The dawn of Finnian's second day in Aethelburg was not marked by a rooster, but by pain. A deep, muscular ache radiated from his shoulders down to the small of his back. The raw, stinging blisters on his palms announced themselves with every slight movement. In his previous life, such sensations would have been classified as system errors—inefficiencies to be medicated and optimized away. Here, lying in the scratchy embrace of the hay, he recognized them for what they were: data. Not the clean, digital data of his screens, but a raw, analog testament to effort. To having been *used*.
He sat up slowly, each movement a precise calibration against the discomfort. It was a new kind of mathematics, one of thresholds and tolerances. He flexed his hands, wincing. These hands had signed orders that shifted fortunes and doomed corporations. Now, they struggled to form a simple fist.
