The yank was brutal. The tendon loop around his boot tightened like a garrote, dragging him backward out of the crawl space, toward the hungry roar of the shear chute. His injured ankle screamed, a white-hot brand of pain. The ring on his finger pulsed a frantic, rhythmic warning.
His mind, a fortress of discipline, processed the variables. The IN-PULL was at its peak. He had one beat. On the subsequent HOLD, the tension would slacken for a fraction of a second.
He didn't waste it. As the HOLD arrived, he twisted, grinding the tendon loop against the sharpened, irising edge of the wind valve. Fibers frayed with a sound like tearing sinew. Simultaneously, he used his good foot to kick loose a nearby suture tick. The star-metal needle fired, not at him, but through the loop itself, pinning it to the floor.
The loop snapped.
He was free, but the cost was registered in a fresh, hot flood of pain under his malleolus and a searing tear in his boot. His breath locked in his throat for a paralyzed second before he spiral-bled the shockwave, the pain receding from a scream to a throbbing, fiery ache.
He scrambled fully into the Inner Wind Corridor, a narrow, tubular passage humming with contained force. The cycle here was relentless: a snap OUTFLUSH from deeper within, a tight, silent HOLD, then a sharp IN-PULL toward the interior ducts. He recalibrated instantly, his Vein Steps reduced to limping shuffles taken only during the HOLD, his Star Lung breaths so constrained his chest felt like a vise. The ledger was clear: sparkles in his vision, the ankle a constant fire, the pins-and-needles in his forearm returning whenever he used it for support.
The floor was treacherous, etched with thin cross-shear slits that fired a hair's breadth after the IN-PULL, a delayed trap for the unwary. He moved with painful precision, using toe-edge steps and hugging the lee of wall staples. He baited another suture tick, triggering it early so its needle jammed a slit's mechanism, desyncing a lethal lane for two precious cycles. No devour. Only rhythm and terrain.
The corridor opened into the Equalization Drum, a spherical chamber where the air itself seemed to crystallize. A ring of vents—the Resonance Louver—hummed a low, complex chord that vibrated in his teeth. This was a test of purity, not speed. A wrong breath, a heavy step, would cause the louver to tighten a cold star-thread snare around his limbs.
He stilled himself. Inhale on the faint dim of the hum. Hold micro-still. Exhale in a low, steady line. He matched his being to the room's note, his movements becoming extensions of the resonant frequency. His throat grew raw from the controlled breathing, his ribs ached, his injured ankle trembled under the strain. The ring's pulse shifted, from warning to a steadying metronome, keeping him anchored to the true rhythm.
A small reward for his perfection: a subtle, purifier swirl of energy gathered around him, drawing out the last residual grit of the river's acidic Qi from his meridians. It wasn't power, but readiness. A cleansing.
"Keep your pitch."
The polite admonition drifted through a duct, a serpent's whisper in the choir. A talisman popped.
The louver's key shifted by a half-step. The HOLD he was relying on became a false null, a deceptive quiet that promised stability but was a trap.
He didn't panic. He dropped to a lower breath, changed his stance width to redistribute his weight, and re-timed his step. He pressed his buzzing palm against a cold wall staple, using it as a ground to dump the excess dissonant energy, a trickle of grey mist escaping his pores. He adapted without a power move, his discipline a shield against the sabotage.
But the intruder' meddling had consequences. The shift in resonance woke a Star Sentry Eye set high in the chamber wall. Its cold lens irised open, and a rune-pattern focused on him. A concussive pressure ping gathered in its center, timed to fire on the next false beat, aimed directly at his already-compromised ankle. There was no dodging. It was a kill-shot.
He opened a pinpoint micro-devour over his injured ankle.
The backlash was a shard of glass in the joint. Iron flooded his mouth, his fingertips went numb, and the existing fire in his calf erupted into an inferno. A tooth in the back of his jaw splintered with a sharp crack. But the concussive force was deflected, dissipating against the chamber wall with a dull thump. He spiral-bled immediately, slamming his palm against the floor, the costs stacking—a deep, tooth-aching throb joining the symphony of his pain.
Gritting his teeth against the agony, he spotted the exit: a low wind-latch. He lunged during a true HOLD, pressing the star-map shard to the glyph. The latch irised open. The window was one HOLD plus the following IN-PULL. He committed, dragging his broken body through the narrow opening.
The floor beyond the latch wasn't there. It dropped away into a roaring, vertical wind-plume. His bad ankle, weakened and numb, slipped on the smooth edge. His free hand scrambled, clutching at a set of cold, sharp rune-teeth lining the aperture as his body swung out over the abyss.