Chapter 282: The System Offered Jiang Its Broken Evolutions

"Choose the claw," Raska said.

Her guild’s second keep dragged toward the road crack while white prongs widened it from below. Fighters had cleared the outer balconies. A family remained trapped behind a door bent against its frame.

Deep-Claw would stop the crack.

Jiang could see the offered result across his sight: white joints locking into road bone, the graveback holding still, and Bone Orchard lines reaching the keep before the floor split beneath it.

"My straight leg is unstable," he said.

"The claw is larger."

"It follows my body pattern."

"Then try not to limp."

Raska kept the saw against the open plate. Blood from her palm ran down the handle.

She was not pretending the offer was clean. She was watching people strike the blocked door from inside while the System put a usable answer in Jiang’s face.

Jiang looked at the Deep-Claw path.

[DEEP-CLAW: anchor host through controller foot pressure. Competing paths remain embedded.]

White light crossed his sound foot first, then touched the leg that had been bitten straight and never become reliable again. The projected graveback braced unevenly. One road prong took most of the carrier’s weight.

The road crack stopped moving.

Another prong began splitting under the load.

Deep-Claw did not repair the beast. It made the beast fail in the shape Jiang understood best.

"It may hold long enough," Raska said.

"It may break the road under everyone standing on it."

"That is already happening."

The family behind the keep door struck again.

Kessa heard them from Maelin’s roof. She drove Maelin’s blade sideways into the gap and used both hands to pry.

Valea came through the clear-wall fracture with a broken yoke bar. Together they opened the door far enough for a little girl to crawl under it.

The keep lurched toward them.

Hest caught the girl against his chest. Her father shoved a smaller child after her and turned back for someone Jiang could not see.

Sky-Bone could lift that side.

Jiang let his attention touch the first path.

[SKY-BONE: carry host through controller keel and wing motion. Competing paths remain embedded.]

The preview took Jiang’s rigid breast and failed wing as instructions.

White spars spread under the graveback’s plates. Its good side lifted. The other side dragged behind, twisting the buried fin and claw through living tissue.

The keep rose from Maelin’s roof.

So did every black trunk attached to the same strip of back.

Bone Orchard bridges pulled tight between rising and grounded plates. One snapped in the preview. People reached safety from the keep while a different line fell with the bridge.

Raska saw none of it.

"What does the wing give?" she asked.

"A larger disaster with better height."

"Useful for enough height?"

"Until the rest of the orchard tears."

"Then inspect the fin."

Tide-Fin offered escape.

[TIDE-FIN: carry host through controller swimming stroke. Competing paths remain embedded.]

The graveback turned toward starwater in Jiang’s sight. Its buried fin copied the long drive of an emperor penguin’s body, but the carrier had no narrow breast, no paired flippers, and no tail built to trim a dive.

Its left flank entered the current.

Starwater caught the white fin and pulled.

The graveback crossed half its body before the digging joints tore a trench through the road. Suspended keeps struck the surface sideways. Clear fruit burst under blue water. Maelin’s hall vanished behind a wall of light.

The carrier escaped the confluence.

Jiang could not tell how much of it remained alive.

He closed the preview.

"The fin takes the beast away," he said. "It does not release the branches."

"Away is not always dead."

"No. It is only far enough to stop hearing."

Raska’s mouth tightened.

The family at the bent door had reached the roof. Kessa passed the second child to Hest and crawled back for the person who had not appeared.

Raska watched her go.

"I have buried people because I chose the careful cut," she said. "I have buried people because I chose the fast one. The dead have not shown a preference."

Jiang had no clever answer for that.

One of the three paths could keep the second keep from falling. Refusing all of them did not make the trapped people safer. It only kept Jiang’s body from becoming the handle on another creature.

Aylin’s voice came through the channel.

"Does any path remove the others?"

"They stay inside it."

"Does control end when the immediate movement ends?"

Jiang searched the offer. The System gave him no release condition.

"It does not say."

"Then it is offering a beginning."

Raska glanced toward the pruning channel. "Your partner has a talent for making the obvious less useful."

"She has practiced on me."

"I heard every word."

Aylin’s reply carried anger, but not enough to hide fear.

Another digging stroke shook the plate.

The white shaft punched farther through the road. Raska’s opened cut flexed under Jiang’s breast, and warm fluid pushed around his keel.

Living pressure gathered beneath the scaffold.

It did not follow the claw, fin, or spar.

The graveback forced blood and pale marrow fluid toward the cut in a changing surge. The opening widened under Jiang’s body, then narrowed around the white hook.

Something inside was trying to push the scaffold out.

Jiang lowered his beak to the gap.

Hot fluid washed over his face. He felt a channel opening behind the plate, cramped beneath the flight spar and turning toward the buried shaft.

Raska saw where he was looking.

"No. Not that way," she said.

"You wanted a choice."

"I wanted the claw."

"The claw wanted me."

"This hole also wants you. It has blood in it."

"I am difficult to impress."

"You nearly drowned in a tree yesterday."

"That was tree sap."

"A distinction for your grave."

The keep shifted again. Kessa disappeared through the bent door.

Jiang pressed the flat of his beak against the opening. The passage would take his head and breast if he pinned the useless wing tight. Raska could fit an arm. Aylin could not enter from her side without cutting through living plate.

Only a body built to push through water without hands had a chance of following the channel.

"If I reach where the branches join, I may find what holds them," he said.

"Or you may become part of the blockage."

"Then cut around me carefully."

"I have seen your definition of carefully."

Aylin pulled high-root once, enough to make her presence impossible to ignore.

"Can you return against the fluid?" she asked.

Jiang waited for the next living surge. It pushed outward, paused, then changed direction around the shaft. The foreign paths kept their fixed strokes, but the carrier supplied a return pressure each time.

"If it keeps refusing, yes."

"That is not a promise."

"No. I cannot promise that."

Aylin took a breath over the line.

"Keep high-root on your coat. I move only on your signal."

Raska looked from the channel to the keep.

"I cut the plate wider on the next outward push," she said. "If the fin moves, you come out. If the claw moves, I pull your feet. If the wing moves, I blame you while pulling."

"Those terms improve with distance."

"Enter the beast before I reconsider."

Jiang dismissed all three previews.

[Control paths refused.]

No reward came after.

Raska set the saw against living plate. Jiang put his breast down and waited for the carrier’s changing pressure.

It gathered beneath them.

"Now. Cut with it," he said.

Raska cut with the outward surge.

The passage opened around Jiang’s shoulders. He drove forward with his sound foot while the unstable leg scraped behind him. Hot marrow fluid closed over his back.

His oilcoat held one shallow pocket of air until the extended Wake Scar crossed the opening. Heat reached the damaged lower keel there, sharp enough to make his whole body jerk.

Warm did not mean safe.

Warmth reached skin that had been cold too long and brought every ache with it.

Jiang forced himself onward.

High-root slid along his coat. Raska’s fingers left his feet. The plate closed behind his tail without crushing it.

Inside, the graveback became a moving red darkness.

Pale membranes stretched between living ribs. The flight spar ran above Jiang like a white ceiling. Each false stroke pulled the channel upward. When the fin swept, fluid rushed along his left flank. The digging joint dragged everything toward the carrier’s belly.

Jiang pinned the useless wing and drove both webbed feet backward.

His unstable leg supplied less force. The sound foot corrected the turn. A human swimmer would have needed room for shoulders and arms; Jiang needed enough space for his beak, breast, and the narrow wake behind his oilcoat.

The channel tightened around a pale valve.

He bit its thick edge and pulled with the next outward surge. Living tissue opened for its own fluid. Jiang slipped through before the fixed branches reversed again.

Something white struck his failed wing.

Pain rolled through the shoulder. He turned belly-first, let the next fin sweep carry him sideways, and wedged both feet against a rib until the obstacle passed.

High-root remained behind him.

The channel remained hidden from Aylin. She kept the line slack enough for Jiang to choose movement and tight enough that he could feel the way back.

The branch seed waited beyond the final rib.

It was smaller than Jiang expected, a knot of black glass held inside three white collars. One collar fed the flight spar. One widened into the fin. One descended toward the digging joint.

Each collar bore the same shallow cuts Aylin had recognized outside.

Every cut stopped before closing the shape.

Jiang touched the black knot with his beak.

[Foreign paths located. Host choice absent.]

The System had known enough to offer him control anyway.

Jiang pulled his beak back.

A red point appeared inside the black glass.

It brightened from beyond the wound, crossed Raska’s open plate, and drove through the flight collar like a needle of lantern light.

The branch seed answered with one red beat.