Part 1: The House on Elden Ridge
The silence of Elden Ridge was a silence not of absence, but of waiting.
Nestled on the outskirts of Aurin District, far from the mechanized core and glimmering towers of Central Prime, the Aethros household stood like a stubborn monument from another time. The home—modest, stone-built with smooth chrome lacing around its window frames—breathed warmth amidst the chill of dusk, its lights always dim but never off, like the soft pulse of something still healing.
Inside that house, a young boy sat curled in the corner of a cushioned window seat. His silver eyes watched the horizon, where another dropship coasted overhead with a soundless streak of light. He wasn't afraid. Zeiran Aethros had never been afraid of machines.
"Zei, it's your turn to stir the rice." The voice from the kitchen was soft, lined with a cracked strength—his mother's.
He rose quietly and walked barefoot over the polished floor, his presence always ghost-like, deliberate, too controlled for a child. His father used to say he had an "old soul"—one that watched the world too carefully. Zeiran didn't know what that meant, but it sounded like a compliment and a warning rolled into one.
His mother stood at the stove, shoulders trembling slightly with the effort of holding a spoon. Her hands—scarred, rigid, and often unresponsive—betrayed the healer she once was. Long ago, before the incident at the old breach gate. A time she never spoke of.
"I got it," Zeiran whispered. He reached up and gently closed his fingers over hers before taking the spoon. The rice stirred quietly.
She smiled. "One day, your hands will shape more than food."
Zeiran didn't respond. He only nodded. Words always felt too small.
Later that night, when the sky had bled into black and the stars blinked against the edge of the Voidstream, Zeiran lay in bed and his younger sibling curled on bed suitable for her size—Lyra Aethros, only eight, but already too sharp for her age.
She held a small metallic shard in her hand, a broken fragment of an old Sentiencer shell they'd found buried near the old forest wall.
"You think this belonged to a real one?" Lyra asked, voice hushed with awe.
Zeiran examined it. The shard was etched with faint runes—Akaran glyphs, if his guess was right—and it still shimmered faintly, like it remembered being alive.
"Maybe," he said. "It's too damaged to tell."
"I think it was a warrior. A Protector model. Like the ones in the old war logs."
"Could be." Zeiran turned his eyes toward the ceiling, imagining the stars were windows to their homeworld—Kaidess Prime—the planet where Sentiencers were born, and where most humans would never step foot.
"I'll have my own one day," Lyra whispered.
Zeiran didn't answer. His mind was already racing ahead—to his own fourteenth birthday. Less than two seasons away.
That was when the Awakening happened.
When the call from Kaidess reached into Earth and the chosen children formed their Contracts. Not all children were chosen. But Zeiran knew, with a certainty that kept him up at night, that something was already watching him.
The next morning was routine.
He fetched water. Helped his mother dress. Guided Lyra to her schooling holo. Then made his way to the edge of the cliff behind their house, where the wind howled against the crags. This was his thinking spot.
Elden Ridge offered a view of both futures—below were the shimmering silver roads that led toward the Prime cities, and far above, in the clouds, floated the remnants of ancient wrecks from the great Terraforming War, still drifting like sleeping titans.
He remembered watching the Primes arrive once in his district. Eight in total. Each accompanied by their own customized Sentiencer—no two the same. One had a glowing white frame and swords made of starlight. Another rode a mechanical beast stitched with antimatter cores. And another—the one that had stared right at him—had no eyes at all, only a mirrored face.
"They're gods," Lyra had whispered.
Zeiran had said nothing. He'd watched the one with no eyes, wondering why he felt like it could see right through him.
That was Prime Veylan—one of the youngest Primes in the Circle of Eight. And the only one whose origin was classified even in the public records.
Zeiran clenched his fists.
He didn't want to be like them.
He wanted to surpass them.
At school that week, whispers followed him.
Not because he was strong—he wasn't the tallest, or the fastest.
Not because he was brilliant—though he was clever, he rarely spoke.
But because strange things happened around him.
A rogue mecha-spider once paused in the middle of its attack protocol just to stare at him. Drones malfunctioned near him. Once, during a practice duel, a classmate's armguard shattered mid-block—without being touched.
Some said it was luck. Others said jinx.
Zeiran knew what it was: resonance.
His soul was vibrating to something that hadn't arrived yet.
He could feel it coming—like the wind before a storm. Like eyes behind a locked door.
And every day, the pull grew stronger.
At night, he heard voices.
Not dreams. Voices.
Mechanical. Ancient.
They spoke in fragments. Numbers. Coordinates. Sentences like fractured code.
"…Protocol not terminated… sequence remains in flux…"
"…the Tenth is unrecorded… anomaly awaits stabilization…"
"…Zeiran Aethros… designator unknown… initiate pending…"
Sometimes he would wake up gasping, fingers glowing faint blue where the skin touched metal.
And sometimes—just for a second—he would feel a presence in his room. Cold. Watching. Not threatening, just observing.
He never told his mother. Or Lyra.
Because some truths… felt too big to speak.
One day, while walking home alone through the rain-soaked alley behind the old archives center, Zeiran stumbled across a wrecked hoversled. Buried beneath its cracked shell was a slumped body—metallic, humanoid, but clearly ancient.
It wasn't moving.
Its chest was open, exposing a core that had long since gone dark.
A Sentiencer.
But not like the ones in the current age. This one was older. Taller. Covered in script from a forgotten dialect. Its limbs were etched with battle logs.
And across its chest plate, scrawled in crude human ink:
"Unit X-0. Protocol: Legacy."
Zeiran stepped closer, his breath shallow.
The core, though long dormant, pulsed once.
Faintly.
Then again.
Then—darkness.
And then, something whispered—not in his ears, but in his mind.
"The wait… is over."
Part 2: The Whispering Core
The core pulsed again.
Then, silence.
Zeiran stared at the dormant shell of the Sentiencer—half-buried, forgotten in the alley like discarded scrap—but nothing about it felt dead. There was an aura, something electric in the air. Not visible. But alive.
"The wait… is over."
That whisper still echoed through his mind like the aftershock of thunder. It hadn't come from his ears. It had bypassed every known language system, brushing straight past cognition, embedding itself in instinct.
He stepped back slowly, rain matting his dark hair against his forehead. Then, he noticed something—his hand was still glowing faintly. Blue-white streaks, like neural veins, pulsed from his fingertips and toward the center of his palm.
His resonance was active.
He should have walked away.
He knew what his mother would say. What his mentors would scream. Unclassified contact with dormant Sentiencers—especially relics—was grounds for a full protocol lock.
But something deeper moved within him.
And so, Zeiran knelt.
The metal surface of Unit X-0 was ice-cold, even beneath the rain. Etched into its breastplate were four unbroken glyphs. One of them flared the moment his finger brushed the surface.
The ground beneath him trembled.
[RESYNCHRONIZATION COMMENCED…]
[Legacy Core Detected.]
[Soul Match: 92.8% — Designation: Pending.]
[Prime Placeholder: X.]
Zeiran's breath caught.
Prime Placeholder?
X?
His heart pounded so loudly he didn't hear the crack of thunder overhead. All he could feel was the heat rising from the Sentiencer core. Not physical heat. Spiritual.
And then—movement.
The Unit's head turned a fraction. Eyes—long since dark—briefly flickered blue, then red, then blue again.
Zeiran froze.
Then—
"…Protocol Legacy Activated…"
"…Initiating tether… To Host: Zeiran Aethros."
He felt it hit him like a storm surge.
A hundred thousand images. Warzones on alien skies. Armies of biomechanical titans. Shattered moons. Broken Primes. Contracts dissolved mid-battle. Betrayals carved in orbit. Ancient races long extinct, shouting warnings into the void.
Then—silence.
When he opened his eyes, he was no longer in the alley.
A white plane.
Endless. Unbroken.
Zeiran stood barefoot on nothing. Around him shimmered a sphere of light, translucent, humming with symbols and circuit-like veins.
And in front of him—standing perfectly still—was a figure.
Not human.
Not fully robotic.
An armored form of tall, lean symmetry. Neither masculine nor feminine. Its frame glowed with faded white, trimmed in black. Two sets of shoulder ridges. A hollow chestplate with a dim blue core. Wings—retracted—lined with crystalline feathers that flickered in and out of form.
Eyes like starlight.
It spoke, but its mouth didn't move.
"Host acquired."
"Designation: Zeiran Aethros. Human classification, Earth-born. Potential: Class Phi-Tier Unmeasured. Mental fortitude: Unshattered. Emotional scaffolding: Stabilized."
Zeiran didn't respond.
He couldn't.
Every fiber of his being was screaming. But not in fear—in recognition.
This was his.
His Sentiencer.
But something wasn't right.
"You… are broken," Zeiran finally said.
The figure tilted its head. "So are you."
The lights pulsed around them.
Then—
"Do you seek the mantle, Zeiran Aethros?"
"Do you seek to rise where the Eight have fallen short?"
"Do you seek… Prime X?"
Zeiran hesitated.
"I don't know what I seek," he said. "But I know what I won't become."
The Sentiencer seemed to pause.
Then, it extended its hand.
"Then let us forge a path where none exist."
"I am your Tether. You… are my Legacy."
Zeiran gasped awake on the alley floor.
Rain still fell. The body of the Sentiencer was still still.
But the core was gone.
Inside him—he felt it. A pulsing warmth beneath his ribs, fused into something immaterial. A connection that defied science, bypassed traditional awakening ceremonies, and broke every known law of Kaidess-Earth integration.
No Sentiencer had ever awakened like this before.
His ears rang with one last message:
"Prime X… initialized."
Back home, things were unchanged.
His mother called for help reaching the synth herbs from the upper shelf.
Lyra argued with the holo AI about whether dragons once existed in the Ash Rift.
But Zeiran was no longer the same.
At night, he stared at the sky and felt it breathing back.
Meanwhile, deep within Kaidess Prime…
In the heart of a long-abandoned archive chamber, something stirred.
Files marked [DELETED – PRX.0] recompiled themselves. Invisible locks shattered. A stasis pod hissed open, revealing a fractured crystal shaped like an eye.
From the shadows, an old Prime—exiled, forgotten—stepped forward.
"It has begun," he whispered.
"The Tenth… has awakened."