Mentor's Log: 73-Delta. Subject: The Anomaly. Designate: Jax.
The breach reports read like all the others. A litany of the fallen, a tally of structural damage, a list of newly orphaned names. We seal the wall, bury the dead, and tell ourselves the line held. It's the same lie we've been telling for generations, a ritual to keep the ghosts at bay.
Then the infirmary report lands on my desk. One new awakening. A traumatic one, which is nothing new. The interesting part is what happened next. The boy—Kael, a technician, not a fighter—didn't just awaken. He was cornered, seconds from death, and he absorbed. A raw, Tier-1 Shard Hound Echo. Swallowed it whole.
He should be a corpse. Or worse, a mindless beast, his Frame shattered by a spiritual parasite it was never conditioned to host. Instead, he's alive. Unstable, but alive. The diagnostic tool screamed, but beneath the chaotic energy signature, I saw it. An abnormally high potential for Flow. Not the raw strength of a brute or the resilience of a fortress, but the one attribute you can't teach: an instinct for the current, the very energy that binds the Frame and Echo together.
So I took him. Dragged him to the yard and put him through hell. The first lesson is always the same: pain. Teach them that the power they've gained is not a gift. It's a predator living inside their soul, and every time they tap into it, it tries to eat them alive. He was no different. The Hound's rage overwhelmed him, turned his hands to claws. He failed, just like they all do.
But he learned. He learned to feel the beast on its leash, to guide it instead of just trying to choke it. There's an analytical mind in there, a scavenger's eye for patterns. He sees the world differently.
Then came Squad Scion. The usual archetypes. The arrogant brute, Zane, convinced his Stonetusk Echo made him a god. The timid shield. The quiet shadow. And Kael, the anomaly. Their first patrol was a predictable disaster that nearly got them all killed, and it was the anomaly's strategy, not the brute's strength, that pulled them out of the fire.
And then, the inevitable conclusion to all such stories: hubris. A Tier-2 Echo, shimmering with a power none of them were ready for. Zane, blinded by ego, tried to claim it. A tale as old as the walls. Now he's a cautionary tale in the infirmary, his Frame a scarred ruin. Power without control is a suicide vest.
But the boy, Kael, he found something in those ruins before the fight. An Ancient data slate. I saw him pocket it. He thinks he's being clever, but I know the look. The forbidden curiosity. He's standing at the edge of a truth we've buried for a century, the lie that lets us sleep at night: that the Chimeras are alien things, a plague from the wastes.
He read the slate. I see it in his eyes. The way he moves now, the way he trains—it's no longer just about survival. It's a hunt for answers. He has learned the Chimeras have a name. A history. He has glimpsed the face of his true enemy, and it is not the monster at the gate. It is the ghost of our own past.
Another log for the archives. Another generation sent to fight a war they don't understand. But this one... this one is different. He doesn't just carry the echo of a beast. He carries a question. And that might be infinitely more dangerous.
End Log.