For him, the world was now only darkness, but he knew this was not death.

  A sound could be heard in the distance. The hum of machines, the pulse of energy, like the slow heartbeat of an artificial heart. He could no longer remember his name, nor his purpose for being here, but he knew he was destined to become something greater, far beyond his own limits.

  The sounds grew louder and closer.

  "Peacebringer protocol transfer initiated. Status: stable."

  "Vital signs: safe. Signal: green. Finalization commencing."

  A white light began to spread through the darkness. Now he saw himself, a human body, clad in sterile garments, cables attached to a thin plate on his head. The system recorded his heartbeat, brain waves, and respiration. All indicators optimal, ready to proceed to the next stage.

  "Peacebringer Protocol. Processing consciousness transfer from donor to machine."

  Without realizing it, he gripped the sides of the metal bed tightly. He was now just a shadow of himself, unaware of his true identity. He knew only one thing: he was ready to face anything. His old world was behind him, slowly crumbling. For peace no longer arose from words but from something more enduring: machines.

  In the distance, a humanoid mechanical body stood tall, strong and slender, clad in an exoskeleton that reflected the sterile light penetrating the layered glass etched with the bold letters "NEBURON" A perfect fusion of human ingenuity and technological prowess, it was a hollow shell. A shell that would soon house him.

  "Don't be afraid, you will fix everything," a gentle female voice whispered in his mind.

  He closed his eyes. The procedure began.

  Then, something went wrong.

  The room trembled. Lights flickered wildly. Status screens turned crimson red, displaying: "ANOMALY DETECTED - ERROR."

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  Panic spread rapidly. Sirens screamed throughout the sector. The mechanical body behind the layered glass began to tremble, tearing free from its secured cables.

  "All calculations failed."

  "Transfer system failed."

  "Donor consciousness lost."

  "Vital signs are declining."

  The universe, once seemingly infinite, folded effortlessly like a sheet of paper. His body was dragged into a deep vortex, endless and directionless. He tried to scream but no sound came. No body remained. No sensation. Only absolute darkness devouring everything.

  ***

  Elsewhere, in another world, an old man stood in his laboratory. His hands trembled as he adjusted connections on an old machine, surrounded by cracked monitors and dangling cables. The room was far from sterile, a world filled with dust and disorder.

  The old man turned to the only other person there, a teenage girl with ash-gray eyes and slightly short, tied-back hair, who looked cheerful yet exhausted.

  "This will take us back to where we belong," he said, his voice soft yet filled with determination. "And now, it begins."

  The girl nodded, embracing the old man tightly, as if sensing it might be their last.

  She released her embrace, took a deep breath, and activated the machine.

  The same trembling returned. Tremors shook the room, tossing everything around. Lights flickered uncontrollably, and then the anomaly swept through, tearing the fabric of the world. A metal pole pierced the frail old man's body, leaving him no chance to scream.

  Back into the abyss. The consciousness floated, seemingly frozen yet shining in the vast sea of black. In the void, fragments of images began to assemble: machines, human faces, streams of knowledge.

  "Who am I?"

  The question whispered within.

  He felt something calling him. A familiar voice, or perhaps an important command. A voice wrapped in sorrow.

  "Protect her... Stay by her side..."

  After that, only silence. Only a single instruction burned deeper into him than any feeling he had ever known.

  Meanwhile, in the new world born from destruction, a girl sat alone among the wreckage of the laboratory.

  Darkness enveloped Velastra, a half-dead world under the shadow of megacorporations.

  The girl held a frail, blood-soaked hand. She gazed at the dust-choked sky with dry eyes, too exhausted even to cry.

  The world had swallowed her and cloaked her in grief. In a dark corner of the battered ship, enclosed in a transparent capsule, an old, cracked, rusted mechanical body lay almost forgotten. Slowly, it flickered to life with a faint blue light for the first time in a long while.

  Ancient mechanical groans echoed softly. Something flowed into the frame's mind.

  It awoke.

  It did not know who it was.

  It did not know why it lived.

  But it knew one thing:

  “Protect her.”

  In the distance, thick clouds gathered over Velastra, shrouding the world in storms and rain, and amid it all stood two beings, one human, one machine, moving toward an unknown destiny.