The world tore itself inside out. The arrhythmic double-beat hammered Li Tian mid-leap, a sub-bass shockwave that inverted the pulse he'd learned. The planned diastolic draw that should have carried him to the Aorta Ramp became a violent, crushing systole. The force yanked him sideways, off course, toward the grinding, fleshy abyss of the valve maw.
It was a gateway of pale, muscular cusps, each larger than he was, rimmed with glistening tendon cords—the chordae—that tightened and slackened with the heart's broken rhythm. The sound was a wet, grinding hinge. Match the beat, not the breath. The mantra shifted in his mind. Survival meant synchronizing with this damaged, frantic heart.
He angled his body in the turbulent air, the wet cloth over his mouth barely filtering the metallic reek. He used the last dregs of the aberrant systolic pressure—not to fight, but to steer—slipping between two writhing tendon cords onto a narrow ledge of lamellar bone inside the maw. The impact spiked through his shoulder; a sympathetic ache bloomed in his teeth. Cost of entry.
Inside, the valve had its own micro-climate, a faster, tighter version of the Ossuary's cycle. Systole—the cusps slammed with force to pulverize stone. A razor-thin hold—a moment of silent, straining tension. Diastole—the valve gaped, pulling a curtain of corrosive blood-mist through the opening.
He misread the first full cycle, shifting a fraction too early on a hold that ended prematurely. A lash of residual pressure raked his ribs. He gasped, a metallic cough wracking his body as he pressed a palm to bone and spiral-bled the energy, the pain a searing line across his torso. Lesson learned: trust nothing. Read everything anew.
On the next diastole, blood-mist breathed into the chamber. He turned his head, angling his body to let the foul airflow slide around him—a disciplined habit that saved his lungs from a deeper burn. Chord-leeches, stirred by motion, dropped from above. He let the first two be snatched away by the following draw. A third latched onto his forearm, its cold suction tugging at his Qi. He shook hard, scattering the last precious pinch of marrow-salt across it. The grains broke its grip; the leech spilled into the abyss. Scent-masking and traction—now gone.
His eyes caught a hair-thin line of star-metal stapling a torn cusp edge, a surgical suture glinting in the pulse. The ring on his finger pulsed once. Marrow furnace… star-era suture… A ghost of meaning. Purpose. Repair. He noted a short, protruding filament—a one-time grounding rod if the ledger overran.
A shadow moved. Across the chamber, on a distant tendon span, the ape runner reappeared. It didn't charge. It calculated. On the next brief hold, it threw a sharpened bone shard—not at Li Tian, but at the ledge near his feet, to break cadence.
"Mind the gap," a polite voice drifted from some unseen vantage, a needle of courtesy in the chaos.
Li Tian didn't flinch. He'd already anticipated the interference, feet sliding into a pre-set Vein Step toward a more stable plate. The shard shattered harmlessly where he'd been. The evasion, though, forced him to vault a cluster of tendon cords. His hip brushed a forbidden rail of condensed light.
It flared.
From the glyph-rimmed leaflets, a Starlight Warden (Heart Variant) condensed, its frame humming in perfect sync with the heart's broken rhythm. Faster. More aggressive. Its blows landed only on systole, amplified by the beat; it froze, statue-still, during hold.
The fight became a rhythm puzzle. Li Tian moved only on hold and diastole, skirting, resetting. He never met a systolic strike. He baited the Warden, letting it commit to a beat that shattered a bony outcrop behind him. In the following hold, he closed. The Warden recovered quicker than expected, its fist lancing for his throat. No room to slip.
He opened a pinpoint micro-devour in his palm.
Frozen lightning ripped up his arm; pins-and-needles burst in his fingers; iron filled his mouth. He stole a sliver of force, spiral-bled at once, letting the numbness recede to a deep throb, then pivoted inside the Warden's guard. The next diastolic window opened. One chance.
Hollow Spiral Palm — First Form.
The strike was quiet, a drilling pressure with a hollow core. Frost spiraled across the construct's chest; the center imploded, and the Warden fell away in a sigh of inert, glittering dust. The cooldown hit like a wrench through his meridians—his palm hollowed by ache; his hand trembling. He would not do that again soon without tearing flesh.
Beyond the dissipating motes, the Aorta Ramp's rhythm was ruined, desynced beyond recovery. But the heart's new pattern revealed a secondary path: a Vena Arch, narrower and darker, sloping upward. It flickered open on a delayed diastole, two beats after the main valve's motion.
He mapped the sprint. It would cost everything. He prepped a single use of Star Lung · Empty Cup, the still-point breath-hold. He slipped past a regurgitant jet, and dizziness with a sharp ache beneath his sternum told the price. Finally, he pressed his buzzing palm against the star-metal filament, grounding the last dregs of backlash. The filament glowed once, then dulled and crumbled. Spent.
He poised at the ledge's lip, every muscle coiled, his whole being tuned to the predicted delayed draw. He launched for the Vena Arch as its mouth began to glow.
"Allow me."
The polite voice was a final, elegant curse. Somewhere deep in the valve machinery, a talisman popped.
The heart stuttered. Rhythm shattered again.
The promised draw inverted mid-air into a crushing systolic hammer.
Li Tian's trajectory broke—flung sideways into the scissoring path of the closing cusps. The ring answered with a single steady pulse—warning, not rescue