The petrel dropped while Pale-Cheek faced two versions of its parent.
Bent-Toe called from the ice, blood dark beneath its jaw.
The stolen Bent-Toe called from below.
Pale-Cheek answered in fear. Its high song ended early, followed by a questioning beat Jiang had never heard from the chick.
The real parent changed with it.
Bent-Toe's reply came rough and low. It waited through the chick's new ending, then placed its own final beat after it.
Under the ice, the recording started over.
Same length. Same opening. Same clean ending stolen before terror changed the exchange.
Pale-Cheek leaned toward the living body.
White-Nape swept across the chick's path and covered it with both flippers.
The petrel struck through the gap.
Its hooked bill aimed through the gap between White-Nape's neck and the ice. Pale-Cheek's cream-marked face showed beneath one wing.
Bent-Toe rose from its side.
The wounded adult crossed the gap on one good foot and drove its breast into White-Nape. Mate and chick rolled toward the huddle.
Bent-Toe remained in the open.
The petrel hit it hard enough to bounce both bodies across the ice.
Jiang shoved away from Aylin before she found the sling.
His bad foot folded. He rolled through the pain, caught the surface with his right claws, and drove his belly toward the brown wings covering Bent-Toe.
Black-Crown arrived from the chick line.
Split-Beak came from the other side.
Neither waited for Jiang. Black-Crown struck the petrel's tube nose. Split-Beak clamped onto a wing tip and pulled backward with its whole body.
The petrel spread its free wing across Bent-Toe and snapped at Black-Crown.
Jiang reached the hooked bill from below.
The lower curve had sunk into yellow neck feathers. Bent-Toe kicked once, too weak to tear free without opening itself farther.
Jiang wedged his beak beneath the hook.
His neck had leverage where flippers had none. He twisted upward, forcing the petrel's bill away from Bent-Toe's throat a feather at a time.
The petrel bit down.
Pressure closed around Jiang's beak. A crack traveled through the tip and into his skull.
Jiang twisted with all his neck.
Bent-Toe pulled its head clear.
Blood followed across the ice.
"Jiang, down!" Aylin rasped.
He flattened his head.
Silver passed above him and wrapped the petrel's free wing. Aylin had thrown the last long strip rather than the wider sheet. Cool essence stiffened it around the flight feathers.
On the first beat, metal cut through brown plumage and peeled feathers loose while Aylin kept both hands on the strip.
The second beat dragged her to one knee. Her banded forearm opened where the sling had bruised it. She changed her grip instead of releasing.
"Get them away from its feet."
Jiang rammed his breast under Bent-Toe's shoulder. The adult lay limp enough to move and heavy enough to punish his torn side.
Split-Beak released the wing tip, caught Bent-Toe's back feathers, and hauled with him. Black-Crown kept striking at the petrel's face.
Together, they pulled the wounded adult clear.
Aylin let the strip go.
The petrel climbed with silver bound around one wing. Uneven strokes carried it above the colony. A final wrench tore the strip free with several long feathers, and both fell beyond the chick edge.
The bird kept flying.
Black-green frost fled beneath its shadow toward the sea. Aylin watched it cross beyond the reach of her torn silver, then dropped beside Bent-Toe. She chose the living wound while the fragment escaped.
Jiang wanted to chase it until sky, sea, and every hooked thing in this world learned to leave the rookery alone.
Bent-Toe moved under his breast.
That small motion chose for him.
Jiang turned back at once.
Aylin reached Bent-Toe and pressed both hands around the open side of its neck. Cool essence tightened the skin beneath her palms. Blood kept welling from deeper than the silver light could touch.
"I can hold the edge," she said. "The vessel underneath is gone."
Jiang pushed his beak against Bent-Toe's breast.
A heartbeat met him, fast and faint.
Pale-Cheek called from behind Black-Crown.
The adult blocked both chick and White-Nape from the fallen petrel feathers. Once the predator passed beyond striking distance, Black-Crown stepped aside.
White-Nape crossed the open ice first.
Pale-Cheek ran beneath its body and reached Bent-Toe's head. The chick begged at the blood-wet beak, searching for another fish, another answer, anything the parent had carried home.
Bent-Toe opened its eyes.
Aylin's hands trembled around the wound. "Stay."
The word belonged to a human idea of death. Bent-Toe knew only the voices near its body, the chick at its beak, and whatever pain still crossed the distance between breath and ice.
Pale-Cheek gave the questioning ending again.
Bent-Toe dragged in air.
One acoustic source failed inside the wound. The other carried the slow opening Pale-Cheek knew.
The wounded parent waited through it.
Pale-Cheek changed its final beat.
Bent-Toe spent the last of its breath answering after it.
Its beak touched the cream patch below the chick's eye.
The heartbeat beneath Jiang stopped.
That morning, Bent-Toe had broken Jiang's clever wall because a chick was trapped. It had brought one fish home, then left its own chick to save another. Remembering those choices hurt worse than calling the death unfair.
Aylin kept pressure on the wound until the blood warmed her fingers and no chest moved under them.
Then she sat back.
Pale-Cheek sent another call.
Bent-Toe's body stayed quiet.
The chick struck the still beak, called into it, and climbed across the dark breast. White-Nape stood over both bodies without trying to pull the chick away.
No notice entered Jiang's sight.
No reward warmed his blood or closed his shoulder.
He had never wanted the System to speak less.
Black-green frost moved beneath the dead adult.
Jiang saw Bent-Toe's stolen identity sliding toward Pale-Cheek and lunged for it.
Aylin caught his sling. "The branch. Not the root."
She was right. The frost under the family belonged to shallow chick ice; its deeper line ran toward the sea, beyond her remaining silver and Jiang's reach.
Saving the recording from one use mattered more than pretending they could destroy it.
Jiang pecked the fallen silver strip until one end lifted from the snow. Aylin seized it, laid it across the black-green branch, and drove cool essence through the metal.
Frost climbed the silver.
At the crease burned into it during the attack, Aylin folded the strip. Jiang threw his body over the other half.
The shallow branch snapped between them.
Green-black light recoiled toward the sea.
Bent-Toe called beneath the distant ice.
Pale-Cheek raised its head.
The dead parent's full song crossed the rookery, clean and strong. It ended with the answer recorded before the neck wound deepened.
Pale-Cheek gave one reply.
Fear changed the chick's ending once more.
The fragment repeated Bent-Toe's old answer.
Pale-Cheek waited with its head tilted.
Another exact copy came from below. It stepped over the chick's new beat and began again.
At Bent-Toe's flank, White-Nape answered.
Its living song opened slowly, made room for Pale-Cheek, and changed when the chick changed.
Pale-Cheek turned away from the ice.
The chick pressed under White-Nape's breast. One parent stood over it. The other lay at their feet, silent in the only way the copied voice could never understand.
Black-Crown moved between the family and Jiang.
Its beak remained lowered. It let Aylin recover the silver and let Jiang crawl away without a strike. When he edged toward the huddle's warmth, the adult shifted across his path.
One defended chick had changed one judgment.
Bent-Toe's death had purchased no membership.
Jiang backed toward the low shelter outside the moving birds. His shoulder bled, his beak tip throbbed, and hunger hollowed the space beneath his breast.
Aylin followed with a strip of silver too small to cross a stream.
Behind them, White-Nape called to Pale-Cheek beside Bent-Toe's body.
Far under the only water where the colony could hunt, the fragment answered in a dead parent's voice.