Black and grey back tattoo of a biomechanical ribcage with a laced corset design running down the spine and swirling detail over the shoulders.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Biomechanical ribcage and laced corset on back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large back piece shows a ribcage-like structure with a central spine, ribs rendered in layered shading, and swirling tendril-like details across the shoulders. Cross-laced cords run down the centre of the design, drawn with fine highlights that give them depth. The work is in black and grey with smooth gradients, photographed against a dark background.

Realism Back Ribcage Ribs Spine Corset Lace Swirl Biomechanical Bone

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bellows were still warm when Sister Ottilie found the girl in the bone-house, her back to the door and her shoulders bare to the cold. Someone had laced her up in cords of black sinew, crossed tight from the nape to the hip, and the ribs beneath the skin had been opened like the doors of a cathedral organ. Ottilie had been told the Physician of Varrow Hollow took his apprentices no older than twelve. This one was grown, and she did not turn when the lantern came near.

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"He said you would come with a candle," the girl said. "He said the cords only hold while someone keeps counting them."

Ottilie knelt and began to count. Fourteen crossings above the waist, nine below, and between each pair a little silver vein that pulsed when the lamp swung. Where the tendrils rose over the shoulders they had grown into ferns of cold metal, and they rang faintly when she touched them. The Physician had promised a cure for the Hollow's wasting sickness. He had not promised that it would wear a person's spine on the outside.

She tied the last knot, counted it, and found the number had come out wrong by one. The girl laughed softly, the way the bellows wheezed, and said, "Then you have one more rib to find, Sister, and it is the one you took out of yourself."