The world was a howling, scarlet vertigo. Expelled from the weir, Li Tian tumbled through a maelstrom of shrieking wind and razor-edged debris. The bone-reef spread out below him—a colossal, slanted lattice of ancient ribs and calcified plates that curved away into a bottomless, mist-choked abyss. The gale tore at him, a physical force trying to rip him apart. Knife-rain spicules—needle-sharp fragments of bone—ticked and pinged against the larger structures, filling the air with lethal shrapnel.
There was no time for technique, only instinct. He twisted in the air, his body a ragged flag in the storm. An intercostal wind tunnel blasted a cross-current from a gap in the ribs to his right. He angled into it, letting the gust slam him sideways, out of the direct path of a falling plate of bone. It wasn't enough. A whistle vent on a jutting spar emitted an invisible wire of concentrated wind, slicing toward his leg with a sound like a bowstring.
In that lethal instant, he had no choice. He opened a pinpoint micro-devour along his thigh, not to absorb, but to deflect the cutting force.
The backlash was a hot needle driven deep into the muscle. His leg went numb, then erupted in a fire of pins and needles. The taste of iron filled his mouth, sharp and coppery. But the deflection worked, bending the wind-wire just enough for it to slice past his leg, shearing through a tendon strip on his belt. He was thrown clear, his body slamming against a giant, curved rib. He spiral-bled immediately, the pain in his leg receding to a deep, throbbing ache that promised to slow him later.
He clung to the rib, the wind trying to peel him off. The exterior had its own brutal cadence. A long, powerful OUTBLAST—the colossus's cough—that tried to throw him into the abyss. A brief, chaotic wind-hold full of treacherous eddies. Then a deep IN-DRAW that pulled everything back toward the weir, a suction that felt like a giant's inhale. Match the beat, not the breath.
He recalibrated, using Vein Step to move only during the fleeting lulls, his Star Lung breaths so small they were little more than suppressed shudders. The cost was a persistent, grinding ache in his chest and sparkling motes at the edge of his vision, but he refused the suicidal temptation of Empty Cup. A blackout here was a one-way ticket to the void.
Ahead, a tilted lattice of ribs formed a treacherous path. Intercostal gusts fired unpredictably, and knife-rain fell in pulsing sheets. He timed his movements, crawling and sliding between the gusts, using the remaining tendon strip as a makeshift guy-line to secure himself during the strongest draws. He baited a pleural drain, stepping into its pull and then throwing himself clear as it fired, using the rebound to sling himself to the next precarious handhold. The yank strained his already-screaming shoulder, and he spiral-bled the fresh agony immediately.
"Almost there."
The polite voice was a whisper against the gale. A talisman detonated somewhere in the reef. The cycle inverted mid-wind-hold; the expected lull became a violent IN-DRAW. Li Tian adapted, letting the sudden suction pull him into the lee of a massive rib column rather than fighting it, his cadence unbroken, his will a thing of ice.
A band of knife-rain guarded the final approach, its density pulsing with the outblast, creating a wall of flying daggers. He studied the pattern, the way the rain thinned to a mist during the wind-hold. He waited for the exact moment, then dashed across an open plate during the dead space of the hold, his body low, his timing perfect. Not a single spicule struck him.
The ring pulsed, a steady, urgent beat against his finger. His eyes, stinging from the corrosive mist, found the promised shelter: a Wind-Shadow Niche, a star-stapled seam tucked in the lee of a colossal parietal bone. He held up the star-map shard. The staples glowed in recognition, and the niche irised open. It would remain so for two holds after an OUTBLAST + one-beat delay. He mapped the final path across wind-lashed, tilting plates, his movements precise, his breath controlled. He once again weighed and rejected Empty Cup. The risk of losing consciousness in this gale was absolute.
He committed. As the correct outblast finished, he launched himself across the final gap, his body fighting the crosswinds. He was a hand's breadth from the niche, salvation within reach.
"After you."
The polite line was a final, elegant betrayal. A talisman popped.
The colossus groaned. The entire bone-reef shuddered and then rolled, a slight but catastrophic shift in the behemoth's posture.
The gravity vector tilted. The world pivoted. The open Wind-Shadow Niche, once directly ahead, was now swinging up and away from him, reorienting to become a ceiling. The bony handhold he was reaching for sheared off under the sudden strain.
Li Tian was airborne again, falling not toward the niche, but into the yawning gap between the reef and the scarlet sky, the iris of the sheltering niche beginning to grind shut above him.