Cel stood and lifted Silent Moon higher, letting its pale radiance push back the darkness. The blade's four glowing crescents cast enough light to see perhaps ten steps in any direction.
He began walking the perimeter of the throat, mapping what he was truly dealing with.
His breath caught.
Teeth. Dozens of them in the first ring alone. Perhaps hundreds total.
They ringed the maw's entrance in concentric rows that stretched back into shadow, each tooth a curved blade of bone as tall as he stood.
Slipping through them by chance as he fell was one thing. Forcing his way through deliberately while the creature was awake and aware?
Cel's jaw tightened as he studied the formation. The outer ring was densest - teeth packed so close together a child couldn't squeeze between them. But further in, toward where he stood, the spacing grew wider. The creature's throat, it seemed, was less concerned about things trying to escape from within.
His gaze tracked from tooth to tooth, counting. Estimating. Each one would need to be loosened from its socket, carved free from the flesh that held it. One by one. With a single working hand.
The enormity of the task settled over him like a weight.
"Let's get started then." His voice sounded strange in the close space - flat, swallowed by organic walls.
He approached the nearest tooth, running his left hand along its smooth outer curve. Almost polished. The serrations on the inner edge looked sharp enough to shred flesh.
The tooth curved inward, its base disappearing into a socket of yielding flesh. That's where he'd need to cut. Sever the connections. Loosen it enough to pull free.
Cel adjusted his grip on Silent Moon's hilt, positioning the blade's point near the gumline. A chokutō was built for thrusting - straight, single-edged, perfect for driving deep into flesh. If he had both hands, this would be simple. Quick, even.
But his right hand dangled uselessly at his side. Dead weight. The frostbite had taken it completely.
He'd have to do this one-handed.
The blade's tip found purchase against yielding flesh. Cel drove it in.
Steel met resistance - flesh and muscle pushing back - yet his uncontrolled strength forced the blade deeper than intended. Silent Moon's entire length disappeared into the socket before he could stop himself, his hand slamming into the base where tooth met flesh. Blood exploded outward, spraying across his chest in a hot wave.
Cel jerked back, startled. He'd meant to probe carefully, to work the blade in gradually.
Instead, he'd just buried it to the hilt in a single motion.
'Too much strength again.'
But unlike the practice swings where control mattered, where balance determined everything - here, raw power was exactly what he needed. There was no finesse required. No technique. Just destruction.
He wrenched Silent Moon free and repositioned. Then drove it in from a different angle.
The blade punched through meat and scraped against bone with a grinding sound that made his teeth ache. He twisted the hilt, using the leverage to carve away the connective tissue. Blood poured from the wound in thick streams.
The creature didn't react. No spasm. No sound. Just the steady rhythm of its breathing continuing unchanged, as if he were nothing more than an irritating insect.
Good. Let it stay ignorant.
Cel worked methodically now, driving Silent Moon in from different angles around the tooth's base. Each thrust went deep - deeper than he intended, deeper than he could control. But it didn't matter. Every wild, uncontrolled strike tore away more of the socket's hold.
The work was going faster than he'd expected. Much faster.
After perhaps twenty thrusts - maybe thirty - the tooth shifted.
Not slightly. Not a gentle loosening.
It lurched in its socket, suddenly free on one side, listing like a tree about to fall.
Cel gripped the tooth's base where it jutted from the socket and pulled.
Nothing. The tooth held fast, still anchored on one side.
He braced his feet against the slick floor and threw his weight backward. Muscles strained. The tooth resisted, grinding against bone and tissue that refused to release.
Cel snarled and pulled harder.
The socket tore free with a wet, ripping sound flesh giving way all at once. The sudden release sent him stumbling backward as the tooth's weight shifted.
The fang hit the floor with a meaty thud.
One tooth done.
He stared at it for a moment, then looked up at the rows still remaining.
'That wasn't so bad.'
The realization settled over him slowly. Yes, there were dozens more. Maybe hundreds. And yes, he only had one working hand.
But he was strong now. Far stronger than he'd ever been. Strong enough that raw power could substitute for skill, for precision, for everything he lacked.
This was doable.
His throat worked in a dry swallow, pulling him back to immediate concerns. When had he last had water? Not since his resurrection. Time blurred together, but his body knew - knew from the way his tongue felt thick and papery, from the way even swallowing hurt.
He needed water.
But there was no water here. Just blood, bile and—
His gaze dropped to the shattered frost fragments scattered across the floor. The ice that had saved his life earlier.
'Frostmark creates ice.' The thought arrived slowly, fighting through dehydration's fog.
And ice was frozen water.
Cel pressed his left palm against the organic floor.
Cold erupted beneath his hand. The familiar burning sensation - vicious and sharp - raced up his arm as frost spiraled outward in delicate patterns. The tissue beneath crystallized instantly, forming a perfect circle of ice.
He pulled his hand away, fingers aching from the cold, and stared at what he'd created.
Frost. Beautiful and intricate.
Edible?
His stomach churned at the thought. But what choice did he have?
Cel reached down and broke off a chunk of the frost. It came away with a sharp crack, the fragment glittering pale blue in Silent Moon's light.
He brought it to his mouth. Hesitated.
Then bit down.
The sound was obscenely loud - a crunching crack that echoed off the ribbed walls. Like biting into thick glass. The ice was hard, dense, requiring real force to break between his teeth.
But it broke.
Cold flooded his mouth - sharp and immediate, spreading across his tongue without melting. He chewed carefully, breaking the fragments down smaller and smaller. The ice didn't dissolve like normal frost would. He had to grind it between his teeth until the pieces were small enough to swallow safely.
He chewed carefully, feeling the fragments crack and crunch. Then swallowed.
The cold traced a path down his throat, settling in his stomach with surprising weight. Not water exactly. But close enough. Real enough.
Cel stared at the remaining frost on the floor, then at his left hand.
'It works.'
Relief crashed through him so intensely his vision blurred. He could make water. Whenever he needed it. However much he needed.
The authority he'd dismissed as useless had now saved his life twice. First by anchoring him during the creature's violent descent. Now by providing the one thing that separated survival from death by dehydration.
His throat tightened with something that might have been shame.
"I'm sorry," he whispered to the darkness. To the moon he couldn't see. To the goddess who'd granted him power he'd been too blind to appreciate. "I'm sorry I underestimated your gift."
The words felt inadequate. Hollow. But they were all he had.
Cel ate more frost, methodically breaking off chunks and crunching them down until his mouth no longer felt like sandpaper. Until swallowing didn't hurt.
When he finished, he stood, testing his legs. Steadier now. The frost had restored something vital.
But his stomach twisted with a different kind of emptiness. Hunger. Sharp and demanding.
His gaze drifted across the organic floor. The ribbed walls. The pulsing tissue that surrounded him.
All of it was flesh. Meat. Raw, certainly. Probably disgusting.
But edible.
The thought arrived with crystalline clarity, and with it came a hysterical laugh that bubbled up from somewhere dark and twisted in his chest.
He'd spent a year eating rotting meat crawling with maggots. Meat so far gone it barely qualified as organic matter anymore. He'd choked it down, vomited it back up, forced it down again until his body learned to accept poison as sustenance.
Compared to that?
Fresh meat was practically a delicacy.
Cel carved a thin strip from the wall near the tooth's empty socket. The meat came away easily under Silent Moon's edge, warm and slick. He held it up in the blade's pale light, watching it glisten.
His stomach turned. Not from the sight - he'd seen worse. But from what he was about to do.
He put it in his mouth.
Nothing. No taste at all. Just texture - soft, yielding, oddly smooth.
He chewed. The flesh gave way between his teeth - easier than the frost fragments, but still requiring effort to break down. Warm. Wet. The consistency of... nothing he could compare to. Nothing he'd ever eaten willingly.
His throat convulsed. The gag reflex hit hard, muscles spasming as his body tried to reject what he was forcing into it.
Cel clenched his jaw, breathing hard through his nose. Forced his throat to relax. Swallowed.
The meat went down.
His stomach lurched. Rebelled. For a heartbeat he was certain it would come back up, that he'd vomit everything onto the floor and waste the effort.
But his body remembered. Remembered a year of training, of learning to accept the unacceptable. The nausea peaked, held... then slowly receded.
He stood there gasping, bent forward. Waiting. Watching for the inevitable rejection.
But it didn't come.
Cel stared at the walls surrounding him. An entire creature's worth of food. Enough to sustain him for weeks if he could stomach it.
He carved another strip from the wall and took a bite. Chewed. Swallowed. Gagged again - less violently this time - but kept it down.
A third bite. Fourth. Fifth.
By the tenth, the gagging had nearly stopped. His body was adapting, accepting this new reality the way it had accepted every other horror he'd forced upon it.
When he finished the strip, Cel cut another. Then another. He ate methodically, without pleasure or disgust. Just the mechanical process of fuel entering his body.
Finally, when his stomach felt uncomfortably full, he stopped. Wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Right then." His voice was steadier now. Stronger. "Back to work."
He approached the second tooth, blade in hand.
Cel positioned Silent Moon at the tooth's base and drove it in deep.
The blade punched through flesh and scraped bone. He wrenched it free and drove it in again from a different angle, carving away the connective tissue.
It went faster than the first tooth. His movements fell into rhythm - drive, wrench, reposition.
The second tooth crashed to the floor. Then the third.
By the fourth tooth, something had shifted. His mind had narrowed to this single task - nothing else existed except the tooth before him and the blade in his hand.
He glanced at Silent Moon between strikes.
Six crescents glowed along its length now. Two more than before.
The blade felt different. When he drove it into the fifth tooth's socket, the steel slid through tissue like it wasn't there. What had met resistance before now carved freely. Silent Moon had grown sharper.
'Empathic Steel.'
So the trait reacted with sharpness. The more crescents ignited, the keener the edge became.
Each tooth fell faster than the last. His strikes remained wild and uncontrolled, but the blade carved through flesh as if it weren't there.
The gap in the outer rings grew visible. Real progress.
Time became meaningless in the darkness.
Tenth. Fifteenth. Twentieth.
His left hand bled where the hilt's friction had worn through skin. His right remained dead weight. Sweat and blood coated him. But he kept moving.
How long had he been working? Hours? Days?
The gap was clear now - wide enough to slip through if the creature opened its mouth.
But dozens more teeth remained.
He turned toward the twenty-first tooth.
Exhaustion pressed down on him - heavy and insistent. His left hand throbbed where the skin had worn away. His arm ached from endless repetition. But beneath it all, his body remained vital. Strong. The divine resurrection had rebuilt him into something that could endure this.
A year ago, half this work would have killed him.
Now? He could keep going.
Gratitude flickered through his chest - brief but genuine. This body - this gift - would not break easily.
He raised Silent Moon. Six crescents burned steadily along its length.
He positioned the blade and drove it in.
Steel punched through flesh. He wrenched it free, repositioned—
A tremor ran through the creature's body.