The Bellmother swallowed Jiang without giving him time to fill his lungs.
Black water folded the clear membrane over his back. Amber ribs closed behind it, and the canopy vanished beneath living tissue.
Jiang entered the dark with half a breath and one useful wing.
His body knew more about drowning than his fear did. Blood left the parts that could wait. His heart slowed without a System command. The old human panic still arrived, loud and certain, but emperor lungs did not spend air merely because he was afraid.
That restraint was not the same as comfort. His chest already wanted the breath the Bellmother had stolen from him, and every old human instinct insisted that something so large could not swallow him by accident.
The intake hurled him through a corridor of soft red ridges.
Each ridge opened as he approached and sealed after his feet passed. Clear hairs combed his wet coat. Some tasted the rooted oil pattern and trembled with his fixed call.
