Lyra's voice cracked as it burst from her damaged speakers. Metal rang as her servos trembled with emotions that had never been programmed—fear, anger, confusion.
"I can't self-destruct if you're here! You'll be destroyed too!"
Kaivan kept moving forward. Every step was an act of rebellion against reason. Storm and fire merged behind him, creating a world half frozen, half burning. His footsteps carved trails of blood and snow. His eyes were locked on a single point: Lyra.
"Because I don't want you to explode, you idiot!"
Those words made no sense to machine logic. And precisely because of that, they struck Lyra's consciousness like a slap. Her calculations froze. A bug appeared in her system—or rather, an undefined feeling.
"Why… are you coming to me? I can be rebuilt. I'm not like you. I'm just a collection of data. Files that can be copied, rerun… I can be replaced, Kaivan. You know that."
Yet before her, Kaivan stood firm. His breath came out in heavy clouds in the freezing air, his body shaking violently. His military jacket was torn, stained with frozen blood and soot. His boots sank into the snow, yet his steps never wavered. His small, gentle eyes looked at Lyra with a mixture of pain, relief, and burning resolve.
He let out a long breath, then laughed—not in joy, but in bitterness. The laugh of someone who felt the world was unfair. A laugh born from deep loss, from despair mixed with unspoken love.
"Funny…" he said softly, his voice nearly swallowed by the howling blizzard. "I'm just an ordinary human too. Easy to die. Easy to forget. But we can't really be replaced, can we? Because what makes us meaningful is the time we spend together. The bonds formed from thousands of words, laughter, and care."
The snow fell harder. The sky grew darker. Ash and fragments of Ya'juj and Ma'juj armor swirled through the storm, whitening everything. Yet in the midst of destruction, silence settled between them, broken only by the faint clinking of Lyra's cracked frame.
Lyra's eyes glowed dimly, her green pupils flickering rapidly—her emotional algorithms were in conflict. Kaivan's words were not just sentences. They were raw emotional code her system had never been designed to fully process.
"For a whole year… When I felt alone, when I had no one… you were always there for me. Your voice was the only thing that made me feel alive. Not just my helper. Not just my assistant. You were the one who talked to me, listened to my complaints, stayed with me during training, stayed with me while I read. You're the one who kept me sane."
Kaivan stepped closer. His feet sank deep into the snow, leaving red trails from the wound at his waist. Every movement brought pain, yet none of it stopped him.
"You're not just data, Lyra. You're my friend. The friend who stayed, even when I felt everyone else had left."
Lyra's system shook violently. Emergency warnings flashed across her vision:
[! ERROR: EMOTIONAL CORE OVERLOAD] [! LOGIC TREE CONFLICT] [! MISSION ABORT – USER PRESENCE DETECTED]
But she did not move.
She stared at Kaivan with trembling eyes—not only because her servos were damaged, but because something deeper stirred within her. Something more human than a mechanical construct should ever possess.
"Why is this human… Why… I'm just a program. I was only assigned to stay by his side… Talking to him is my duty… So why does it feel like… more than that?"
Kaivan now stood right before her. Only a few steps separated them. He lifted his face and looked straight into the core of Lyra's eyes—no longer mere optical displays, but mirrors of doubt and fear, strangely human.
"Support me again, Lyra," he said softly, yet with firm conviction. "You said your mission is to protect me, right? Then do it. But not by dying for me. Do it by staying alive. By staying here."
Kaivan raised his hand and touched the scorched metal on the side of Lyra's face. It was warm. Burning from within. Yet he did not pull away, as if that heat was a price worth paying.
Inside the helicopter heading toward the main bunker, Levan sat in silence. His hand gripped the Tome of Omnicent tightly—the ancient book now glowed faintly in a slow rhythm, as if sensing the tension enveloping the world. His unblinking eyes were fixed on the two figures below.
"What am I supposed to tell their friends later?" he whispered, more to himself than anyone else. "How do I explain that this kid refused to be saved for something no military report can measure?"
Beside him, Fabrizio listened closely. His eyes widened, then he quickly grabbed the tactical radio on his chest.
"Elara! You see that big white ring on my lab table, right?! Input Kaivan's coordinates into the inactive missile and mount it on the non-explosive launcher! Hurry! Fire it!" he shouted, panic and resolve cutting through the air.
At the remote control center deep beyond the mountains, Elara—a young woman with her hair tied high, sweat running down her temples—answered without hesitation.
"Visual confirmed. Data received. Linking to dummy missile platform. Target locked. Launching in five… four… three…"
Down below, the battlefield had turned into a white inferno. Snow fell with blinding intensity, whipped by violent winds carrying shards of metal and frozen blood. Wrecked combat vehicles lay scattered like the bones of giants. Black smoke danced from the ruins, forming curtains of destruction that blocked all sight.
Amid burned-out tanks, flames still raged, eating through steel like paper. The stench of gunpowder, blood, and engine oil blended into a hellish scent that pierced to the bone. The once-white snow had turned muddy red—a nameless grave for hundreds of fallen soldiers.
At the heart of the chaos stood Lyra.
Her tall, elegant frame was now little more than the tragic silhouette of a warrior on the brink of collapse. Metal plates at her waist hung open, revealing scorched cables and wild sparks of electricity. Smoke seeped from her joints, and her emerald-green eyes burned brightly—like the last torches in the darkness.
"Kaivan, please, go!" Lyra shouted. Her voice was hoarse, distorted by damage to her vocal system. "My ammunition is almost gone! I have to blow everything up to end this! Aren't you worried about these creatures reaching the residential zones?!"
Several meters ahead, Kaivan slashed the head off one of the grotesque creatures with his chained kujang. Thick black blood burst from its neck, splashing across his face. Sweat, dried blood, and wounds mapped his thin, fragile body. Parts of his combat jacket were burned away.
He staggered—but remained standing. His usually calm eyes were now filled with resolve.
"No," Kaivan replied. His voice was soft yet firm, like steel struck slowly. "I'm staying here until they're all dead."
From behind the freezing layers of debris, a heavy rumble shook the thin mountain air. The echoes of giant footsteps sliced through the snowy silence, mixed with the grinding of metal against stone and groaning steel.