then paused as the stair drank in.

A young soldier’s heel kissed the stone a touch too neatly. Thalatha snapped two fingers low by her thigh. He turned it into a cough-step mid-motion and gave her a sheepish nod.

Good lad. Saved your ankle and your pride.

Two turns up, Rodion’s ribbon flickered with a little mischief.

Micro-oscillation ahead. Someone tried to be clever here once and the floor remembers.

"Mark it," Thalatha said.

A worker knelt and painted an X of mint so faint you could mistake it for shade. The team stepped a hand’s width wide, and the memory did not get a chance to wake.

They paused at the landing to check straps and hands. No speeches. Just the quiet tug of a buckle and the soft clack of a carapace plate being seated better on a worker’s shoulder.

"Breathe," the nurse captain said to her line, voice low and kind.

They moved.

The next room breathed like an instrument trying not to. Ribs stood like reeds, thin and eager. On the inhale they hummed a narrow note. On the exhale they released a different one that wanted to sit in your teeth.

"Echo hygiene," Mikhailis murmured. "Wash your rhythm."

He watched Ribbon-Scout chalk stutter-marks: halt here, not there; wait a beat and a half, then a half; start again on two-and-a-something.

The Hypnoveil rolled its mantle out across the rafters. Edges softened. The reeds tried to be interesting and forgot how.

The Archivist took his time with the placard. He wrote the letters wide so even pride could read them from far away.

NO CHOIR • NO CLAP • PRIME-STEP ONLY

He tied the sign with a neat knot and patted it once with his stylus like he was telling a youngster: do your job.

"Sentinel," Thalatha said.