The wind howled outside the sterile walls of the Karnell facility, the icy gusts penetrating through the cracked windows, carrying with them the whisper of snowflakes that never seemed to melt. The cold was suffocating, the air thick with the scent of metal and sterilized concrete. It was a place where warmth didn't exist. Where life felt like it had been frozen in time, trapped in a perpetual state of death.
Livia's breath fogged in front of her as she adjusted the collar of her insulated coat, but no amount of fabric could shield her from the chill of Karnell. Even the high-tech garments the Empire provided couldn't keep the cold at bay here. It was a sharp, biting cold, the kind that felt like it was inside your bones. As she walked down the narrow corridor, she could feel her fingers numbing despite the thermal gloves she wore.
"I hate this place," she muttered under her breath, her words barely audible in the vast emptiness. She was still new to Karnell, only a month into her assignment, and it had yet to grow on her. In fact, every day felt colder than the last, not just physically, but mentally too. It was hard to reconcile the gleaming metropolis of Stella with this forgotten, barren wasteland.
Jorlan, her colleague, walked beside her. His expression was cold, as always. If there was any warmth in him, it was buried so deep that even Livia had trouble believing it existed.
"You'll get used to it," Jorlan replied, his voice low and matter-of-fact. He didn't look at her as he spoke, his gaze fixed ahead, eyes unfocused. "You better learn to stop complaining. Or they'll make you a test subject too."
Livia shot him a sharp glance, her lips curling into a faint frown. "Test subject? What, like them?" She motioned towards the pods, where the children were being stored, cold and silent in their restraints. "What are they even doing here? Why is this place—this… wasteland—still in existence? We have the best cities in the Empire. Technology beyond anything any other nation could ever dream of. But here? This… this is just wrong."
Jorlan didn't respond immediately. He continued walking, his boots clicking on the metal floor. Finally, after a long pause, he spoke, his voice colder than the air around them.
"Karnell wasn't always like this. It used to be a thriving city. One of the largest on Earth. Fifty million people lived here once. People who had the best of everything: technology, culture, advancements. It was a symbol of the Empire's power."
Livia glanced at the rows of pods, each one containing a child, many no older than seven or eight. Their bodies were stripped bare, their heads shaved clean. The children's eyes were shut, their faces pale, breathing shallow through the special masks that filtered out the toxic air. They were the product of years of experimentation, of the serum that the Empire had created to bind their fates to the whims of the state.
"But then came Grannus," Jorlan continued, his voice low, tinged with a bitterness that almost sounded like regret. "During the Merge War. He came down from the sky, a dragon the size of a city. Grannus's flames burned Karnell to the ground, nothing left but ash. Fifty million people. Gone in an instant. And the fire kept burning, and burning, until there was nothing left to burn."
Livia felt a chill run through her. She had heard the stories—everyone had. The rumors about Grannus, the god of fire, and how his flames had ravaged Karnell. But hearing it from Jorlan, hearing the cold weight in his voice, made it real in a way she hadn't expected.
"But the fire…" she began, but Jorlan cut her off before she could continue.
"No amount of water could put it out. Not even a mountain of it," he said, his eyes locked on the distant pods, as though he were seeing the flames again, the fire that had consumed everything. "It wasn't like anything we've ever seen. The fire of Grannus burned until there was nothing. And even after the dragon was gone, the city was lost. Only a few thousand managed to escape the inferno. The rest were burned to ash. They say Grannus didn't stop. He just… disappeared. Some say he flew back to Elemor, or that he sleeps beneath the ruins now, waiting."
Livia felt a shiver crawl up her spine. "But… what if it wasn't the dragon?" she asked softly, almost to herself. "What if it was something else? Maybe a weapon? Something we don't know about."
Jorlan turned sharply to her, his cold gaze narrowing. "There are those who say that. That it was a nuclear strike. One of Stella's enemies, someone who saw the chaos of the Merge War and used it as a cover. They say that Grannus was just a convenient cover, a myth to explain away what happened. But it's all rumors. The truth doesn't matter anymore."
Livia shuddered, looking at the pods, at the children whose futures had already been decided. "And this place, Karnell… it's just a graveyard now. A wasteland."
"A wasteland," Jorlan echoed. "But we use it. We turn it into something useful. We make them into weapons, like we always do. There's nothing else here but the cold and the experiments."
Livia's eyes flicked back to the children in the pods. There were so many of them. So young, so fragile, and yet they were here, bound for a life they hadn't chosen. She felt a deep, unshakable sense of unease as she watched them, their bodies still and lifeless in their restraints.
"I can't help but feel sorry for them," she said quietly, almost to herself.
"Don't," Jorlan's voice was sharp, cutting through the silence like a blade. "They're nothing but tools. If you start pitying them, you'll lose your edge. You'll become just like the rest of the weaklings here, and then they'll make you a test subject. Is that what you want?"
Livia shook her head, as if to dispel the thought. But still, something gnawed at her. The coldness of the air, the silence of the pods, the lifelessness of the city outside. It all felt wrong. And yet, it was where the future of the Stella Empire was being shaped. Where the next generation of soldiers, of weapons, would be born.
Livia took a deep breath, trying to steel herself. "I just don't understand why we even keep this place around. The Great Border is so close. It looms over everything, like a wall that divides two worlds."
Jorlan followed her gaze toward the towering wall in the distance, the Great Border. It loomed high in the sky, a line of jagged, unyielding stone and magic that stretched beyond the horizon. It was both far and near, a constant reminder of the fractured world they now inhabited. A barrier that separated Earth from Elemor, humanity from the mystical land that had once been a separate realm.
"We're stuck here," Jorlan said, his voice heavy with the weight of truth. "The Merge made sure of that. Earth and Elemor—two worlds that collided. But the Merge didn't just bring magic into our world. It brought the monsters, the creatures we could never have imagined, and the forces that threaten everything we know. The Great Border is a reminder. It's the line we can never cross, and one that holds the two worlds apart. It's what keeps us safe. Or at least… it was supposed to."
Livia nodded, but her gaze never left the Great Border. It was a vast and endless wall that separated them, but she couldn't shake the feeling that there was something more to it. Something they weren't being told. And as the cold winds of Karnell bit at her skin, she couldn't help but feel that something was watching them from beyond that border. Waiting.