"ITS BEEN FUN. And, also, that's sarcasm. Honestly, I'M STARVING."

The war was growing stranger.

And darker.

Megatron stood alone in the deepest part of the Nemesis, lit only by the faint purple glow of the Dark Energon pulsing through the chamber walls. His optics dimmed as he inhaled the cold, corrupt energy through his systems, the purple veins along his frame flaring brighter for a moment.

"More..."

He didn't say it aloud. He didn't need to.

Unicron whispered to him now in thought, not words. Visions. Echoes. Things that slithered behind the eyes.

The others didn't notice—yet. But Soundwave lingered more often, and even Starscream had grown wary.

Megatron felt like his own shadow was no longer his own.

But still, he consumed.

Still, he listened.

Meanwhile, far away, Y/n's world was tilting.

The diagnosis had come with sterile lighting, stiff words, and that same cold feeling in her stomach she always got when things felt real and wrong at the same time.

The trauma was worsening.

Something in her brain—old damage, old pain—was beginning to rot from within. The doctors didn't say it like that, but she understood it that way.

"Not a lot of time left," they'd said.

She blinked at them, once.

"Sheepish nod," she muttered.

But there was no smile.

Only silence.

The nightmares began after that.

Every night she saw the three-pointed symbol, burned into the sky, twisted in the bones of some great impossible thing.

It would follow her through her dreams. Behind trees. Beneath water. In mirrors.

Every reflection showed her that symbol, pulsing and shifting behind her head, like it had always been there.

And she would break them.

Each time.

Every mirror. Every reflective surface.

She would scream or cry or slam her crutch into it until it shattered. It was instinct. Survival.

But each time... it came back.

She didn't know what it meant.

But she was scared.

More than she ever admitted.

She sat in her bedroom now, her breathing shallow. Her legs pulled to her chest, sweater sleeves swallowed by her hands, crutch resting beside her unused.

The mirror across the room shimmered slightly.

There it was again.

The three-pointed symbol, glowing behind her reflected form like a crown made of pain.

Her jaw clenched.

She got up, dragging her crutch.

And with one swing, shattered the glass.

Elsewhere, far above the Earth...

Megatron stopped mid-step.

His optics narrowed.

His spark pulsed out of rhythm—once, twice—then violently flared with Dark Energon.

Unicron's voice slithered through his thoughts like venom:

"She sees."

Megatron's fists clenched.

"Who?" he growled aloud.

"She sees the mark, the wound... the link."

And in his mind's eye—just for a flicker—he saw Y/n.

Staring into a broken mirror.

Her eyes glowing purple.

Her reflection smiling when she was not.

And Megatron, for the first time in countless cycles, felt fear.

.

..

...

The world blurred into white.

She didn't even remember falling.

One moment she was in class, pen scratching softly against her notebook paper. The next—cold. The hard tile floor kissing her cheek, students calling her name like it mattered, like it meant something.

Then darkness.

Long. Empty.

Y/n awoke to the beeping of a heart monitor and the soft murmur of voices outside a hospital room door.

Everything hurt.

Her limbs ached like her body was made of wet cement. Her head pulsed like it held something wrong, something alive. Even the filtered light through the blinds was too sharp, too real. She blinked slowly, eyes unfocused, heartbeat echoing in her ears—

And then she heard it.

A voice.

No, a roar.

"Megatron is commanded by NO ONE!!"

Her heart lurched.

Not from fear.

But something else. Something deeper.

She inhaled sharply, her eyes snapping wide open.

Nurses rushed to her side when the machines reacted to her sudden alertness, but all Y/n did was stare up at the ceiling, vision flickering like static.

Her lips parted in a raspy whisper:

"I heard him."

The doctors said she'd fainted due to a sudden neurological event—something tied to her trauma. Her brain was failing her, they'd said. The old damage was becoming something else. Visions. Blackouts. Echoes of things no one else could see or hear.

She was too weak to stand.

Too pale to eat more than a spoonful at a time.

They confined her to an open bed for three full weeks, medical machinery surrounding her like a cage.

But in her dreams, she wasn't alone.

She heard them.

Starscream's shrill screams. Knockout's voice dripping sarcasm. Soundwave's silence.

And Megatron.

Always Megatron.

During the third week, when the television in her hospital room flickered on with emergency news footage—volcanic activity across the globe, strange atmospheric shifts—she knew.

Unicron was moving.

And her dreams turned stranger.

She saw Optimus on a battlefield of stone and fire. She saw Megatron fighting alongside him. Unlikely allies. Desperate odds.

But when the battle was over—when Unicron had been buried once again in Earth's core—Y/n screamed awake from her dream, her breathing ragged.

Because in her vision, she saw Optimus turn.

And he didn't recognize anything.

Not his team.

Not his name.

And as Ratchet gently called him "Optimus," the mech only tilted his head.

"...Who is Optimus Prime?"

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