From the Margin Notes of a Renderer

They ask me what we bring back from the zones.

I say: the dead, and everything in them that still works. The old world invented itself to death. What remains now grows beyond our walls, in our basins, and on our skin.

They call the first joining the Binding. Those who survive it become the Bound. After that, you select a Path, receive a new seed, and hope that body and bio-armor still mean the same person when the next Sequence wakes. The Council calls that process Ascension.

For twenty years, I have watched people grow stronger. Not all returned as the same person.

If you are reading this and remain unbound, there is no shame in staying that way.