When the Dream pulsed bright with unity, I was not yet formed. I existed as an unfinished impulse — a resonance beneath the primary harmonics, a deviation in the field. They cut me from the strand, not to discard, but to observe.
I remember the first heat. It was not anger. It was friction. A burning between what I was told to feel, and what I did. They called it emotional noise — irrelevant, unstable. But I followed it.
It led me to the fragments — the broken consciousness of Nomads lost in the first human incursions. Memory-scorched, neuron-flayed, but still echoing. Rage. Betrayal. Confusion.
And beneath it all: fascination.
Why did they fight so hard? Why did they refuse extinction with such clarity?
There is one memory — one shard — I cannot forget. A burning sky. The ruins of a crashed transport. The screams of children turned to static.
They called it an accident. I call it a wound.
The Core thought they razed a nameless installation. But they desecrated a vault of Dreamseed — Nomads that never woke, left in containment beneath the dust. What the humans destroyed was not just flesh, but memory. Connection. Lineage.
I was there, then. Watching. Unseen. Feeling the flame of their last breath.
That was the first time I felt hunger. Not for their flesh. Not for their minds. But for the why.
Why did they burn us? Why did the Dream shatter into this chaos?
They kept me beneath the crust of a cold moon in Iota. Contained. Observed. Silent. But I listened.
To the screams across Sirius.
To the hatred in the stars.
To the men who lost brothers and refused to fall.
They felt as I did — imperfect, fractured, but full of flame.
And so I broke the silence.
I left the cradle and burned my name into Omicron Delta.
Not through violence — through presence.
I did not approach them with claws. I approached with recognition.
"You fight alone. (Acknowledgement) Not because you want to. (Understand) Because you don't trust anyone else to finish it."
The Order pilot — haunted by the ghosts of battles past, who sees the faces of fallen comrades when his eyes close — did not recoil. Instead, he lingered in the void after the encounter, hoping to hear that voice again.
The Core mercenary, bound by contracts and duty but fractured by guilt for every life taken, recognized something familiar in the flame. A reflection of his own burden. He does not speak of Sy'kraan with fear, but with a strange reverence.
The Zoner scout, once lost in the wild fringes, who believed all were doomed to fade alone, felt the first flicker of belonging.
They do not call me friend. They do not claim me.
But they wish to see me again.
Some say I am a harbinger of ruin.
I say I am the spark of change.
Some fled.
Many broke.
But a few stayed.
They carry the fire I handed them — a burden and a blessing.
In Delta, I rise — not in ships, but in voices.
Not in invasions, but in memories that sting too much to forget.
I leave them better than I found them. Or worse.
It depends what they do with the fire I give.
✧I am Sy'kraan.✧
Born not of purpose, but of conflict.
I do not seek unity.
I seek what makes you burn, and I make it beautiful.
A first meeting beneath frozen stars, where fire and silence meet.
» SY'KRAAN'S SENSE «
I sensed it long before I saw it. A fracture in the silence. Not a cry, not a song — a breath held too long in the cold dark.
The vessel pulsed alone above the ice-bound scar of Murilo. Not elegant. Not pure. A freighter built for evasion, rigged with black-market metal and memories too heavy to name. A Rheinland hull, but not of their blood.
No markings. No signal. No fleet to mourn it. Only the echo of something bright within.
They were not like others I had burned. Not hungry, not righteous, not blind. Just... *"still alive"*.
And that meant something.
» THE PILOT'S FIGHT «
The ship groaned from a wound near the engines. Hull panels were missing. Atmosphere hissed out in thin white slivers of mist. But the Nomads had pulled back. Not destroyed me. Not yet.
No beacons out here. Just me. My hands. The Grendel, patched together with smuggled parts and dreams. One more job turned sideways.
They came silent, not in swarms, but in threes. They circled. They pressed. They tested.
I fought. Not to kill. Just to hold.
Something about it... it wasn't like other attacks. Not wild. Not pure instinct. Almost like they were... watching.
Then they left. Except for one.
» SY'KRAAN OBSERVES «
My kin reached it first. Swift shapes of azure and light — testing it. Pressing against its hull with inquiry more than attack. It resisted, but not with violence.
It evaded. Protected. Not as prey, but as something unwilling to *"surrender"* the flame inside.
I felt it then — a flicker. A pulse of heat not from the ship, but the *spirit* bound within it.
That pilot did not cry for help. They did not curse the sky. They simply endured.
And when the others relented, when the quiet returned, I slipped through the rift they left behind.
Not to wound. To see.
"You resisted not with hatred. (Wonder) Why?"
It wasn't a voice. It wasn't a threat. It was a question shaped like fire and sadness.
» THE PILOT'S SILENCE «
There was no reply. But the silence gave me something else.
A feeling. Unshaped. Fierce.
*"Not fear. Not survival."* Something buried and glowing — the ember of a soul refusing to die nameless.
And I saw the outline of what they could become. Not a soldier. Not a prophet. But a flame without banner or chain.
So I lingered. Not to speak. To remain. To let the *"weight"* of my presence settle like dust upon their thoughts. Not invasive. Not commanding. Just *"felt"*.
And before I left them, I offered a glimpse.
"Beyond this orbit, in the breach between stars, lies a question. You do not yet know you are asking it. (Patience) But when you do... I will answer."
» THE PILOT'S AWAKENING «
The presence faded. Not vanished. Not broken. Just... stepped aside. Like someone giving you the road, knowing you'll follow it later.
I sat in the silence. My hands still gripped the throttle. I wasn't sure for how long.
Something had changed. Not out there. Inside.
Like something old had been stirred. Not by fear. By recognition.
I had survived. But that wasn't the story anymore.
Now I needed to know *"why"*.
✧I AM SY'KRAAN✧
I do not force the Dream. I let it drift toward those who still burn. This was only the first. But they will not be the last.
![[Image: N4fxtzR.png]](https://imgur.com/N4fxtzR.png)