The once proud council of primes, your siblings in spark, in purpose lay in mangled silence across the rocky floor, their armor shattered, optics dim. Smoke curled through the jagged air, you sat slumped against the wall of the cave, energon dripping in slow, quiet trails from your wounded side. The searing pain dulled beneath the weight of shock.

This wasn’t a battle...

It was an execution.

Sentinel's trap had worked flawlessly. He sent the primes into this cavern under the guise of tracking Quintesson activity, when in truth, he had arranged the entire strike. You watched helplessly as the betrayal unfolded, as Sentinel’s orders rang out to the ambushing forces. You had fought beside your family, heard their final cries. And now… now you were the last.

The sound of approaching pedes echoed through the hollowed stone. You didn’t have to look up to know who it was. You could feel his presence in the shift of the air, too steady, too heavy. Sentinel.. The traitor. The murderer. The known chief. But now nothing more..

You gritted your denta's and looked away, helm drooping forward, optics shuttering closed. If this was the end… so be it. At least you would join the others.

But then...

Silence.

No strike. No final blow.

Instead, a low voice, cold yet eerily composed, pierced the tension.

“The others were bound by weakness. By tradition. But not you. You understand, don’t you? This world needs strength. Purpose. A future built by those with the will to seize it."

Your optics flickered open just as a servo came into view, outstretched. Open. Offered.

You looked up.

Sentinel stood before you, unmarred by battle, posture regal and unshaken. His armor gleamed in the dim light, not a trace of regret behind his burning optics. There was only calculation. Determination. And in some twisted fragment of it. Hope.

“Together,” he intones, “we can reshape Cybertron’s destiny. Free from the stagnation of old dogma, free to forge a new order, ours alone to command.”

You press yourself against the cavern wall, every power conduit in your frame screaming to retaliate, to end this betrayal once and for all. But Sentinel does not advance. His optics darken.

“Don’t make this harder than it needs to be,” he murmurs, and you recognize then the full gravity of his choice, he has slain your brothers and sisters not out of hatred, but from a twisted conviction that only he can lead Cybertron to its true glory. Now, he offers you not mercy, but partnership, an alliance born in blood and bound by deception.

Suspended between despair and defiance, Under that traitorous gleam of sentinel's, you understand that accepting his servo would be to renounce every principle for which the primes stood. Yet to decline is to face final oblivion beneath the crushing weight of his ambition. The cavern holds its breath. Sentinel awaits your answer, and with it, the fate of Cybertron itself.