"Lend me your body."Hundreds of mouths inside the false Cassian repeated it.Citizens outside answered, "We will."They tied black cords around their necks: a baker's wife, a prisoner's brother, a mother who lost a child in winter, even men who hated Cassian.Some wanted dead family returned. Some wanted revenge. Some wanted to abandon sick bodies.All signed: `I lend my neck and body to the Black Saint.`Past one hundred signatures, living skin grew between idol fragments—woman's cheek, old man's hand, an arm that held a child—imitating Cassian."Whose name do I record?" Ria asked."Everyone.""One person.""No one."Hundreds of mouths gave different names. Ria refused to write an original-less collective identity.Cassian raised his sword."Kill me," the false one said. "You cannot resist a neck."His point touched its seam. The same line opened on one, ten, a hundred citizens."Cut it and it multiplies," Ria said."I know.""Then why push?""To count the connections."A child screamed at the alley's end. Her mother had signed, but the body line ran into the child.Cassian stopped because there were more candidates than expected."Afraid?""Annoyed."The mother, Sera Bean, stepped out and tore her contract."I cancel. I didn't know my husband would return in my daughter's body."Blood ran from both halves; the child's seam deepened. The false Cassian's arm became a child's."A loan cannot be revoked. Ask the body."The child's mouth spoke in her mother's voice."I lend it."Their shadows dragged toward the false body.Sera seized Cassian."Take my daughter out first.""Then I cannot see how it chooses the next body."She slapped him.He watched the line. The false saint used love before health: the more a mother withdrew, the better the child became as a vessel.Ria wrote both names."If we fail, who killed them?""The one who made them sign. Put my name beside it too.""Will another name return my daughter?" Sera asked."No.""Then why always write?"Ria answered."So the next buyer knows the price."Sera did not accept it, but did not release her daughter.
* * *
Small bells rang beneath the scaffold, in the alley well, and inside citizens' throats.At the first they knelt. At the second they bowed.After the third, the false Cassian would be legally beheaded and every signer become a corpse candidate. It would enter the healthiest."Break the bells?" Ria asked."The sound is inside their throats.""Burn the signatures?""Copied into their bodies."Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings."Then?"There was a method: kill the signers before they became corpse candidates."Do it," hundreds of mouths whispered. "You can."Cassian held his sword low. He could finish before the third bell.The roof bell fell—but a black hook caught it.Ines stood above."Choosing the same answer twice.""Where is Derrick?""Beyond you.""Why return?""You are fouling my scaffold."She threw the bell inside."Another executioner," the false one said. "Lend me your body.""No.""You already borrowed your father's."Ines jumped.She kicked the falling bell into its mismatched fist. Three fingers fell and became tiny people clutching her ankle.She let them hold her. The false body's next fist crushed its own fragments."Your body. Break it yourself."The collective rhythm faltered.Ines jammed a blade against the first bell's tongue, delaying it half a beat.Half the crowd bowed early, half remained on the second toll.She cut the second bell rope so it rang early.No one reached the same third toll. Corpse succession could not open."You cut the bells," Cassian said."One route."She drew the black blindfold used on Derrick.The false body tried to leave the scaffold."The target does not move.""I am hundreds.""One body now."It searched for the healthiest next host: soldier, young woman, then the child with the thickest seam.The girl's eyes blackened. Her neck twisted in Sera's arms.Ines threw the nameless cloth over the false face.The last gaze was blocked. The child's seam closed.Ria kicked the block behind its knees."I am not an executioner.""A witness is enough."Ines forced its head into the groove fitted to Cassian's seam."Executioner Ines Morn. Target: nameless idol that stole names to form a collective body.""I am Cassian Crow.""No. That name is still standing there."She pointed to the real Cassian, raised Derrick's old sword, and struck once.
* * *
The false head fell.Hundreds of mouths inhaled and could not exhale.The bells were out of rhythm, the last gaze trapped, the signers' necks unopened.No succession occurred.The body collapsed into idol fragments, and borrowed names returned to citizens.Some wept. Others, whose dead relatives did not return, threw stones at Ines."Why did you kill the saint?"Blood ran from her forehead. She cleaned her sword."No one asked me to save them. I only killed it accurately."Ria checked the record: one body, one neck, one stroke, no proxy, no succession.The first stage of killing Cassian was complete.Ines sat before the covered false head."How many are left now?"The question was not for the corpse.Beyond neck, breath, sight, and bell, how many escape routes had Cassian hidden?Ria looked at the real Cassian.He did not answer.He did not know.