Jiang landed beak-first on a road made from Aylin's memory.
Cold pressed against his breast. Beneath the sling, a strip of ice carried his weight while voices dropped away on both sides. The road had no walls he could touch and no sky above it.
Aylin entered behind him on her elbows.
The closing tear caught the sole of her boot. She twisted, drove her free heel into the ice, and pulled through before the green edge could take the leather.
Earth vanished behind her.
Devika's voice returned from the blank space anyway.
"Breathe before you fight, Jiang. I forgot your shoulder wrap."
Every part of him wanted to turn.
His beak still remembered the pressure of her wrist. The wrap pinched exactly where she had placed it. Devika forgot patients only in threats invented by people who had never met her.
Jiang drove his working foot into the ice.
The sling moved one belly length. Aylin took the rear weight as promised, leaving his breast close to the surface.
"Jiang, wait," the copied Devika called.
A thin silver path opened toward the voice.
Aylin saw it form. Her mouth opened around Jiang's name, and he struck the sling with his beak before sound escaped her.
She swallowed the word. The new path broke under its own weight and fell into the voices below.
Their replies built roads here.
Jiang kept his throat closed while the false colony called from the cold ahead. Aylin copied his silence and began answering through pressure on the sling: release when he pushed, hold when his bad foot dragged, stop when his beak struck cloth.
The route climbed under his belly.
His rigid torso belonged on ice. A human crawl would have placed knees and hands over opposite edges; Jiang could spread one webbed foot, brace his beak, and keep most of his body along the narrow center.
The advantage lasted until the road turned.
His left foot slid past the edge. Dead weight pulled his hip around, and the shoulder wrap caught beneath him.
Pain cut through his breast.
Aylin released the rear sling before the cloth twisted tighter. Jiang clamped his beak over its front fold while his working claws searched for ice.
One claw found the ridge.
He pulled his belly back over it. Aylin waited until his foot pressed down before taking the rear again.
No praise followed. Her hand shook against the cloth, and both of them knew how close she had come to hauling the wound apart.
The cold road narrowed ahead.
To its left, warm water began running over stone.
Jiang smelled wet lime, lamp smoke, and seed cake before he saw the canal. Copper cups struck a parapet in the exact uneven rhythm Gredudande had learned below Nerea's room.
Light opened over River-Open Night.
Workers leaned over a floodgate wearing stained aprons. Children crowded the wall with cups in their fists. Hot food changed hands above gears polished by years of river grit.
King Edric stood among them.
This copy wore the old leather apron Aylin had described. Both gloves were torn across the palms. A crushed seed cake lay near one boot, and the councilor beside him was already laughing.
Gredudande had corrected every mistake.
Aylin's grip vanished from the sling.
Jiang looked back. She had raised herself onto both hands, staring down a warm road that continued past the festival toward roofs and towers he had never seen.
Her home waited at its end.
"Father," she said through her damaged throat.
The cold route split beneath Jiang.
One half remained under his body. The other curled toward River-Open, widening each time Aylin's voice touched her father's name.
Edric turned from the floodgate. "You took a long road home."
Aylin's face tightened around the hope.
The copy knew enough to avoid begging. Her father had challenged first and comforted badly; Gredudande wore that shape with the patience it had lacked before.
"Tell me what happened after the gate opened," she said.
Edric looked toward the canal. "You stole the councilor's cup and hid under the west rail."
Aylin's knees touched the warm stone.
"I never told it that."
Through the weak Spirit Link, Jiang caught more hope than shock. Aylin's weight had already shifted toward the festival.
Maybe this was more than a copy. The trace crossed her world. A real memory could lead to a real place, and a real father might stand at the far end.
Jiang wanted the road for her.
He wanted warmth for his own body, roofs above them, food that smelled like something other than raw fish, and a healer closer than another world. The cold route offered screaming chicks and a fragment waiting under their feet.
His good claws eased toward River-Open.
Under the festival noise, a second Edric voice said the same sentence half a beat late.
Jiang stopped with one claw raised.
The king at the floodgate kept moving with living rhythm. The delayed voice came from the canal. It carried one source of Edric's words beneath another person's breath, the same theft twisting the colony calls.
Black-green frost surfaced around the dropped seed cake.
Aylin saw it beside Jiang.
Her father's copied face remained warm. "Come through. We can decide what is true after you are safe."
That sounded almost kind enough.
Aylin crawled to the boundary where warm stone met Jiang's ice. Her fingers hovered over river water that gave off heat and reflected a city.
"This road reaches Eres," she said.
Jiang tapped once against the sling.
"The fragment knows it too."
He tapped once more.
The decision belonged to her. Jiang kept his body on the cold branch and hated every second he made her choose without steering her hand.
Edric held out one torn glove. "Aylin, your people need you home."
"They need me to arrive alone."
Cool green essence gathered under Aylin's palm. The warm road tugged at her knees as the festival crowd began calling her name in voices Gredudande had stolen on Earth.
With her palm against River-Open, Aylin pushed cool essence into the current. Ice climbed upstream until the nearest copper cup cracked. Water rose over the floodgate, locking gears, gloves, seed cake, and King Edric inside it.
His trapped face changed at the end.
For one breath, he looked like the father she remembered: furious with her, frightened for her, and ready to argue the whole road home.
Aylin drove her palm deeper until the warm branch broke under her.
Heat ripped away from Jiang's face. Towers folded into green fractures, the canal split down its center, and Edric disappeared with one torn glove still reaching toward his daughter.
Aylin's scream carried almost no voice.
The cut struck back through her throat. Blood ran over the old scar, and the Spirit Link shrank until Jiang felt only the hard outline of her presence.
River-Open dropped into the voices below.
The cold road bucked beneath him.
Jiang's claws tore free. His beak remained locked on the sling while his belly slid toward a white opening ahead.
Aylin caught the rear knot.
She had one hand left for the ice and no stable voice, yet she pushed from her own knees rather than hanging her weight from Jiang's shoulder. Together they reached the exit as the broken warm branch collapsed behind them.
Wind punched through the white opening.
Jiang crossed onto hard sea ice. His working foot found snow; his bad foot dragged through the closing green edge. He turned low and kept the sling in his beak.
Aylin came through to her hips.
The opening pinched around her coat and stopped.
Jiang braced both claws. The left toes folded, leaving his right foot and belly to hold the pull. Fresh warmth spread beneath his shoulder wrap.
Aylin planted her palms on the sea ice. Green essence flashed under her elbows while Jiang pulled the sling toward his breast.
Her coat tore across the back.
She rolled free beside him. The opening snapped shut on a strip of cloth and carried every remaining trace of Earth away.
Snow covered them together.
Far across the ice, hundreds of emperor penguins turned toward a call rising beneath their chicks.
Jiang recognized his own beat.
Someone had brought his voice here first.