Mind returned to Yan Zhiqiu not as a gentle dawn, but as a violent, choking convulsion.
One moment she was falling through the lightless, pressure-crushing deep pit of the Abyssal Fracture, her lungs bursting with black seawater, the screaming faces of her dying archive-brothers dissolving into emerald void-fire. The next, her eyes snapped open to the reality of solid stone, warm air, and the smell of burning wood.
For three seconds, her sense rig failed to understand the environment.
She saw a high, vaulted ceiling of dark soapstone, ribbed with massive cut stone arches that came together eighteen arm-lengths overhead. She saw the warm, pulsing vermilion glow of an open fire spilling across grey flat stone slabs. She saw her own hands—clean, dressed in a coarse hemp tunic five sizes too large, resting beneath a heavy blanket of dark yak wool.
Then her eyes found the figure.
Ten paces away, standing before the glowing mouth of the fire with his back partially turned, was a man.
He was broad-shouldered, massive in the dim firelight, clad in a stiff, amber-colored coat of boiled oilskin patched at the shoulder with rough sharkskin. His feet were bare, wide, and calloused like slabs of oak, planted firmly upon the stones. In his hand, he held a heavy iron ladle, lifting it from a steaming cooking pot that bubbled over the coals.
