The cold stone floor smelled of ancient dust, stale cold air, and dry stone-hard lime.
Lin Ke lay on his back in pitch-black darkness, every breath sending a sharp, stabbing throb through his bruised left between-rib muscles.
His clothes were soaked through with dried sweat, soot, and dark blood. His third and fourth left fingers were mangled, swollen into purple sausages that radiated sickening waves of heat against his cold chest inside the crude cedar splint.
Worse than the broken bones was the brittle, crystal-clear agony streaming along his chest and forearms. His Vitreous Glass Spirit veins (Bing-Mai) had taken the full brunt of the fall from Floor Eight after surviving the brutal cold restart. Without living stretch to cushion the clockwork shock, tiny hairline fractures had propagated along his chest waveguides. Every shallow spreading of his ribs felt as though jagged quartz slivers were grinding directly against his lung lining and between-rib nerves.
There was no rolling back the trauma. Meatspace damage was permanent, brutal, and slow to heal.
Back in the drafty triage lean-to in Ward Seven, Apothecary He’s grumpy voice echoed through the dark: “Flesh doesn’t have an undo button, you stubborn clerk! You crack those glass vessels down in the deep dark where I can’t reach you with a bone needle. You’ll drown in your own stale juices. Don’t come crying to me when your arms turn to gravel.”
