An hour passed. It felt like a year.
Hanging upside down is not just uncomfortable. It is a slow, agonizing physical trauma. The human body is built to fight gravity in one direction. When you flip it, the internal systems start to fail.
Jin felt the blood pooling in his skull. The pressure behind his eyes grew worse every minute. His vision tinted pink as tiny capillaries in his eyes started to burst. His heart had to pump much harder to push blood down into his legs. It hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird.
His lungs were compressed. His heavy internal organs pressed down against his diaphragm. Every breath was a shallow, desperate gasp for air. He could not fill his lungs completely. He felt constantly starved of oxygen.
Then there was the pain in his lower back. It did not go away. It throbbed with a dull, hot ache. Every time the night wind blew through the giant tree, his body swayed slightly. The thick vines rubbed against his ankles. The swaying pulled at his injured spine. He had to clench his jaw to keep from crying out.
He tried to distract himself. On Earth, he used mental exercises to get through grueling ninety-hour work weeks. He tried to build a spreadsheet in his head. He tried to calculate the trajectory of the crash. He tried to list the names of his royal siblings.
It did not work. The pain was too loud. It drowned out his corporate logic.
He was entirely helpless. He was a Foundation Level 3 cultivator. He had a mythical Level 10 genetic cheat waiting to be unlocked. He had a perfect, unblemished genome. But none of that mattered right now. Gravity and a broken back made him completely useless. He was just meat hanging in a tree.
He listened to the Zenith jungle. The sounds were alien and terrifying. He heard the heavy snapping of tree trunks far away. He heard a low, rumbling growl that vibrated through the humid air. Giant insects buzzed in the dark canopy above him. Some of them were the size of small dogs. They clicked their mandibles together.
He kept his eyes fixed on Nyx. She was his only lifeline.
She hung twenty feet away. She was tangled in a thick web of green vines around her waist. Her arms and legs dangled toward the forest floor. She had not moved an inch.
Jin counted the seconds. He reached three thousand and six hundred. Exactly one hour.
Then, he heard a dry rustling sound.
It did not come from the wind. It came from the vines holding Nyx.
Jin forced his swollen, pink-tinted eyes to focus. He watched her hands. Her fingers twitched. It was a small, jerky movement. Then, her arms slowly raised.
She was waking up.
The process was not smooth. Nyx was a Level 4 Divinity Realm expert. Normally, she moved with absolute, fluid perfection. But now, her Aether core was completely empty. She had burned all her energy to create the kinetic shield that saved his life. She was running on pure, physical stamina.
Her head lolled to the side. The broken obsidian visor caught the dim light of the twin moons. She let out a low, ragged breath. She sounded incredibly tired. She was groggy. The impact of the crash had rattled her brain.
She hung there for a few seconds, trying to process her surroundings.
Then, her training kicked in. It overrode her exhaustion instantly.
Her body snapped rigid. Her hands shot to her waist. She grabbed the thick green vines binding her. She did not have Aether to enhance her strength, but her base physical power was still massive. She flexes her core muscles. She pulled hard.
The thick vines snapped like dry twigs.
Nyx fell. She dropped twenty feet straight down through the dark air.
She hit the forest floor heavily. She did not land perfectly on her feet. The fall was awkward. But she tucked her shoulder and rolled. The roll absorbed the kinetic energy. She came up onto one knee, instantly scanning the dark jungle around her.
She looked at the burning wreckage of the cargo ship. She saw the twisted metal. She saw the crushed organic panels. She saw the fires burning low in the damp vegetation.
She did not look up into the trees.
Her head snapped left and right. Her movements were frantic. It was a silent, mechanical panic. She was a shadow-guard bound by a blood-oath. Her only purpose for existing was keeping Jin alive. If he died, her cells would self-destruct. But it was not just the oath driving her. It was pure instinct.
She stood up and sprinted toward the largest piece of the ship's hull. It was a massive slab of scorched iron. It weighed thousands of pounds.
Nyx grabbed the edge of the hot metal. She did not care that it burned the synthetic material of her gloves. She planted her boots in the soft dirt and heaved. She flipped the massive slab of iron over with a loud crash.
Nothing was underneath it. Only crushed dirt and dead leaves.
She moved to the next pile of debris. She started tearing the wreckage apart with her bare hands. She threw twisted pipes and broken pilot chairs out of the way. She was looking for a body. She was calculating the vector of the crash. She assumed the impact threw him downward into the dirt.
Jin watched her from above. He saw her frantic search. He needed to stop her before she exhausted herself completely or attracted a predator.
He tried to speak.
It was difficult. The blood pooled in his neck made his throat feel thick and swollen. His vocal cords felt tight. He opened his mouth. He tried to draw a deep breath, but his compressed lungs refused to expand fully.
He forced the air out.
"Nyx," he croaked.
The sound was weak. It was barely louder than a whisper. The buzzing of the giant insects and the crackling of the small fires easily drowned it out.
Down below, Nyx did not stop. She kicked a heavy metal door off its hinges. She dug her hands into the soft earth, looking for any sign of his clothes or blood.
Jin tried again. He ignored the throbbing pain in his spine. He tightened his core muscles. He pushed all the limited air in his lungs up through his swollen throat.
"Nyx!" he yelled. His voice cracked harshly. "Look up. I am here."
The sound cut through the ambient noise of the jungle.
Nyx froze instantly. Her hands stopped digging in the dirt. Her shoulders went completely rigid. She slowly stood up straight. She turned around.
She tilted her head back. She looked up into the massive, bioluminescent canopy.
She saw him. She saw Jin dangling upside down, tied by his ankles high above the ground. He looked battered and bruised, but he was alive. He was in one piece.
Jin watched her face. The obsidian visor was cracked down the middle, exposing the lower half of her face.
For a fraction of a second, the perfect, emotionless weapon broke character.
The rigid line of her jaw relaxed. The corner of her mouth twitched upward. It was a very small smile. It was barely noticeable. It was not a smile of joy or humor. It was a smile of absolute, crushing relief. The heavy burden of failure lifted off her shoulders. She had not let the old Queen down. The prince was still breathing.
The smile lasted for exactly one heartbeat.
Then it vanished completely. The soft lines of relief hardened back into stone. Her face became a cold, professional mask again. The shadow-guard returned to duty.
She did not say a word. She walked quickly to the base of the colossal tree holding Jin.
The trunk was massive. It was wider than a large building. The bark was rough and covered in thick, slippery moss. Nyx did not look for low branches to climb. She did not have time. Jin had been hanging upside down for too long. He was in danger of a stroke.
Nyx jumped. She leaped ten feet straight up into the air. She slammed her hands and feet against the vertical bark.
She dug her graphene-covered fingers directly into the thick, wooden skin of the tree. She climbed straight up the vertical surface. She moved like a massive, black spider. She hauled her body weight upward with brutal efficiency. She covered fifty feet in seconds. She reached the thick, horizontal branch where Jin's vines were anchored.
She swung her body up and over the thick wood. She crawled out onto the branch until she was directly above him.
She looked down at his trapped ankles. She saw how the steel-like vines cut into his skin.
She reached to her belt. She pulled out a small, curved blade. The edge was lined with monomolecular wire. It could cut through solid bone without resistance.
She hung upside down from the branch by her knees. She reached down toward his legs.
"Brace yourself," her telepathic voice echoed weakly in his mind.
Jin tensed his muscles. He prepared for the drop.
Nyx swung the small blade. She sliced through the thick green vines in one fluid motion.
The tension snapped instantly. The crushing pressure on Jin's ankles vanished.
Gravity took over. Jin fell.
He dropped like a stone. He was falling headfirst toward the jungle floor seventy feet below. The wind rushed past his ears. The red tint in his vision blurred. He could not stop himself. He could not twist his body to land on his feet. His broken back prevented any movement. If his head hit the ground, his skull would shatter like a dropped egg.
But Nyx was faster than gravity.
She did not let him fall. The moment she cut the vines, she lunged downward.
She reached out with her left hand. Her fingers closed around Jin's right ankle like an iron vice.
The sudden stop was violent. Jin's downward momentum jerked hard against her grip. The joint in his knee popped loudly. A fresh wave of pain shot up his leg.
But he stopped falling. He dangled in the air again, but this time he was held by a very strong hand instead of a plant.
Nyx grunted loudly. The sudden strain of catching his full body weight pulled hard on her exhausted shoulder. Her muscles screamed under the tension. She gritted her teeth. She pulled her arm up.
She hauled Jin upward. She dragged his dead weight over the edge of the massive branch.
Jin collapsed onto the rough bark. He rolled onto his side. He lay flat against the thick wood.
The relief was instant and overwhelming. The blood finally started to drain out of his skull. The terrible pressure behind his eyes faded. He took a deep, full breath. The air filled his lungs completely for the first time in an hour.
He did not try to sit up. He knew his back could not handle it. He just lay there, staring at the dark leaves above him.
Nyx pulled herself up onto the branch beside him. She put her small blade back into her belt. She knelt next to him. She looked down at his battered face. She did not smile this time. She just watched his chest rise and fall.
"You took your time," Jin whispered. His voice was hoarse and weak.
Nyx did not apologize. She simply reached out and placed two fingers against the pulse point on his neck, checking his heart rate.
"We are on the ground, My Prince," she said in his mind. "We survived the drop. Now we must survive the jungle."