Living beside the Ioma for millennia leaves its mark, but it doesn’t rewrite what we are. Our bodies skew compact, with shorter limbs and broader faces that warm each breath before it reaches the lungs. We carry more subcutaneous fat than our southern kin, and the capillaries in our fingers and toes hold warmth longer when the cold tests them. I read those traits in family lines the way I read mist patterns on the sloughs, tracing the same thermal corridors you can see on the atlas and in The Ioma Rift.

Physiologically we run hotter. Basal metabolism hums at a higher clip, brown adipose tissue stays active past childhood, and we can swing from steam-bath humidity to razor-dry arctic air without faltering. Years spent tending vents also blunt the panic most people feel when heat presses down; we sweat, we adapt, we keep working. Our lungs hold more air, not because we need to climb mountains, but because fog can smother sound and smell, breath becomes another way to stay oriented.

What the Ioma hasn’t done is mutate us into something mythic. We haven’t grown more hair, changed skin tone, or evolved new senses. Eight thousand years buys subtle shifts, not new species. The adaptations are tweaks on human variation, nudged in the direction that lets us survive nights at forty below and days spent hauling nets through boiling mist.

When I raise children here, I watch those adjustments settle in with each season. They learn to read their own circulation, to trust the warmth stored in muscle, and to accept that resilience isn’t invulnerability. The rift keeps testing our limits, so we honor the changes it has carved into us without pretending it turned us into something other than stubborn, adaptable humans, the same practical humility that runs through Crafting Survival in the Mist and Culture Woven from Mist.