What the Ribs Kept

The seam had opened far enough to show darkness and the edge of a bone wedge. It had not opened far enough for a person.

Tarrow’s arm stayed hooked in the gap. The fire crawled along its salt-white fingers, bright in the cracks, and the ribs around them strained apart by another finger’s width. His jaw worked around a breath. The sound that came out was thin and rough.

Neris lay against the shelf with her injured leg bound tight. She watched the seam, not Tarrow. “Jorren’s line went through there. If the shelf shifts, we lose the path back.”

Pell glanced at the cracked stone under our boots. “Then we don’t shift it.”

That was the kind of plan I preferred: simple enough to fail in a way we could see.

Venn crouched beside the seam without touching it. His gaze tracked the fire’s glow. “It responds to the pressure. It may keep opening once it starts.”

“Will it stop?” I asked.

He took a moment before answering. “I can’t tell.”

Venn was good at reading unstable things. His honesty about the limits of that skill was less reassuring than a lie, but more useful.

Tarrow looked at me. His Saltified fingers could not bend. The fire had chosen that hand before any of us understood what it wanted, and the spread had climbed his jaw. Still, his eyes were clear.

“I can put the arm back,” he rasped.

He meant he could pull away. He also meant he knew what might happen if he didn’t. I had no clean instruction to give him, so I gave him the actual choice.

“If you pull free, Jorren stays in there. If you hold, the fire may take more.”

Tarrow’s gaze shifted to Neris. She didn’t ask him to save her partner. She kept her hands flat on the shelf, holding herself in place as if any other movement might bring the whole ledge down.

“Keep the line tight,” he said. “If it drags me in, pull.”

Pell threaded the silver tether around his forearm and cinched it. I looped a second length around Tarrow’s waist. My stone hand had less feeling than I liked, which was another way of saying I couldn’t trust it to notice when a rope cut through my palm.

“Ready?” Pell asked.

“No,” Tarrow said. “Do it anyway.”

He leaned his shoulder into the bone.

The fire flared.

It did not burn the seam. It went looking through it. A red line slipped between the ribs and vanished, then returned in branching strokes that traced every hidden join. The wedge beyond scraped sideways. The seam widened with a sound like a stone door dragged over gravel.