Days passed, then months, then years, and Youri continued living the only way he knew how — as the weapon he had been shaped into. Missions came and went, cities burned or were "stabilized," reports were filed, medals were awarded, and through it all he remained constant, unchanged, cold. The only thing that truly shifted over time were the faces around him. Every year new pilots arrived at Batuzane Base, young men and women stepping through its steel gates with nervous pride and trembling ambition, and every year most of them left in black transport carriers or not at all. The God Orbitons collected their payment without hesitation. What grew darker with time was not just the body count, but the age of the replacements. Each new pilot assigned to a unit seemed younger than the one before, because statistics had proven something cruelly efficient — the younger the pilot, the longer they survived synchronization. Younger neural pathways adapted better. Younger bodies endured strain longer. And so the empire adjusted accordingly.
It began quietly, almost clinically, until it was no longer a rumor but policy: a new institute, founded with full imperial support, dedicated solely to raising children to become future God pilots. Not recruiting them. Raising them. Selecting them early, isolating them, shaping their education, their psychology, their bodies, and even their genes toward one purpose. The architect behind this initiative was none other than Halvek himself. After studying the unique genetic anomalies Youri possessed — the accelerated regeneration, the abnormal synchronization tolerance, the cellular resilience — Halvek realized such traits could be pursued, enhanced, cultivated. If one weapon had been born naturally, the rest could be engineered. Thus, the Institute of Super Pilots came to life.
Among the first ten children chosen for the program were two names that would one day carve themselves into Youri's battlefield memory: Anemone Christ and Maximilian Stappen. At the time, they were simply data points in a classified report. Young. Promising. Stable. Youri read their names without emotion.
During the early years of the institute, Youri himself was reduced once again to something less than human. He was recalled from active deployment and returned to laboratories where white-coated specialists treated him as an asset rather than a person. Blood drawn weekly. Tissue samples extracted. Neural scans performed under stress conditions. Controlled trauma inflicted to observe regeneration speeds. They pushed his body to its limits simply to measure how quickly it reassembled itself. He endured it silently. He had long accepted that whatever remained of "Youri" was secondary to what he represented.
But the experiments did not last. Altopereh refused synchronization with any other candidate. No engineered child, no enhanced recruit, no desperate volunteer could replicate the connection he shared with the orbiton. Attempts resulted in neural collapse or immediate death. In the end, Halvek made the pragmatic decision — the weapon was still required on the battlefield.
It was on the day of his reinstatement that something unexpected happened.
Youri was walking through the cold corridors of Batuzane Base, metal walls humming faintly with embedded conduits, overhead lights casting sterile reflections across polished floors, when a mechanical door to his left opened with a hydraulic hiss. He would have ignored it like any other movement, but something caught his peripheral vision — silver. He did not stop immediately, only slowed, and then he saw her.
A woman stepped into the corridor holding three books against her chest, dressed in a formal military uniform that carried rank but not combat wear. Her long silver hair flowed freely down her back, nearly reaching her waist, shifting gently as she turned while speaking to another woman walking beside her. The artificial lighting caught in her obsidian eyes when she smiled, and in that smile he recognized something that struck deeper than any blade. His heart skipped — not metaphorically, not dramatically — but physically, sharply, as though his body had reacted before his mind allowed it.
He knew her.
Not as she was now, refined and composed, but as the little girl he once met long ago, before D7, before the beam of gray light erased a world. Time had shaped her into someone formidable, yet something in her presence remained untouched, bright in a way he no longer understood.
He turned the corner before she could possibly notice him.
He did not look back.
When he reached the next bend in the corridor, he stopped and leaned against the wall, sliding slowly downward until he was seated on the cold floor. His hands trembled. So did his legs. Memories surged without warning — fragments of softer days, of conversations that belonged to a different lifetime. For a brief, dangerous moment he wanted to stand up, walk back, and speak to her. To ask if she remembered. To let her see that he still existed.
But he knew better.
A monster does not step into the light of someone untouched by its destruction.
He had erased planets. He had become an instrument of annihilation. Whatever kindness once lived inside him had been buried beneath ash and antimatter. Slowly, he steadied himself, stood, and walked away without another glance.
Later that week, a sealed package left the base addressed to the Kaelthorn Estate. Inside were three books and a handwritten letter. The letter had been written years earlier during a rare moment of weakness, folded carefully and hidden away because he believed sending it would only drag her into his darkness. He did not reread it before sending it. He did not rewrite it. Some words belong to the version of you that still had the courage to write them.
Years passed.
Eight of them.
Until, after that corridor encounter, fate intervened again.
Marta's tavern still stood in the night district, warmer now, more established. One evening Youri entered not out of grief, not out of rage, but out of habit. And there she was.
Standing near the counter.
Silver hair shorter now, resting just below her shoulders. Military attire. The same obsidian eyes.
This time, she saw him.
Recognition did not strike instantly. It unfolded slowly across her expression — curiosity, memory, realization. And for the first time in years, something inside Youri fractured.
Not violently.
Quietly.
The weapon hesitated.
And beneath the layers of ink, scars, orders, and annihilation, Youri Kronos stirred — not as D7, not as Altopereh's pilot, but as the boy who once stood under an open sky with friends who believed the world was still worth living in.
This time, there was no corner to turn.
No wall to hide behind.
And whatever would happen next would not be dictated by empire, orbiton, or destiny.
It would be decided by him.