I don't know how long the second hour ran. Time stopped being a thing with numbers and became a thing with wounds, and I counted it in those instead.
There was the gash over my brow, sealed. The one on my side, sealed. The one on my thigh that wouldn't close no matter how long I gave it, because Infinite Vitality had only just clawed its way up to Advanced and sat there at the bottom rung of its new tier, clumsy as a newborn, dragging me shut slower than the old version ever had.
So the thigh stayed open, and I kept splitting it wider every time I put weight on the leg to lunge.
A finger on my left hand had gone the wrong way an hour back and I'd set it against a pillar without slowing, one short grind of bone on cold stone, because slowing down was the single thing this place would not forgive. My mouth tasted of old copper. I'd stopped noticing when that started.
Snare, free, close, kill. I'd built a rhythm, and the rhythm was eating me alive.
