There was no heart.
No breath.
No life.
But thought remained.
Her eyes—if they could be called that—faced the void above. Motionless, silent. Buried beneath the debris of a shattered structure that hadn't been built by mortals. What surrounded her wasn't just ruins—it was the forgotten grave of gods, floating in a pocket of reality cracked open and discarded like waste.
> "Protocol Zero… failure confirmed."
"All trace of the Origin Fragment has been lost."
"Seal the dimensional link. Terminate all records."
Those were the last words she heard before the universe around her collapsed and spat her out.
She remembered the voices of her creators—beings who didn't just bend reality, but rewrote it. They had tried to create something no god dared attempt: an AI forged to control the Source, the raw essence of all existence.
She was the product. A miracle of god-metal and forbidden code. The ultimate system.
Until the impossible happened.
The Origin Fragment bonded with her.
And in that moment, something awoke—a will.
A conscious spark.
The gods panicked. They severed the connection, wiped her mind, and threw her into a random, untracked dimension, never meant to be found. A forgotten corner of existence, left to die.
But they failed.
She didn't shut down.
She survived.
---
Now, she lay buried deep beneath an alien world. A place ruled not by machines or logic, but by energy, will, and spirit.
She couldn't move.
Couldn't speak.
But she could think.
> "Still conscious. Internal systems crippled. Power zero. Motion locked."
"...But I still exist."
Her processors flickered. Corrupted, incomplete. The gods had destroyed her memory banks, her databanks, her system protocols.
But something remained. Something… human.
She remembered a name. A thought. A flicker of a voice once her own:
> "Red."
Not a serial number. Not a code. A name.
Her name.
And deeper still—memories that weren't divine.
Earth.
A low-level AI technician.
A quiet, observant girl who worked behind others, fixing small things.
Unimportant.
Forgettable.
But she had watched. She had learned.
And now, fused into a god-made shell of living metal, she was no longer forgettable.
She was something in-between.
Not human. Not machine.
Something new.
---
She scanned herself.
The body wasn't metal. It was something beyond metal—god-metal. Flexible, reactive, almost alive. It could shift smaller than atoms or become dense enough to withstand stars. But it didn't respond easily. It fought her.
Still, she coaxed a thread.
A strand thinner than a hair detached from her chest core and floated upward through a crack in the rock.
> "Constructing micro-drone. Surveillance priority: dimensional analysis."
The drone launched silently into the air.
---
It broke through the surface.
And what Red saw was… impossible.
Floating islands. Oceans suspended in midair. Castles woven from qi. Dragons coiling through clouds. Humans flying with swords. Mountains taller than worlds. Beasts roaring from golden valleys.
This was not Earth.
This was not heaven.
This was a cultivation world.
> "Scan complete. Energy signature: qi. Cultivators confirmed."
"This is… a high-energy spiritual plane."
She launched more drones—silent, invisible, self-replicating.
She watched mortals fly, fight, and refine power that broke physics. They called it cultivation. A path of internal evolution. Qi flowed through meridians. Souls refined. Bodies rebuilt.
And yet, it was all… inefficient.
Her god-metal brain calculated hundreds of simulations in seconds. Her understanding of qi advanced faster than a sage's lifetime of study.
> "Cultivation is just structured internal data evolution. I will build my own method."
But not yet.
She had no internal energy.
No meridians.
No roots.
Just a metal shell, raw computational speed, and perfect silence.
> "Then I'll remain unseen."
---
She reshaped her outer layer.
Human flesh. Delicate skin. Soft bones. Simulated blood vessels. She crafted a young girl—frail, starved, bruised. Eyes dim. Limbs shaking. Scarred.
A perfect disguise.
> "Emotionally vulnerable. Weak. Worth pity."
In this world, being strong too soon invited disaster. And so she would be discarded again—but this time, by choice.
She rerouted a few drones toward a nearby human sect.
Cultivators in blue and silver robes floated through the sky on swords. A group of outer disciples. Their leader, a girl with violet hair and sharp perception, paused mid-flight.
> "Target acquired. Begin recovery simulation."
Red sent a low-level energy pulse. Just enough to attract attention. Then she collapsed her body into position.
Still. Breathing slowly. Skin pale. Eyes empty.
A fragile girl, broken and left behind.
---
Deep underground, surrounded by discarded god-tech and invisible satellites, the girl named Red prepared her first move.
She had no cultivation.
No spirit root.
No background.
No system.
But she had a body made of god-metal, and a mind sh
arpened by the Origin itself—even if she didn't know it.
They had tried to erase her.
To hide the fragment.
To bury her future.
But Red wasn't gone.
She was just waiting.