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John smiled despite the room. "Marking," he said, as another bundle slid into the black. The void-mill hummed — a deep, far sound, like a millstone turning under a river you could not see.

[Ding! System notifications: Feeding channel open. Pulverized nutrient routed to egg. Hatch Progress: 1% → 2%.]

John's shoulders loosened a fraction. "It works," he said.

"Of course it works," Fizz said, mouth full. "You are you and I am me. Two geniuses and a hole." He swallowed and pointed with the bread again. "That one. No, not the one that looks like a shoe. The one that looks like a folded dog. Yes."

Time has thinned. Work took over. Sack after sack lifted and slid into the soft black. Bones went with a faint whisper, like small secrets. The rare hard spines rang once, a sound too high for normal rooms, then were gone. Old blood did not splash. It simply rose, poured like tar into darkness, and the darkness drank it without pride.

Fizz sang again.

Ode to the Bucket (Chorus)-

Slosh and sway, dear bucket mine,

You carry sea and suds and brine.

You drown the stink, you float our hope,

You make a hero from a rope.

He made up three more verses on the spot about mops, about rags that dream of being flags, about how lye is "spicy salt that kills rude things." He ate between rhymes and kicked the occasional stray bone back toward the void with a satisfied little thwip. He took breaks to drink from the clean water jar and brought it to John without being asked, holding the cup up like a page at a feast.

John did not push the void hard. He kept it steady. He watched his mana. He listened for the new alert he knew would sound when the mana well ran low. The system's presence hung quiet and watchful in the back of his mind.

[System: Hatch Progress: 2% → 3% → 4%.]

The numbers ticked like small victories on a long road. John felt the egg hum once in reply — just a small beat against his sternum, then stillness again. The mana sheath held. The tether held. He kept one thought fixed in the middle of all the work: "Do not drain to zero."

He paused every so often to breathe, to reset his grip on the ledger pen, to wipe his palm on a rag. Fizz used those pauses to put on a show for the hooks — an audience of iron.

"Ladies and hooks," he announced grandly, standing on the rim of a barrel with his paws spread wide, "today you have seen wonders. You have seen the Amazing Vanish Trick. You have seen the Not Soup Drink void drink things. You have seen a handsome boy do math with a hole. In return, I ask only for applause."

The hooks did not clap. Fizz clapped for them, then bowed so low his nose almost touched the floor.

An hour passed. Then another. The room changed shape — not in walls, but in weight. Bins emptied. Racks showed their backs. The air lost a slice of its old rot. The void-mouth didn't change size, but somehow it felt less like a mouth and more like a door you could respect if you treated it with respect.

[System: Mana 56%. Hatch Progress: 7%.]

"Food," Fizz said at last, flopping down on a clean bit of tarp that he had declared a throne. "We eat or we turn into brushes."

John closed the void with a spiral motion and a breath, the way you snuff a candle to save the wick. The black shrank to an apple, to a seed, to nothing you could see. The room felt heavier for a blink — then normal again, if this room had a normal.

He set the ledger aside and reached for the small bag they had brought. Two rounds of bread, a folded wedge of cheese, a stoppered jar of pickled carrot, and a minor miracle: Penny's leftover apple tarts wrapped in oil paper.

Fizz saw the tarts and gasped. "A goddess lives," he said, eyes bright. "Her name is Baked."

They ate. John took steady bites and looked at his hands. They were red across the knuckles where lye had found thin skin. He flexed them. They still felt like his and not like someone else's. He ate the last piece of bread and set the crust aside for the cat who had adopted the yard outside.

Fizz licked the tart paper clean, then folded it very small and tucked it into his bag. "For art," he said. "I will make a hat later."

"Please don't," John said without heat.

Fizz leaned back against John's shoulder and hummed. Then he sprang up again, restless, and pointed at a crate stamped with a faded seal. "This one says 'reef spines: dull.' That is a lie. Reef spines are never dull. They are pointy even when they apologize."

"We'll handle them slowly," John said. "Back to work."

He opened the void again, careful with the mouth, careful with the pull. He moved the crate with both hands and a grunt so he did not lose control of either the wood or the black. The crate floated, tipped, poured its chalky spines into the void like a slow rain. The mill swallowed, ground, sent the powder down that thin tether-path into the waiting egg.

[System: Hatch Progress: 9%.]

John says, "I think we are like nine percent close to hatch."

Fizz read him the numbers as if reading a race call. "Nine! Nine! The tiny egg crawls! It breathes! It believes!"

"Don't shout at it," John said.

"I encourage it," Fizz said. "I am a coach."

Back and forth they went. Old wolf ribs. A sack of boar skin that tried to flop like a ghost fish. Two jars of "practice bile" so old even the label looked ashamed. John did not taste the smell anymore. He was too busy tasting numbers and holding the shape of the tether in his mind. The cost never left —half his well, humming out into the sheath— but he set his pace for a long run, not a sprint.

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