Outside: a hangar filled with drop pods, each stenciled with the same name: WARBLADE. An army of himself. And beyond the hangar's viewport—Earth. Not the blue-green world of history books, but a gray, smoking cinder.

Then: "That's impossible. Unit 1.2y.6 has no memory partition for past missions."

He stepped into the nearest pod. Not because he was ordered to. Because the memory he wasn't supposed to have—faint, blurred, like a dream after waking—showed him a little girl's face. His daughter. From before.

"Warblade," a voice crackled through the bay's speaker. "Report."

Kaelen turned. A hologram flickered to life—a woman's face, tired and old.