The cell in Dawnspire was not a place of darkness, but of soft, pulsing blue light—a deliberate choice by Vaktari. "His world has been silence and sterile command," she had said. "We must remind him of life, even in his pain."
Kaelen, the cybernetic Vakhas, lay strapped to a medical pallet. The physical restraints were secondary; the primary lockdown was a damping field generated by the Living Stone itself, tuned to neutralize his invasive implants. He convulsed, caught in a violent feedback loop between his programming and the flood of resurrected emotions.
Skodar watched from behind a transparent barrier, Elara at his side. Her silver Ciel eyes were wide with a mix of horror and fascination. "His neural pathways are a warzone," she whispered, reading the scrolling data on a terminal she'd jury-rigged. "Malakor didn't just suppress his emotions. He segmented them, walled them off behind firewalls. Your energy spike... it was like a flood bursting a dam."
"What's he experiencing?" Skodar asked, his own chest aching in sympathy.
"Everything. All at once." Elara's voice trembled. "The memory of his capture. The pain of the surgeries. The grief for whatever family he lost. And layered over it, the cold, logical imperative to kill you. His mind is trying to reconcile two irreconcilable truths."
Vaktari's form solidified inside the cell. She approached the pallet, her glowing hand hovering over Kaelen's seizing forehead. "The mind can be broken, but the soul's echo remains. We must find the core memory, the anchor that Malakor could not fully erase. It will be his tether back to himself."
She closed her eyes. A tendril of her own luminous essence, gentler than Skodar's raw power, extended and touched Kaelen's temple. The convulsions slowed. On the monitors, the chaotic brainwaves began to sync with the rhythmic pulse of Dawnspire's energy.
An image, hazy and projected by Vaktari, formed in the air above Kaelen:
A small Vakhas village, not unlike Mohsi. A younger Kaelen, laughing, teaching a little girl how to weave a Hudoj-pad basket. His sister. Her name was Lira.
The memory shattered, replaced by the raid: Vroxion soldiers, fire, screams. Kaelen fighting, being overwhelmed. A neural shock collar being clamped on his neck. Then... the cold steel of Malakor's lab. The voice, void of emotion: "This one shows high resilience. Prime candidate for Reforging."
"The Reforging," Elara hissed, her fingers flying over the keyboard. "That's the project name. It's not just about creating assassins. It's a proof of concept. Malakor believes emotion is a design flaw. He's trying to engineer it out of 'useful' species, starting with the Vakhas. Kaelen was his prototype."
Skodar's fists clenched. It was a violation deeper than slavery. It was the theft of a self.
In the cell, Kaelen's single living eye flew open. It was no longer scanning. It was haunted, drowning. He looked at Vaktari, then through the barrier at Skodar. A raw, ragged word tore from his lips.
"...Lira...?"
"We will find her," Skodar said, stepping into the cell, his voice firm with a promise he didn't know if he could keep. "But first, you must choose. You can let the pain consume you. Or you can use it. You know how Malakor thinks. You know his systems. Help us stop him before he does this to every Lira in the galaxy."
Kaelen stared, tears of lubricant and saline leaking from his human eye. The cybernetic one remained dead. The war inside him was visible on his face—a torturous battle between the ghost of a loving brother and the perfect, empty weapon he was forced to become.
He looked at his own cybernetic hand, then back at Skodar.
"Choice..."he rasped, the word foreign on his tongue. "He... took choice."
He took a shuddering breath.
"...I choose...to remember the pain."
It was not a pledge of allegiance. It was a declaration of existence. The first step.