Nyra’s Scar
The wound wasn't deep, but Kael noticed it.
They were halfway through clearing out a nest of unstable relic drones beneath Solara's collapsed southeast quadrant. The room stank of coolant, cracked energy cores, and metal that had been chewed by time.
Kael pointed. "You're bleeding."
Nyra looked down. Just below her collarbone, a thin gash glowed faint red beneath her torn jacket. She wiped it off casually and muttered, "Old wound."
"From what?"
She didn't answer.
---
Back at their temporary camp inside a hollowed-out relic bay, BITS was cheerfully incinerating drone parts for "science," and Kael was resetting the perimeter sensors.
Nyra sat alone near a fractured relic terminal, sharpening one of her daggers with short, precise motions.
Kael watched her from across the room.
He'd learned not to push when she didn't want to talk.
But this silence felt different—heavier. Older.
"You never told me how you got that scar," he said gently.
Nyra didn't stop sharpening. "Didn't I?"
Kael gave a half-smile. "No. You usually just distract me with sarcasm and knives."
BITS chimed in from the background. "Sounds like a healthy coping mechanism."
Nyra sighed.
Then she said, "It was my third job."
---
🕯️ Flashback – 3 Years Ago
Nyra was seventeen and far too skilled for her own good.
The employer was anonymous. The pay was obscene. The target? A relic broker known only as Grint, who trafficked in memory fragments and sold "reconstructed lives" to the desperate rich.
The mission: infiltrate his compound, extract data, and retrieve a stolen relic.
"Do not engage," her contact said. "Do not get caught."
She got caught.
---
The building had been easy enough—old glass tech overgrown with jungle roots and machine moss. But the security wasn't electronic. It was alive.
Nyra didn't even see the relic-touched until it slammed her into a wall.
She rolled, twisted, cut its leg open—black fluid sprayed. But a second one dropped from the ceiling, claws out.
One of them raked across her chest, burning deep.
That was the scar.
---
She should have died there.
But something happened.
The relic they were guarding—the one she came to retrieve—reacted to her blood. It pulsed. Flickered.
And then it screamed.
Nyra didn't remember what happened next, only that the next time she opened her eyes, everything in a 10-meter radius had been reduced to ash and silence.
Grint was gone. The relic was gone. Her payment vanished.
So did the people who'd hired her.
She never took another job like it again.
---
🏕️ Present Day
Kael sat beside her, quiet.
She held the dagger still, staring at its blade like it might show her something.
"After that, I stopped asking why," she said finally. "Started asking how much."
BITS hovered nearby. "Classic mercenary response. Tragic, punchy, and emotionally repressed."
"Don't ruin the moment," Kael muttered.
Nyra smirked. "It's okay. He's not wrong."
She tapped her chest where the scar was hidden beneath the jacket. "It doesn't hurt anymore. But it itches. Like it remembers something I don't."
Kael frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I mean… that relic. The one that reacted to me. It shouldn't have. I didn't have clearance. No connection. But it knew my blood."
---
BITS whirred. "You think you're relic-compatible?"
"I think I was," Nyra said slowly. "Before I ever met you."
Kael leaned back. "So… you think we were both part of something bigger?"
Nyra shrugged. "Or I was a loose thread they forgot to cut."
---
Suddenly, a sound echoed from the corridor—clanking metal. Fast.
Kael stood instantly. "Drones?"
BITS scanned. "Negative. This one's… strange."
A moment later, a figure stumbled into the bay.
Bloodied. Pale. Wearing Council armor that hadn't been used in over a decade.
He looked at Kael—and then at Nyra.
> "They're waking up," he whispered. "The sealed ones. The dreamers. The ones that remember the city before the Fall."
Then he collapsed.
---
Kael rushed to check him. Pulse weak. Breathing shallow.
Nyra crouched beside him. "Dreamers?"
BITS scanned. "He's infected with a memory parasite. Symbiotic. Buried relic code in his cortex."
Nyra's voice was tight. "What kind of parasite?"
BITS hesitated. "One that feeds on shared trauma."
Kael looked at her.
Her scar pulsed.
---
"Where did you come from?" Nyra asked the man softly.
His eyes fluttered open for just a moment.
> "Sector 12. Underground. The place where… we were made."
Then he passed out again.
Nyra stared at him in stunned silence.
Kael asked, "You know that place?"
Her voice was low.
"I was born there."
---
💬 Author's Note — Kazuki Rei
Wounds that don't bleed often cut the deepest.
Did this chapter change how you see Nyra? Do you think her past and Kael's are connected deeper than they know?
👉 Vote: Should Nyra investigate her birthplace in Chapter 18?
👉 Comment your favorite line or moment — I love writing these flashbacks.
More scars, more sarcasm —
— Kazuki Rei