Part 1: Interrogation, Ice Cream & Idiocy
"You don't get to ask the universe for answers, then complain when it replies in screams."
— Zeiran Aethros, Internal Monologue
1. The Summons
The academy's Summoning Bell rang twice that morning.
Once for honor.
Twice for inquiry.
And Zeiran knew… he wasn't being summoned for honor.
He walked alone down the corridor of Resonant Inquiry, where the walls hummed with passive lie-detection fields and mind-pressure scans. The doors to the chamber hissed open, revealing a circular room lit with floating orbs of light.
At the far end sat High Instructor Caelis—head of Protocol Oversight. Beside him stood two silent Primes and a drone scribe.
"Zeiran Aethros," Caelis said, voice sharp as a blade wrapped in velvet. "Your performance at Caervin Grove has raised…questions."
"So ask them," Zeiran replied.
He was tired of games. And tired of hiding.
2. Questions with Teeth
"How long have you had contact with Unit X-0?"
"Since my Contract. The bond happened naturally."
"Naturally? And yet your resonance override was something not seen since the Fall of Kaidess."
"I didn't override. I harmonized. Ask X-0 yourself."
The Prime to the right stirred. "That Unit is considered a failed prototype."
Zeiran smirked. "Then why's it beating your Echo scores?"
The scribe drone twitched.
Caelis narrowed his eyes. "Do you know what Prime X really is?"
Zeiran's heartbeat jumped. "No."
He lied. For now.
3. Interruption by Idiot
The door slammed open.
"I brought snacks!"
Kalen Dray barged in with a bag of ice creams, a portable projector, and a half-activated anti-surveillance shield clipped to his waist like a broken toy.
Caelis raised a brow. "Mr. Dray, this is a restricted—"
"Yeah yeah, I read the rules. Just here to emotionally support my boy before he explodes from stress. Also, strawberry?"
Zeiran blinked. "You brought me strawberry ice cream… into a government inquiry chamber?"
"Bro, if we're going down, we go down frozen and sweet."
Caelis massaged his temples. "Dismissed."
"Fine," Kalen said, handing Zeiran the ice cream and whispering, "They're definitely scared of you."
Then he winked and walked out.
Zeiran chuckled—quietly, but enough for the drones to mark as "emotional deviation."
4. Lyra's Awakening
Later that day, Zeiran visited the medical wing. Lyra had been unconscious since Caervin Grove—exposure to the Voidspawn had triggered something deeper.
She lay in a chamber filled with Elvan shielding glyphs, her hair glowing faintly silver and her pulse echoing in rhythm with Kaidessian moons.
A nurse approached him. "She muttered in her sleep. Words from an old tongue."
"What tongue?"
"El'Khaaris. The Lost Elvan dialect."
Zeiran looked through the glass.
Lyra wasn't just from Elvan blood. Something inside her was tied to the deeper layers of Kaidess.
"Why is everyone around me breaking reality?" he muttered.
5. Rival Round 1
Later, on the proving floor, Zeiran found himself standing opposite Cael Virex again.
Not by choice.
The academy had ordered a tactical training match between "high-risk bonded initiates."
Cael smirked. "I asked them to let us use live blades. They said no."
Zeiran rolled his shoulders. "That's cute. I asked for a lunch break."
Kalen (now acting as "unofficial commentator") whispered into a comms channel:
"Ladies and gentlemen, in the black corner—emotionally repressed chaos boy! And in the blue corner—spiteful daddy's clone with a scar fetish!"
Seris sighed loudly. "Can someone mute Kalen?"
"Denied," Kalen replied.
The duel began.
Cael moved like a precision drone, striking with dual-phase daggers that curved mid-air. Zeiran dodged with reactive pulse-glides, drawing on X-0's semi-echo mode.
For ten seconds, it was equal.
Then Zeiran tapped into a glyph his mother once taught him—an Elvan mind-halo, letting him glimpse Cael's next move before it happened.
He didn't attack.
He simply stopped Cael's final strike with two fingers.
The arena fell silent.
Cael whispered, "You're not normal."
Zeiran smiled. "Neither is the world anymore."
6. The Blackline Watcher
Far away, inside the Obsidian Reach—a cloaked figure watched the match feed.
In their hand: a data crystal labeled "Prime X - Reactivated."
A voice behind them spoke:
"He's getting stronger."
The figure turned. "He's not even begun."
Then:
"Send a Watcher. If he survives Moonfall… bring him to me."
Part 2: Threads of Fire and Memory
1. The Memory Seal
Zeiran sat with his mother beneath the terrace lights of their small garden—a rare quiet moment. The wind carried the scent of violetroot tea and burnt pine.
She slid a small object onto the table: a memory braid—woven Elvan crystal threads meant to hold fragmented memories.
"It was given to me by a priestess of Caelthra," she whispered. "She said one day, my child would awaken what I feared to remember."
Zeiran touched it.
Flashes—too fast, too old, too deep—flooded through his skull:
A ruined tower beneath Kaidess skies
Voices chanting the name "Prime X"
A boy—not him—standing in a battlefield of glass, holding a burning crest in one hand and a shattered Sentiencer core in the other
His eyes snapped open. The braid cracked.
"I saw… someone else."
His mother nodded solemnly.
"No, Zeiran. You saw a version of yourself… who didn't survive."
2. Lyra's Awakening
In the Academy's Resonance Wing, Lyra opened her eyes.
Alarms triggered instantly—every glyph in the chamber flared. The Elvan shielding began to twist into a new pattern, something not from any current codebook.
Two medics rushed in.
Then stopped dead.
Lyra floated six inches above the bed. Her body humming in exact synchrony with the Rift frequencies above Aeris Moonfall. Her eyes glowed—not silver, but blue-veined gold.
She whispered a name. Not her own.
"Aelyra… Kaidessin."
The lights burst.
3. Kalen's 'Prime' Cosplay
Elsewhere, back at the dorms, Kalen stood in front of the mirror, adjusting the ridiculous faux-Prime armor he'd cobbled together from scrap metal, holo tape, and ego.
"Check it, bro," he said when Zeiran walked in. "Introducing—Prime K-Dawg. Defender of justice, snack provider of doom."
Zeiran blinked. "You look like a vending machine got angry."
"Thanks. That's the aesthetic."
Seris walked by, paused, stared.
"You're lucky I don't report this to the Dean."
"Oh please, I'd be the Dean if fashion sense counted."
Zeiran: "It doesn't."
Kalen: "Then I have nothing."
They all laughed. Even Seris smirked—barely.
4. In the Archives
Later that night, Zeiran, still shaken from the memory vision, entered the Restricted Archives.
Using X-0 as a key, he bypassed three lock levels until he reached a sealed section marked:
PRIME TERMINUS: UNACCESSED FILES
He opened the first.
A recording played.
A man with Zeiran's eyes, older, stood before an army of broken Sentiencers.
"If I fail—if the X Protocol falls—seal the truth. Let the next bearer find it when it's time."
Then static.
"Only the tenth shall break the chain."
Zeiran whispered:
"Prime X… is me."
5. Blackline Emerges
Far from the academy, deep within the Black Wastes, a convoy moved through ashfields under moonlight.
From it emerged a woman—long coat, white hair, eyes black with fractal runes. Her name: Saelyn Dros.
She lifted a blade carved from a Voidspawn's skull.
"Initiate memory bleed."
The weapon pulsed.
And a boy in the village miles away screamed—as his resonance signature was stolen from his body.
6. Threads Converge
As Zeiran returned from the Archives, he felt something tug behind his eyes.
A memory.
Not his.
A girl standing on the edge of a tower, holding a pendant and whispering the same name:
"Aelyra."
He turned a corner—and collided directly into Lyra.
But something was different.
She looked at him like she'd known him for a lifetime.
"I remember you," she whispered.
Zeiran: "What?"
She touched her temple. "In another life. Before this one. Before the Sentiencers fell."
Then she collapsed in his arms.