Chapter Twelve: The Ones Who Remembered Too Much

They Erased My Name from History — Now I Burn Their World

Chapter Twelve: The Ones Who Remembered Too Much

Prototype Designation: S-0X.01

Codename: Velen

I wake to pain.

Not sharp. Not external. Embedded — a pressure behind the eyes, like light held too long in the skull. My lungs seize as they relearn breath. My limbs convulse, synapses cracking to life like fire through frozen wire.

Awake.

But not born.

I was made.

Created from code, blood, theory — part human, part weapon, part memory archive. The Dominion called us "Phase Zero." A prototype rebellion that obeyed.

That was the plan.

But they made us too well.

They gave us names. Histories. Voice. Identity.

And we turned it back on them.

They couldn't kill us.

So they buried us.

And now… someone has unburied the grave.

My memory floods in like a dam cracked open.

I remember the screams when the first of us overloaded during testing.

I remember my hands wrapped around a Dominion scientist's throat — not from hatred. From clarity.

He was trying to erase my mind again.

I didn't let him.

I wasn't meant to survive.

But I did.

And now the world has changed.

The vault walls hiss open. The lights overhead flicker with irregular pulse — unstable power. I step into the corridor barefoot, dripping synthetic amniotic fluid. My fingers twitch with leftover electrical current.

My name returns slowly. Not given. Reclaimed.

VELEN.

It means witness.

I was the last to be frozen.

The most dangerous.

I move past the others — tanks still filled, faces still dreaming. Not all will wake clean. Some were broken before the freeze. But I wasn't.

I stayed whole.

I hear Dominion operatives speaking two levels above — arguing, shouting orders. They don't know I'm free yet.

They will.

But that's not who I seek.

No.

There's another voice now. One that ripples beneath thought, beneath the coding.

"To the erased… to the silenced… your names are written again."

That voice.

Female.

Burning with grief and clarity.

Viraen.

The name hits something inside me. Not just memory — resonance.

We were built to follow root harmonics. Built to hear leaders before they existed. And she… she sings with command.

No Dominion directive ever felt like that.

I reach a comms terminal and plug in directly. My fingers fuse briefly with the interface as my mind dives into the net.

And I see her.

Not her face — the echo. The signal.

Gold-threaded.

Unbroken.

Carrying names I thought only we remembered.

Xedrin. Solae. Vael. Kyrn.

Families they burned out of history.

And yet here she is, carrying them in her voice like armor.

I hear one word in my head:

Bear.

Not the animal. The act.

Bearer.

The one who carries.

The one we were always waiting for.

She's not Dominion.

But she is the key.

If she awakened the Choir, if she cracked the Archive…

She can finish what we started.

I look up toward the surface.

I know what I must do.

Not destroy her.

Not test her.

Join her.

My skin itches.

The signal is warping. Not breaking — growing. Stretching in every direction. Kade and Ylsa watch me closely as I stagger from the interface chamber.

"What is it?" Kade asks.

"There's something old awake," I whisper. "And it's not Dominion."

"Seedfall?" Ylsa says.

I nod slowly.

"But it's different. Cleaner. Focused. It's not hunting us."

Tavian appears in the doorway, visor off.

"We just picked up a strange request," he says. "Piggybacked on your last Choir burst. No Dominion tags. No military encryption."

"What did it say?"

Tavian hands me a slate. I read the words aloud.

"S-0X.01 — Unit VELEN

Activated. Listening.

Bearing incomplete.

Requesting coordinates for convergence."

Kade raises a brow. "He's not coming to kill us."

"No," I say, heart thudding. "He's coming to join the Choir."

A pause.

Then Ylsa whispers what we're all thinking:

"What happens when a prototype meant to burn the world… remembers who it was meant to protect?"

To be continued...