The emergency stairwell swallowed Lin whole. Her N95 mask disintegrated into fluttering talismans as she fell through nineteen floors of shifting architecture. Steel railings morphed into rib bones slick with amniotic fluid, emergency lights becoming bioluminescent fungi clinging to pulsating walls. When her back struck concrete, the impact rippled through reality like a stone cast into a nightmare.
"Breathe, little thief." The archaic voice vibrated through her molars. "Unless you prefer suffocating in borrowed time."
Lin's eyes flew open to fluorescent lights strobing like dying stars. Her fingers clawed at cold tile flooring patterned with migrating hexagrams. The digital clock above the nurses' station flickered between 20:47 and *Year of Drowned Phoenix, Ninth Moon*. A janitor's mop bucket overflowed with liquid shadows that hissed when her sweat dripped into the murky depths.
"Code Grey, OR-4!" blared the PA system with metallic distortion. "Structural anomaly in progress."
Lin staggered upright, her white coat now weighing like ceremonial armor. The surgical scar beneath her scrubs mapped constellations across her skin, its luminous tendrils creeping toward her collarbones. Through the fifth-floor observation window, she witnessed the hospital's new wing twist like a wounded dragon - glass panels becoming scales, steel beams contorting into vertebrae dripping with black ichor.
A cold hand materialized on her shoulder. "They're rewriting the building's qì flow." Dr. Jiuyou's breath frosted the air as he appeared beside her, now wearing a biohazard suit stitched with embroidered curse breakers. "Your little resurrection trick tore a hole in the Veil. Delightful chaos, isn't it?"
Lin shoved him against a medication cart. Vials of insulin shattered, their contents coalescing into mercury-like droplets that formed tiny screaming faces. "What the hell are you?"
"Disappointed you don't recognize me?" The silver-haired man's eyes reflected collapsing stars. "Though I suppose this vessel is less intimidating than nine bronze heads belching hellfire." He snapped his fingers, and the rolling chaos outside froze mid-transformation. "Shall we negotiate terms before the Celestial Audit Bureau arrives?"
The walls bled. Crimson rivulets spelled out ancient warnings in seal script that burned when Lin tried to read them. Her stolen heart thundered a war drum rhythm that shook the IV stands into frenzied dances.
"Three truths," Jiuyou continued, plucking a still-screaming mercury droplet from Lin's sleeve. "First: That heart in your chest once powered a divine ward containing the Nine Nether Realms. Second: The original owner wants it back. Third..." He crushed the droplet, its shriek dying like a stepped-on insect. "...you're already dead."
Lin's pager erupted with emergency codes. Patient monitors throughout the hospital began singing in dissonant choir, their leads sprouting claws to dig into flesh. Through the mounting bedlam, she heard her resident's voice screaming from a supply closet: "Dr. Lin! The transplant patient - she's melting!"
Flashback: Celestial Operating Theater
One Millennium Earlier
The Dragon-Scale Lancet trembled in Su Li's clawed hand. Her reflection in the surgical pool showed a creature caught between forms - jade scales retreating from humanoid flesh, gills fluttering weakly at her throat. Before her on the obsidian operating table lay the source of all her torment: the Ninth Prince of Heaven, his golden blood crystallizing into venomous shards where her earlier incision had gone awry.
"Finish it," croaked the divine prince, his six corrupted eyes weeping black tears. "Before the rot reaches my core."
Su Li's respiratory frills flared. "Your celestial energy is rejecting the purgation. We need another donor heart."
"Yours will suffice." The prince's remaining hand shot out, bones elongating into talons that pierced her thoracic cavity. "The Covenant demands balance, Warden of Tides."
Agony beyond physical comprehension erupted as his claws closed around her still-beating dragon heart. The surgical pool boiled over as Su Li's scream shattered every glass vial in the celestial infirmary. Somewhere beyond pain, she heard the Ninth Prince whisper through their shared bloodstream:
"Forgive me. The Abyss requires an anchor."
Present: Shanghai New Grace Hospital
The transplant patient's bed had become a cocoon of pulsating veins. Lin watched in horrified fascination as the young woman's body undulated beneath translucent skin, her new heart glowing like a captive star. The cardiac monitor displayed impossible vitals - 347 bpm with QRS complexes shaped like tiny dragons.
"Fentanyl isn't touching her pain!" cried a nurse as the patient's screams harmonized with the singing monitors. "We need to - oh god!"
The woman's sternum split with a wet crack. From the blossoming cavity rose the transplanted heart, now encased in jade scales and trailing luminous chordae tendineae that snaked across the ceiling. Lin's own scar blazed in sympathetic resonance as the organ began playing a sonata only she could hear - a melody of drowning cities and broken oaths.
Dr. Jiuyou materialized beside the crashing patient, his fingers dancing through the writhing tendrils like a maestro conducting chaos. "Marvelous, isn't it? A divine heart trying to rebuild its original body from mortal clay." He caught a snapping tendril that lunged at Lin. "Though I'd advise against letting it taste your particular vintage."
Lin's vision doubled. The crashing patient's face flickered between modern features and an ancient visage - high cheekbones dusted with scales, hair floating in liquid air. The heart's song shifted key, vibrating through Lin's molars in a language older than bone:
"Keeper of Broken Chords, the Tide demands restitution."
Her hands moved without conscious instruction. Defibrillator paddles flew into her grip, their surfaces etched with glowing sigils. The crash cart's screen displayed not joules but Lightning Tribulation Level IX. When she slammed the paddles onto the patient's chest, reality itself flatlined.
Soulscape: Memory Vessel
The shockwave hurled Lin into liquid darkness. She floated in amniotic silence until bioluminescent sutures appeared below - glowing threads stitching together a massive mosaic of her stolen memories. The surgical scar on her chest unraveled into a luminous filament that plunged into the abyss.
Lin followed.
The thread led to a submerged operating theater where two women lay conjoined at the sternum. One wore bloodied scrubs, the other robes of woven kelp. Their shared heart pulsed with twin rhythms that warred through the saltwater gloom.
"You stole my death." The robed woman's voice vibrated through Lin's marrow. "Now we both drown in borrowed time."
Lin reached for the tangled arteries. "Su Li?"
The dragon-woman's gills flared. "The Ninth Tide rises. My heart cannot hold the Veil and sustain your fragile existence." Her clawed hand closed around Lin's wrist. "Choose, fleshling. Your world or mine."
The vision shattered as something massive stirred in the depths below. Lin's lungs burned with phantom pressure as she kicked toward distant light, chased by the sound of snapping surgical threads and a woman's bitter laughter.
Present: Convergence Point
Lin awoke choking on saltwater and anticoagulants. The crash room had become an aquarium of horrors - medical equipment fused with coral formations, nurses floating like jellyfish with glowing IV tentacles. At the epicenter hovered the transplant heart, now grown to the size of a compact car and beating with tsunami force.
Dr. Jiuyou stood atop an inverted crash cart, his lab coat flapping in nonexistent wind. "Wonderful! The heart's regenerating its pericardial sea. Another hour and we'll have a full oceanic biome in Pulmonary Ward." He grinned at Lin's horrified expression. "What? You mortals wanted regenerative medicine."
The giant heart contracted, blasting the room with briny wind. Lin's stolen memories surged - Su Li performing an autopsy on a leviathan, extracting glowing pearls from its twelve-chambered heart. Her hands moved with ancestral muscle memory, snatching a scalpel from the floating debris.
"Still fighting?" Jiuyou asked as she slashed through a tangle of invasive arteries. "This is why I love mortals. Like ants trying to dam the Yellow River with their own corpses."
Lin's blade found purchase in the heart's primary ventricle. Golden ichor erupted, solidifying into screaming angelfish that dissolved upon hitting the floor. "How do I kill it?"
"Kill it?" Jiuyou laughed. "Darling, you *are* it." He gestured to her glowing scar now pulsing in sync with the monstrous organ. "That's your dragon-scale defibrillator at work. Every shock treatment gives the heart more energy to rebuild its true form."
The walls groaned as seawater breached the hospital's reality. Lin tasted copper and regret. "Then how do we stop it?"
"We don't." Jiuyou's form blurred at the edges. "But if you let the dragon's warden take control..." He vanished as a tidal wave of memories crashed through Lin's defenses.
Forced Symbiosis
Su Li's consciousness rose like a leviathan breaching. Lin's vision tinted aquamarine as scales rippled across her skin. Her stolen medical knowledge fused with ancient biomancy in terrifying synergy - she saw not organs but energy meridians, not blood but liquid qi.
The monster heart recoiled as Lin/Su approached. "You dare wear my flesh, thief?" The words tore from Lin's throat in dual registers. Her hands sketched glowing sutures in the air. "I am Su Li of the Azure Abyss, Warden of the Ninth Tide. Kneel."
The heart spasmed, shriveling to human size. Lin/Su plunged her hand into the pulsating mass, extracting a glowing pearl threaded with black veins. "A soul anchor," they hissed. "You would make my heart a bridge for the Drowned Throne?"
The pearl shattered. Reality rewound like snapped elastic.
Aftermath
Lin came to kneeling in a dry crash room, her scrubs stiff with salt crystals. The transplant patient breathed steadily, her chest bearing only a faint scar. Nurses blinked dazedly at intact equipment, their memories already fogging like dream residue.
On the observation deck above, Dr. Jiuyou applauded silently. His lips formed words that bypassed soundwaves to etch directly into her mind: "Round one to the dragon. But the Audit Bureau does love paperwork."
Lin's pager buzzed with a new alert - thirteen patients simultaneously coding with identical arrhythmias. The cardiac monitor patterns formed a message in ancient seal script:
PREPARE THE SACRIFICE.
Her stolen heart answered in triple-time rhythm as Su Li's voice whispered through their shared veins: "The Tide comes for what's ours."