Five years had passed since the day the sky over Morvain turned black with fire and smoke. In that time, the Karnell Laboratory—hidden deep in the frozen north near the edge of the Great Border—had consumed and broken hundreds of children.
Only a few remained.
From the initial seventy-two children, less than two dozen had survived. Each year, new batches were added. Most never lasted more than a few months. Their bodies failed the trials, their minds shattered, or their hearts simply gave up.
K-109, one of the earliest survivors, had died in his fourth year. A boy with remarkable mind-reading potential, his blood markers had shown promise. But his body had not kept pace. The drugs meant to force his genetic evolution slowly crushed his internal organs. In the end, he collapsed during morning drills, blood streaming from his mouth as his heart failed under the constant pressure.
Y-271, a quiet girl of six, remained. She was small and meek but carried a strange light. Her genetic readings suggested a latent ability to transfer life force. It hadn't awakened yet. Still, the other children respected her—not out of fear or hierarchy, but because she was the only one who never changed. Even when she screamed through the pain of injections or cried beside a dead friend, she always helped others first. Naïve, maybe. But untainted.
S-410 and S-411, the twins, were now nine. They had become a force inside Chamber Four. With a strange bond deeper than blood, they communicated without words, and their pyrokinetic markers had begun to manifest as heat radiating off their skin during stress. Even the guards had started to keep their distance.
And then there was O-243. Once the grandson of a general. Now, fifteen and hardened by pain. His hatred for Stella burned inside him like a second heart. No one spoke to him without purpose. He was the leader of his chamber—by strength and by fear. He never forgot the face of the man who kicked his grandmother's skull in. Every push-up, every strike, every breath was carved from his promise of revenge.
AB-774, now five years old, remained the anomaly. The only subject who had shown no reaction to the mana-inducing serums or the body-modification elixirs. No fire. No screams. No rejection. No breakthrough. Yet the researchers couldn't dismiss him. His readings were… off the charts, and completely unreadable.
His hair had grown back, white as frost. His dark blue eyes never changed—calm, blank, unreadable. He didn't speak unless required, and he never played with the others. He didn't fight, didn't beg, didn't even cry. He simply observed. Listened.
And learned.
Unlike the others, who received knowledge via neural links or data infusions when considered "worthy," AB-774 had learned language, reading, and human behavior from scraps—by watching guards, mimicking researchers, and devouring every book in the dusty old library. Ancient paper books no one bothered to remove. Philosophy, war theory, ancient religions, extinct ideologies—he read them all.
Now, he remembered them all.
And from it, something had taken root inside him—not empathy or belief. But calculation. He began to understand people. Their lies. Their fears. Their greed. He learned the rules of the world he lived in. And how to manipulate them. He simply hadn't chosen to. Yet.
In Karnell, surviving was not enough. You had to become useful, but not replaceable. Strong, but not threatening. Those who failed either became weapons for the empire… or corpses in the snow.
The fifth year in Karnell brought with it silence and tension that ran deeper than any before. Children continued to come and die. Some rose, hardened by pain and purpose; others fell—devoured by the system that bred monsters in white coats and steel corridors.
K-109, once one of the sharpest minds among them, died early that year. His genetic profile had shown great promise, but the constant pressure of forced evolution snapped his body from the inside. His muscles broke down. His nervous system failed. One day, after his usual dosage, he collapsed mid-training and never moved again. No one cried. His body was gone before the next bell rang.
Y-271, the girl with gentle hands and too much hope, was still alive. Now six, she remained naïve, soft-spoken, but there was something in her that even the cold could not kill. She was often seen offering comfort to the others—especially the younger ones, whose names no one bothered to learn. She was loved by many, hated by none, perhaps because she had accepted her fate and chose kindness anyway. Even the guards didn't sneer at her anymore.
Power and hierarchy had bloomed in each chamber.
O-243, now fifteen, had become the undisputed leader of Chamber 3. His noble blood, physical power, and intense focus made him respected—and feared. He rarely spoke, but his actions were deliberate, always veiled with a simmering desire for vengeance. Few knew it, but his hatred for Stella ran deep. His grandfather, General Ceasar Heinis, had died in disgrace after the fall of Brena, and the blood that once served an empire now dreamt of rebellion. O-243 sharpened his strength like a blade, waiting for a day to strike.
The twins, S-410 and S-411, now nine, ruled Chamber 5 together. Telepathically linked and nearly inseparable, they were brilliant and unpredictable. Their minds were fast, wild, and too sharp for comfort. The others kept a respectful distance unless invited.
Even within Karnell, evolution was more than genetic. It was social, psychological, and brutal. By age five, all subjects began martial training, both to reinforce their genetic alterations and to filter out the weak.
Groups began to form. Alliances. Castes. Predators and prey.
And yet AB-774, now five, moved alone. He never joined any group. He never sought protection. When a boy from Chamber 1 tried to recruit him once, he refused, wordlessly. No one asked again.
AB-774 had no allies, but none dared provoke him. There was something unsettling about his quietness. In those five years, he had never been seen to laugh or cry. His white hair had regrown, and his pale face was unreadable—emotionless, frozen. But inside, something stirred. Not rage, not fear, but calculation.
Through scraps of observation and endless hours of silent reading in the old library, he had taught himself. Philosophy, tactics, history. He devoured books of ancient generals, human nature, and the flawed logic of empires. No datapods. No AI-assisted learning. Just forgotten pages and paper crumbling at the edges.
Through reading, he learned the language of manipulation. He studied how power was taken, not given. Slowly, AB-774 began to understand something vital: in Karnell, survival was not granted by strength—but by usefulness.
One day, he would use what he learned. One day, he would become something far more dangerous than what they intended to make of him. But not yet. The time would come.
That afternoon, Marla's lesson resumed. She stood at the front of the learning hall, flanked by two armed guards, her usual hollow expression as rigid as the walls around them. Behind her, a large holoscreen flickered to life.
This time, the topic was not just history—but war.
"Every one hundred years," she began, "the realms of Earth and Elemor hold the Grand Confrontation—a tournament between six of the greatest warriors each side can offer. It began as tradition, but it became something far more… strategic."
Holograms played images from past battles—technology clashing with magic, war machines against summoned beasts, warriors in exo-frames falling before mages who bled fire.
"We have lost three of the five tournaments," she continued. "Magic has always outpaced technology in direct conflict. Their bloodlines are soaked in mana. Ours were not—until now."
Marla's eyes sharpened, and her voice became something colder.
"The next tournament will be different."
She slowly paced across the room, her gaze cutting through the silence. AB-774 met her eyes. So did O-243 and the twins. Others looked away.
"By that time, the Empire will have fully awakened the potential of genetic enhancement. And you… you will be the proof. You are not soldiers. You are weapons. Engineered. Rewritten."
"Humans are fragile, yes. But with what runs through your veins now, you will stand above them—beyond them."
"The Grand Confrontation is not merely a tournament. It is a political maneuver. Each side uses it to probe the other. To expose strengths. To identify weaknesses. It is not just about winning—it is about knowing your enemy before the next real war begins."
"Knowing your enemy's weakness is better than walking into the unknown."
The screen faded to black. Silence returned.
"Your role is not to understand. Your role is to endure. To adapt. To survive."
With that, she turned and left.