The ship had gone quiet.
Not in silence—there was still the low hum of plasma cores, the hiss of recycled air—but in presence. The crew had learned to hold their breath when Lys walked by.
She wasn’t walking like a soldier anymore.
She was moving like something older.
Remembering something older.
Valkyrion — Observation Deck 3
Kael leaned on the railing, watching the starlight warp around the ship’s veil field. Lys stood next to him, arms folded, eyes dark.
“It’s not just déjà vu,” she said.
“No?”
“It’s recognition.” Her voice was quieter now. “Not like ‘I’ve seen this.’ Like I was there.”
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Kael frowned. “The DNA sequence?”
Lys nodded.
“I’m not the original Lys. I’m a descendant—probably many, many generations down. But Zero’s signal... it triggered something in me.”
“Memories?”
“Encoded in my blood,” she said. “That sounds insane, right?”
Kael didn’t respond. Because it didn’t.
Not anymore.
“The original Lys was one of the first DNA-hybrids,” she continued. “Prototype of a perfect psionic vessel. She died in the Echo Rebellion. At least, that’s what the records say.”
“Except… she didn’t,” Kael muttered.
“She lived long enough to pass on her genome. And now it’s me.”
Flashback: DNA Vault Records — Interlaced with Lys’s Memories
A woman bleeding out, alone in a collapsing lab.
The original Lys.
She encodes a memory thread inside a chroma-vial, wraps it in her blood, and whispers to it:
“For whoever carries me next... you will remember when he returns.”
The vial is burned into her genome by a radiation storm—and carried forward in silence, across centuries.
Back on the Deck
Lys touched the scar on her wrist. It wasn’t hers.
It was hers.
Kael looked at her, uneasy.
“So what now?”
She didn’t answer at first.
Then:
“I wasn’t made for this war.”
She turned to him.
“But I was born from someone who was.”
Echo-Controlled Moon, Sanctum of Echoes
Zero watched her through a simulation—her pacing, her pulse, her hesitation.
He could see her. Not through cameras or scans. Through the resonance between their blood.
“She’s waking up,” the priest said beside him.
Zero closed his eyes.
“She’s almost Lys again.”