The stone gate ground shut with a final, echoing thud. The roar of the red river vanished, replaced by a silence so profound it felt like a physical pressure. The only light came from the star-glyphs on the walls, pulsing with a soft, cold rhythm. Li Tian stood still, dripping onto the smooth floor, his every sense screaming. The glyphs pulsed, and he felt it—a vibration that almost matched his own heartbeat, but was off by a fraction, a half-breath out of sync.
The ring on his finger warmed, a single, pointed pulse. A whisper-thin thought brushed his mind. "Match the breath, not the light."
He understood. He closed his eyes, ignoring the ache in his meridians, and focused on the rhythm of the cave. He inhaled slowly during the glyphs' dimmest lull, held it, and exhaled as they brightened to their peak. The first time he mistimed it, a needle of cold energy lanced up his leg from the floor. He spiral-bled it instantly, the pain a sharp reminder of the cost. He tried again. Inhale on the lull. Exhale on the rise.
On the third synchronized breath, a section of runes to his right clicked softly and recessed into the wall. The path was open. There was no fanfare, only a silent acknowledgment. Spend only what returns.
The corridor beyond was a tunnel of questions. There were no words carved into the stone, but impressions pressed against his mind: Origin. Will. Cost. He answered not with words, but with action. His breathing remained steady, his steps measured. He did not reach for the energy saturating the air. He simply passed through, a guest who did not greedily eye the host's treasures.
A misstep—his weight settling on a slightly raised tile—triggered a hiss. Three darts of condensed light shot from the ceiling. He rolled, but one grazed his forearm. A stripe of skin went instantly numb, the cold sinking to the bone. He was up and moving again, spiral-bleeding the numbness away even as he advanced. Devour small. Refine clean. Live.
Ahead, the corridor widened. A rectangular tablet of stone, covered in densely packed, glowing sigils, detached from the wall. It hung in the air, humming with a low, interrogative frequency. A Rune Sentinel. It didn't attack immediately. It tested him, projecting a wave of concussive force that made the air waver.
Li Tian didn't meet it head-on. He backtracked, luring it into a narrower section of the corridor. As the Sentinel fired another concussive wave, constrained by the tight space, he had no choice. At the moment of impact, he opened a pinpoint devour in his palm.
The backlash was a lightning strike up his arm. His fingers erupted in a pins-and-needles agony, and he coughed, tasting blood and metal. But he'd shaved the edge off the blast. Using the Sentinel's own forward momentum, he shoulder-checked it, slamming it against a jutting, carved rib of rock. While it was momentarily stunned, he drove the heel of his palm into a smaller, flickering sigil on its side. The complex pattern fractured. The Sentinel dissolved into a cloud of ash-cold, bitter motes.
He was already spiral-bleeding as he moved past, his breath steadying but his body tallying the cost.
From somewhere above, through a hairline crack in the ceiling, he heard it: a distant, rhythmic chant. A faint sprinkle of dust rained down. They were still there. They were finding another way. The fuse was still burning.
A short side passage led to an alcove. Within it, light moved in a gentle, inhaling and exhaling rhythm, like a sleeping lung. A purification cusp. He stepped inside. The light washed over him, and he felt a drawing sensation, not of his Qi, but of the residual impurities left by the river—the acidic sting in his pores, the metallic grit in his meridians. Faint grey wisps vented from his soles and palms. It was a deep, cellular cleansing. When he stepped out, his breath came slightly easier, the tremor in his hands a fraction calmer. It wasn't power. It was readiness.
The corridor ended at a circular chamber. The floor was a mosaic of interlocking sigils. As he stepped onto the central seal, the patterns rearranged themselves, forming a clear fork. To the left, a downward-sloping vein of tunnel exhaled a cooler, metallic breath—the path to a Star Sanctuary. To the right, a slick, steep chute roared with upward wind pressure, carrying the damp, wild scent of the valley—the Heart Sump, a direct route back to the main flow.
The ring pulsed twice against his skin. A warning, not a command. The choice was his.
As he weighed his options, the central seal under his feet glowed brightly. A line of cold starlight seared across the skin of his wrist, etching a simple, elegant glyph. Namebound. The platform beneath him began to rotate, the two paths shifting like the hands of a clock.
He made his decision. He would choose the Sanctuary, the unknown depth over the known danger.
But as the platform turned, a robed silhouette dropped from a newly opened crack in the ceiling, a blade talisman already glowing in its hand. Below, in the Sanctuary's entrance, guardian lines of starlight flared to life around a silent altar.
The cave remembered another name.