Two years had passed within the sterile walls of the Stella Empire's southern research facility. Cold metal embraced every corridor. Surveillance orbs hovered like silent watchers, documenting every heartbeat, every breath.
Chamber 12, one of many across the sprawling laboratory, was a sterile nursery filled with half a dozen metal cots. Each housed a child—none older than three. No toys, no warmth, just regulated temperature and flickering overhead lights. An automated speaker repeated soft lullabies in a robotic tone that lost all semblance of comfort.
AB-774 lay in his cot like a ghost—silent, unmoving, breathing so faintly that several nurses once marked him for disposal, thinking him dead. But when the scanner pinged with life, he was left alone again. The drugs administered to him the previous year had shown no reaction, no scream, no tear. Just a blank, dull stare.
In the cot closest to the entrance lay E-189, a boy with bronze skin and sharp, restless eyes. He would claw at the rails of his cot whenever someone approached, hissing like an animal. Records showed high resistance to sedatives and unusual cell regeneration. Notes marked him as "potential berserker candidate."
Next to him, M-508, a small girl with short black hair, would constantly murmur numbers and calculations to herself. Her aptitude for pattern recognition had caught the attention of one of the technicians. The scribbles she'd etched into her cot rails with her fingernails had formed something close to a cipher. Her label read "high cerebral compatibility. Mental sync experimentation pending."
Y-299, another girl, had heterochromia—one eye golden, the other deep brown. She clutched an old sock like it was a holy relic. She didn't speak, but her nightmares were frequent. Her record read "empathy suppression failure. Prone to emotional breakdown. Unstable."
And in the farthest cot, closest to the vents, was D-122, a boy with red hair and deep black eyes. His reaction to tests had been erratic. He once laughed for an hour straight after being injected with a nerve agent. Some staff joked that he enjoyed pain. His tag: "neurological anomaly. Sadistic potential."
That morning, a caretaker entered—Marla. She was in her late forties, dressed in the Empire's drab gray uniform. Her lips were always pressed in a flat line, her hair tied tight to the back of her skull. She didn't smile, didn't pause, and didn't bother to speak unless absolutely necessary.
She sat on the cold stool in the corner of the room, holding a metal clipboard with today's feeding schedule. The children didn't rush to her. They had long learned that she wasn't there for comfort. Her presence meant food, or a needle, or another tale masked as "education."
Today was one of those tales.
Marla's voice was steady and uncaring, like someone reading a grocery list.
"We weren't always in this world, you know," she began, not looking at them. "We came from another. A place called Earth."
Y-299 perked up slightly. "Earth?" she whispered, fingers clutching the frayed sock.
Marla nodded absently. "A place without mana. No dragons, no flying ships. Just buildings, smoke, and people too busy to look at each other."
E-189 grunted. "So why are we here?"
"No one knows," Marla answered flatly. "Some say a god got bored. Others say a mage broke a wall that should've never been touched. Doesn't matter. Four hundred and fifty years ago, both worlds collided. Boom. We lost more than we gained."
She scratched at her clipboard and continued, "There are five main empires now. You know Stella, of course. That's where we are—south of the Border. Advanced, efficient, dominant."
She didn't sound proud—just indifferent.
"Then there's the Majin Empire in the west. Their royal family bleeds ancient magic. Snobs with spells, basically. If they can't incinerate it, they enchant it."
"The Uran Republic rules the north. Sounds democratic, but it's just a crownless throne. One man, Vales Leonid, leads everything. He calls it a republic. People call him a savior. I call it nonsense."
Y-299 tilted her head. "What about the other two?"
"Bohia sits in the center. Supposedly neutral. They hold the largest Academy for elites—magic, tech, whatever. Even Stella's princes study there. Democracy, gold, and books." Her voice held a tinge of mockery.
"And then there's the fifth," Marla leaned back. "The new one. Xadral Dominion, out in the east. Old desert kingdoms, stitched together by a warlord named Asmun the Chain-Breaker. They value blood over lineage, pain over politics. They don't deal in gold—they deal in conquest."
The children were silent. Somewhere outside, a distant scream echoed. Probably another failed experiment.
Marla glanced at her timer. Five minutes left on her shift.
"They say strong kids like you might become commanders one day. Leaders of special forces. Tools. Or maybe…" she paused, eyes scanning the room with complete apathy, "just puppets. Strings controlled by the Empire's finest. That's what happens when you show promise. They take your name, your past, and leave just the weapon."
E-189 growled, "Then why are you telling us this?"
Marla stood up. "Because I was told to. Nothing more."
As she walked out, the metal door hissed shut behind her, locking with a mechanical chime. No goodbye. No comfort.
Only silence.
In the cold light, the children of Chamber 12 stared at the ceiling, unsure if they would be alive tomorrow—or if they would still be themselves.