Punishing: Gray Raven: Remnants of an Era, Beginning with Witnessing Gray Raven

[No transmigration] [No System] [No CP? Impossible] [Absolutely authoritative timeline] [Strictly follows Punishing: Gray Raven's writing style] [Get your tissues ready] She is the last survivor of the Golden Age. When she was five, her mother boarded a ship and set off for the stars, never looking back. At seventeen, her father died in the red fog of the Punishing Virus, and she dug his grave with her own hands. That same year, she was taken in by the Kowloong Search and Rescue Team. Not rescued. Taken. Because she was born with a barrier in her Mindscape, she became the system's "Classified Observation Subject," designation SY-001. For twenty-four years, she roamed the surface alone, sheltering refugees and clearing out mutations, pledging allegiance to no faction. Curved blades encircled her upper arms, lying in wait like a mantis. In the minds of most Commandants, she came from the textbook modeled after her, just like every cadet at the Forsak Academy who had read it. In 2187, she was forced to return. In the viewing gallery, her mother, whom she had not seen for thirty-seven years, regarded her coldly. "You're still so stubborn and unreasonable." She said nothing, staring blankly out the porthole at the stars: the same stretch of sky beneath which she had watched her mother leave when she was five. Then a young man walked over. Green, gentle, and newly graduated from the Forsak Academy, he was a rookie Commandant. He recognized her, not as a specimen or a dangerous criminal, but as the "senior" who filled an entire textbook. "I'm forming my squad today. Could you come and witness it? Honestly, I'm a little nervous." She was a remnant of the old age. He was the spark of a new one. Starting with Gray Raven's witness, this time, she would no longer be alone.