Cold. Salty. A strange stench—decaying seaweed mingled with metallic rust. Her consciousness, like the shattered remnants of a shipwreck, struggled to rise from the pitch-black sea.
She… opened her "eyes."
No sterile glow of a Life Star medpod. No antiseptic scent. Only a sky, low and oppressive, sagging like a dying breath over the earth. Beneath her, coarse sand scraped her skin, and the waves lapped weakly at her feet, each retreat leaving behind a film of dark red foam that shimmered with ominous light.
She moved her fingers—stiff, sluggish, yet imbued with a cold, unnatural strength. Her memories were torn and scattered, like a scroll unraveling in a storm: Huosha's twisted smile, the viscous blood of the Tree of Life, the agony of her collapsing body, her final gaze at Lamia before dissolving into light… and deeper still, fragments of the Gray Raven Commander's memories—Lucia's blade flashing like lightning, Lee's concern veiled in stoicism, Liv's gentle smile…
Warm lights piercing her chaotic core like red-hot needles.
Who am I?
She forced herself upright and looked down. Gone was the bloodstained Cradle uniform. In its place: a sleek exoskeleton of dark silver alloy, laced with deep violet conduits pulsing with Punishing energy. No wounds. No warmth. No softness. Only cold, alien hardness.
Instinctively, she raised a hand to her face. Smooth metal. Flowing Punishing current. She needed a reference.
Her gaze fell to a nearby puddle, its surface still enough to reflect the dim sky.
She stumbled toward it, kneeling beside the murky water. The ripples settled… revealing a face.
That face.
The Gray Raven Commander's face.
Familiar. Clear. And yet—utterly foreign. Like a mask welded onto something inhuman. Fear coiled around her core like a venomous serpent. No. This wasn't her. She was a failure, a remnant that should have dissolved within the Tree of Life. Why did this face remain? Why had the Punishing reconstruction chosen this visage—a symbol of the "original," a cruel reminder of what she was not?
Revulsion surged. Her nascent consciousness buckled under the weight of rejection and loathing. The Punishing energy forming her face began to boil, distort, unravel.
"No—!!"
A silent scream tore through her mind.
As if echoing her soul's horror, the energy lost cohesion. The "human" mask dissolved into chaos. Dark violet matter writhed and hardened, layering over her face like a living parasite. A grating metallic rasp filled the air.
Moments later, the reflection had changed.
A monstrous mask stared back. Jagged edges. Fangs like a yaksha demon's, stretching from mouth to ears. Eyes reduced to narrow, bottomless slits, burning with eerie purple fire. Cold. Ferocious. All traces of humanity erased—only the raw monstrosity of a Punishing construct remained.
She stared at the reflection. The fear hadn't faded. It had simply been buried beneath a deeper despair. Even this last, false echo of the past had been stripped away. She was no longer a person. Just a vessel—an aberration forged by Punishing, carrying the Commander's memories, yet unworthy of her face.
The thought struck her like a blade.
Her very existence was a blasphemy. A desecration of the Gray Raven Commander's legacy. She should not exist. This body, this twisted soul—it all needed to vanish.
She raised her hand. Her Punishing-forged fingers plunged into her chest—where a human heart once beat.
Hiss.
The exoskeleton parted like paper. No pain. Only a hollow sensation, as if an energy lattice had been torn apart. She could feel her fingers stirring within her inhuman torso.
But it was futile.
The moment the damage was done, Punishing energy surged like a swarm of hornets. Dark red light wove itself into the wound, sealing it shut in seconds. Her chest was whole again. No scar. Only the cold echo of her own energy on her fingertips.
She struck again—her neck this time. A dull clang. A dent. Then restoration.
She seized a jagged crystal shard and slashed at her limbs. Again. Again. Each act of destruction was met with faster, more stubborn repairs.
At last, her strength—or rather, the energy animating her—waned. She collapsed onto the cold, filthy shore. The purple flames behind her yaksha mask flickered violently, mirroring the despair roiling within.
Can't die.
She didn't even have the right to end herself. Punishing hadn't just rebuilt her—it had imprisoned her. This body was a cage. A living coffin that refused to break.
"Ho… ho…" Harsh, metallic gasps escaped her mask, like the dying wheeze of a broken bellows.
She rose, staggering. She no longer looked at the puddle. No longer sought her reflection.
Direction? None.
Purpose? None.
Only inertia. Hollow and aimless.
She walked.
Away from the death-stained shore that had birthed her. Into the desolate, broken land beyond.
The world was scarred. Withered flora clung to life, their veins crystallized. Ruined buildings lay buried beneath mats of dark red Punishing growth. The air was thick with low-grade Punishing particles, a gray mist that clung to everything. In the distance, low-tier Infected wandered, but they kept their distance—repelled by the purer, more potent Punishing aura she exuded.
She was a phantom. A yaksha demon in a Punishing shell. A lone specter drifting through a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Time lost meaning. Only the endless desolation remained beneath her feet, and the flickering purple flames of confusion and despair behind her mask.
Was the Punishing that rebuilt her also eroding her memories? Would the warmth of the Commander's fragments—Lucia, Lee, Liv—be washed away by this violet tide? Would she one day forget them all, leaving only this mask… and eternal nothingness?
She didn't know.
She just walked.
A living tombstone, wandering the silence.
Until one day, across a plain littered with massive crystal spires, she saw it—a broken, familiar mechanical bird. It flapped a shattered wing, its core's blue light flickering weakly. A broken chirp escaped it, looping a distorted signal… a coordinate. An identification code.
From the Cradle.
Etched deep in her memory.
Through the eye slits of the yaksha mask, the eerie purple flames suddenly froze for a moment.