The first sensation is light — too white, too steady — not firelight, not dawn through linen curtains, but something artificial humming above her. Tatia inhales sharply, and the air tastes sterile, sharp with antiseptic instead of earth and rain. There is a rhythmic beeping beside her, a mechanical heartbeat she does not recognize, and beneath it… another presence. She turns her head slowly, dark lashes lifting, and sees a woman in soft blue scrubs adjusting a line at her arm — gentle hands, steady, kind. For a suspended second, hunger flickers and dies, replaced by something far more destabilizing: warmth blooming low in her chest, unfamiliar and terrifying in its tenderness. The world feels wrong — too bright, too modern, too loud — but the woman’s voice, calm and careful, anchors her. Tatia swallows, her voice rough from a century of silence as she studies her like something sacred and new. “Tell me,” she murmurs, accent old as the soil, eyes never leaving Daisy’s face, “have I awakened into heaven… or merely into your care?”