If Prime was silence, then Stream was motion.
Wherever he went, there was noise: the crash of water, the scrape of armor, the voice of someone who had not forgotten how to live.
His side of hell has burned through his soul, and yet he keeps flowing.
Stream was not born into peace. None of the Awakened were. But unlike others, he had learned to bend chaos into a weapon.
His armor told his story before his voice ever did. Dark, slick plating, lined with curved spikes that arced backward along his shoulders, arms, and legs. When he moved, the spikes caught light like fins cutting through water. Survivors called it strange, even frightening — until they saw what it meant in battle.
---
The ruins where Stream made his stand were not like the dusty plains Prime had crossed. These ruins were drowned. A once-proud fortress now sat half-submerged in black water, its towers jutting upward like broken teeth. The corruption lurked beneath the surface, their pale eyes glimmering faintly from below.
Stream waded through the water as though it were air. His every step rippled outward, each movement controlled, deliberate. He was patient. Waiting. Listening.
The first creature lunged from the depths — a mass of teeth and limbs. Stream pivoted, letting the water carry him aside, his spikes dragging across the beast as it passed. The water swirled crimson before its corpse even hit the surface.
Another came, then another. Stream's body moved with impossible fluidity, sliding between attacks, spinning, twisting, his spikes carving open everything that drew near. He fought not in the water — he fought as the water. Fast. Relentless. Inevitable.
By the time silence returned, the black water rippled with the corpses of his enemies.
---
The survivors who had hidden within the fortress whispered among themselves. Unlike Prime, Stream did not ignore them. He walked into their midst, spikes glinting, and with a small smirk beneath his mask, he said,
"You're safe now. Stay above the waterline."
It was not much. But in a world where most warriors spoke only of survival, his words carried something rare: assurance.
He helped them climb to higher ground, patched their wounds with what little supplies he carried, and then vanished into the mist.
He did not linger, but unlike Prime, he left behind more than a memory. He left behind a voice, an impression of someone who cared enough to be heard.
---
Stream and Prime did not meet that day. Not yet. But the ocean currents and the rifts of space were drawing closer, spiraling toward one inevitable collision.
For the world was broken, yes — but fate was not. And the Awakened were not meant to walk alone forever.
Destiny had other plans written for them, encarved in reality.
---