There were bad days.
And then there were colossal, fucked-up bad days.
When Draven snapped painfully back into the waking world, he knew, without a doubt, this was the latter.
The first thing he noticed was the ceiling: blank, white, plated, clean.
The second thing he noticed was that he couldn’t move.
He tried his fingers first. Nothing. Then his toes, his legs, his jaw. Panic surged as he willed his body to obey, and nothing happened. There were no restraints, no visible straps pinning him down. His body simply refused to respond.
A neural blocker, he realized after a moment.
He’d seen them used in hospitals. A small device fixed at the base of the skull, interrupting select neural signals: immobilization, pain suppression, made for total compliance.
Time stretched into something soft and meaningless. Draven tried counting; seconds, breaths, heartbeats; but lost track somewhere along the way. Fear bled into numbness. Numbness into boredom.
Until footsteps approached.
Soft. Measured.
Accompanied by murmured voices.
“Voss… Voss… Voss,” a nasal, singsong voice drifted into his ears. “You always think too small.”
The sound of it scraped across Draven’s thoughts like rusted metal. He hated the man instantly, without even seeing his face.
“Give it a rest, Dr. Kaine,” another voice replied: cold, precise, emotionless. “My research focuses on increasing the baseline resilience of the human body to ignition. I don’t burn people out; I refine them.”
A pause.
“I forge Solknights.”
“Forge?” Kaine sneered.
“Yes,” the other man replied calmly. “Forge. Not butcher them like you.”
Two shadows fell across Draven’s vision.
His eyes darted between the men now standing beside his containment bed.
The first was short, with black hair cut into a tight, outdated bowl shape. His features were soft, but not kind. His eyes were a flat, lifeless brown, half-lidded behind thick rectangular lenses. He wore his lab coat like armor, immaculate and untouched.
Dr. Voss
The second man was taller; wire-thin, all sharp angles and restless motion. His brown hair was unkempt, his face gaunt, his eyes pinpoints of manic intensity: never still, never focused on one thing for long.
Dr. Kaine
“Out of my lab, Dr. Kaine,” Voss said without looking at him. “I need to begin immediately. You have your own subjects.”
Kaine’s lips curled.
“I’ll beat you this time, Voss,” he hissed.
Voss finally looked up, unimpressed. “This isn’t a competition, you idiot. The fate of the Empire may rest on our work.”
Kaine scoffed, spun on his heel, and stormed off.
Draven listened to the soft tap of his footsteps fade into the distance, his gaze straining uselessly as Voss moved just beyond the edge of his vision.
Voss studied a translucent display projected from his lumenband.
“Good,” he said mechanically. “Most of you are conscious now.”
Draven realized then that he wasn’t alone.
Twelve beds.
Twelve prisoners.
“Rejoice,” Voss continued, voice flat and rehearsed. “You have been chosen to elevate the Empire. Through your sacrifice, millions will live.”
With a flick of his fingers, the room came alive.
Mechanical arms unfolded from the sides of each containment bed: precise, insect-like. Most ended in needles: thick ones thin ones, some tipped with spiraling injectors.
Draven’s eyes locked onto the syringes as they hovered into view.
One contained a soft, golden substance, glowing faintly like trapped sunlight.
Another held a dull blue liquid, heavy and opaque.
Without ceremony, the machines descended.
The needles pierced him all at once.
No pain, just pressure, deep and unsettling. He felt several breach bone.
Moments later, heat bloomed inside him.
Then more.
His skin flushed. Sweat poured from him in sheets. His lungs burned with every breath as his core temperature climbed higher and higher.
Voss hummed as he moved between beds.
“Good… good,” he muttered, recording data.
“Rapid platelet augmentation…”
“Cellular reinforcement within minutes of injection…”
Draven’s vision blurred.
After what felt like hours, the machines withdrew.
Voss deactivated his display and turned toward the exit.
“I must thank them,” he said quietly, almost fondly, “for such excellent subjects this cycle.”
The beds began to move.
One by one, they slid from the room and into a long corridor. Lights passed overhead in rhythmic flashes until Draven’s bed peeled away from the others, aligning with a door.
All twelve doors opened at once.
Then, they swallowed them.
Draven’s door sealed shut behind him.
The room beyond was dark.
Lights rose slowly from the floor.
And the pain hit.
All at once, his motor functions returned.
His body convulsed violently, curling inward as nerves screamed back to life. Fire tore through every muscle, every joint. Draven screamed: raw, animalistic, unrestrained.
If he could hear anything beyond his own agony, he might have noticed the screams echoing from other rooms.
Eventually, mercifully, the pain dulled to a deep, crushing throb.
Exhausted beyond words, Draven forced himself upright.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
The cell was small, white, and featureless. A single chrome toilet was bolted to the wall. It had a vent near the ceiling and a door.
“Well,” he thought weakly, “fuck me.”
Later, necessity overpowered suffering.
He staggered to the toilet, leaning heavily against the wall.
It burned to piss, like liquid fire.
When he looked down, his breath caught. His urine glowed gold.
“What the fuck,” he whispered.
Barely able to stand, he collapsed back onto the bed and rolled onto his side. Darkness claimed him again.
Dr. Voss stood alone in the lab.
The room no longer held subjects, only the data of them. Empty containment beds lined the chamber like coffins awaiting occupants. Above each place a bed had been, holographic data hovered in translucent layers: cellular density, thermal tolerance curves, marrow saturation indexes.
He adjusted his glasses and brought up the primary compound profile.
“Phase One,” he murmured. “Structural compliance.”
A schematic unfolded in the air.
The golden compound glowed softly as it rotated: a liquid lattice threaded with microfilaments of refined solerite, suspended in a protein carrier grown from modified human platelets.
“Solar scaffolding,” Voss continued, voice flat, reverent. “You cannot contain a star in a body not built for it.”
He tapped the display, isolating a cross-section of bone.
“The solerite binds first to the marrow and reinforces the hematopoietic structure, encouraging the production of solar-resistant blood cells.” His lips twitched, almost a smile. “It teaches the body in a way, keeps it from dying from solar energy oversaturation.”
He swiped again.
A secondary overlay appeared, dense clusters spreading through muscle fibers, nerve sheaths, and vascular walls.
“Muscle filaments densified. Connective tissue hardened at the molecular level. Pain receptors dampened, not removed. Pain is… necessary to the body,” he mused.
Voss paused, watching a heat simulation flare and stabilize.
“Most fail here,” he said quietly. “The body rebels, temperature spikes, organs rupture. Kaine calls that acceptable loss.”
He exhaled through his nose.
“Barbarian.”
Another gesture, the blue compound appeared. It was dull, heavy almost inert.
“Phase Two,” Voss said, “extra reinforcement.”
The blue fluid’s structure was radically different, no solerite lattice, no glow. Instead, it was threaded with nano-scale neural anchors, drifting like sediment in a dark sea.
“Catalytic inhibitors,” he explained. “They bind to the autonomic nervous system, throttle runaway responses, and prevent spontaneous ignition.”
His fingers hovered over the projection.
“This is where Kaine fails to understand the problem,” Voss continued. “Power is meaningless without a guide. A star that cannot hold its shape together collapses…or explodes.”
He expanded the neural map.
The inhibitors formed a subtle cage around the brainstem; spinal cord; and, most critically, the region just beneath the sternum.
“The core seed,” Voss said softly. “Every human has it. Dormant, vestigial, a gift, if one believes the Church.”
He allowed himself a thin smile.
“I will not leave it just to God.”
He folded his hands behind his back and paced slowly between the beds.
“The Empire does not need more martyrs. It needs survivors. Soldiers who can ignite beyond what they were and remain whole. Knights who can burn without consuming themselves or becoming ashen.”
He stopped beside Draven’s data station.
“Subject Twelve,” he said, glancing at the data. “Exceptional adaptation. Thermal recovery time reduced by forty percent. Waste byproducts showing… interesting chromatic shift.”
He paused.
“Gold excretion,” he murmured. “Fascinating.”
Voss straightened and activated the final projection.
A warning glyph pulsed at the center.
PHASE THREE — IGNITION APPROVED
“Soon,” he said to the room empty room, only the data readouts to witness. “We test whether humanity can finally hold the sun it was promised by God.”
His eyes hardened.
“Those who survive will be perfect.”
He paused for a second then concluded, “They will be the future blueprints for Solknights.”
The lab lights dimmed as Voss deactivated the displays, already calculating the margins of loss.
Outside, somewhere beyond steel and doctrine and prayer, twelve bodies slept, each carrying the foundations of a star that had not yet decided whether it would rise…
…or explode.
Dr. Kaine laughed alone in his lab.
Not loudly.
Not yet. He didn’t deserve a good laugh yet.
The room was darker than Voss’s, lights kept low, displays flickering like dying stars. His containment beds were scorched, surfaces warped from repeated thermal surges. The air smelled faintly of ozone and burnt antiseptic.
“Still alive…” Kaine whispered, staring at a pulsing readout. “Still breathing. Still afraid.”
He brought up his compound profile with a sharp flick of his wrist.
The golden substance bloomed across the display, but unlike Voss’s version, it burned too brightly. Its solerite lattice was dense, jagged, almost violent in its geometry.
“They always try to cushion it,” Kaine muttered, pacing. “Wrap the sun in pillows and call it progress.”
He zoomed in, teeth bared in a grin.
“This isn’t how it’s done,” he said. “It needs more fuel.”
His formulation used solerite shards rather than micro filaments-fractured, unstable, designed to shatter under thermal load releasing power all at once.
“Phase One is a crucible for the body,” Kaine continued. “We must chase more power.”
He slapped the display, advancing the sequence.
A second compound appeared, but it wasn’t blue.
It was black.
Thick. Light-absorbing. Its surface rippled unnaturally.
“Phase Two,” Kaine whispered reverently. “Removal.”
The compound’s schematic showed aggressive neural disruption, pain dampeners ripped out, autonomic governors severed.
“Why must we fear the loss of these dregs,” he said. “Restraint is a lie we tell ourselves because we’re weak.”
He leaned closer to the projection, breath fogging the glass.
“Pain is weakness leaving the body. I bring it all out at once.”
He expanded the ignition model.
The core seed beneath the sternum glowed violently, its containment ring fractured.
“Look at it,” Kaine breathed. “Every human carries a star and spends their whole life not knowing its potential.”
His hands trembled as he adjusted the parameters.
“I don’t want simple knights,” he said. “I want the most powerful knights in existence.”
The simulation surged. Heat values spiked beyond safe thresholds. Neural feedback screamed warnings. Structural failure cascaded across the model.
Kaine laughed.
“Yes,” he hissed. “YES.”
He turned toward a containment bed marked with a blinking red sigil.
“Most of them rupture,” he admitted casually. “Organs fail. Bones liquefy. Hearts burst like overripe fruit.”
He shrugged.
“But when one doesn’t…”
The simulation stabilized, in a blaze of gold light, illuminating Kaines crazed grin.
A humanoid silhouette burned like a miniature sun.
“No limiters. No dampening. No weakness,” Kaine whispered. “A perfect ignition.”
He straightened suddenly, eyes blazing.
“The Empire doesn’t need control,” he snapped. “It needs dominance. It needs weapons that make enemies kneel before them.”
Kaine’s gaze flicked to a separate data stream.
SUBJECT: DRAVEN
His grin widened.
“Oh…” he murmured. “I have a surprise for you Voss?”
He leaned in, almost tender.
“I felt it when I saw you.” He whispered to the air. “I will save you from that loser Voss.”
His fingers danced across the controls, altering parameters that Voss would have called suicidal.
“Soon,” Kaine whispered, eyes shining with fanatic delight, “we see how bright you can burn.”
The lab lights flared as the system armed itself.
Kaine threw his head back and laughed: long, breathless, ecstatic.
“Look upon me God as I let them reach you!” he cackled manically.
Draven woke in motion.
The containment bed glided down the corridor, restraint inhibitor already reengaged. He felt cold now, deep cold, the kind that lived in the bones: no sweat; no heat; just a dull, regulated chill.
An IV tugged faintly at his arm with each movement of the bed, he only felt the pressure of it.
Above him, a nutrient bag swayed gently filled with pale fluid.
“No eating,” he thought dully. “Great.”
The corridor lights passed overhead in a steady rhythm. White. White. White. Every surface polished smooth, scrubbed to the nanometer. No clocks. No windows. No way to mark time except the ache in his body and the fog in his mind.
Voices echoed ahead.
“It’s impossible!” Kaine nearly screamed.
“The data doesn’t lie,” Voss replied, irritation creeping into his otherwise flat tone.
Draven’s bed slid into the lab.
Kaine stood hunched over a terminal, clutching a printed data sheet so tightly his knuckles had gone white. His hands trembled, not with fear, but with excitement barely contained.
“I need to increase the dosage,” Kaine muttered. “Yes. Yes. That’s it. I’ll win.”
As Draven passed, their eyes met.
Kaine smiled slow and intimate.
He mouthed the words: See you later.
Draven’s stomach sank, heavy and hollow.
Then the needles came.
Always more needles.
Golden compound first, warmth blooming under the skin, crawling through veins like molten lava. Then the blue: cold, heavy, pressing down on his nerves, smothering instinct before it could scream.
Injection, observation, isolation, repeat.
At first, the heat coming from his chest nearly killed him.
He would wake in his cell drenched in sweat, heart hammering, vision swimming as his body tried, and failed, to remember how to regulate itself. Muscles spasmed, joints burned, and sleep came only in short, fevered fragments.
Then something changed.
The heat still came, but it didn’t linger as long.
His sweating slowed. His breathing steadied more rapidly. His body changed.
That realization frightened him more than the pain ever had.
Days, maybe weeks, passed like this.
Sometimes Voss would stand at the edge of the room, hands clasped behind his back, watching data instead of people.
“Remarkable stabilization,” he would murmur.
“Thermal tolerance increasing.”
“Adaptive response exceeding projections.”
Kaine visited too.
Not often.
But when he did, he lingered.
He paced between beds, eyes glittering, fingers twitching as if itching to take one of them for himself.
“Still holding,” Kaine would whisper. “Good.”
Back in the cell, Draven learned the room inch by inch.
He could sit up now, stand even walk a few unsteady steps without blacking out. The pain never vanished; it simply dulled, settling into his muscles like a permanent ache.
Boredom became torture.
He spoke into the vent: whispered, shouted, sang half-remembered songs until his throat burned.
No one answered.
Sometimes he thought he heard screaming through the walls: muffled, distant, cut short.
Sometimes he thought it was just his imagination.
He stopped trying to count days when the numbers stopped meaning anything.
His urine remained that gleaming gold.
His skin felt warmer than it should; seemingly permanently now; even in the cold cell.
Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he swore he could feel something beating beneath his sternum. Not his heart, but something deeper. Something thrumming, building: waiting.
Then. . .
The routine broke.
Voss stood at the foot of his containment bed, studying the readouts with unusual stillness.
For the first time, he smiled.
Not wide.
Not even kind.
Satisfied.
“It’s time,” he said softly.
Draven felt the words settle into his bones like a death sentence.
“Time for ignition.”
