The Sternum Gate was a living lock, a vast archway of ribs that moved with the colossus's breath. Inhale—the ribs parted slightly. Hold—they trembled. Exhale—they ground shut. Glowing glyphs on floor and ceiling pulsed not with time, but with this three-phase rhythm. The name-glyph on his wrist burned in sync, a key begging for the right sequence.
He had to cross a series of rib-treads that tilted and shifted with the cycle. Match the breath, not the light. He stepped onto the first tread on the inhale, his weight perfectly placed. He held as the Gate held its breath, the rib groaning beneath him. On the exhale, he slid forward as it retracted. A deadly, precise dance.
A misstep on the third tread—a half-breath mistimed—triggered a lash of cold energy from a ceiling glyph. It caught his shoulder, a whip of frost that burned to the bone. He spiral-bled it instantly, teeth gritted—the sharp price of error.
From the tunnel behind, sharp clicks echoed. An agile ape runner scrambled into view, hurling a sharpened bone shard. Li Tian sidestepped; the shard skittered off the rib. The distraction was the point—to break his cadence.
"Don't be late," the intruder's voice murmured from somewhere in the stone, a ghostly courtesy.
Pressure from all sides. He needed speed without waste. As the next inhale began, he pushed off not on the lull, but in the fleeting seam between the end of the exhale and the start of the inhale—a half-beat that shouldn't exist. Calves burned, tendons twanged—credit taken up front—as he slid across a gap that should have been impassable.
Star Vein Step · Crossing Line.
He reached the Gate's center: a wider platform between the final, largest ribs. The ape runner leapt after him, claws extended. At the same moment, a reconstituted Starlight Warden, its runes etched in bone-dust, rose from the floor.
Trapped between them, with the ground tilting, Li Tian acted. He let the ape lunge, using a micro-devour on his forearm to deflect its claws. Numbness shot to his elbow. No time to spiral-bleed. He pivoted, letting the Warden's concussive blast—aimed at him—become cover. The ape, caught by the blast, was flung back.
Li Tian focused everything. He drew a thread of the Warden's cold energy, refined it in the crucible of his pain, and unleashed the Hollow Spiral Palm. The quiet, drilling force struck the core. The Warden froze, shattered, and dissolved into bitter frost.
Only then did he spiral-bleed—the accumulated cost making fingers tremble, calf a torn rope. He spotted a thin, gleaming star-metal filament woven into the arch. On impulse, he pressed his numb hand to it, channeling the last dregs of backlash into the strand. It glowed white-hot for a heartbeat, siphoning the pain. A trick, not a solution.
He turned to the final sequence. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. He synchronized perfectly and, on the final exhale as the ribs closed, executed one last, agonizing Crossing Line. He slipped through the narrowing gap as the ribs slammed shut, sealing ape and Warden behind.
He stumbled into a downward-sloping corridor on the other side. Relief didn't come. The corridor inhaled—a violent suction that ripped him off his feet. He tumbled down, landing hard in a vast, dark cavity.
From the darkness below came a single, seismic thump.
It was not the colossus's breath. It was slower, deeper, more profound. A beat that vibrated in his teeth, his bones, his very soul. It blanked his mind, stole his breath, and shook the world.
The ring answered with a single, steady pulse—warning, not rescue.
The heart was waking.