SYSTEM STATUS — KrysKo O'Ruadhraigh
Milestone Snapshot — Start of Chapter 4, Part 1
Level: 5
EXP: 0 / 1600
Class: Prototype (Pre-Evolution)
Attributes:
STR: 22
AGI: 20
END: 20
INT: 17
PER: 19
CHA: 12
LCK: 10
Passive Suites: Adaptive Balance (v0.9), Kinetic Recovery (v0.7), Threat Map (v1.3)
Known Styles: Capoeira (Foundation Kata; Rank I)
Integrated Weapons: Forearm Blades — Pair A (Forward orientation; retractable; bronze resonance lattice; serviceable length = forearm)
Armor: Civilian layers (concealment bias) — Full bronze set not equipped.
Inventory: Minimal field kit (cloth wrap, coil wire, tinder, two water tabs)
Notes: Emotional governor active. Memory index fragmented.
---
Chapter 4 — Part 1: The Girl at the Edge of the Road
(Style B — mission log clarity; cinematic detail; system interleaved)
The scream found him in the hollow between breaths.
It was young and bright with terror, the kind that cuts through ruin and dust like a clean blade. KrysKo's head lifted a degree; feet stilled on broken asphalt; ears triangulated.
> [AUDIO LOCK]: Female, ~18–20; distress; distance 116 m; bearing 041°.
[ADVISORY]: Hostile voices overlapping (3–4).
[MAP]: Collapsed overpass; vehicle graveyard; multiple occlusions.
He didn't think should I. He moved.
The highway curled into a vertebrae field—cars half-swallowed by ivy, bus frames laced with rust, glass pulverized to glittering grit. Wind crept under the bridge and made a thin organ sound. The scent arrived before the scene—cheap alcohol, metal oil, human breath gone sour with excitement.
KrysKo slid to the lip of the overpass, low. Below: three men and a boy on the cusp of manhood, knives and a cleaver, a stubby pistol with a cracked grip. The girl was pinned against a jersey barrier. One raider's hand fisted fabric, tearing it. Another pressed her shoulders, grinning through broken teeth.
Her eyes found KrysKo. Wide. Then steady. The plea landed without sound.
> [QUEST UNLOCKED] — Humanity's Choice
Save the girl or walk away.
Reward: Unknown. Consequence: Trajectory.
For one breath the system let the world hold its options like scales.
He went.
He dropped clean—no shout, no warning. The first raider only realized the shadow had shape when KrysKo's heel lifted the ground to meet his jaw. Teeth and blood arced; the man turned boneless and folded.
The second raider, cleaver-man, reacted fast—gut instincts honed by a life spent hunting the weak. He swung horizontal, blade shrieking against concrete. KrysKo slid into ginga, center line fluid, hips speaking rhythm. Step-right feint, sway-left; cleaver cut air. KrysKo's leg scythed low—rasteira—and the man's feet lost the contract with earth. He hit hard; KrysKo's elbow met his sternum before breath could remember itself. A short metallic hiss—blades whispering free along KrysKo's forearms—and bronze rip sang from hip to collarbone. The cleaver clattered. The man didn't get back up.
Gunman moved—shaky, desperate. KrysKo inverted, palms to asphalt, legs scissoring up into a meia lua de compasso; his foot crushed the pistol hand. Bones cracked. The gun skittered, spinning away under a dead sedan.
The youngest tried to run.
KrysKo was there—one, two—and the boy's hood met the barrier. Not enough force to break him; enough to smother momentum. The node of a pulse trembled beneath KrysKo's palm.
"Drop it," KrysKo said. Calmer than the wind. The boy's knife rang on concrete.
Silence searched for its balance.
The last raider—the one who'd held the girl's shoulders—trembled between rage and calculation. Rage lost. He darted; KrysKo's blade moved in a quiet cross. The man froze in surprise at how easily bodies come apart.
> [COMBAT REPORT]: Hostiles neutralized (4).
[DAMAGE]: Minor (abrasion, left knuckle).
[EXP] +210.
[EFFICIENCY]: 61% → 66%.
KrysKo retracted the blades. The girl didn't flinch at the sound because she didn't have breath left to spend on flinching. Her blouse was torn; a raw scrape burned across her shoulder. She held herself small but upright—defiance surviving on stubborn instinct.
"You—" She swallowed. "You saved me."
"You would have bled out," he said. The answer was true and insufficient.
She tugged the torn fabric closed with shaking hands, eyes never leaving his face. "What are you?"
He considered weapon and rejected it. "KrysKo," he said. The name fit like a tool you've forgotten you owned. "KrysKo O'Ruadhraigh."
"Kara," she said. "Kara Myles."
She staggered; he offered stability without touch, stepping so her legs caught a line and found it. "We should move," he said. "The noise will carry."
Kara nodded, practical swallowing panic. She stooped painfully and grabbed a small satchel from where it had fallen. Clay vials clinked inside like small patient hearts. "East," she said. "The old thoroughfare toward University lands."
"Lead," he said, and fell in beside her like a shadow that had decided to walk.
---
They left the overpass; the world changed its texture. Asphalt surrendered to root and moss; a green insistence pushed through seams of civilization and made them its own. Shopfronts gaped like mouths losing teeth. Solar glass was veined with creeping crystal—the lingering signature of Architect residue. Ivy that was not ivy pulsed faintly under its own skin, bioluminescence exhaling in capillary threads.
Kara's hands spoke a vocabulary of travel—palm down, slow; two taps to thigh, halt; fingers lifted, listen. Each time she signaled, KrysKo matched her without waste. She glanced at him once; respect adjusted itself a degree.
They paused at a rot-scabbed bus fused around a triumphant tree trunk. Across its side, paint, long weathered, still carried a phrase: WE REMEMBER. Kara brushed dirt from the letters with the back of her knuckles.
"Who?" KrysKo asked.
"Those who didn't cross the Silence," she said. "Those who did. Sometimes we don't know who we're remembering. We just know we should."
Wind moved through broken glass. The city watched them with a thousand dark windows.
> [ENV SCAN]: Air quality moderate; particulates ↑ in low corridors.
[THERMALS]: Minor fauna; low threat.
[ANOMALY]: Architect crystalline deposits (trace); avoid direct contact.
They cut through a skeleton of greenhouses—the Glass Gardens. Webs of pane and frame created their own dim weather: damp, breath-warm air even in cold. Vines thick as wrists climbed ribcages of steel. Somewhere water dripped with the patient stubbornness of survival.
Kara slipped; KrysKo's hand found her elbow before gravity filed a claim. She looked at his fingers—unnaturally long forearm, tendon lines clean under skin—and then up at him. "Thanks," she said, simple and meant.
He released. "Step along the beam," he said. "Not the pane. More honest."
She smiled with the quick flare of a person who still remembered light. "I'll borrow that line."
In the museum's cracked atrium, a mural survived: children's painted hands in a ring around a tree. Kara stopped, palm hovering over a blue print smaller than her own. "Do the Drakari have children with us here?" she asked, voice hush-soft. "Not the stories. City places. Streets. Gardens."
"Some," he said. The word arrived with a faint echo, as if spoken by a file somewhere far away.
"And they're safe? In University lands?"
"Safer than outside."
"You always answer so I won't break," she said quietly, not unkind. "You never promise."
"Promises are currency," he said. "I don't know which ones I own."
Her smile was quick and gone. They moved on.
The ground shivered.
KrysKo's weight slid forward to balls of feet, loose and ready. Kara felt it too—the way soil hums a warning before a bad thing surfaces. The mulch rippled; then eyes—too many—caught green in the dim.
> [ALERT]: Subterranean motion → emergent.
[ID]: Engineered vermin ("Skull Rats" / colloquial).
[COUNT]: 14… 18… final 21.
[THREAT]: Swarm; corrosive bite; rapid adaptation.
They boiled out—rats once, now gear-collared, cranium plates peeled back like grisly petals to expose latticed brain that pulsed sickly yellow. The scent hit: ammonia, hot copper, rancid oil.
Kara was already moving—backing to higher rubble, satchel open. "Don't let them bracket you!" she called. "They stack!"
Stack they did—three wide, two high, a ladder of hate. KrysKo slid into ginga, low and open, the rhythm that makes everything else possible. First wave: a half step left and a forward blade drew a clean line through three, momentum feeding heel into a fourth. It cracked; it died.
"Back!" Kara snapped. She bit a gut-string, spat it, and hurled a clay bulb. It burst wetly; a sweet minty sting flooded the air. Half the pack veered, hacking, eyes pouring. The deeper-yellow pulsing skulls pushed through—learning, adapting, angry.
KrysKo changed tempo—rasteira hook-kick; armada spin to flank. A leaper latched onto his calf; pain flared bright and useful.
> [DAMAGE]: Dermal breach; corrosive agent detected; auto-repair engaged.
He drove his knee up; the rat became a smear. "Left," Kara warned—he pivoted before the word finished, blade halving a midair skull precisely along the axis of its hunger.
Another bulb shattered on stone behind him. Chalk detonated; milk-white fog erased depth. For a heartbeat he fought by sound and system map alone—scrape of claw, hiss of breath, the humble chime of his inner gyroscope keeping the world true.
A body fell wrong. Not his.
Kara's back hit glass ribs. An old one—scar-lipped, mottled, collar ticking like a grave clock—had climbed the frame and dropped. It found leather, then skin.
KrysKo crossed the space in a handful of impossible steps. No dance now. A straight line of decision. His hand closed the creature's spine and pulled. Flesh parted; tendons screamed. He kept pulling until the rat came apart in ragged halves. He flung the pieces with a tremor he didn't intend.
The swarm cracked. Survivors fled into holes and the day swallowed their small mean sounds.
Silence tried and failed to settle.
Kara's breath hitched under the jacket; blood shaped a dark V. Her hands fumbled satchel straps—stubborn, shaking. KrysKo knelt; one palm found her wrist—gentle; the other pressed to the wound.
Heat moved from him into her—no flame; a steadier hum from the Drakari alloy riding his core. Nanites woke like soft avalanches beneath the skin of his hand; they whispered instructions to torn human tissue they remembered from manuals older than the ruin outside.
Kara hissed; then blinked as pain unclenched. "What… is that?"
"Field dressing," he said. True. Not all of it.
"You ripped that thing in half," she said. Not accusation. Night's fact laid on the table.
"Yes."
"You don't sleep. You don't eat. Your blood… it smells wrong." Her eye tracked his forearms. The inlet seam was subtle. Not invisible. "You fight like a man whose bones learned someone else's song."
He didn't answer because nothing he could say would be smaller than the question she'd actually asked.
> [SOCIAL]: Trust Threshold 58% → 61%.
[ADVISORY]: Partial disclosure may increase mission cohesion.
[COUNTER-ADVISORY]: Strategic ambiguity maintains optionality.
He released her wrist. "I know functions," he said. "Parameters. I know the way to the University."
"That's not what I—" She let it go. "Fine. For now."
They walked until light forgot words. In a collapsed atrium they made camp no bigger than two breaths. Kara strung tiny copper bells across the entrance—old caravan trick. KrysKo sat at the threshold and listened to the night do its arithmetic.
She brewed thin stew—bitter greens; jerked meat; a pinch of something mint-sharp. Steam wrote fragile shapes in the cold. "You don't eat," she said.
"Not as you do."
"You have a heartbeat," she murmured, curious more than wary. "But it doesn't sync with your breathing."
"It syncs with other things." He found a corner of humor he didn't recognize as his.
She huffed a laugh despite the day. "Strange."
"So I'm told."
She slept with her hand inside the satchel—metal, glass, tools, small certainties under her palm. "Second watch," she mumbled.
"I won't need—"
"I didn't ask if you need me," she said, already gone. "Wake me."
He nodded to the dark, and kept it.
Time smoothed itself. Far off, a train horn tried to remember tracks that no longer existed. KrysKo let his vision soften; telemetry hummed—wind speed, particulate; thermal flickers the size of mice, the size of ghosts. Bells did not stir.
A hollow found the room.
Not motion; the absence where something had been. The world shifted a degree colder with no change in temperature. KrysKo rose, blades asleep but interested.
Shadow near the atrium's slit of sky attended him. It stood with the patience of geometry. No breath. No dust. Presence like a solved equation.
He reached for classification the way a hand reaches for a familiar shelf.
> [SCAN]: Initiate.
[CLASSIFY]: … Error.
[RECLASSIFY]: … Error.
[… REDACTED].
The sense of you are seen pressed gently against the inside of his skull.
He did not speak, and whatever it was did not speak, and between them something like a word burned quietly: Prototype.
A bell trembled. Kara stirred. KrysKo looked at her; looked back; nothing remained but air and the small ache of empty space regaining itself.
> [NOTE]: Unknown entity encountered. Classification locked.
[ADVISORY]: Do not pursue.
Kara rubbed her eyes. "What is it?"
"Weather," he said, a lie so small it could almost be true.
Morning embarrassed the sky—thin light, colorless. They broke camp; Kara pocketed her bells; the rectangle of sky above the atrium stopped feeling like a door.
If yesterday was ruin's garden, today was its theater—long boulevards between buildings too proud to fall quickly. Something perched on a lamppost watched them with membrane wings; when it moved it drifted like ash.
Toward noon they topped a low hill. Smoke rose beyond a wedge of skeletal towers: gray not black—cooked wood, wet leaf. Human. A settlement.
Kara's face lit and hid. "Walls," she said. "Food. Maybe news."
> [THERMALS]: Multiple signatures; structure density medium; pattern = settlement.
[ADVISORY]: Do not crest skyline; approach via low line (aqueduct).
They dipped under the old aqueduct—arches like ribs; channels dry. Shade kept them from curious glass. The palisade resolved itself from scrap and cut timber. Watch platforms. Ropes. A gate built by hands that learned the hard way you either have a gate or you have graves.
"Let me talk first," Kara said. "Some places don't welcome strangers with… advantages."
"Advantages," he repeated, as if trying the word for texture.
She lifted her hands open at the gate. "Travelers," she called. "Seeking passage. We can pay—medicine; tools."
A pause in day-music; then a rough voice: "Masks off."
Kara pushed hair from her face. KrysKo lowered scarf to collarbone—human symmetry shown; exactly the parts that weren't remained under shadow.
"Ophilim with you?"
"No," Kara said.
"That thing a machine?"
Kara didn't look at him when she lied. "He's a man with scars you can't see."
Bolts thunked. A bearded wall of a man opened the gate. University green sash at his shoulder. Drakari leather across it. His eyes ran quick assessments and stored them.
"Welcome," he said. "But not too welcome until I know your names."
"Kara Myles," she answered, offering waxed paper stamped with a circle and entwined lines. He respected it with a nod that came from somewhere honest.
"Myles," he said. "We've had good hands from that line." He looked to KrysKo. "And you?"
"KrysKo O'Ruadhraigh."
"University has feelings about weapons walking like men," the gate-man said. Not unkind; just weather again.
"He saved me," Kara said. "Twice."
"Seems to be a habit," he said, then relented. "Bren," he offered. "You hungry?"
"We're heading for the University," Kara said. "We won't trouble you long."
"Trouble's shorter than you think," Bren said. "Market's open. Keep your hands where people can see them and your promises where you can keep them."
The market opened like a living thing—herbs braided and hung; jars of pale roots; wire coils; bent metal reborn as pots; a stall with glass beads traded from a caravan that had found a cache of yesterday. Children watched too closely. People's eyes moved around KrysKo the way water moves around a rock in river—some fear; some curiosity; mostly calculation.
Kara bartered for vials—coagulant and river-class antitoxin. She spoke in the accent of belonging and the place let her borrow it. KrysKo learned the shape of being near without being in by watching her do it.
By late afternoon Bren leaned an elbow on their table. "University rangers make a sweep near dusk. Catch them, they'll walk you to the line." His gaze weighed KrysKo one more time. "If you're more than you look, be better than you look."
The bells in KrysKo's inner ear chimed—habit translated as metaphor—and he filed the line as a kind of law.
The first bell in the market tolled—three notes: attention, not panic. Hands paused over fruit, fish, wire. A lower bell answered.
"Scouts coming in!" Bren barked. "Make a lane!"
> [SIGNATURES] inbound: human x2; Drakari x2.
[COMPOSURE]: unit cohesion high; movement quiet; bows that never saw a factory.
Kara touched her papers, then let her hand fall. She did not reach for KrysKo's sleeve. Trust changed its footing in small increments.
The gate swung.
Four figures slipped through the slot of evening: two lean humans in green sash; two Drakari in river-stone plates and grown bows. The auburn-scarred ranger saw Kara's seal and smiled with the kind of relief you allow yourself at the end of a long day.
"University-bound?" she called.
"Yes," Kara said. "Kara Myles. Under charter."
"Good hands," the ranger nodded. Her eyes skimmed KrysKo, measuring like you measure a horse that might decide things. "And your shadow?"
"My guard," Kara said before he could. "I vouch."
"Then University will let him cast it a while longer," the ranger said. She flicked two fingers; the Drakari peeled to the flanks, casual as cats beside a procession of mice.
They stepped out into falling dark.
Behind them, the market's day folded itself up. Ahead, the road stretched like a held breath.
Wind ran low along the ground, tasting of iron and wet leaf. Beneath the hum of evening, KrysKo's system slid a new line of quiet text across his mind:
> [PASSIVE SUITE UPGRADE] — Lunari Scent Veil (latent)
Status: Detectable.
Prognosis: Upon exposure to hybrid patrol, adaptive subroutine may unlock scent masking (human baseline profile synthesis).
He didn't know why the system told him now. He didn't look at Kara. He kept walking.
Mist collected, thin as unkept promises, pooling in hollows. The sound reached them through stone more than air—a low chime, like a fork struck gently against a crystal bowl.
Kara's hand lifted; two fingers tapped her throat: speak only if spoken to.
Shapes stood on the fallen overpass ahead—tall, still, too patient to be human. The mist folded itself away to let them descend.
KrysKo's body adjusted its balance a fraction. He did not reach for his blades. He did not smile. He did not blink.
The Drakari stepped out of the gray like answers arriving.
"The Mirror Fields: The Descent"
From the first approach into the bioluminescent basin through the first contact with the living mirrors.
2. Segment 2 of 3 – "Reflections of War"
The full Mirror-Phantom battle and its aftermath; memory fragments and KrysKo's emerging abilities.
3. Segment 3 of 3 – "The Fire and the Word"
Emotional fallout, the warm system's guidance, the 'Lunair' whisper, and the lead-in to the Ranger camp.
When I post them, just copy each one in order—there will be no summaries or transitions between messages, only the continuous prose.
---
Chapter 4 – Part II: The Mirror Fields
Segment 1 of 3 – The Descent
The mist thickened into a curtain of pearl and dust as the pair moved north. Kara's boots squelched in ground that once had been asphalt; each step released the sour scent of rot and metal. KrysKo walked a pace behind, his motion smooth, unhurried, the way gravity might walk if it chose a body.
They descended into the basin by way of a slope that had once been a rail embankment. Broken pylons jutted from the muck like bones from a shallow grave. Every few steps, Kara bent to study a plant, muttering the Latin names she half-remembered from the University archives. The stems of these things glowed faintly—green fire trapped in veins—and when the wind moved through them they sighed as if breathing.
"Don't touch the sap," she warned. "Photovore residue. It eats through leather."
KrysKo's eyes narrowed. The light of the plants refracted inside his pupils, painting circuitry across his iris.
> [Environmental analysis active.]
[Compound: chloral-biolum mix / corrosive grade C.]
[Recommendation: limit contact.]
A sound rippled through the basin. Not wind—something deeper, like a low hum that made the glass shards around them quiver. Out of the luminescent thicket came a creature the color of spilled mercury. Its hide was translucent; organs glowed faintly within, pulsing to some internal rhythm. The thing lifted its head toward them, nostrils twitching.
Kara froze. "Photovore," she mouthed.
KrysKo drew still, systems whispering.
> [Target acquired.]
[Behavioral tag: passive unless agitated by scent or motion.]
He inhaled once, then imagined his breath folding inward, his scent retreating. A faint shimmer crossed his skin.
The beast hesitated. Its milky eyes flickered, uncertain, then it turned away and melted back into the glow.
When they reached the far side of the basin, Kara exhaled. "You masked your scent."
"It seemed efficient," he said.
Her gaze lingered. "That wasn't human."
"Neither am I," he replied, and started climbing.
---
At the ridge's crest the world flattened into light. What had been farmland before the Silence was now a field of mirror-glass panels, miles of them, half-sunken in the soil. Each sheet caught the pale daylight and twisted it; some reflected the sky as it was, others reflected skies that never existed. The air shimmered with fractured images.
Kara knelt, brushing dirt from one of the panels. "Architect collectors," she whispered. "They fell out of orbit. I read that they fed on sunlight until the EMP poisoned their cores."
KrysKo's reflection stared back at him—delayed, a heartbeat behind. When he turned his head, the mirrored image was slower still.
> [Temporal reflection offset detected – 0.37 sec.]
[Anomaly classification: quantum residual field.]
"KrysKo," Kara said quietly. "Don't—"
Too late. His mirrored self blinked independently, lips moving in silent echo. The glass beneath his boots began to ripple.
The ripple spread outward in widening circles, warping the broken light of the basin until the world seemed made of water. Kara stumbled back. "KrysKo!"
He pivoted to pull her clear, but the reflection did not follow. The image on the glass stood where it was, smiling—a faint, alien echo of him with eyes that burned molten gold. The mirrored KrysKo raised its arm, and the glass beneath their feet shattered upward in a storm of light.
They fell.
The impact drove dust into Kara's throat. Shards floated around them like slow snowflakes, reflecting hundreds of KrysKos at every angle. Each reflection moved a little differently—some slower, some faster, some wrong in ways the brain refused to track.
> [Environment corrupted. Mirror anomaly type: Sentient projection.]
[Initiating combat routine: Adaptive Rhythm.]
A whisper came from all directions, many voices shaped into one:
"Prototype. Show us the rhythm."
Blades hissed free from his forearms, catching the fractured light. Kara pressed herself behind a half-sunken panel, clutching the satchel against her chest. "What are they?" she shouted.
"Echoes," he said, and the first one lunged.
It moved like him—same stance, same swing—but a half-beat faster. KrysKo ducked under the blade, feet sliding into the fluid motion of ginga, body swaying in rhythmic defense. Steel scraped glass; sparks rained. He twisted low, hooked the phantom's ankle, and drove an elbow up through its chest. The reflection burst into a rain of liquid silver.
Two more rose to take its place.
He spun, blades cutting arcs of white fire. Each movement a dance step: meia lua, armada, rabo-de-arraia. His body remembered a rhythm older than reason, each strike accompanied by the deep pulse of the earth. But the mirrors learned. Their copies began to mirror him in real time, adjusting to his patterns.
> [Warning: Predictive mimicry escalating. Tactical advantage diminishing.]
[Recommendation: break rhythm.]
He exhaled once. Then he stopped moving like a dancer and started moving like weather.
The next attack came high. KrysKo met it with his forearm, let the blade glance, stepped inside, and drove his knee into the phantom's core. It burst apart—but the reflection behind it caught his throat in mirrored motion. Sparks flew from the synthetic skin as his system flashed red.
> [Integrity drop: 18%. Critical damage warning.]
Kara's voice cut through the din. "KrysKo, behind you!"
He turned. The largest mirror was stepping out of the glass, carrying not blades but light itself—solid beams drawn into its hands like molten rods. It hurled one.
Instinct moved him. He ducked, the rod carving a line of vapor through his scarf. He rolled, came up on one knee, and flung one of his own forearm blades. It spun end over end, embedding itself in the phantom's chest. The creature staggered, but did not fall. Its wound glowed instead, a hole filled with radiant circuitry.
KrysKo's system spoke in the cold voice of the code:
> [Adapting hostile architecture. Probability of total defeat: 42%.]
Then the warmer voice—the one that sounded like memory—broke through, low and human.
> "Don't fight the reflection, KrysKo. Change the mirror."
He froze for a heartbeat. "Change… the mirror?"
> "Yes. Shift your frequency. You are not only metal. You are resonance."
The idea clicked. He pivoted, blades retracting. The mirrors advanced, expecting a strike. Instead, he straightened, spread his hands, and let his internal hum rise.
The air vibrated.
Light bent toward him. The field of mirrors trembled, their surfaces rippling like disturbed water. His reflection began to distort—lines warping, form flickering. The phantom army faltered, faces twitching as if struck by invisible wind.
> [Resonance Sync – 73%]
[Activating Harmonic Pulse.]
He released it.
The sound was not sound—it was a pressure wave that cracked glass and silenced the world. Every reflection fractured at once, splintering into a million shards that hung midair, gleaming like frozen rain. For a long breath, the world was still.
Then gravity remembered itself, and the shards fell.
---
Kara rose slowly, blinking through the haze. "What did you just do?"
He looked at his hands. The faint glow along his veins pulsed brighter, then dimmed to a steady rhythm. "Resonance," he said softly. "I… remembered it."
> [Skill Acquired: Harmonic Pulse.]
[Function: Sound-based area disruption / mirror-field countermeasure.]
[Efficiency increased: +6%.]
His system dimmed again, retreating into silence.
She crossed to him carefully, boots crunching on glass. "You remembered? I thought you said you didn't—"
"I don't," he said. "Not like you mean. I remembered a function, not a life."
She looked at him, sweat streaking the dust on her cheeks. "It saved us."
He didn't answer. His gaze was fixed on a fragment of mirror still trembling in the mud. Inside it, his reflection didn't match his stance—it smiled a moment longer than it should have before fading.
---
They made camp in the shelter of a collapsed solar array. The mirrors still shimmered faintly beyond the ridge, catching the dying light. Kara built a small fire, using dry roots that burned blue. KrysKo sat opposite her, blades sheathed, the glow along his skin slowly cooling.
She spoke first. "You said 'resonance.' That's a Drakari term. They use it to describe balance between spirit and stone."
He glanced up. "Drakari," he echoed, as if tasting the word. "They guard the University."
"Yes. They saved us once, a long time ago. They say every living thing has a song. Maybe you found yours."
He looked away. "Maybe I just found a weapon."
---
Hours passed. The fire crackled, painting the ruin in bronze. KrysKo watched the flames with the stillness of a statue. Kara brewed tea from pale leaves, handed him a tin cup. He held it but didn't drink.
"Tell me something," she said quietly. "Why did you ask me earlier about the Lunair?"
He blinked once, slow. "I thought I'd heard the name. In… the reflection. Or a memory."
She frowned. "I've never heard it. Is it a clan?"
"I don't know," he said. "It felt… familiar."
> [System Note: Subroutine keyword detected — "Lunair." Access locked.]
He didn't react outwardly, but the warmth inside him stirred.
> "That name isn't for this age," the warm voice murmured. "Let it sleep."
He whispered, "Then why do I remember it?"
> "Because not all memories are yours."
Kara was watching him again. "What did you say?"
"Nothing," he lied. "Just thinking."
---
When sleep finally came for her, he remained awake, listening to the quiet between breaths. The system's colder tone resurfaced, analytical and detached.
> [Behavioral note: increased emotional variance. Caution advised.]
[Trust parameter with Subject Kara Myles: 68%.]
[Projected trajectory: alliance beneficial.]
He stared into the ashes. The wind outside sighed across the mirrors, turning each into a pale flame.
> "You are changing," the warm voice said. "Not just your code. Your rhythm."
"Is that good?"
> "It's human."
He didn't know if that was comfort or warning.
---
The next dawn rose silver, diffused through smoke and mist. They broke camp and descended from the ridge toward the distant line of forest that marked safer ground. The field behind them glittered like a sea of glass, already erasing their footprints.
KrysKo didn't look back. But as they crossed into the trees, one fragment of mirror caught the light and reflected not his shape but another—taller, wrapped in shadow, watching from within the glass.