From Human to Skeleton: Revived with Infinite System Crystals Chapter 737: The Finger Remembers

Zunoder should not have been able to call JJ's panel. That was the first useful fact.

JJ grabbed the fact before fear could. Her wrist screen burned pink-white around the edges while Ty's stolen voice filled Lost Property.

"Sponsor," Zunoder said. "How much did you pay for the wrong half?"

Ty reached for the panel. JJ pulled it back.

"Do not," she said.

"He is using my voice."

"Yes. Badly."

Zunoder laughed softly. The sound made the black case tap once.

Everyone heard it.

Omina turned from the clerk. JJ lifted the panel higher. "You are on a sponsor line. That ans you routed through my estate claim, the arena feed, or stolen contestant identity. Which one?"

"I missed your confidence."

"We have never t."

"Your money has touched . That counts in so courts."

Heissman murmured, "Regrettable, but not universally false."

Yun-Jin elbowed him.

JJ kept her eyes on the panel. "Which route?"

Zunoder did not answer.

The finger tapped twice inside the case. The clerk's pen hovered. Omina saw it and stepped closer.

"Record that."

"The item is not under testimony," the clerk said.

The finger tapped three tis. The black case slid one inch toward Ty. The clerk's expression shifted from bored to offended, which seed like a promotion in this office.

"Item interference is prohibited before claim recognition."

The case tapped again. The wax seal cracked wide enough for a single white bone to press against the gap. Ty's missing finger. Small, ridiculous, and terrible.

It bent once toward JJ's panel.

Zunoder's voice sharpened. "Do not let that thing near the line."

Ty went still.

JJ looked from the finger to her panel. "Oh."

Yun-Jin smiled without warmth. "He is afraid of it."

"I dislike confident interpretations," Heissman said, "but I am willing to celebrate this one prematurely."

The finger scratched the inside of the case. Not random. Letters.

Omina leaned over. "Read."

Ty did not move. The finger scratched again.

JJ read aloud because Ty had done the quiet thing again. "Not... yours."

The panel scread. Zunoder's voice split into two sounds. One stayed smooth and human. The other tore underneath it, raw and furious.

"That bone does not get to vote."

The clerk stamped a form so hard the counter jumped.

ITEM SELF-ASSERTION DETECTED

The case lid popped open.

Ty caught the finger before it rolled off the counter.

He should have felt nothing. Bone t bone, and the room fell away.

He stood in rain.

mory rain. Cold on a hand that used to have skin. Jade laughing under an awning. His own voice saying sothing stupid about rice, then sothing worse, then sothing better because she kept laughing. A promise so ordinary it had survived death by being too small for monsters to notice.

Then Erebos's hand rested on a dark table.

The finger lay separated from Ty, used like a key. It tapped against wood beside Jade's emptied crystal. Twelve black circles waited around a brass gate marked EARTH PUBLIC TRUST.

Erebos did not smile. That made the mory worse.

"A body is a public argunt," Erebos said to soone Ty could not see. "A bone is a private one. Make them disagree where love can hear it."

The finger touched the brass gate. The gate opened one tooth-width. Ty felt Jade's na catch in the gap.

Pressure Jade. Feed the face. Corrupt the rescue route.

The mory snapped.

Ty's fla surged hard enough that every loose tag in Lost Property lifted.

JJ grabbed his arm. "Stay here."

His voice ca out flat. "Erebos used it to point at Earth."

Omina's eyes narrowed. "Say it again."

"He used my finger to point through Jade."

The clerk's pen began writing without her hand. The finger twitched in Ty's palm and scratched against his thumb bone. More words. He read them himself this ti.

"He gave a job."

Yun-Jin took one step closer. "The finger?"

Ty nodded.

"What job?"

The finger curled toward JJ's panel. Zunoder's call was still open. The line hissed with breathing that belonged to Ty's lungs and not Ty.

The finger scratched:

FIND HER FIRST.

Omina's face went still. "That is not a rescue instruction."

"No," JJ said. "That is targeting."

Heissman looked suddenly ill, which was rare enough to make everyone notice.

"If the assigned purpose was to locate Jade through Ty's original bond," he said, "then Erebos turned affection into navigation. Elegant. Vile. I would like to be done admiring terrible people."

Yun-Jin looked at Ty. "Normal version."

"Erebos used my bone to make reaching Jade dangerous," Ty said.

"That I understood."

The clerk reached for the finger. Ty closed his hand.

"Do not."

"Item remains contested."

"It is talking to ."

"Many contested items talk."

"It is warning ."

The stamp on the clerk's desk flipped over by itself.

NEGLIGENCE REVIEW ESCALATED

The clerk stared at it.

Heissman clasped his hands. "I am about to experience joy in a municipal setting."

Zunoder's voice ca through the panel again, stripped of softness. "Give it back to the case."

Ty turned toward the panel. "No."

"It is not yours."

The finger curled against Ty's empty joint. It did not attach. Not fully. Pain ran up his arm anyway, an old road finding new fire. Ty held the panel close enough for Zunoder to hear the bones grind.

"Say that again."

For one mont the line carried two hearts: one stolen, one rembered by bone.

Then Zunoder laughed. "Keep your little witness. I already found a better road."

The call cut.

Across the room, a shelf slid aside and revealed a narrow black passage lined with blind public crystals. The missing finger pointed at the passage.

Then, very carefully, it pointed at Ty.

Omina read the gesture before anyone else moved. "He wants you in the route."

"It is my route," Ty said.

"It is Erebos's route until we prove otherwise."

JJ tucked her panel against her chest as if that could stop Zunoder from reaching through it again. "Can we prove otherwise while standing here?"

The blind crystals inside the passage flashed once. Jade's basent appeared in them for less than a heartbeat: gauze, water, phones, a white reflection behind her. Then the image beca Zunoder's face and vanished.

Yun-Jin drew a slow breath through pain. "No."

Heissman folded the inconvenience form with excessive care. "I believe we are being invited to a trap with unusually persuasive decor."

Ty closed his hand around the finger. It burned. He did not let go.

"Then we go in knowing it is a trap."

Omina's mouth tightened.

"That is not enough."

"It is more than Zunoder has."