Frostbite.
The frost-air the Titans had compiled was settling into him. His fingertips, exposed against the broken stone, were beginning to die — the frost reaching into the small capillaries and freezing them from the inside, the skin blackening in a slow centripetal bloom from the nail-beds inward.
He could feel them losing sensation.
He could feel them ceasing to be his.
The Titan's boot pressed harder.
Phei's skull protested in a fresh round of hairline fractures.
He had time, in the dim distant register of a body that could not currently understand it was the body in question, to think please.
It was the first time in the engagement his interior voice had asked for anything.
The Titan lifted its boot.
Stepped back.
The shoulder-pin was withdrawn, the crushed hand released. The construct that had used his hair as a tool stepped away.
He was, for one brief moment, free.
Then —
He pushed himself up onto his uncrushed left hand.
Onto his knees.
