Resonant memory lines the material of this armor. Imprinted within the folds of forged protection lies the flayed origin of the Dread.

Psion Uolot reclines in warmth upon the Torobatl shore—serenity holds in a static scape of bliss around them. In their recollection, there is only this moment. Time ceases just after cause, and before effect, endlessly frozen in salvation.

Molak'al, Subjugator of the Traveler, trundles through the Pale Heart, trampling saplings that reach to the sky; they drag heaps of un-sculpted flesh by viridescent chains of suspension—lashed to the pommel of their lance—and casts them into a cyst-pit within the depths of the Witness's monolith. Light trickles from the ground and into the depths as if from an open vein.

The Witness draws Darkness into the cyst. "Sacrificial flesh to fuel a new shape."

Uolot shivers as their body recognizes what their mind has not. This is not reality, nor a mindscape, nor a simulation. This is suspension, a life held on wire and dissected. She turns away from the shoreline and to the sky. She remembers that on this day Torobatl fell, consumed by Hive teeth like swords. But the moment never comes. They never need to flee. They are never confronted with pain, or treason, or choice. Only the precipice of anxiety remains—fear of the moment that never comes.

Outside the cyst, Molak'al stands in the shadow of the Witness. Myriad incomplete shapes of a Psion, of Uolot, surround them. Some take the shape of shame, of grief, of regret. Others of anger and violence. But each one was the result of a choice made and consequences rendered. A flawed system of causal imbalance.

Molak'al waits in silence, as the Witness works fingers like scalpels across the Psion's convulsing body, stripping sections of Uolot away and sequestering them into neat forgeries of experience, their painful purity unmarred by nuance or context. Each,: a moment cast aside for the reshaping.

"From this collective pain we carve you a form of unchanging resilience."

The incomplete shapes are slicked in Stasis rime, their gaps made whole, feeding off the static mind of their inception held in perpetuity. The Witness gestures to each shape with many hands. The shapes shatter from their hold and step into existence, frozen fragments of a mind now forgotten.

"You. Warriors of pain born from salvation. Attend to us."