Kawaks -

"Kaelen of the Kawaks." The voice slithered from behind a pillar of basalt. Commander Vex of the Yarrow Dominion stepped into the amber light, his polished black armor reflecting the void. He held no weapon. He didn't need one. "You've been difficult to find. The last one. Do you know what your shards are worth?"

The curse was simple: a Kawaks could not feel fear. Not the healthy kind, the one that kept other species alive. When a Kawaks experienced true terror—the primal, gut-wrench kind—their body did not tremble. It resonated. Their bones turned to crystal, their blood to harmonic dust, and they became a living tuning fork that screamed a single, perfect note until they exploded into a thousand singing shards.

Kaelen raised the Tol-Sen to his lips. The tuning fork was broken—it could not produce a true note. But a Kawaks did not need a perfect instrument. A Kawaks was the instrument. kawaks

"Why are you telling me this?" Kaelen asked, his voice flat.

Or—

The Yarrow Dominion had learned this the hard way. For centuries, they had hunted the Kawaks to harvest their death-screams, using the resonant shards to power their war-galleons. A single Kawaks explosion could level a city block. A dozen could sink a dreadnought.

Vex smiled. It was a thin, hungry expression. "Your people were fascinating. You couldn't feel fear, so we had to invent it for you. Did you know we used to capture your children? Not to hurt them. Just to tell them stories. Stories of what we would do to their parents. Slow stories. Detailed stories." He tilted his head. "The fear would bloom. And then… ping ." "Kaelen of the Kawaks

Kaelen didn't turn. "More than my life. Less than my silence."