The soil was cold. It wasn't the programmed cold of the Nursery that bit at your skin just enough to feel "realistic." This was a deep, ancient chill—the kind that lived in the bones of a planet that hadn't seen a sun in a century.
My fingers, now made of real flesh and blood, were raw and caked in black grit. Every movement hurt. My muscles, which had only ever known the effortless physics of a digital avatar, felt like leaden weights. I breathed in, and the air tasted of ash and stale oxygen, a far cry from the ozone and rain of the "Stitch."
I knelt there, in the shadow of the blackened stump of the Golden Tree, and pressed the violet shard of Silas into the earth.
"Grow," I whispered. My voice was a ghost, barely audible against the absolute silence of the dead city. "Please, Silas.
