Vella prepared only one thread because anything larger would become an attack. She sat outside the nullstone shell with her Spirit Ring visible around Hajin’s finger.
Ferra opened a maintenance channel, and Vella extended a strand of neutral mana through it while the thread followed the child’s existing circulation without a healing command until the answering force revealed itself.
The child watched from behind the soul membrane with both hands tangled in her hair. Hajin remained outside her direct sight while Divine Eye observed the reaction through Vella’s contact.
Golden circulation reached the first extraction needle and forced the demonic core half a finger’s width away from its seat before Vella severed her own thread.
The movement still sent pain through the child as her body folded around the displaced core while black channels pulled it back with a wet pulse, and she closed both hands against her lap instead of begging for another current.
"Golden healing interprets the core as corruption," Vella said after the seizure eased, "it would separate her demonic structure from every divine needle, which is exactly what the array trained her body to survive."
Didi crouched beside the maintenance channel without touching it and said, "Then use demonic healing," though her expression already rejected the obvious answer.
Vella sent a second thread carrying the smallest possible demonic pattern, which reached the first black housing and joined the extraction resonance as though completing an unfinished command.
Three needles tightened before she withdrew and said, "That current becomes fuel for the experiment, and enough treatment would finish the extraction and deliver her core into the royal lattice," while keeping her voice carefully controlled.
Hajin watched the copied prison model across Aegis as divine healing pushed core and body apart, while demonic healing taught the array to complete the separation.
Ordinary Spirit restoration remained neutral only until it entered one side of the forced circulation, after which it acquired whichever command dominated that route.
"Can you heal the body without entering the core?" Hajin asked, keeping his question away from the child.
"Not while the soul membrane defines them as one treatment surface," Vella replied, looking toward the girl, "I could close a cut on her hand, but the corresponding energy would still reach the needles beneath her heart."
Loccy placed a basin of water near the outer opening before moving back, and the child approached only after everyone withdrew several steps.
She drank from cupped hands without crossing the membrane, allowing physical matter from her side to remain inside while accepting nothing from theirs.
Rumi studied the one-way behavior with her amber-edged plane held close against her back and said, "Open outside, body comes," while tracing a route around the glass.
Aria completed the likely result before Rumi attempted it, explaining that opening the spatial layer would transfer the child’s physical body first because its weight occupied the nearest real coordinate.
The array anchored the demonic core, so moving her body would leave it behind and tear pathways. Hajin showed Rumi the lines and said, "Your road can move her body, but not the core until the anchor is free."
After frowning at the model, Rumi pressed both hands together and pictured the body moving with its core while her new Wing sharpened at the route, then dimmed when the anchor refused.
Nari approached from the opposite side and said, "Close glass, no pull," while folding smoke-gold lines inward.
Her proposed closure removed the open spatial tension, but Divine Eye showed the collapsing distance transferring into the flexible soul membrane. Instead of crushing the glass, Nari’s power would drive that membrane through the child’s living core.
"Closing the route makes her soul absorb the distance," Hajin said, placing a warning mark across the model, "you would stop the body from moving by crushing what connects it."
Nari’s ears flattened as she dismissed her Wing before anyone requested it and stepped closer to Rumi.
Ferra tested mundane approaches next, and a hooked probe could enter the maintenance channel, yet every angle ended behind a needle housing rather than beneath it.
Breaking nullstone exposed the chamber without changing the folded distance. Shattering spatial glass from outside would turn every reflected layer into cutting planes aimed toward the membrane.
She built three miniature frames from spare wire and demonstrated each failure upon the floor. The first dragged its central bead away from the anchor, the second tightened wire around it, and the third snapped every connecting thread at once.
Rumi destroyed the third model with one irritated claw, then carefully returned the loose pieces to Ferra as Juna examined the behavior of the light before speaking.
"A solar cut can remove the royal commands, but the walls will interpret that as an attempt to steal their subject," Juna said, keeping her blade stored.
"The ownership line retaliates through her blood," Didi replied, following the response grammar, "my Crowned Frost might pause one sentence, but not while the command remains attached to every needle."
The child returned to her corner when their discussion became too animated. She pulled the gray shift over her knees and counted on her fingers.
Every twelfth count, the extraction array sent a quiet pulse through her body. Vella noticed and matched her breathing to the rhythm without sending mana.
The child gradually followed that slower pace, reducing the violence of each forced circulation while her shoulders stayed tense and the next pulse did not fold her body as sharply.
"She has been regulating the pain herself," Vella said, keeping her eyes on the small movements, "the array cycles twelve needles, and she prepares before the final one."
Hajin counted three complete cycles as the Prince’s work turned healing into another instrument of separation, but the patient had learned more about surviving it than any rescuer understood.
"We ask her body what it already does," Hajin said, turning from the model to the breathing pattern, "map the sequence she trusts before designing anything that replaces it."
Vella began recording breath, pulse, core position, and membrane tension across every needle, plus the housings where Ferra found the strongest recoil.
Didi translated the ownership responses, while Rumi and Nari drew the routes that must remain closed as hours passed without another test reaching the child.
Servants brought food to the undercroft, but nobody ate beside the opening where unfamiliar smells might overwhelm her. Hajin ordered shifts instead, so at least two people watched the circulation while everyone else rested beyond the sealed corridor.
The child accepted water only after Vella drank from an identical cup first and left both hands visible. No verbal permission crossed the walls, yet the slower breath and lowered shoulders became the only answers they were entitled to use.
A complete map offered no single answer as four dangers converged whenever one specialist applied the power best suited to ordinary rescue, and Hajin examined every intersection until the pattern became undeniable.
"Healing cannot begin the operation," Hajin said, facing the team, "it must hold one living system together after the hostile commands are already contested."
Vella looked through the walls and asked, "Who contests the claim without making a new one?"
Didi’s silver-gold resonance touched her own palm, carrying blood the prison would recognize as she said, "Someone the command believes has standing, and someone willing to be punished for telling it no."
After another count, the child breathed through the twelfth needle, and nobody offered comfort through a current that would kill her.
Hajin marked the first operation as a contest of authority rather than a healing attempt. Didi could be recognized by the royal lattice, but the prison might treat her refusal as a rival claim.
That risk had to be measured before she entered the child’s route, and the measurement needed to stop before any command reached the core.
Ferra prepared a mirrored test frame outside the prison, using the same royal channel without the child’s soul membrane attached. Didi would touch that copy first, while Vella watched for the exact point where standing became ownership.