Ferra tightened the last refusal-lattice strip around Hajin’s right forearm and struck it twice with a wooden mallet. The temporary bracer covered the old Resonance lines without feeding mana into them.
Thin metal ribs crossed beneath his wrist, with force directed toward three mundane plates along the elbow and shoulder. One severe Breaker backlash would crack the arrangement, but the fracture should travel through prepared seams instead of his rebuilt pathways.
"You receive one mistake," Ferra said as she tested the release catch, "afterward, the brace becomes sharp jewelry around an injured arm."
"One distributed backlash," Hajin replied, confirming the limitation.
"A mistake is shorter," she said as she handed him two wooden practice forms.
The first matched the unfinished divine Growth blade she forged from avatar material, while the second matched its demonic counterpart, and neither possessed an edge or active frequency.
Their unequal balance forced Hajin to manage separate weapons rather than treating them like one mirrored tool. He retrieved the Legendary Chain from inventory, completed one binding motion, then stored it before accepting both forms.
The wooden blades entered his right and left hands without sharing the Chain’s space. Ferra struck at him with two padded rods, so each side required a different response.
His right-hand form had to catch divine pressure without feeding it into the demonic balance of the left. When he crossed them too early, the wooden surfaces kicked apart and the bracer clicked along its warning seam.
"The finished blades will answer opposing frequencies," Ferra said, resetting her stance, "if you let one decide the other’s angle, their resonance will fight through your shoulders."
Hajin adjusted his feet and repeated the crossing motion until both hands supplied distinct force toward one shared target.
"Again," Ferra said as she circled him inside the abandoned orchard pavilion, "you still reach for a weapon that belongs inside inventory."
He repeated the sequence until his right hand stopped expecting Chain weight. Store, retrieve the right blade, retrieve the left blade, cross the separate frequencies, and release both without entangling their future resonance.
The bracer clicked whenever his wrist angle would have concentrated backlash through one pathway. Juna watched from the orchard wall while Loccy inspected evacuated gardener houses.
Eirwen had already moved every worker beyond the living ground, so the ownership test had empty space. Didi stood at the pavilion’s center with the child’s preserved blood sample sealed between her hands.
Three Shards rotated behind Didi, while the fourth remained only an unfinished pressure beneath her royal circulation. Cessy’s command grammar rested on a stone table.
Vella maintained the child’s frequency across a neutral crystal, and Lucan observed through the same warded mirror used during planning.
"We test one thread," Didi said, placing a fingertip against the sealed sample, "I name the protected person without title, deny the birth claim, and accept retaliation without accepting transfer."
"If the response becomes a route, release the sample before following it," Cessy warned through the mirror, "Collectors use recognition as a bridge."
Didi drew one line of Crowned Frost through her own blood. Silver-gold resonance touched the preserved sample and found the black ownership command hidden beneath the extraction damage.
Vella kept a neutral thread around the sample without entering it. If the test displaced any remnant of the child’s core frequency, she would preserve the pattern rather than heal the copied blood.
Eirwen recorded Didi’s exact declaration from outside the frost boundary so no later court could rewrite its meaning, and the mark answered immediately.
Pressure entered Didi’s three Shards and demanded the child’s return to recognized Underworld custody, so she spoke the complete refusal without shortening any clause.
"This person is protected from collection, assignment, and transfer," Didi said, holding the frost steady, "I reject the claim without receiving it, while accepting the original authority’s answer against my own standing."
Black light struck through her palm as Didi’s knees bent beneath the first impact, but she kept the sample above the table and refused to let pain smear the command across another person’s blood.
Frost climbed her throat before she redirected the retaliation through her own Shards to the empty stones beneath her feet, so the orchard roots recoiled from the foreign pressure.
Eirwen moved her silver markers outward while keeping the living network safe without interfering with Didi’s chosen burden, and the braced sample remained on the table as Didi absorbed the retaliation across her Shards.
Frost covered both arms, then traveled into the orchard ground without claiming any living root. Hajin moved closer but did not interrupt the sentence before she completed it.
"The claim is invalidated for this contact," Aria said within his thoughts, "the underlying mark remains attached because the protected person is not present."
Above the blood sample, darkness opened into a key-shaped boundary while Cessy stopped breathing for one visible moment.
"Close the test," Lucan said, reaching toward the mirror controls, "that route is drawing a crossing body."
The black key widened before Didi could withdraw her blood. A familiar obsidian claw pressed through its center, followed by the angular shoulder of the Royal Collector that had killed Gazel.
One black Shard floated above its brow, identical to the misleading display Hajin remembered from their first encounter, while Divine Eye found no ordinary rank circulation inside it.
The Shard functioned as a boundary key and drew more of a distant core through the manifested body while Cessy’s face lost every trace of diplomatic control.
"That exact route took Gazel," Cessy said, recognizing lines preserved inside years of memory, "it is the same Collector, and it has chosen to answer instead of allowing a lesser agent to report the refusal."
The creature pulled its second arm through the opening while obsidian plates scraped against the boundary and a voice emerged from the unfinished crossing.
Aria measured the crossing body against every rank record and returned no reliable result, while the visible Shard contained almost no stored growth because it served as a key rather than a reservoir.
Most of the creature’s real pressure remained beyond the boundary, entering only where the open route allowed. "Agent Cessy. Agent Lucan." The Collector looked directly toward the communication mirror.
"Your reports no longer match the harvest growth registered above," it said, its voice carrying through the boundary without raising the volume.
Lucan severed the mirror’s outgoing location data, but the Collector had already seen Hajin’s five dormant Ring circuits and Didi’s blood.
"Evacuate the final perimeter," Hajin ordered, storing the practice forms and retrieving the Legendary Chain, "Eirwen needs every living root clear of civilians."
Juna crossed the orchard wall in a solar streak while Loccy lifted the last gardener’s empty cottage from its unstable foundation. She carried it beyond the expected strike line, removing shelter a returning worker might approach.
Eirwen planted twelve silver markers around the living ground without opening her Zone while her pathways remained whole and the answer she prepared would consume everything the orchard remembered.
Didi released the blood sample after she finished her refusal while the boundary key remained open because the Collector had accepted the call from its side.
"The test succeeded," Cessy said, her voice tight with anger rather than relief, "her resonance can deny one claim while she names the person and receives its retaliation."
"And it called the killer through," Hajin replied, watching the obsidian torso emerge.
"That was not a condition," Cessy said, "it was the claimant choosing to answer personally."
The Royal Collector placed one claw onto the orchard stones and pulled more of its distant body into Ouro. The single black Shard rotated above it like a key entering a deeper lock.
Hajin opened his first Ring and let the Chain uncoil between them as the rescue requirement gained an exact cost while Gazel’s killer crossed through the same grammar meant to protect another child.
"We do not let the answer become the claim," Didi said, standing through the last of the frost backlash, "the Collector crossed because I refused, not because I surrendered the person I named."
Hajin shifted the Chain into a low guard as the orchard was empty, the perimeter was clear, and the Collector had arrived with only part of its real body inside the world.
"Then we hold it at the boundary," he said, "and learn whether the same route that carried it here can be closed without sending the refusal back through Didi."
The Collector’s claw tightened against the orchard stone while the half-formed body waited for the rest of its core, and no one rushed forward.
The rescue test had already shown that a successful refusal could open a door for something worse.