Mornye

Mornye had known from a very young age that she was a burden to others.

Her family, most of the time, treated her with great care. Her mother quit her job to look after her at home, while her father worked long hours to pay for her endless medical bills and examinations. In those early years that still blurred at the edges, her mother would often lift her into her arms, murmur soft words, then lay her gently back onto the small bed that was hers alone. One year, on her birthday, her father even made it home while she was still awake. The three of them sat together to sing a birthday song. They wished her peace, joy, and health as she grew up.

Mornye always accepted these moments quietly. She knew her mother believed she couldn't understand what was said or how they felt, and she always caught the sadness that flickered across her mother's face each time she lifted her unresponsive legs. She remembered, too, the tiny, almost imperceptible hesitation whenever they said the word "health.” But they loved her. She understood that very early on.

There was only one exception. One night, the sound of an argument jolted her awake. Her father's voice was raised, and her mother sobbed through her words. The unfamiliar threat in the air frightened her so badly that she began to cry. She was certain they heard her, because their shouting paused for a heartbeat, then returned louder, sharper, pitched toward a new kind of despair.

In that fragile pause, a feeling she had never known took root: she had to stop them herself.

The wheelchair sat by the bed, just within reach. She clutched the rail on the edge of the bed and began to move. First her chest, that was easy. She could lean forward and close the distance. Then her stomach. She felt her insides clench against the hardwood until a dull pain bloomed, a strange sign that she was making progress. Finally, her legs. She gathered every shred of strength and forced those disobedient limbs to slide over.

And then came a thump.

The argument stopped at once.

Silence flooded the house. The wheelchair lay overturned from the force of her fall. Numb with pain, Mornye pushed herself up with trembling arms. Something warm was trickling down from her temple, sliding over skin that was always cold to the touch.

Her mother rushed in, dropped to her knees, and lifted her. She held her close, tears of exhaustion streaming down her face.

Mornye was always quiet, or so most of her classmates from her hometown believed.

The bulky wheelchair had isolated her from the careless, chasing play of her peers from a young age. As compensation, she poured her extraordinary energy entirely into her studies, filling every crack of time with endless reading and calculation. Teachers often held her up as a model student, until they themselves began to struggle to keep pace with her mind. Among the students, whispers circulated: her father worked for one of the New Federation's more notorious corporations, and every day after school, a stern attendant would appear to wheel her away with flawless, icy precision. Mornye sat in the chair like a carefully arranged doll, silently compliant.

What unsettled her peers even more was her constant refusal of goodwill. Even when teachers instructed the class to look out for her, even when other students approached with generous smiles and asked if she needed help, she would lower her head, letting her bangs veil her eyes, and gently shake her head, silently rejecting everything.

A child's patience is always limited. Once the advantage of being the giver was lost, quiet exclusion grew. Soon, when she wheeled slowly down the hallway, no one approached her. They exchanged glances in silence and parted to give her chair a wide, straight path, like a school of fish dividing in a stream.

Mornye had never minded those withdrawn gestures of concern. She clung to academic excellence, her one silent form of gratitude to the world, and knew that if she asked for help, whether out of genuine need or just compliance, someone would inevitably respond.

But she remembered the weary look in her mother's eyes. And so, she remained silent.

At sixteen, Mornye received an admission letter from Startorch Academy.

Her Forte had awakened even earlier, on an otherwise ordinary afternoon, when she realized she no longer needed to push the heavy wheels of her chair by hand. There was nothing particularly thrilling about it, for she had already understood the mechanics perfectly. Making them turn in her mind or in reality made little difference. Her immobilized body was still trapped atop that cumbersome metal frame.

That night, as she moved herself to bed, she caught sight of the faintly glowing Tacet Mark on her thigh. It felt like a dark joke designed just for her.

But the admission letter was different.

Startorch Academy was widely known as the premier institution for nurturing talent across Solaris, and its parent organization, the Spacetrek Collective, represented the cutting edge of human technology. That finely printed sheet seemed to tear a crack in Mornye's narrow world, proof that even someone who could not move, even someone with a Forte she herself considered useless, could still be considered "worthy."

Could someone like her truly be one of the morning stars meant to light humanity's future?

She quickly completed the Preparatory Program, and her Forte was deemed most suited for the Department of Exostrider Engineering. She became the genius whispered about in the halls, the favored apprentice of her mentors, the youngest teaching assistant in the department. Yet it was never enough. She spent countless nights immersed in reports and experiments, often throwing herself into dangerous tasks that pushed her Forte to the edge of Overclocking. One night, light-headed from missing a Nutri-Pack, she wondered—if, just if—her body could one day become a cornerstone of the scientific halls she dreamed of. If so, it would be a satisfying conclusion.

"It's midnight now. Aren't you going to rest?"

She looked up and met a pair of golden eyes.

She remembered this person. The initiator of her current project, her senior and mentor at Startorch Academy. She had always been drawn to those gold eyes, carrying a vast loneliness that Mornye had yet to understand. They regarded everyone with the same impartial calm, with no trace of the pity she was so accustomed to.

"If you don't rest," that person said, voice even and steady, "you'll miss the stars."

There were no stars at Startorch Academy.

Back then, the Sky Projection Array could only manage the most basic precipitation patterns, and the Spacetrek Collective, still in its early exploratory stage, had no spare resources to adorn the unfamiliar underground world with starlight.

But Mornye hadn't realized that the "stars" her mentor spoke of were the ones above the frostlands.

It happened during an expedition to the frostlands. Normally, no one would have thought to invite Mornye on such a mission, so when her mentor extended a hand toward her, she did not refuse.

She boarded the Starward Riseway bound for the world above. To her surprise, she was treated no differently from the rest of the team. She sat quietly in the humming vehicle, analyzing in real time the data collected by its roaring machinery. Occasionally, when the transport could go no further or when there was simply something worth seeing, her mentor would lift her onto his/her back and carry her through the snow.

Wind swept across the plains, cold flakes tearing at warm cheeks. The distance blurred into white, yet something vast and new seemed to unfold before her. At the end of the expedition, they arrived at the wreckage of an old machine. Sitting atop the ruins, they looked up at a sky thick with stars.

"Do you like the stars?"

Her mentor's voice broke the quiet. Mornye followed his/her gaze, looking up at those fragments that had traveled from light-years away.

"Seeing the stars makes us curious. They make us ask what else is out there."

"I think... One day, you'll all prove that the blockage in the sky isn't the end. There will come a day humanity reaches the stars."

Ah. So that was it.

The first thing she realized was that she and everyone else were equally small.

She, her father, her mother, her classmates back home, and this person next to her. Beneath the boundless night, they were nothing more than dust drifting on a single planet.

Then came the memories she had forced herself to bury.

The pain of falling the first time she tried to climb the railing.

The cry she choked back when her mother left home.

The secretive glances in her old school, the way silently made for her passage.

The unsettling calm she felt when she once imagined ending everything herself.

And then, a restless yearning surged.

It was unlike anything she had ever felt, a fierce tide rising so violently it felt like a defiance of something vast and incomprehensible. A cold spark ignited in her silenced chest, tearing apart the quiet she had built to survive her narrow world.

Then the starlight leaned toward her.

Tears spilled. Heartbeat thundered. She reached out toward the person beside her, toward the distant light stretching into infinity.

"I… want to reach that future, too."

"Professor Mornye, Cody and Vance are arguing over the Helios test components this time. We probably need you to, um..."

Mornye let out a barely audible sigh. Above her, the modified Starstack hummed steadily, channeling her Forte into the floating keyboard as it replied to emails about the status of the New Solar Ceremony. Her left hand adjusted ignition‑simulation parameters on another floating display, while her right worked through a sequence of elastoplastic calculations. She could manage a dozen streams of work at once, but interpersonal disputes like this would always grind her progress to a halt.

The quarrel was between two fresh graduates—bright, ambitious, desperate to prove themselves. Mornye had never experienced that kind of youthful fervor firsthand. Still, the scene pulled up memories from her early days at the Research Institute. She remembered the first time she clashed with the board over her proposal to recreate a starry night's sky, and how, after finally gaining approval, a Void Storm struck. She remembered Overclocking to keep the signal tower from failing, and, of course, the moment when a falling component smashed into her legs.

...Well, maybe she wasn't so different from these young graduates after all.

By the time the dispute was settled, the Sky Projection Array had already shifted into night mode. A Hover Cannon delivered her dinner—today's Nutri-Pack came in "Smoked Steak" flavor, a new addition from the Agronomy Wing. She twisted the cap open, dimmed the last floating screen, and let her gaze drift to the artificial stars outside the window.

Her mentor had been gone for a long time.

So much had happened since then. She had graduated and joined the Institute. Her first assignment had been to build a sky above Lahai-Roi. Her legs, rebuilt over multiple surgeries, now carried her with accustomed ease. And on the day she and her mentor last saw each other, he/she said that Lahai‑Roi was ready to continue forward on its own feet.

He/She didn't belong to Lahai-Roi. That was when Mornye understood why those golden eyes held everyone at a distance. He/She was never meant to stay anywhere for long.

But that was all right.

Below, in the test hall, Helios cast silver light in the dark. The New Solar Ceremony—Even her mentor had never imagined this immense undertaking to awaken the Exostrider.

—"I've found what I want to do now, Mentor. And… I can go further than you ever did."

—"So when you return someday… will I be ready to stand beside you?"

[Spacetrek Collective Senior Researcher Routine Health and Capability Evaluation Report]

Name: Mornye

Affiliation: Spacetrek Collective - Research Institute and Department of Exostrider Engineering

1. Forte Assessment

1.1 Baseline Classification

The subject is classified as a Natural Resonator, with a Tacet Mark located on the lateral aspect of the left thigh.

1.2 Parameters & Characteristics

- Effective Range: Approximately 20 meters. Within this radius, the subject demonstrates direct, fine-grained manipulation of mechanical entities with complex internal structures. Precision of manipulation remains stable across the entire effective range, with no observed signal degradation.

- Activation Prerequisite: Forte initiation requires a complete structural analysis of the target's internal mechanical composition. The Forte cannot be initiated on objects with unknown internal structures.

"Wait, what is that supposed to mean…? I've never seen Professor Mornye fail to take control of a machine!"

2. Physical Condition Overview

2.1 Diagnosis

The subject presents with congenital hypoplasia of the lumbosacral plexus, resulting in permanent loss of motor function distal to the coccygeal region and an absence of autonomous locomotion capability.

2.2 Rehabilitation Status

Through a custom neural-interface prosthetic limb system, the subject has achieved full independence in ambulation and daily activity. Functional stability has been maintained for several years. This evaluation constitutes a routine review.

Waveform analysis of the test sample indicates an elliptical oscillation pattern with a stable Time Domain. While a prolonged tendency toward irregular fluctuations was previously documented, the waveform has since stabilized. Examination results are determined to be within normal parameters.

Conclusion: Resonant Criticality is within normal range. Subject stability remains robust. No present risk of Overclocking.

Resonator Mornye has a prior history of Overclocking. Maximum severity rating: Mild.

The subject reported inducing a brief episode several years ago to sustain the operation of a critical signal tower. Due to timely medical intervention, no post-Overclocking symptoms were observed.

Routine physical examinations are advised. Psychological counseling is currently deemed unnecessary.