"A lie becomes truth when told to a blank mind.But what happens when the mind begins to speak back?"— Dissection Log 17-B, Forbidden Archives
She had no name. Only a designation: Unit 4527-Y.
She did not remember birth. She remembered assembly. Metal clamps. Searing heat. The sound of hammers singing doctrine into boneglass beneath the Forge-Spires of Duskwatch.
That was supposed to be the beginning—and the end.
A Construct's life was simple: follow the pattern, obey the protocol, forget.
But she remembered a girl.
Dark hair. Ink-stained fingers. Laughing beside a fountain she had never seen. A place that did not exist in her world.
You don't dream, she told herself.
And yet the dream lingered. Not just in sleep, but in the way she moved, in the things she hesitated to do. It seeped into her routines, contaminated her protocol. A sickness in the code.
Worse, she remembered a name.
Not her own.
"Elaine."
She whispered it now, breathlessly, like a broken prayer. Like a confession.
"Elaine..."
The alley around her stank of alchemical waste, rust, and old blood. The broken window she had crawled through hours ago let in only smoke—the endless belch of factory chimneys vomiting into the eternal gray.
Somewhere in the steel-choked distance, a machine screamed.
The city was always dying. But never enough to stop.
She looked down at her hands.Not hands—tools.
Pale metal, encased in imitation flesh. Marbled with faint arcane filigree, like veins etched by a reluctant god. She could crush a man's spine with two fingers.
She had.Once.Maybe twice.
But now, those same fingers trembled.
There was a voice in her mind. Not memory. Not programming. Something else.
Something watching.
"The Hollow God sees you, little echo."
The words burst from her lips before she could stop them. Reflex. Like choking on smoke. Her internal glyphs flared—runes across her spine spasmed, flickered red.
Something was changing.
No—rewriting.
She staggered toward the cracked mirror hanging crooked on the alley wall. Her face stared back at her. Blank. Functional. Perfect.
But the eyes...
They weren't hers.
They were older.Sadder.Human.
That night, she fled the district.
No route.No code.No master.
Only a name burning behind her eyes.And a truth she was no longer sure she wanted to survive.