Knowing he couldn't collapse now, Theon forced himself to keep moving, ripping off his clothes to create makeshift bandages for the myriad of bleeding orifices across his battered form. The Scarlet Lifeblood Pendant around his neck pulsed with a subtle warmth. Though Theon had forgotten about it in the heat of the moment, it had played a pivotal role in his survival, without it he most probably would not have lived to see the last sentinel fall.
He shuffled towards one of the holes in the surrounding walls, hoping it would provide him some semblance of refuge. And as soon as he reached his destination he promptly collapsed onto the floor, yet with no night sky and stars to keep him company all he could do was gaze into the industrial white of the ceiling as his consciousness drifted away.
Then - snap.
He opened his eyes to find himself standing in a dimly lit room, surrounded by cold, metallic surfaces. The air was thick with the scent of antiseptic, and the distant hum of machinery echoed faintly in the background.
'Lab C.'
Theon recognized this place. The sterile lighting, the sharp clinical scent, one of the very rooms where he'd undergone countless tests during his time at the laboratory complex, long before he'd been taken in by the Veritas Syndicate.
But that was impossible.
Theon never dreamed. He knew this because he had perfect memory. Every experience, every detail of his life from a certain point onward, he could recall with precise clarity. And yet, here he stood, somewhere completely foreign.
Around him, faces of scientists in white coats floated into view, their expressions distant, mechanical. They hovered over him, adjusting machines, preparing needles—cold, detached, entirely uninterested in him as a person. Just another subject in their endless experiments.
Then the needles came.
Flashes of pain shot through Theon's consciousness. Needles pierced his skin, and machines hummed as they monitored his every response. The sharp sting of the instruments, the prickle of invasive procedures—it all came flooding in, along with something else. Something alien.
Fear.
Helplessness.
Real. Visceral. It clawed up his throat, choked him, made his hands shake.
The scientists' voices droned on, indifferent.
"Subject exhibiting elevated stress response."
"Adrenaline levels exceeding parameters."
"Proceed with phase two."
But this wasn't what had happened, this wasn't how he remembered it.
His trips to Lab C were devoid of fear. Sure, the experiments hurt, but he had been calm, collected. Detached. He had learned early on to process pain as a simple sensation, nothing more. But now, in this surreal moment, he felt every sharp stab of fear that his younger self had experienced. He could feel his heart racing, his breath shallow and erratic. The helplessness gnawed at him.
These feelings….they were uncomfortable.
Emotions were something he'd long since learned to mimic. He'd never truly felt them; he simply analyzed the behavior of others and adjusted his responses accordingly. It was second nature, a skill that had served him well. He knew how to play his part, how to be charming, how to fit in.
But this—this uncontrollable rush of emotion—was... overwhelming.
He tried to piece it together. Though his memory was perfect, it hadn't always been that way. He remembered waking up one day and having a flawless memory from that moment onward. The only knowledge he had of his past came from the logs he'd found in the crumbling remains of the laboratory complex, he had been in the laboratory complex for a year before his perfect memory, and before that….well he had no way of knowing.
These memories, this vivid sensation of fear and pain, could only mean one thing. These were the lost fragments of his life—the memories from that blank year in the laboratory complex before his mind became what it was now.
'The year in the lab... before I became 'myself.''
Theon had always suspected that the experiments had shaped him in ways he didn't fully understand. His perfect memory, his emotionless detachment, the almost mechanical way he interacted with others—all of it stemmed from something deeper, something that had happened before he became who he was.
Now, it was clawing its way back.
And it refused to be ignored.
Deep within Theon, within his very soul, raging waves began to kick up as the once calm visage of his soul was buried under the unrelenting storm as if god himself had decided that this sea would fall today. The sea bed of his soul began to unravel as something underneath showed itself.
Right now he was not the Theon he knew.
He was just a boy, screaming into the void.
Then—
Light.
Harsh, artificial, real.
Theon gasped awake, sweat-drenched and shaking. The bunker's walls pressed in around him, solid and unyielding. The dream—no, the memory—was already fading, its edges blurring like ink in water.
By the time he stood, his breathing had steadied.
The storm was gone.
As if it had never been there at all.
His eyes scanned the ruined chamber. No doors. No visible exits. But there—a sliver of artificial light bleeding through cracks in the northern wall. Theon worked methodically, stacking debris into an unstable platform, testing each piece before committing his weight.
Before entering the narrow passage, he prepared an escape route—scattering chunks of concrete like breadcrumbs he could use to climb back out. Old habits died hard.
The chamber beyond stole his breath.
Where the bunker had been all crumbling concrete and rusted metal, this space gleamed with preserved technology. Holographic displays floated in the air like ghosts, their blue light casting eerie shadows across consoles that hummed with dormant power. Theon approached the central dais with predator's caution, every sense alert for traps.
The hexagonal table activated at his touch. A constellation of holograms burst to life—dozens of shimmering interfaces in words he couldn't understand. All but one.
[Language Module]
The words appeared in stark, familiar glyphs. Theon tapped the display. A voice, synthesized yet strangely weary, began:
"We are unsure how much you will remember therefore we have left this for the worst case scenario. Glory to the empire….."
Theon's fingers froze above the interface. This wasn't some general archive. The wording was too specific—too personal. Someone had prepared this for a person who should remember, but might not.
Cementing Theon's suspicions that this place was not some sort of 'legacy' to pass onto some random traveler. His mind raced through possibilities, discarding theories as quickly as they formed:
'Did they send someone out of the planet when they were young in hopes that they would grow up and return ? But then why didn't they do that with the figureheads of the Empire and take everything with them?'
Possible hypotheses and ideas flashed through Theons mind as he tried to piece together a narrative and explanation for where exactly he was.
Theon swiped to the next page: "Table of contents: 1. Alphabet, 2. Common Words 2.a. Nouns, 2.b. Adjectives….. "
Time lost meaning as Theon devoured the language module. Days blurred together marked only by his body's demands for rest. He slept in fits on the cold floor, his hunger and thirst ever increasing without ever being satiated. But he soon began seeing results. The alien script gradually yielded its secrets, glyphs resolving into words, words into concepts.
As comprehension grew, so did the available modules. He read through [History Of Sylvan], [Serenera] and many others, deepening his knowledge on everything he could. And once he felt his knowledge was sufficient he opened the book he had been most curious about: [Lu] The words glowed as he opened the file:
"Lu is the breath of creation, the energy woven through all things. And it is something that can be controlled and cultivated . To master it is to shape reality itself..."
The single entry branched into dozens—[Body Cultivation], [Soul Cultivation], [Meridians], [Bloodlines], [Beasts] and many many more. Each subject spawned new questions, new avenues of study. Theon stood at the edge of a vast, uncharted ocean of knowledge.