The sunlight of Echora vanished the moment the Lumina Rip slid into the Sky-Whale's wound.
In its place, an eerie, chilling blue light flooded the bridge. A deep-sea light, filtered through living, biological tissue.
"The concentration of corrosive material around the wound is beyond imagination. Micro-fractures detected on the outer hull. Avoid contact at all costs!"
Leon's voice, sharp and precise from the engine console, cranked the tension on the bridge to its breaking point.
His fingers danced over dozens of instrument panels, monitoring the ship's status in real-time.
"I know."
Sweat bloomed on my palms as I gripped the helm. Through it, I could feel the Sky-Whale's entire body wince in pain every time the ship scraped against the corroded flesh.
"But this... this isn't just a wound. I can feel the whale's body fighting, trying to push this steel out."
We were passing through the throat of a living hell.
The walls of the passage were a horrific tangle of living flesh and corroded steel. Sharp metal fragments jutted out like thorns from between dark-red, degenerated muscle tissue. From the gaps, an oil-like contaminant seeped constantly, filling the air with a rancid odor.
Every time the Lumina Rip squeezed through the narrow passage, a visceral screech of the outer hull scraping against the sharp fragments echoed through the bridge.
Each time, the Sky-Whale's body convulsed, tightening the passage around us. I had to scream, fighting the helm just to hold our position.
"Jayn, five degrees starboard! You're too close to the wall!"
Leon's urgent shout slammed into my ear.
But independent of my will, the massive, living spasm threatened to crush the ship whole.
How long had it been?
At the end of that horrific passage, which felt like an eternity, a single sliver of blue light finally broke through.
And then, a sight unfolded before our eyes that could not possibly be of this world.
It wasn't a dark cavern. It was a living sub-universe.
Beyond the translucent, blue-glowing walls, hundreds of millions of luminous Aether particles flowed in a great river, like a galaxy.
In every direction, massive, unidentified bioluminescent organs pulsed gently like hearts, filling the entire space with a mystical light.
The immense, thundering heartbeat of the Sky-Whale—BA-DUM... BA-DUM...—reverberated through the bridge in a solemn rhythm.
"Mother's veins... the River of Life."
Lilia, standing beside the navigation hologram, whispered in a voice filled with awe.
"If we follow this path, we can reach the source of the pain."
Lilia's guidance was a lighthouse in the darkness. With her eyes closed, she read the Sky-Whale's internal map as if looking at the palm of her own hand.
As her fingertips glided over the hologram floating in the air, our path was drawn in a line of blue light.
"Left at the junction ahead. The right is the main aorta, leading directly to the heart. If we enter now, we will cause Mother even greater pain."
"I've never seen Aether of this purity!" Leon, unable to tear his eyes from the energy analysis panel, exclaimed in astonishment.
"This is incomparable to atmospheric Aether. This is... refined life itself!"
And so, we began our ascent, following her guidance up the great, living river.
The Lumina Rip glided silently through the blue Aether current, like a submarine navigating the deep sea.
Outside the windows, thousands, no, tens of thousands of small, glowing creatures swarmed around us like fireflies.
Lilia called them 'Cleansing Jellies.'
It seemed that wherever they passed, the Aether current flowed clearer and more brilliant.
This was the deepest part of a breathing world. A primeval sea where life was born.
However, the calm flow of the Aether vein suddenly began to rage.
I felt the Sky-Whale's pulse quicken erratically through the helm and shouted.
"Something's coming! The whale is agitated!"
"Right side!"
Lilia, who had been concentrating with her eyes closed, cried out urgently.
"A giant pulmonary vein! Mother just took a deep breath, and the flow has become a tidal wave! We have to evade it!"
Before her words even finished, the Lumina Rip was swallowed by the massive Aether current.
The ship began to spin, out of control, and sharp warning alarms blared across the bridge.
The massive wall of the vein rushed toward us. If we hit that, it was over.
"Jayn, hands off the helm! I'm taking control, now!" Leon shouted.
He grabbed the engine console's auxiliary controls and, like a maestro conducting an orchestra, began to manipulate dozens of dials simultaneously.
His gray eyes, reflecting the readouts, were colder and sharper than I had ever seen them.
"Port stabilizer fins at maximum deployment! Counter-spin with reverse thrusters! Lilia, distance to the next vortex?"
"Five hundred meters ahead! Impact in three seconds!"
Leon piloted the Lumina Rip not as a massive airship, but as a delicate surgical scalpel.
He skimmed the very edge of the vortex, using its own power to accelerate the ship.
It was a perfect concerto, a flawless harmony of his genius piloting and Lilia's precise predictions.
*
We had barely escaped the rapids when, without a moment to breathe, the second crisis hit.
Hundreds of red warning icons exploded across every screen on the bridge.
From the vein walls ahead, countless shadows were detaching themselves, swarming toward us at terrifying speed.
"Mother's protectors... the 'Phage Guardians.'"
Lilia's face went pale.
"They've identified us as a virus. They're coming to attack!"
Giant, mantis-like creatures, covered in crystal-hard carapaces. The Sky-Whale's immune system.
Hundreds, no, thousands of Phage Guardians... ...clinging to the Lumina Rip's hull and beginning to scrape at the outer walls with their razor-sharp arms.
SKREEEEEEE—!
A horrific shriek of metal friction echoed, and sparks erupted from all over the hull.
"Damn it, there's no end to them! They're trying to melt the hull! I'm deploying the shield, but it won't last long!"
Leon's urgent shout filled the bridge. At this rate, the hull would be breached in no time.
Just then, Lilia closed her eyes and began to sing, a melody that was soft yet desperate. The 'Shaman's Song,' passed down through generations. An ancient tune to soothe the pain of life.
As if responding to her song, the Phage Guardians' attacks hesitated, just barely. But it wasn't enough. The pain was too deep.
"No..." I groaned, still clutching the helm. Through the Guardians' attacks, the Sky-Whale's immense agony was pouring directly into me.
"This isn't hatred. It's just... pain. The Mother is in so much pain, she's just trying to push everything away!"
I let go of the helm and closed my eyes. We couldn't fight this. We had to calm the pain.
I gathered all the Aether within me, projecting not the alien presence of the Lumina Rip, but my own pure consciousness, empathizing with the whale's suffering.
'It's okay. We're here to help. We won't hurt you.'
The blue Aether flame that burst from my left eye enveloped the entire ship in a soft glow.
It wasn't a hard barrier like Leon's shield. It was a warm, gentle wave of comfort, like a mother's hand soothing a wounded child.
As my Aether spread, a miracle happened.
The Phage Guardians, which had been madly attacking the Lumina Rip, froze all at once. The red light of warning that had shrouded them resonated with my Aether and turned a soft blue.
They no longer attacked us.
Instead, like knights escorting their queen, they surrounded us protectively, parting to either side as if to open a path.
Leon and Lilia could only stare, as if unable to believe the sight before them.
The concerto of three. Leon the maestro, Lilia the navigator, and Jayn the tuner.
Finally, our performance was in perfect harmony.
*
Escorted by the Phage Guardians, we finally reached the source of the pain.
It was the heart of hell itself.
The vibrant blue light was gone, replaced by a diseased, rotten dark-red and a nauseating yellow that covered everything. The beautiful bioluminescent organs were twisted like cancer cells, and rusted pipes grew alongside living veins.
And at the center of all the contamination, a massive fragment of an Imperial probe was lodged, blinking an ominous red light.
"I'm taking over from here!" Leon's voice broke the bridge's silence. "Jayn, if the whale starts to go crazy, calm it down, no matter what it takes! Lilia, secure an escape route, just in case!"
Leon deployed the high-output plasma cutters mounted on the tips of the Lumina Rip's variable stabilizer fins. The blue blades began to precisely excise the corroded tissue around the probe.
Each time, the Sky-Whale's entire body convulsed, and I had to scream as I absorbed the pain. My mind felt like it was burning white-hot, but I desperately channeled calming Aether.
Finally, Leon succeeded in extracting the massive probe fragment using the ship's auxiliary grappling arm.
"Success! I got it!"
It was the exact moment Leon shouted in triumph.
A colossal spasm from the Sky-Whale began, as if vomiting out tens of thousands of years of pain all at once.
The Lumina Rip was thrown about violently, like a leaf.
Every system on the bridge went down, and our vision plunged into darkness.
"Kraaaahk!"
I screamed, slamming my body into the pilot's seat.
* * *
How much time had passed?
Emergency power kicked in, and red warning lights began to flash wildly across the bridge.
Ear-splitting alarms blared from every direction.
Lilia, having regained her senses, cried out in a voice full of despair.
"...The path! The path we came in through is blocked! The Mother's body... it's healing itself! It's closing up!"
With trembling hands, I turned on the external monitor.
The screen displayed a horrific sight: the massive Aether-vein we had just exited was rapidly being covered over by living flesh, sealing itself completely.
As we three stared in utter shock, the ship's cold, mechanical voice echoed like a death sentence.
"External passage completely sealed. External passage completely sealed."
We were trapped. Perfectly trapped inside a living giant's tomb.