Felicia was born into a nightmare that wore the skin of scientific progress.
Her mother—brilliant, desperate, and broken—had once been a top bioengineer working on countermeasures against the parasite plague that swept the outer worlds. When conventional medicine and magic failed, she turned to something darker: human experimentation. And not just any humans—her own children.
They were born not to be loved, but to be tested. Tweaked. Rewired. All 250 of them.
Felicia was the last child born—Subject 250.
And the only one who lived.
Her siblings died screaming in cold metal vats and glass tubes. Some were torn apart from the inside by malfunctioning implants. Others melted into raw data when their cores collapsed. She heard their cries through sterile walls. And worse, after they were gone… she still heard them. In her sleep. In her mind. In her soul.
Her mother kept her alive because she was the "successful model." Felicia didn't feel special. She felt cursed. It wasn't long before her mother, cracked by guilt and grief, took her own life—leaving nine-year-old Felicia alone in the ruins of a lab soaked in failed dreams and dried blood.
She wandered through a war-torn district of the outer ring, barely more than a walking corpse, metal bones hidden under bruised flesh. She spoke to ghosts. She didn't eat for days. Locals avoided her, thinking she was possessed—or cursed.
Until she collapsed.
And the Astral Legion found her.
Two employees on a scouting mission discovered her curled beneath the collapsed roof of a train station. One held his weapon, thinking she was hostile. The other noticed the red glimmer of cybernetic life in her chest. A child, yes—but unlike anything they'd seen. The energy signature was classified tech.
They brought her in.
And that's when Count Daziel, a high-ranking tactician of the Astral Legion, personally intervened. Within hours of her arrival, files were sealed. Analysts whispered. Scientists were summoned. She wasn't just a lost girl—she was a living experiment, one that embodied forgotten, illegal research once thought burned in the great purge.
Daziel didn't see a child.He saw potential.He saw a weapon.
But he wasn't heartless.
For reasons unknown to even his closest aides, he placed Felicia under protected status, barring anyone from reverse-engineering her or treating her as property. Instead, she was enrolled into the Astral Legion as a recruit—under the pretense of "rehabilitation." But Daziel made sure to keep watch. Some say he saw a reflection of his own sins in her eyes. Others say he saw a future queen of flame.
Felicia never truly trusted the adults. But she learned. She trained. She adapted. If she didn't, the voices would consume her.
Every night, she would clutch her knees and cry silently. Her cybernetic heart thumped too loud. Her ears rang with the whispers of dead siblings. Why was she chosen? Why didn't she die like the rest?
She didn't find peace.But she found purpose.
The Phoenix Feather, given to her later by Riah, became her lifeline. It didn't silence the voices completely—but it gave her hope. Hope that she wasn't just the aftermath of someone's ambition.
That maybe, just maybe… she could be something more than a survivor.