Gaia Chronicles: The Integral Saga

The world remembered fire.Cyg remembered silence.

Long before he became Synthesis 11, before the gunblade Aetheron fused with his soul, he was just a boy scavenging through war-torn ruins—ashen streets where birds no longer sang, and the sun felt like a memory filtered through smoke.

He had no surname. No records. No family.

Just a name given by the last person he ever trusted:"Cyg," whispered the voice of a woman now faceless in memory. "It means Swan. Because even in the ashes, you stand tall."

He was seven when the Third Riftfall swallowed his home city, Palerin, once a shining trade hub in Eastern Europe. The Abyss opened with no warning. Towering monsters clawed out from shimmering cracks in the air—ranks of Wretches, screeching Fracture Tanks, and a Rank 2 Abyssal known only as Vorven the Maw.

Gaia couldn't reach them in time.No one did.

Cyg survived for thirteen days underground with nothing but a broken radio, a knife, and the shattered remains of a tactical HUD visor from a fallen soldier. It was there, in flickering green static, that he first saw tactics.

"Estimated enemy count: 127. Breach patterns: irregular. Probability of survival: 0.3%."Cyg didn't panic.He just said quietly, "Then I need to be faster than 99.7% of people."

When Gaia's recovery team finally arrived, they found a skeletal child with soot-caked skin and hollow eyes, surrounded by the burned remains of five Wretches—each killed with surgical strikes to the neck and inner joint hinges.

Commander Lionel Synthesis 17 had led the mission.

"What's your name?" he asked gently, kneeling before the boy.

"Doesn't matter," Cyg replied flatly. "The next breach will be west. If you set up your cannon teams on the east wall, they'll be dead in twenty-two seconds."

Lionel blinked. "How do you know that?"

Cyg simply pointed to the surrounding architecture. "This city's grid bleeds ether. If I were them, I'd come from the center. So they'll come from the opposite."

He was right. The next wave arrived exactly where he predicted.

Taken to Gaia HQ under "Exception Protocol 8," Cyg was studied by every department: psionics, military training, neuro-patterning. They couldn't explain him. His brain processed combat data faster than most AI. He absorbed textbooks like breathing. He couldn't remember his parents—but he could dissect enemy formations from memory alone.

And yet, he never smiled. Never cried.He refused to connect.

The only one who managed to reach him—even slightly—was Eun-Ha Synthesis 15, already a young recruit undergoing spiritual training at the time. Her quiet aura didn't pressure him. She never asked questions. She just sat beside him in the meditation chamber when he refused to eat.

"You're not a machine," she said once, voice like calm water."Machines don't feel tired," he replied. "I do. I just ignore it."

Eun-Ha didn't argue. She just placed a warm hand on his and whispered,"Then don't ignore me."

At age twelve, Cyg attempted the Artifact Trial.

No one expected him to survive. He had no combat experience, no known emotional spectrum, and barely any ether signature. But as he stood before Aetheron, the gunblade shimmered—not with heat, but with cold reason. It rearranged itself to match him—modular, precise, calculated.

Cyg didn't flinch when the Trial began.

His mindscape was filled with fire, screaming, and the shadow of Vorven. But he didn't try to fight it.

He analyzed it.

He trapped the monster inside his own subconscious logic loop and watched it devour itself in confusion.

When he opened his eyes again, the chamber had gone still. Aetheron floated beside him, fully bonded.

Cyg simply said, "I'm ready."

He became the youngest Knight in Gaia history.

Cyg Synthesis 11.

Colleagues called him the "Ghost Strategist." Commanders requested him for field simulations. Artillery divisions asked for his models.But when asked why he joined Gaia, he always replied:

"I didn't. You found me. I just stayed."

And yet, something changed the day he met the other seven—Sylvia, Mia, Hikari, Charlotte, Harriet, Elaine, and Eun-Ha—not as files or threats or variables, but as people. At first, they were loud. Messy. Emotional.Unbearably illogical.

But little by little, they began to crack the walls he didn't know he'd built.

Sylvia with her stubborn melodies.Mia with her curious eyes and odd creations.Harriet with her relentless dares.Elaine with her energy.Charlotte with her strange brilliance.Hikari with her silence that mirrored his own.And Eun-Ha… who had always been there. Always.

For the first time, Cyg found something harder to calculate than war.

Friendship.

And maybe, eventually... love.