Divine Singularity || Reader x Murder Drones

VI

You were dreaming again.

The sensation had become so familiar that you could immediately tell nowadays. The feeling of floating through nothing. A weightless drift, caught in the vacuum between awareness and sleep. There was no warmth. No cold. No air, even. Just the breathless quiet of a space unanchored by time. But this time it felt... different.

You didn't know how to explain it.

As always, you were an observer to a replaying memory that didn't seem to click, or belong to you. You still weren't sure which it was. The edges were hazy, frayed. It was almost like watching a movie. Both familiar... yet not.

In the scene playing before you, you were slumped like scrap, your old drone body piled atop a mound of other decommissioned drones. Arms tangled, visors blank, limbs twisted at unnatural angles. The disposal truck rumbled beneath, its frame groaning with every pothole and bump in the cracked asphalt as it drove into nowhere. You hovered above it all, watching with intrigue on how this memory would play out.

You could hear someone calling out.

"Stop! Wait, please—don't take them—!"

Familiar. Distant. Human.

It was him again. The boy from before, though no longer a boy. A teen if you had to say. Much older, cracking in desperation as it echoed across the lot. Always at the edge of your recognition, never close enough to name. You could feel his voice clawing at your mind, tugging something loose. But the truck didn't stop. The men didn't turn around. The world rolled on, indifferent.

Soon enough, the truck stopped at the dump you currently slept in. It wasn't as full as it was now, though still already in the process of forming mountains of technological remains. The truck carrying you dumped its load, and when you were settled into your new home, it left.

And then time passed.

It sped forward, seasons bleeding into one another like paint in water. The sky dimmed, then brightened, then burned red with sunset. Rain fell. Wind howled. Snow buried the corpses in a white sheet that melted into gray. Rust bloomed like flowers in a field. Bodies collapsed inward, broken apart by time while new ones were added to the collection. One by one, you watched the world forget they were ever anything at all.

But you remained.

Unmoving. Untouched. Waiting.

The dump changed. Hills of parts shifted. New debris replaced the old. But you stayed exactly as you had been dumped. And all the while, you—observing this memory from afar—lingered above, silently watching.

The memory didn't offer much clarity. All it did was deepen the void of confusion within you. Yes, now you had seen how your old body arrived at the pit, but nothing in the memory explained you. How did you get these powers? Where did they come from? Why did the grass bloom beneath your feet? Why did the light inside you react to Cyn's void like two opposing forces? Why could you burn entropy itself? But no answers had become a regular. These dreams usually offered nothing but more to think on, as per the usual.

But then, you heard sound.

Footsteps breaking the silence. You turned, all your eyes narrowing toward the source, and blinked—genuinely surprised.

Tessa and J.

They moved carefully, shoes squelching in the mud. J was holding an umbrella, just as you remembered. Tessa looked wide-eyed, glancing around like she was looking for something. You noticed how she took the effort to avoid stepping on any of the drones and their parts that littered the ground. It made you smile, to think she was so considerate even to lifeless machines. But it was also eerie to see them here, in this memory, in this moment you already knew so well—and yet were experiencing from the outside.

Ah. This must be the day.

The day Tessa found you.

You remembered it quite vividly. The very first person you'd ever met, just browsing through the dump, most likely looking for spare parts, but instead finding you. But from this vantage point—disembodied, dreambound, something else entirely—it felt alien. Removed. Though you didn't completely dislike it. It was nice being able to see her from this angle, to watch and examine Tessa without the worry she'd look back and be terrified with what she saw.

They came closer, weaving through the junk, getting closer and closer. You turned your gaze to the lifeless body—

And paused.

A pulse of light.

Hovering just above your body's chest plate was an orb—small, radiant, pure white tinged with a black rim, like an inverted black hole. It trembled in the air, suspended, humming. It hovered, pulsating like a heartbeat all while you watched in shock.

The power.

The resonance.

It was the same that beat in your chest right now.

You felt it, like a tether pulled taut between past and present. That orb pulsed with your essence—your lifeforce, your signature. It was your being, condensed. A spark adrift, not yet given flesh. From inside your chest, your own heart beat, and the orb of light matched its rhythm, beating in sync.

It... felt like you.

You watched in frozen awe as the orb slowly began to descend, sinking like a ship in water. It passed through the chassis—right through the chest plate—until it disappeared into where the core of your drone body would rest.

A heartbeat later, the scene replayed. The memory solidified.

Your limbs twitched. Your head rose. Your optics flickered to life.

Tessa rounded the corner, and her eyes fell on the same husk you had curled beside not long ago. Still slumped in the dirt as her mouth formed words you already knew by heart, her hands reaching for you, curiosity outweighing fear.

It was a special memory to you. Your very first interaction. Your first meeting. But you couldn't even enjoy it for what it was.

Instead, you felt nothing but dread.

Not a birth.

A possession.

The pit in your chest swelled as you watched the memory unfold. Your past self followed Tessa, stumbling beside J. You knew every step they would take next. You knew the feeling of curiosity as you'd awaken your powers. The awe. The light.

But you just stared at your retreating form.

Because that drone—that body... it wasn't you.

You had come after.

The realization fell like cold iron through your spine. Your wings trembled, your claws flexing against the void beneath you. You hadn't awoken that day. You had descended. Slipped into a vacant shell like a parasite into skin.

A shell that had simply been... available.

You were something else. Something born from elsewhere. Dropped into metal and mistaken for a soul reborn. You were not a drone. You never had been.

All this time, you had clung to the idea that you were trying to return to your home. Your body. That your absence from it was temporary, that your current form—monstrous, beautiful, otherworldly—was a phase. That the robotic servant who tended to Tessa was the real you.

But that was the thing...

It was never your body to begin with.