Lin Ke opened his eyes.
They were no longer the dark, exhausted eyes of an undernourished laborer. His pupils had resolved into nested, crystal-clear reticles. Nested sharp-angled sky-slits that refracted the surrounding light into razor-sharp tracking data vectors.
He looked at his own body.
His smock was gone, burned away to charcoal tatters. Across his chest and arms, the torn skin was already sealing, knitted together by dark, metal scars where the Ashen Iron jackets had fused permanently to his glassy waveguides.
His right shoulder remained out-of-joint, the joint swollen and locked. The cedar splint over his collarbone was charred black.
The physical damage was real. The meat had not rolled back.
He could feel every torn muscle fiber, every bruised nerve. The deep, throbbing ache of the iron needle still embedded in his left thumb.
He stood up.
