Hend began with the floor, not the body.
The dead echo-maw lay beside the old winch plinth, one broken plate folded beneath its middle. Its mineral armor made the carcass look more like fallen machinery than an animal. Dark tissue showed through the breach Iven had opened. A small cluster near the rear limb still made a faint, breathy copy of the word “Hold.”
Hend kept everyone outside its reach while Neri marked the sound supports beneath the court.
A victory did not make a broken floor carry more weight.
It was the morning of day fifteen hundred and forty-seven. The moving core had remained still through the night. Safa’s watchers had seen no heavy movement beyond it. The smaller folds and threads had continued twitching in places until the local keeper isolated their water and vibration paths.
Garn stood beside that keeper now with the old hazard notebook open. Its sketch was poor. The animal was larger, uglier, and more complicated than the drawing suggested.
They began a new drawing.
Hend brought the ordinary capstan line to the first sound anchor. Its drum had a known rating. So did the slings, the secondary line, and the roller cradle waiting beyond the court. None was rated for lifting the whole carcass clear.
