Chapter 2: Emeric's Garden and the Scaffold's Voice

# Chapter 2: Emeric's Garden and the Scaffold's Voice

The fold exit hit him like a fist wrapped in velvet—a compression of every organ followed by a release so sudden it felt like falling, the quantum transit's signature nausea rolling through his body in a wave that started behind his eyes and ended somewhere below his knees. Hadran gripped the armrest of his berth and breathed through his nose, counting to four on the inhale and six on the exhale, the way the combat medics had taught him aboard the *Ardent* a decade ago. Around him, the fold-liner *Cassia Bright* groaned through its structural members as normal physics reasserted itself, the hull ticking and popping like a cooling engine. Someone in the berth across the aisle vomited quietly into a bag. The smell of bile and recycled air. The hum of the drives spooling down.

He opened his eyes.