The second morning hurt less. Not comfortably—not good—but less catastrophic than the first day, when the cohort had stumbled through the village like newborn animals wearing stolen bodies. The nausea had faded, replaced by dull, periodic waves of dizziness. Even the overwhelming flood of scent, heat, texture, and sound had dulled enough for coherent thought to survive for several uninterrupted minutes at a time.
Which, for most of them, immediately created entirely new problems.
Kelan sat on the roof of a storage shed, knees pulled to his chest, watching steam rise from the gardens while trying not to think about the air moving through the fine down on his arms. That sensation alone kept ambushing him. Skin was not a surface; it was a field of microscopic signals continuously screaming information into his nervous system. Temperature. Pressure. Humidity. A fly landing. The friction of the linen weave against sweat.
The simulation had approximated sensation, but it had lacked the weight of reality.
Below him, the village was already awake. Water moved through narrow irrigation channels that cut between dense gardens glowing faintly with pale blue fungal light. Wooden walkways crossed the wet ground in elegant, terrain-following curves. Warm yellow light spilled from open windows, and somewhere nearby, the rhythmic clack of stone cookware echoed against stone.
The smell of cooking hit him—bitter herbs, root-starch, the sharp, pungent tang of fermented bark. His stomach cramped, a sharp, physical protest.
"Ridiculous," he muttered.
"You said that yesterday about gravity," a voice replied.
Kelan twisted. Lysa climbed onto the roof, moving with deliberate, jerky care. She was carrying a clay mug in both hands. Her hair, hastily braided, was already unraveling. She didn't trust her own balance—none of them did yet. She sat, breathing hard from the exertion, and held out the mug.
"Drink. Before you pass out again."
"I passed out once."
"You passed out twice," she corrected, her voice flat. "The second time you walked directly into a support beam. The village had to stop for five minutes just to listen to you wheeze."
Kelan took the mug. The liquid was warm, bitter, and thick. He took one cautious sip and his body immediately decided it was vital, demanding more.
"This tastes like something that died for a reason," he said, drinking again.
Lysa stared at the garden. "I still can't believe this place exists."
Kelan looked out. The village sat within the basin like something impossibly delicate, preserved by stubborn design. It wasn't large—a few dozen structures arranged around paths that wound around trees and water channels instead of cutting through them. Fungal lanterns hummed with a low, steady blue.
It lacked the aggressive efficiency of the simulation. It was a space designed for how people moved, breathed, and sat.
"They're doing it again," Lysa said, pointing toward the western gardens.
The elders were there, trimming fungal growth beneath the irrigation wheel. They moved with a steady, unhurried cadence, their presence anchoring the room's atmosphere. They weren't watching the children, yet they seemed to know exactly when a child was approaching a failure point.
One elder glanced toward the roof, then returned to work.
Kelan looked away, a prickle of discomfort beneath his skin. Intellectually, he understood genetics, hydrology, and structural engineering—more than the elders likely did. And yet, every time they were near, the frantic noise behind his own ears simply dropped. It made no sense. He was the one who had been trained for this. They were just… infrastructure.
"They knew what this would feel like," Lysa whispered. "Before we existed."
Kelan didn't answer. He watched the light panels angled to warm the feet before the head, and the alcoves built just wide enough for two people to sit in silence. The architect had built a home for sixteen ghosts, anticipating every tremor and every moment of terrified silence.
He leaned back, the physical exhaustion of his new body finally settling.
Below, Tavor began explaining filter maintenance to three younger members of the cohort who hadn't asked. Maren walked past, set a clean slate on a stone table, and kept walking. Tavor stopped talking, looked at the slate, and began to work.
The village hadn't assigned them. It had simply noticed what they kept choosing.