The world was a vice. The suture port clamped down on Li Tian's chest with the force of a mountain, stealing his breath. Behind him, the pericardial flood roared—a tidal wave of acidic, syrup-thick fluid that slammed into his back, intent on crushing him into paste against the star-metal staples. There was no air. Only pressure and the metallic-sweet stench of ancient blood.
Discipline was his only weapon. He couldn't inhale, so he focused on exhaling, forcing the last stale air from his lungs to slim his chest by a precious millimeter. His fingers, numb and tingling from the earlier micro-devour, scrambled at his belt. He found a sliver of bone shard, a remnant from the ventricle, and wedged it into the seam above his head. It was a futile gesture, but it bought a hair's breadth of space. The fluid pressed in, burning where it touched his skin.
The pressure spiked again, a direct result of the intruder's sabotage. The bones in his chest groaned. In that lethal instant, with no other option, he opened a pinpoint micro-devour along his spine, not to absorb, but to deflect the crushing force.
The backlash was a lightning strike down his legs. His calves burned as if dipped in acid, and a sharp, metallic pain lanced through his teeth. But the deflection worked. The pressure relented for a single, crucial moment. He spiral-bled the violent energy into the tissue around him, the pain a screaming ledger entry, and the surge of fluid forced him through the narrowing slit.
He tumbled into the pericardial canal, a tight, living tube lined with glistening tissue and the ever-present star-metal sutures. The fluid here was slightly less viscous, but the pressure was still immense, pushing him inexorably forward. The rhythm was different—a faster, tighter cycle of hold, micro-draw, and shear-pop that he had to learn instantly. Match the beat, not the breath.
Adhesion sheets, like sticky membranes, tried to glue him to the walls. He peeled them away in rhythm, using the micro-draw to help pull himself free. A brush against a glowing rail triggered a suture tick—a needle of star-metal that shot from the wall. He twisted, feeling it graze his arm, leaving a line of cold fire. He spiral-bled the Qi-disrupting energy immediately.
His lungs screamed for air. The temptation to use Star Lung · Empty Cup was a physical pull, a promise of a full, clean breath. But the memory of near-blackout and the fluid environment made it a death sentence. He refused. Instead, he used micro-breathing tricks, angling his head, pursing his lips to exhale in tiny puffs on the lull between pressure waves. The cost was a deep chest ache and dancing lightspots at the edge of his vision.
Ahead, the canal narrowed into a drain-lacuna, a grinder-like opening that pulsed off-beat, threatening to flush him backward into maceration plates he'd passed. It was a timed hazard, a rhythm puzzle. He couldn't force it. He had to outthink it.
He baited the lacuna, timing his approach so that a slight arrhythmia from a distant talisman pop caused it to open a half-beat early. The subsequent pressure surge, now out of sync, didn't pull him in but instead propelled him forward, past the deadly opening. He used a torn tendon strip to momentarily jam a guiding rail, creating a two-beat window of safe passage. It was terrain and timing, nothing more.
"Mind your interval."
The polite voice was a worm in his ear, carried by the fluid itself. Another talisman detonated, causing a sharp arrhythmia spike. The canal convulsed. Li Tian adapted, riding the shockwave rather than fighting it, his movements economical, his will a scalpel.
The ring on his finger pulsed, a steady, warning drumbeat. His eyes, strained and burning, found a pattern in the sutures ahead—a drain seam, a weir where the fluid slowed and pooled before being cycled out. A whisper brushed his mind: "Drain seam… pericardial weir…"
He pulled the star-map shard from his pocket. As he held it near the seam, the star-metal staples glowed in recognition. The seam began to irise open, a narrow escape route. It would only stay open for two holds after a specific diastole + one-beat delay. He mapped the final path across slick, ridged tissue, timing his movements to hit the seam exactly on cadence. He refused the empty promise of Empty Cup. He would do this clean.
He committed. As the correct diastole hit, he pushed forward, his body a precisely tuned instrument. He was a breath away from the drain seam, the outside world a dark promise beyond.
"Allow me to assist."
The polite line was the last thing he heard before a secondary valve blew.
A reverse surge hammered the canal, an inversion of pressure that slammed into his back. The drain seam yawned open, not into safety, but into a vast, dark chest cavity. And below, directly in his path, whirred a spinning maceration fan of bone and tendon, its blades gleaming in the faint starlight.
Li Tian was halfway through the drain seam, falling, the fan's grinding teeth rising to meet him.