Erebus set the three bone ampoules on Kade's steel table and opened a pocket that smelled like cold stone. "No flames," he said. "They like being seen."
"Distill," Kade said, pencil ready. No projector—paper and a blunt lead. He listens with his jaw, not his ears.
Erebus cracked the first ampoule. Not liquid—dust that refused to fall. He coaxed it through a narrow bone funnel into a shallow dish. Lines rose in the dust like breath across frost, then settled into a pattern: not a map. A behavior.
Rose leaned in. "Echo-seeding," she said. "It teaches the belt to remember the touch and want it again."
"Like a song you can't stop humming," Rachel murmured, unhappy.
Erebus opened the second. Same dust, different curve. It played with timing—rewarded the lattice when it answered quickly, punished it when it didn't.
"Training," Kade said, disgusted. "They're housebreaking our hum."
"Trying," I said.
