The first thing I felt wasn't the wind; it was the weight. After existing as a "Prime User" in the weightless, high-bandwidth environment of the Archive's source code, returning to a physical body felt like being crammed into a suit of rusted plate armor three sizes too small. My lungs burned with the thin, freezing air of the high atmosphere, and my right arm—the one etched with the indigo-inked obsidian pattern—felt as though it had been used as a grounding rod for a lightning strike. I wasn't falling anymore. I was vibrating.
The Centurion held me in its massive iron arms, its internal servos whining with a high-pitched stress that I could feel through the leash. We were standing on the outer hull of the Vanguard-01 as it plummeted through the clouds, its engines coughing out thick plumes of indigo smoke. The Floating Archive was a dissolving memory above us, turning into a rain of inert mana-crystals that sparkled like falling stars in the twilight.
