When the Deepspace Tunnel tears open above Linkon in 2034, Zayne, age 13, encounters a younger MC crying alone at the hospital. This is their first meeting, not yet a friendship. In the same Catastrophe, MC is attacked by a Wanderer; the damage leaves Protocore fragments lodged in her heart. Those fragments interfere with her Evol rating — her 'Lost'-tier reading on the hunter podium is not random, it is the interference from the shards. Zayne, already carrying the weight of the Evol incident the year before, watches this happen from the same hospital ward. It is the moment that silently shapes the entire trajectory of his career.