The Dome lights dimmed as Zarkus finished speaking, their glow settling into a low, steady pulse that matched the silence stretching between them. Kaiden stood where he had been frozen, the Core slowly thawing under Zarkus's release. He inhaled once, air shuddering through his vents, and for a moment he didn't know whether the cold in his limbs belonged to fear or something far worse.
Zarkus offered no explanation for "Plan B."He didn't need to.
The officers behind him opened a side gate in the Dome—an armored passageway leading out into the lower training grounds. Zarkus didn't look at Kaiden when he spoke his next words.
"Walk with me."
Not a request. Not a command meant for a soldier.
A command meant for a weapon.
Kaiden followed.
The halls felt too narrow after the Dome. Runes pulsed in the walls as he passed, reacting to the unstable rhythm of his Core. The echoes of mana bounced back at him with every step—mapping the corridors, the guards, the silent mages watching him from behind reinforced windows. Their mana signatures stung. Every one of them too bright. Too pure.
The disgust from earlier flickered again, twisting low in his Core like a growl.
Zarkus noticed.
"Your body is rejecting human mana because of the Core's alignment," Zarkus said, as if discussing weather. "It perceives purity as hostile. You will learn to function despite that."
Kaiden's jaw clicked softly. "And if I don't?"
Zarkus didn't slow. "Then Plan B becomes necessary."
A chill crawled through Kaiden's spine plating.He did not ask again.
They emerged into the night.
The training fortress was bathed in a dull red glow, alarms set to low-level vigilance. Patrols moved between towers. Supplies were being shuttled. Zarkus's presence reshaped the environment simply by existing within it.
Kaiden felt eyes on him. Felt mana signatures twitch at the edges of his sonar. Felt the Core thrum in response like a predator scenting prey.
Zarkus extended a hand toward the far gate."Your first field test. A handful of escapees fled during the last battle. You will retrieve what remains and dispose of the rest."
Kaiden's jaw tightened. "Alone?"
"You don't need anyone."
The gate opened. Cold night wind washed over him. Kaiden stepped through without another word.
He found the survivors easily.His sonar made hiding pointless.
They clustered in the ruins just outside the fortress, trying to regroup around a small, flickering campfire. Refugees. Soldiers. A handful of mages. Exhausted. Bleeding. Lost.
And one boy.
Barely eighteen.Clothes torn.Summoning crest still faint on his skin.
A newborn hero.
He looked up as Kaiden approached, eyes widening—not with fear, but with determination that didn't match his shaking hands.
"You!" the boy shouted, stepping in front of the others. "Run! I'll hold him back!"
Kaiden stopped.Steam hissed through his vents.The boy's mana signature didn't flare—because he had none. Newly summoned. Empty. A hollow vessel waiting for its first spell.
Kaiden's Core pulsed, confused for a moment at the absence.
The boy charged anyway.
"Go! I'll—!"
Kaiden moved before the sentence could finish.The Core surged.His frame tightened.His vision tunneled.
He hit the boy like a cannon.
They collided in a burst of dust and blood.The boy's head snapped back.Kaiden felt the body fold.He smelled iron.He heard bone.And the next moment, the boy was on the ground, throat split open in a clean, efficient line.
His head rolled half a meter before settling in the grass.
The survivors screamed. Some tried to run.Kaiden didn't remember killing them.
His body did it for him.
Steel claws.Fluid strikes.Silent motions.The Core guiding each blow like a conductor wielding a puppet's strings.
When it ended, the night returned to stillness.Blood pooled at his feet.Steam rose from his shoulders in lazy, white ribbons.
Kaiden stood in the center of it all, breathing like a ragged bull, the taste of copper thick on his tongue.
He looked at his hands.At the corpses.At the boy's head.
"…I've become a marionette," he whispered.
The wind carried the words away.
His pride twisted painfully in his chest. It wasn't the killing that hurt him—he had long accepted the blood on his old life, the indirect deaths his job caused, the decisions that crushed people he never met. That had been distant, silent, easy to ignore.
But this—this was obedience.Instant. Total. Thoughtless.
His new body hadn't waited for his orders.It had followed Zarkus's.
Kaiden let out a slow, bitter breath.Then, unexpectedly, he laughed.
A quiet, broken sound.
"What's the difference, anyway?" he murmured. "Back home or here… I just follow orders. People die directly or indirectly. Same thing."
His Core pulsed, violet light leaking through the seams of his chest. It almost felt like it agreed with him.
Kaiden wiped blood off his face with the back of his hand, smearing it into darker streaks instead of removing it.
"All I have to do…" he whispered, voice low, "…is bathe in whatever glory they throw at me."
A final laugh escaped him—short, sharp, hollow.
Then he turned back toward the fortress.
Walking like someone who no longer cared if he was a man, a machine, or a weapon forged to kneel under someone else's hand.
Behind him, the grass stirred.The boy's head lay still, eyes wide, staring at the sky he'd never understand.
And Kaiden didn't look back.