Chapter 551: Audience Ended Early

The remaining sliver of the court shifted above Didi’s wrist, showing Hajin the nearest figure clearly enough to see one finger rise.

The rest of the figure remained still, the gesture offering no visible preparation to match the effort still running through the people holding their side.

The royal route closed around it, taking most of the connection away with a suddenness that sent Hajin’s weight backward onto his braced foot.

[ Royal route closure: 70% ]

His Grasp lost the greater part of the pull at once, the sudden change making him tighten the support beneath Didi’s arm to keep her from following it.

Loccy’s burden eased beneath the passage, the loop relaxing while the sisters preserved its local ends rather than rushing to abandon their positions.

Vella kept her hands against Cessy’s threatened division, waiting for the person’s core to remain together before treating the absence of pressure as something trustworthy.

Hajin saw those responses together, comparing the care required to release their own effort with the single lifted finger that had caused the change.

’All that work on our side, while it decides when the conversation is finished.’

He stared at the raised finger through the remaining sliver, remembering the pressure in Loccy’s bent arms while the tiny gesture hung there almost lazily.

Seventy percent had gone in that movement, leaving him struggling to ease a grip he had spent everything keeping steady a moment before.

His balance felt wrong after the release, his knees wanting to straighten against a weight that had simply stopped pulling where he expected it.

He bent them again when Juna pressed against his side, swallowing the sick little rise in his throat as the floor settled beneath him.

Didi drew the frost inward with the retreating line, preserving the protection toward the room while allowing the vanished portion of the court to remain gone.

Hajin followed her hand, the contact beneath his palm retaining only what was still exposed instead of reaching after the connection the figure had taken away.

Juna came closer as Cessy’s division settled under Vella’s gold, her attention moving from the injured demon toward Hajin’s changing expression beneath the scar.

Then the hidden throne supplied the only word it had offered throughout their unwanted look, the sound aimed past the hands holding the boundary.

"FRAGMENT."

Hajin felt the word land beneath his ribs, a dreadful familiarity in the way it passed over his name to settle on what he carried.

Ash folded behind the Watcher’s arm, hiding his face against her side while her hand spread firmly across the back of his head.

Sava’s ink stopped halfway through a stroke, the unfinished word refusing to continue even though her fingers still moved the pen across the page.

Sava stared at the stopped ink with her pen still moving, the nib scraping a dry curve across the paper before her hand went still.

Juna’s hand covered his side beneath the ribs, a simple touch finding the place the attention had made him suddenly aware of carrying.

He glanced at her before looking back toward the last sliver, finding no request in her expression that he demonstrate how little the word bothered him.

’Apparently we’ve been introduced.’

The thought left him cold beneath the ribs, his mouth too dry for the clever answer that ought to have followed such an introduction.

He swallowed once before trying to breathe more deeply, the air catching in his throat despite the steady warmth of Juna’s hand against his side.

His five Rings turned around the right forearm he was using to hold Didi up, their familiar movement suddenly distracting in the edge of his sight.

He looked past them toward the last suggestion of the throne, the desire to find a face there making him stare until his eyes began to hurt.

The Grasp shuddered against the final retreat of the route, the burn in his palm reminding him that holding a contact could hurt even when nobody crossed it.

"Let that part go," Didi murmured.

He eased with her movement, keeping the support beneath her forearm until her frost no longer needed his hand to remain aligned with the closing scar.

The last broad suggestion of the court vanished, leaving a narrow black line across the scar where the lifted finger had been a moment earlier.

The stone behind the opening looked insultingly ordinary, its rough surface catching the light while Hajin’s mind kept trying to place the hidden throne inside it.

Nearby, Lucan helped Cessy settle against the wall, the soft scrape of her shoe sounding loud in the space left by that single word.

Hajin lifted his burned palm clear when Didi released the contact, his fingers slow to uncurl from the position they had held around her wrist.

She settled against his other hand for a moment, her shoulder dipping with a long exhale while the six Shards turned above her tired face.

Juna kept her palm against his side, looking toward the trace running from the closed scar toward the square as though following the hum only she could hear.

The trace ran toward the square where the passage opened, its thinness making him search for it twice before he could follow the whole length.

"That was interest," Cessy said, her voice rough from the strain, "the next thing may become a choice."

Lucan remained beside her, watching the scar after the court had disappeared as though expecting the wound itself to explain what the silence below would not.

Hajin looked toward Cessy at the last word, finding her fingers still pressed against the place Vella had just kept from splitting apart.

’How do I tell her this?’

He would have to bring the recognition to the Goddess through a chosen memory when he next entered, carrying that awful word into the place she waited.

The thought made him want to turn the whole view over in his mind, searching for some useful detail to set beside the sound of her being found.

He kept coming back to the finger, its small movement terribly clear while everything he wanted to know stayed beyond the stone in front of him.

"Seal the recognition record," he told Aria.

"Sealed."

The recognition folded into a private record beside Aria’s reply, its closed field sitting quietly at the edge of his sight while he tried to swallow.

For a moment he watched that small field instead of the scar, finding the stillness of the sealed notice easier to bear than the stone behind it.

Sava turned her paper toward the local map instead, marking the portion of the royal route that had vanished while leaving the failed word unfinished beside it.

She drew the seventy percent across the marked connection in one long stroke, the little remaining section making her pause before she finished the closure.

Her pen returned to the surviving trace along the square, darkening that direction until Hajin could pick it out from where he stood beside Didi.

Hajin rolled his left wrist cautiously, stopping with his fingers half closed when the burned skin caught sharply across the crease of his palm.

Juna noticed the pause, moving her hand from his side to his forearm with a small frown at the way he was holding it.

"Still collecting good news?"

"I’m saving my optimism for a less stupid emergency."

"Put this one near the bottom," Juna said.

He glanced at her hand around his forearm, its warmth staying steady while his fingers slowly uncurled from the position that had hurt them.

Didi let out a tired breath that almost became a laugh, the sound loosening something in the way she had been holding her shoulders beneath the new Shard.

Her tired breath brought a small answering movement to Juna’s mouth, lasting just long enough for Hajin to remember what her face looked like without that hard concentration.

The Watcher kept Ash close while Eirwen checked the single root left by her stored mark, making sure the boy remained plainly present after the attempt to overlook him.

Loccy released the carried foundation by degrees, the sisters watching its route settle before withdrawing their hands from the points they had held.

Rumi rubbed her palm against her skirt after withdrawing it from the mark, looking toward Nari before both sisters checked the settled floor again.

Hajin looked toward the protected passage, picturing the clone’s place beside the wall while his own right arm began to ache beneath Juna’s strap.

The eight-minute limit was close enough to keep him watching that direction, the remembered doorway becoming more tempting than another look at the scar.

A thin strain still followed the outer Sanctuary connection, the exposed approach offering a practical concern the closed view had not solved for them.

"The room?" he asked Vella.

She looked toward the protected passage, keeping one hand against Cessy while her attention shifted to the vulnerable connection rather than the vanished court.

"The approach is still under pressure."

He started to step toward the passage, catching himself when the strain beneath his ribs tightened sharply enough to interrupt the movement of his leg.

"Hajin?"

Didi’s hand caught his sleeve as he stopped, her fingers closing around the cloth while Juna turned fully toward his face.

"Something’s pulling."

He looked down at his own arm, finding the five Rings still turning while a new pressure gathered beneath the pathways they had already strained.

A deep tension gathered through the shared soul, pulling toward the protected passage while his right hand began to shake against Juna’s forearm.

Juna shifted closer as his breath changed, preparing to catch a problem that had stopped being something they could watch at a distance.

Hajin kept his feet beneath him while the last of the route’s closure reached the connection he still carried back to the guarded room.