SEREN
The worst part wasn't the truck.
It was the split-second awareness before it hit.
Seren Vale had exactly two coherent thoughts as she stepped off the curb, tote bag slung over one shoulder, thinking about groceries and laundry and the new fanfic chapter she meant to read later.
First:
"That's coming fast."
Second, with bitter resignation:
"Oh for—if this is Truck-kun I swear to—"
Impact never came.
Her body didn't break, no pain blossomed, no bone snapped. The world simply blinked out, as if deleted by a bored editor. Sound condensed to a single point, then ruptured into silence. Something hooked her beneath the ribs and pulled hard.
A whisper of code crawled over her skin.
Then:
[SYSTEM BOOTING…]
[Soul integrity preserved at 86%]
[Dimensional Transit Engaged]
[Do not resist.]
Seren didn't have time to resist even if she wanted to. The universe folded, and she fell through it.
---
She expected darkness.
Instead: light.
Not warm sunlight, not hospital fluorescents—this was alien. A molten storm of blue and gold poured around her as if she'd been dropped into the heart of an aurora. Her body dissolved into quivering points of data, each particle aware of itself and its absolute terror.
Her lungs refused to work; her mouth opened on a scream she couldn't hear.
A tunnel of fractured stars yawned around her, spiraling inwards, pulling her deeper. Somewhere far ahead, something pulsed—massive, ancient, rhythmic. Like the heartbeat of a god.
Then came the sound.
A roar—no, a cascade—like metal lions waking.
No.
No.
NO.
Seren's stomach dropped clean out of her body.
She knew this sound.
She knew this light.
She barely registered it before she fell through the dimensional tunnel, falling to a time prior for those who had formed the legendary Voltron.
The dimensional tunnel thinned into atmosphere. Gravity remembered her. Air screamed past her ears as the light dimmed, revealing a far-off planet's surface rushing up to meet her.
And Seren Vale, former CEO of ValeTech, closeted geek, fanfiction enthusiast and adult woman who just wanted to buy avocados, plummeted like a malfunctioning comet.
Her nerves burned electric violet.
Something ancient, older than stars, flared inside her skull.
[SYSTEM ONLINE]
[User: Seren Vale registered]
[Assets: Converted → 4,000,000 Coins]
[Survival Protocol Initiated]
[Soulbond Protocol… ERROR]
[Attempting repair…]
Seren didn't hear the rest.
Her fall snapped sideways violently—yanked like a marionette by unseen strings. The sudden direction change ripped a scream from her throat.
---
She hit ground.
Hard.
Air blasted out of her lungs in a cough that felt like knives. She rolled through alien dirt, clipped rock, then skidded into a shallow gulley. Everything hurt. Everything rang. Her vision spun, then snapped into brutal clarity as her survival instincts kicked in.
Cold night air.
Gray-blue terrain.
The scent of ionized particles.
Footsteps—several sets—approaching.
Not Galra footsteps.
Not aliens at all.
Humans.
Teenagers.
Seren's heart dropped again.
"Are you kidding me," she whispered to the sky. "I'm in the exact scene where the paladins find the Blue Lion."
Of all times.
Of all places.
Of all episodes.
She coughed, rolled onto her elbow, and forced her brain to focus.
No broken bones. Good.
Bruised everything else. Not ideal.
Alive. Somehow.
[System Notification: Impact mitigated by 12% plot armor]
"Not funny."
Her limbs trembled as she pushed upright. The desert cliffs. And—
"Yes! Yes, okay, yep." Seren squeezed her eyes shut. "That's definitely Keith's stupid red jacket."
The silhouettes approached quickly, climbing down the rocky slope with flashlights.
She recognized them instantly:
Shiro.
Keith.
Lance.
Pidge.
Hunk.
The Paladins.
Kids—by her standards.
"Oh no," Seren breathed. "I'm older than all of you. This is weird. This is so weird."
She scrambled to her feet too fast and nearly toppled again.
Keith reached her first, blade in hand, stance sharp. "Don't move!"
Seren froze.
Shiro stepped forward, calmer, hands raised in a non-threatening gesture. "Hey—hey. It's okay. We're not here to hurt you."
Lance leaned into Keith, whispering loudly, "Okay but what if she's an alien with, like, laser eyes?"
"I don't have laser eyes," Seren wheezed. "I barely have lungs right now."
Her knees gave out; she caught herself on a boulder.
Shiro's eyes softened. "She's injured. Keith, put the blade away."
Keith didn't.
Pidge's visor slid down over bright, suspicious eyes. "She's not registering as Galra or Altean. Or… anything. Her readings are weird."
"No kidding," Seren muttered.
Hunk's face creased with worry. "Are you sure she's not, like… poisoned? Because her energy signature is—uh—loud?"
Loud?
Seren didn't have time to ask, because—
The air went still.
Pain stabbed through her chest—no, not pain—something deeper. A pull. A chain snapping taut around her soul.
The ground shuddered beneath her knees.
Her breath vanished.
[SOULBOND PROTOCOL: ACTIVE]
[Binding 1 Established: Target—Prince Lotor]
[Binding 2 Established: Target—Sendak]
[Binding 3 Established: Target—Kolivan]
Seren's mind blanked.
"No," she said aloud. "No, no—stop. Stop. Wrong characters. Wrong—timeline. Take it back!"
The System did not take it back.
Instead:
[All lives linked. Pain shared. Death shared. Fate shared.]
A violent rush of presence smashed into her from three directions—not physical, not audible, but soul-deep:
One cold and clinical—Sendak.
One sharp as a knife made of starlight—Kolivan.
And one golden, hungry, electric—Lotor.
Seren screamed.
The Paladins flinched back.
Shiro grabbed her shoulders. "Hey! Stay with us—what's happening?"
She couldn't answer.
Three villain minds murmured in the back of her consciousness like a corrupted chorus.
---
LOTOR
Prince Lotor froze mid-stride on the bridge of his cruiser.
It wasn't physical attack.
It wasn't psychic assault.
It wasn't quintessence poisoning.
It was something worse.
A crack—bright, burning, intoxicating—opened inside his core.
A bond.
An impossible, ancient, taboo bond.
Not chosen. Not earned. Not controlled.
His breath shuddered. His grip tightened on the railing as alien sensation flooded him—fear, exhaustion, pain, disbelief—but none of it his own.
A woman's emotions.
Adult.
Human.
Terrified.
His pulse spiked.
A voice—not heard, but felt—screamed from the other side of the bond.
And Lotor's lips parted in shock.
He whispered:
"…What are you?"
---
SENDAK
Sendak stopped mid-combat drill.
His soldiers recoiled as he staggered, one knee hitting the floor. Pain—raw, unfiltered—shot through his chest. A foreign presence latched onto him like an invasive parasite.
He roared aloud.
"A bond? With me? Who dares—?!"
The bond tightened.
Sendak's vision went white with fury.
"If this is a trick," he snarled to the empty air, "I will tear your universe apart."
---
KOLIVAN
Kolivan did not stumble.
He merely paused, one hand braced against the holo-table, as the echo of the bond whispered through the ancient circuits of his soul.
Unexpected. Dangerous. Unprecedented.
But he recognized the mechanism behind it.
Old magic. Forbidden magic.
The woman on the other end was afraid.
Screaming.
Human.
And she knew too much—her emotions flickered with impossible recognition of things no outsider should know.
Kolivan exhaled once.
"Find her," he instructed quietly.
The Blade obeyed.
---
SEREN
Seren collapsed.
Her hands curled into the alien dirt as the echoes of three villains slammed back through the bond—rage, shock, calculation.
Shiro caught her before she hit the ground.
"Hey—hey, look at me! Are you hurt?"
She swallowed bile.
"I just—" Her voice rasped. "I just soul-married three war criminals."
Keith blinked. "…What?"
Seren didn't get to answer, because the System chimed again—
[SYSTEM TUTORIAL READY]
—and her world narrowed to a single, horrifying truth:
She had changed canon.
She had changed everything.