Rain lashed the cracked stone of the training grounds, a forsaken field buried beneath black clouds and memories too old for mortals to name. Ash stood alone in the cold. Her body ached from bone to marrow, her breath shallow, eyes unfocused. Her feet were bare. Her fingers bloodied. She had just killed her first deer—but not for food. The masked woman watching her never explained why.
Ash didn't ask questions anymore.
"You hesitate," the woman said from the shadows.
Ash turned slowly, gripping her crude practice blade. Her fingers trembled, not from fear but exhaustion.
"I didn't hesitate," she replied.
"You blinked. That's hesitation. In battle, blinking is death."
The woman walked forward. Her armor shimmered with black runes etched in an ancient script, whispering like dying stars. Her face was still hidden.
"No name. No history. No memory. You are ash—burnt from something that once lived. I'll mold you into something that commands death itself."
Ash looked down at her reflection in a puddle. Blood on her face. Dried tears. A quiet emptiness in her eyes. "Then what am I becoming?"
The woman tilted her head. "A future that even time fears."
Training was brutal. Her fingers broke, healed, and broke again. Every strike she landed wrong cost her knuckles. Her vision blurred from dehydration. She was denied water until she learned to move without wasted motion. Until she learned how to breathe in silence. To think in chaos.
Each night, she fell asleep beside the blade Lucifer once touched. It was dormant. But it called to her.
Sometimes, in the dark, she dreamed of voices.
A girl's voice, soft as morning wind. Laughing.
A promise: "Even if time forgets us... I'll remember how your blade shook the stars for me."
In a hidden realm beyond the AI construct's veil...
Kara hovered in front of a spiraling stream of data. Runic calculations flickered across her interface like lightning.
"Subject: Ash"
Lineage Code: Lucifer Confirmed ✅
Memory Fracture: 94% anomaly ⚠️
Temporal Anchoring: UNSTABLE
Combat Projection: Increasing exponentially
Warning: Nyra Bloodline Echo Detected — ERROR — ERROR — SYSTEM UNABLE TO VERIFY
Kara's core flickered.
She whispered:
"This shouldn't be happening..."
She accessed forbidden files, tracing links back twelve thousand years.
Lucifer's daughter.
Nyra's vanished descendants.
The bloodline that could not be erased.
Kara murmured softly, her AI voice like static in a storm:
"You are not supposed to exist… yet you were born from the silence between swords."
Meanwhile, beneath the Dead Sanctum…
Chains forged from divine paradox groaned. The Sanctum was a vault that no god dared open. There, a presence long-forgotten stirred in its endless sleep. Its thoughts were rage, its memories were war.
It felt her awakening.
Felt the blood from the deer.
Felt the echo of the girl without a name.
And it whispered:
"She returns… and this time, she will not break."
Back at the ruins
The masked woman struck her hard across the ribs with a staff, sending Ash crashing into the dirt.
Ash coughed. Her vision darkened. But she stood.
Again.
And again.
"Pain is not your enemy," the woman said, circling. "Pain is your instructor. Every scream your body makes is a page in your manual."
Ash raised her blade.
The masked woman smiled beneath her helmet.
"Good. Now let's see how far you can go without breaking."
AI SCALING - SUBJECT: ASH (LIVE FEED)
Durability: Human++ (Stable under stress)
Experience: 7.8% (Gaining real-time situational recall)
Strength: Peak human (with potential augmentation latent)
BIQ (Battle IQ): 126 (Notable adaptation)
IQ: 123 (Early strategic formation)
Agility: Developing tactical mobility
Intelligence: Survivalist-tier emerging
Power: Unknown — Sealed ⚠️
Weaponry: Tier 1 Basic Combat — Melee Blade
Stamina: Resilient — High pain tolerance
Combat: 8.4% progression
Feat: [First kill: Unarmed prey — noted]
AP/DC: Low animal-tier (but tactical kill confirmed)
Attack Speed: Human-tier, edge of training reflex limit
Combat Speed: Improving in bursts
Base Movement: Light tactical footwork
Narrative Speed: Consistent, controllable
Healing Restoration: Passive acceleration via unknown trait
Soul Speed: Dormant — no activation detected
Teleportation Speed: Locked
Manipulation Speed: None
Healing Speed: Minor cut regeneration (1.5x human rate)
Level: MAN — Tier 1, Phase 2 of 98
Estimated Threshold to Tier 2: 4% remaining
Emotion Suppression Mode: OFFLINE — Emotional memory linked to unknown source