TIMELINE ZERO: Saran's Wake

Lyra's hands were shaking when she woke. Not the soft flutter of fear, but of something deeper. A tremor rooted in her bones.

Like something struggling to claw its way out from underneath her skin—scratching at the inside of her fingers, her wrists, her throat. As if the bones themselves remembered something she hadn't chosen to keep.

She stared at her hands in the soft blue glow of the dormlight strip, her eyes wide. They looked normal. Clean. Human.

But they didn't feel human. They felt hot, not with fever—but with residual energy, like the aftermath of a neural surge that hadn't happened yet.

She flexed her fingers, slow and deliberate. Every joint ached, like they'd been wrapped around molten steel. Her nails had carved red crescents into her palms while she slept, and the faint sting—sharp and real—was the only thing anchoring her to the present. It had been a dream. Or so she told herself.

But not like the others. This one hadn't faded when she opened her eyes. This one clung tight.

She stood on a black balcony, watching a city burn.

The world was quiet in a way that made the devastation worse. The flames made no sound—no crackle, no roar—only motion. The sky above was a curtain of ash, tumbling in elegant spirals. Below her, old grand temples collapsed inward like punctured lungs. Walls buckled, streets twisted in liquefied loops of orange glass, and people ran—tiny, frantic figures—between shadow and ruin.

She felt no pity. No guilt. No hesitation.

Her eyes, rimmed in red light, scanned the horizon with clinical detachment. The air shimmered. The edges of her crimson armor steamed and smoked, its plates blackened and buckled but intact. There was something viciously ceremonial about it—bladed filigree curling along the gauntlets, a crest etched in obsidian across her chest.

And in her hands—A crown was held.

Forged from melted enemy blades still glowing faintly from the forge. Each twisted shard hummed with blood-stained resonance, reshaped from the weapons of those who had opposed her.

The metal pulsed in her palms. Alive, in a way. Hungry. A trickle of blood slid down her cheek. But not hers. It was still hot. Still steaming.

"Let it be finished," she said. Her voice didn't shake. It didn't ask either. It simply declared.

And then she placed the crown on her own head. The heat licked her scalp. Her skin sizzled. Still, she did not flinch.

A soldier knelt beside her, his armor scorched and dented. His name came to her like a flickering signal—Avel. Or was it Avan? She wasn't certain.

He whispered like the words might shatter if spoken aloud. "Saran the Red. First of the Hollowborn."

She didn't respond. She only smiled.

Lyra's eyes snapped open. She didn't gasp. Didn't scream. She just laid there in bed. Unmoving. Silent.

The walls of her room swam in soft artificial light. The recycled air tasted stale, but beneath it—There was smoke.

She sniffed again. The smoke wasn't strong. Barely there. But enough.

She sat up fast, her blankets twisting around her limbs. She pressed her nose to her arm. Her skin smelled like heated metal. Like ash. Like memory.

She checked the floor. The vents. The terminal readout.

No fires. No malfunctions. Just the ghost of something burnt.

She stumbled to the sink, gripping the edges so tightly her knuckles turned white. Recycled water stuttered from the spout, and she splashed it onto her face like it might extinguish something buried beneath.

What if it wasn't a dream? Her reflection in the mirror looked wrong. Too still. Too pale. Too hollow. What if it was a recording?

Not an illusion. Not a fantasy stitched together by a trauma-addled brain. But an upload—an echo from the woman buried in her skull. General Saran. The Hollowborn.

She looked again. Her dark hair clung to damp skin. Her blue eyes turned dark. Unreadable. No crown. No fire.

But deep in her bones, a whisper persisted.

Let it be finished.

She gripped the mirror's edge until the plastic frame groaned. Something in her wanted to scream. But she didn't. She just stood there, vibrating with the ghost heat of a war she never fought.

She didn't go to class that day. Didn't respond to the alerts pinging her wrist console. She didn't eat.

She only wandered.

Eventually, her steps took her to the stairwell near the abandoned storage wing—an old auxiliary block that hadn't seen use in years. Beds with bent frames lay stacked like metal corpses. Shattered terminals hummed with half-life. The walls smelled like mildew and sterilized dust.

She sat against the wall, her legs drawn up, her hands trembling in her lap. She'd re-wrapped them again in gauze earlier. The sigil-carving on her palms—scratched there weeks ago in a haze of memory and panic—hadn't healed properly. The skin around them was pink, raised, raw.

Each line throbbed like it had been carved yesterday. Like they were still being carved, over and over.

Juno found her there.

Lyra didn't look up when the door creaked open. But she knew the sound of those footsteps. It was Measured. Patient. Gentle in ways most people weren't anymore.

"You look like you've been run over by an atmospheric hauler," Juno said softly.

Lyra said nothing.

Juno didn't sit. She leaned against the opposite wall, her arms crossed.

"You saw more," she said, not asking.

Lyra nodded slowly. Her voice cracked. "She crowned herself. After burning a city to nothing."

"She?"

Lyra looked up. Her eyes gleamed with something brittle. "Saran."

Juno's expression didn't change. But she moved closer, sliding down the wall beside her, their shoulders almost touching.

"She was real," Lyra said. "I know it now. That wasn't a dream. That memory had structure. Continuity. It belonged to someone."

"She's inside you."

"No," Lyra whispered. "She is me."

They sat in silence for a long time. The only sound was the flicker of broken light through the cracked window above.

Eventually, Juno reached over and took Lyra's hand. Carefully. As if touching her might accidentally trigger something catastrophic.

"You're not her," she said. "Even if you remember her. Even if she's screaming inside your skull."

"She didn't scream," Lyra said flatly. "She was calm. Proud. She liked what she did."

Juno exhaled slowly. "Then she's the one who needs to be afraid now. Not you."

Lyra blinked. "Why?"

"Because you're not alone this time," Juno said. "And maybe—just maybe—you don't have to repeat what she did."

Lyra fingers curled into her sleeves. She didn't answer. Didn't know how to. But the assurance in Juno's voice left something trembling beneath her skin. She wasn't certain she believed her. But for the first time, the weight inside her chest shifted—just enough to breathe. 

That night, Lyra didn't dream. She remembered. She stood again on the balcony. Fire below. Crown in hand. But this time, something shifted.

The sky was different—darker. The silence thicker. The metal in her hands heavier.

And then—A voice. Small. Fragile. Not part of the original memory.

"Why did you burn us?"

Lyra turned fast. A child stood behind her. Barefoot. Pale. A girl no older than eight, though her eyes looked far older. Older than Lyra. Older than the moon.

Her hair was silver-white, catching flame like starlight. Her skin reflected the blaze like glass.

She wasn't afraid. "You tried to kill me once," the child said.

Lyra stepped back.

"I remember," said the girl. Her voice was soft, but it cracked something inside Lyra. Like frost under heat.

The balcony shuddered beneath their feet. Cracks spidered out from where she stood.

Lyra dropped the crown. It clanged once against the stone—and vanished. "Who are you?" she asked.

The child tilted her head. "Don't you know? You named me."

Lyra's lips parted, but no sound came.

"You thought I was dead," the child whispered. "But memory isn't silence. It spreads."

Then the balcony split in half.

Lyra fell—Not through space. Through time.

She jolted awake. Yet again, she did gasp.

The walls were cold. Her body was shaking. She felt like she had landed wrong in her own skin, like the memory had dislocated something fundamental.

With trembling fingers, she climbed back into bed. The sheets were too thin. Her bones were too loud.

She curled up tightly, pulling the blanket over her head like a shield. Not to sleep. Just to hide from the echo. From the whisper. From the weight of the crown she never took off.