The world was a downward scream. Wind-shear tore at Li Tian's clothes, and the roar of the maceration fan filled the vast cavity—a spinning disc of bone and tendon blades, humming with a lethal frequency. It rose to meet him, a circular saw designed to grind flesh and bone into pulp.
There was no Hollow Spiral Palm. No Empty Cup. Only the brutal calculus of survival.
He twisted in the air, his body a rudder in the chaotic gusts. An intercostal vent blasted a crosswind from the rib lattice to his left. He angled into it, letting the gust slam him sideways, out of the fan's direct path. It wasn't enough. The outer edge of the spinning blades still swept toward his legs.
His fingers, already numb from past costs, snagged a hanging tendon strip. He swung, his body arcing violently, his boots skimming the whirring teeth. The tendon stretched and snapped. The recoil sent him tumbling toward the fan's central axle.
In that lethal instant, as a blade swept up to carve him in two, he had no choice. He opened a pinpoint micro-devour along his shin, not to absorb, but to deflect the blade's edge.
The backlash was a frozen fire in his bone. His entire leg went numb, then erupted in pins and needles. The metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. But the deflection worked, kicking the blade off its track for a microsecond. The fan shuddered, its rhythm broken. He was thrown clear, landing hard on a slick, bony ledge below. He spiral-bled immediately, the pain in his leg receding to a deep, throbbing burn.
He was in the chest cavity maw. The air was a torrent, cycling in a new, vast rhythm. A long, powerful inhale-draw pulled at him, followed by a noisy, vibrating wind hold, and then a violent exhale-flush that threatened to sweep him into unseen drains. Match the beat, not the breath.
He recalibrated, using Vein Step to move only on the lulls, his Star Lung breaths tiny and controlled. The cost was a persistent ache in his chest and dancing lightspots in his vision, but he refused the siren call of Empty Cup. A blackout here was death.
Ahead, a rib lattice formed a treacherous bridge, intercostal vents blasting unpredictable crosswinds through the gaps. He timed his movements, sliding and crawling between gusts, his body pressed against the cold bone. A pleural drain hissed open off-beat, its pull threatening to drag him into a grinding pit. He baited it, stepping into its influence zone and then throwing himself sideways as it fired, using the rebound gust to sling himself forward. He used a torn tendon as a temporary guy-line, the yank straining his shoulder. He spiral-bled the strain immediately.
"Almost elegant."
The polite voice was a ghost in the wind. A talisman detonated high in the ribcage. The cavity's rhythm inverted mid-cycle; the inhale became a violent exhale. Li Tian adapted, letting the flip carry him to a new perch rather than fighting it, his cadence unbroken.
A rim of suture ticks guarded the only path forward, their star-metal needles primed to fire on the slightest pressure change. He studied their pattern, the way they hummed in time with the wind hold. He waited for the exact moment, then slid across the glyph-rail during the dead space of the hold, his body a whisper, his timing perfect. Not a single needle fired.
The ring pulsed, a steady drumbeat against his finger. His eyes found the exit: a Pleural Weir, a star-stapled slit in the cavity wall. He held up the star-map shard. The staples glowed in recognition, and the weir irised open. It would remain so for two holds after an exhale + one-beat delay. He mapped the final path across tilting, wind-lashed ribs, his movements precise, his breath controlled. He once again weighed and rejected Empty Cup. The risk was too great.
He committed. As the correct exhale finished, he launched himself across the final gap, his body cutting through the roaring air. He was a hand's breadth from the weir.
"After you."
The polite line was a final curse. A talisman popped.
The cavity convulsed. A colossal, reverse surge—a cough of unimaginable force—expelled him outward. The Pleural Weir yawned open, not into refuge, but into the exterior.
Li Tian was halfway through the weir, his body seized by the outbound blast, the vast, scarlet-hued abyss of the bone-reef and a staggering drop yawning below him.