The room didn't have days. No light changed, no temperature shifted, nothing marked the hours. Jake's body told him when to sleep and when to wake up, and both felt like guesses.
He slept against the wall with Vauren beside him. The stone was warm. The light was the same when he closed his eyes and the same when he opened them. He dreamed about wind and woke up to silence.
More people came through.
The portal opened without warning — a seam of light in the smooth wall, bright, brief, then bodies. Two on the first opening after Jake. Five on the next, stumbling into each other, blinking at the room the way Jake had. Then three more. Then one alone, a woman with bark-colored skin and no expression. She walked in. Checked the ceiling. Checked the walls. Sat down. Closed her eyes.
Every group did the same thing. The brace for whatever they'd been expecting. The confusion when this was what they got instead. The walk around the room, the dead portal, the questions. The ones who'd been here longer gave the same answers. Grey room. Magic rabbit. Wait.
Jake talked to all of them. He couldn't help it — every portal opening was new people, new species, new worlds he'd never heard of. A pair from a desert world who finished each other's sentences. A man whose skin was translucent enough that Jake could see his pulse in his throat. A woman with six fingers on each hand who told Jake her world had three suns and seemed offended he only had one.
"How do you grow anything?" she said.
"We manage," Jake said.
"With one sun."
"It's a good sun."
She regarded him like he'd told her he lived in a cave. Jake liked her immediately.
The bunny came and went. No pattern to it — Jake would check the center of the room and it would be empty. He'd check again and the rabbit would be sitting there, still as furniture, the dark eyes open. It healed every new arrival. The hand extending, the touch, the bodies straightening. Some people thanked it. Some flinched. The woman with bark skin didn't react at all. The bunny healed her wrist — broken badly enough that the bone sat wrong under the skin — and she opened her eyes, studied her hand, closed her eyes again.
Jake tried talking to the bunny twice more. The first time it said something about rivers choosing their banks and Jake nodded and walked away more confused than before. The second time it watched him for a long moment and said: "You ask the way a child pulls threads. Eventually the sweater comes apart."
"Is that a warning?" Jake said.
"It is an observation about sweaters."
Jake went back to the wall.
Kitch came through on the third opening.
Jake noticed him because of how he moved. Most people stumbled through the portal adjusting, bracing, recalibrating to the room. This one came through already scanning. His head turned before his body finished arriving — a sharp rotation, fast, the eyes sweeping the room in a single pass. Left wall, right wall, ceiling, floor, the group against the far side, the dead portal, Jake. All of it registered in about two seconds. Then he stepped forward and let the portal close behind him.
He was Jake's height, maybe lighter. Covered in short brown-grey plumage that darkened across his back, paled at his throat. The head was broad, flat, the skull clearly not mammalian. The eyes were enormous. Amber, the kind of eyes that made you aware of how small yours were. They didn't blink right — too slow, the lids coming from the wrong direction. No visible ears. The face was alien but not unreadable. Expression lived in the tilt of the head, the angle of the feathers, how the eyes narrowed or widened.
He had taloned feet. Three toes forward, one back, bare on the stone.
He noticed Jake's bare feet. Then his own. Then Jake's face.
Jake was already walking over.
"Hey," Jake said. "I'm Jake. You're the first person in here with talons."
The owl's head tilted — sharp, sudden, a precise thirty-degree adjustment. One eye stayed on Jake. The other tracked the room behind him. Jake wasn't sure both eyes were supposed to do different things at the same time, but they did.
"Your ribs were broken recently," the owl said. His voice was flat, clipped. "You're breathing like someone who just remembered they can. And you're walking toward a stranger barefoot in a sealed room with no exits. Is this a habit?"
"Pretty much," Jake said. He sat down next to him. "What's your name?"
The owl considered the space Jake had just claimed beside him. The head tilted the other way.
"Kitch," he said.
"Kitch. How'd you know about the ribs?"
"I can hear them. The bones are healed but your breathing pattern hasn't caught up yet. You're still favoring the left side." He paused. "You're doing it right now."
Jake took a breath. He was favoring the left side. "Huh."
"Also your posture is compensating for a shoulder injury that isn't there anymore. Someone fixed you recently."
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
"A rabbit fixed me."
Kitch went rigid. Both eyes locked on Jake. "A rabbit."
"A giant rabbit. Sits in the middle of the room. Appears and disappears. Speaks in riddles. Heals people." Jake pointed at the center of the room, which was currently empty. "He's not here right now."
Kitch's gaze swept the empty center of the room, then Jake, then the twenty-odd people sitting against the walls with the patience of people who had accepted something they couldn't explain.
"That tracks," he said.
Jake laughed.
Kitch didn't sit against the wall. He walked the room the way Vauren had — perimeter, full circuit — but where Vauren had been testing for seams, Kitch was watching people. His head moved in those sharp tilts, the eyes tracking independently, cataloguing. He paused at the dead portal, studied the carvings for about ten seconds, moved on. He paused near Roden's group, watched them for a moment without speaking, moved on. He circled back to where Jake was sitting and lowered himself to the floor beside him. The taloned feet folded under him in a way that shouldn't have been comfortable but apparently was.
"Twenty-three people," he said. "Three distinct groups, two pairs, eight individuals. The big one is the leader of the first group through. The four-armed one watches everything but talks to nobody outside his group. The woman with the bark skin hasn't spoken since she arrived."
"Pol talks," Jake said. "You just have to sit next to him."
"You sat next to everyone in here."
"Not everyone. The bark woman didn't seem interested."
"She wasn't." Kitch's eyes narrowed — both of them this time, which Jake was learning meant something different from one eye narrowing. "Who's the one walking over here?"
Vauren was crossing the room toward them with the stride of someone who had assessed a situation from a distance and decided to address it directly.
"That's Vauren," Jake said. "He's with me."
"He walks like he owns the room."
"He walks like that everywhere."
Vauren stopped in front of them. He assessed Kitch. Kitch assessed him back. The owl's head tilted. One eye on Vauren's face, one on his left shoulder.
"Your shoulder was damaged," Kitch said. "Left side. The repair is recent. Your body hasn't integrated it yet — you're moving the arm deliberately instead of naturally."
Vauren's expression didn't change. "You are observant."
"I have eyes."
"Evidently."
"Kitch, Vauren," Jake said. "Vauren, Kitch. He's an owl. He can hear my ribs."
"Former ribs," Kitch said. "The break is healed."
"He is precise," Vauren said. The way he said it could have been a compliment or a diagnosis.
"He's great," Jake said. "Sit down."
Vauren considered the floor. Kitch's taloned feet folded beneath him. The space Jake was gesturing to, which was between a barefoot fifteen-year-old and an owl.
He sat.
They talked. Or Jake talked, and Kitch responded, and Vauren listened and occasionally said something that landed like a stone dropped into still water.
Kitch was from an outside world he described in exactly four sentences. A forest world, tall canopy, his people lived high. He'd entered the Chain because the portal was there. He'd crossed link one alone, and link two alone, and it had taken him longer than it should have because there had been no one to watch his back while he slept.
"You climbed thirty-one platforms alone?" Jake said.
"Is that unusual?"
"Vauren and I nearly died on the twenty-seventh."
"Together."
"Together."
Kitch's head tilted. "That's not an argument against doing it alone."
Vauren's face was doing the thing it did when someone said something he considered fundamentally incorrect but wasn't going to argue about.
"What's your power?" Jake asked.
Kitch held up his hand — the long fingers, the talon-tips — and something caught the light. A shard of glass sat between his fingers, thin, clear, sharp enough that Jake could see it split the sourceless light into colors at its edge. It hadn't been there a moment ago.
"Glass," Kitch said.
"Modus?"
"Modus."
"Can you make more?"
Kitch opened his hand. A dozen shards appeared in the air between them, hovering, rotating slowly, catching the light. Each one was slightly different — different sizes, different angles, thin enough to see through. They hung there for a moment, sharp and precise and almost invisible until they moved. Then they dissolved. Gone.
"That's beautiful," Jake said.
Kitch went still. Both eyes on Jake, the plumage drawing tight at his throat. Jake didn't know what that meant yet.
"It's sharp," Kitch said. "Beautiful is secondary."
"It can be both."
Kitch's eyes narrowed. He held Jake's gaze for another moment. Then the head tilted, one eye drifting back to the room, and Jake understood that this was how Kitch smiled.
The bunny appeared.
They were talking — Jake cross-legged, Kitch folded, Vauren straight-backed — and then the rabbit was in the center of the room. Sitting. Still. Ears up. Jake was starting to get used to it, which felt like a problem.
Kitch went rigid. Every feather on his body flattened. His head rotated toward the bunny in a single sharp movement, both eyes locked, the amber irises wide.
"That's the rabbit," Jake said.
"That is not a rabbit." Kitch's voice was different. Quiet. His talons had extended, the tips pressing into the stone. "That is the most dangerous thing in this room."
White fur, dark eyes, still as always. "How can you tell?"
"The same way you can tell a branch is a snake before your eyes agree. Everything in me is saying move." He didn't move. The feathers stayed flat. The talons stayed pressed. "Your rabbit reassembled your bones. Think about what that means working in the other direction."
Jake had thought about it. In the back of his head, in the place where he put things he didn't want to look at directly, he'd thought about it.
"Yeah," he said.
The bunny's ears rotated toward them. Slow. The dark eyes found Kitch.
"A new thread," it said. The voice carried across the room the same way it always did — light, clear, everywhere. "The one who sees before he thinks. Glass and feathers. Old combination."
Kitch said nothing. His body was still rigid, the feathers flat, the talons pressed.
The bunny's head tilted. "Come."
Kitch turned to Jake. Jake nodded. Kitch stood and walked to the center of the room with the careful steps of someone approaching something they knew could kill them. The bunny's hand extended. Touched Kitch's chest. Kitch flinched — a full-body twitch, the feathers spiking outward for a half-second before pressing flat again.
Then it was done. Kitch walked back. His steps were different — something in his left leg that Jake hadn't noticed before was gone.
"What was wrong?" Jake asked.
"Hairline fracture. Left ankle. Had it since link one." Kitch sat down. The feathers were slowly loosening, the rigid alertness draining out of him. "I didn't know it was there until it wasn't."
"The rabbit's like that," Jake said.
"The rabbit is terrifying," Kitch said.
"Also that."
Vauren said nothing. But Jake caught him watching Kitch with something closer to respect than he'd shown five minutes ago.
The portal opened twice more. Seven people, then four. The room was filling. The walls were getting crowded, the conversations louder, the air thicker with the presence of too many people in a space with no ventilation and no weather. Jake counted thirty-one.
He sat between Kitch and Vauren against the wall. His ribs didn't hurt. His arm worked. His feet were warm on the smooth stone. Somewhere on the other side of the dark portal, link four was waiting. Somewhere past link four, the rest of the Chain. Somewhere out there, his father.
The bunny sat in the center of the room. The ears turned slowly, tracking something none of them could hear. The dark eyes were open. Waiting.
Sixty-nine more.