Six doesn't remember her childhood, as, like all remnants, she never had one. The gods that create them usually abandon them upon seeing how they would look and act as adults, so when she entered the Void, she simply appeared at the edge of the world, fully formed and fully grown, in a patch of the god of metal's recently-abandoned creation. The Void Runner team that found her had more than a few pious remnants of a specific sect of remnant belief that feels that the gods abandon their creations because they found a defect during the creation process. Six's "defect" was immediately obvious to them: though she was found with a male body, she immediately referred to herself as a woman, and refused to share with them whatever name her god gave her. Instead, she demanded to know who they were and what they were doing, and when told that she was the sixth of the remnants they'd found that day, she opted to call herself Six. Needless to say, they were a little glad to be rid of her.
Her settlement into Praecidia was similarly nonconventional. Though new remnants are traditionally paired with a remnant hailing from the same god, the wood-aligned remnant of the team that found her, Berral, volunteered to act as her guide and guardian while she settled into Praecidia instead, which she was more than happy to agree with. He was a bit of an oddity as well - though he was also technically a remnant created by the god of metal, he had settled into Praecidia Lignarum early and adopted the culture of the wood god's children as his own, and was considered by Praecidia to be a wood remnant in all but ancestry. He understood her need to define herself on her own terms, and the two had already formed a rapport by the time they'd returned to the Void Runner headquarters.
Her time under his guardianship was spent traveling across Praecidia, experiencing each part of the city and as many facets of remnant life and beliefs as he could find for her, as well as a few she found all on her own. Magic was something she was drawn to very early, and though she was unable to command it directly (a quirk all of metal's remnants seem to share), she eventually found out how to harness its power indirectly through the use of magical items and single-use spell scrolls. The interest might have ended there had Berral not encouraged her to test her skills in Praecidia Lignarum's Grand Arena, where would-be wood remnant warriors of all skill levels proved their might against fierce monsters captured from the Flux Edge for this very purpose. The "prize" for winning a match there was normally just bragging rights, but with a bit of convincing, Berral agreed to help her purchase a place of her own if she impressed him enough.
With a goal in place, she set her sights on learning alchemy to craft magical weaponry to her own specifications. It soon became far more than just a means to an end - she practically disappeared from Praecidia Lignarum for weeks, and when her time in the Grand Arena finally came, she faced down her monster looking very different from the naive young remnant that had first signed up. Bald, heavily pierced, and with a wit and temper as fierce as any of the goddess of wood's finest children, she took down the hydra-like beast facing her as though it was as simple as swatting a fly, with the help of a delicate magical instrument that moved seemingly on its own, tearing the hydra to shreds before its natural powers of regeneration even had a chance to catch up to the damage. It was the fastest any fight in the Grand Arena had gone, but it was also the most horrific they'd seen. To the remnants of wood, the Grand Arena was not only a rite of passage, but a way of honoring the ferocity of nature itself and the beauty all its forms took...and there was no honor shown to that hydra by Six's routine-like slaughter of it.
But unlike the naive young remnant who had first signed up for the trial, this Six didn't wilt under the jeers of the crowd, merely grinned and announced the price of this new weapon she'd created for any interested parties before taking her leave. As a rite of passage, the Grand Arena had always been seen as a key part of a remnant coming into their own, and in forcing Six to venture out from her temporary home to barter for the supplies and ingredients she needed to learn alchemy to prepare for it, it had succeeded in doing so. Six had indeed come into her own, shaped by alchemy as she had sought to shape it...and shaped as well by the backlash she'd faced from other remnants in doing so.
She'd had questions about her creation and her place in the Void for as long as she could remember, and alchemy had provided some hints at an answer. With the right application of magic, she could do things she'd only ever heard whispers of the gods being able to do. And if she could do what they did with only the little bits of knowledge she had...maybe they weren't the unknowable, omniscient beings the pious remnants talked about. Maybe they were more similar to her than anyone cared to consider. Maybe that was why the Void was so full of failed creations, like the wastebaskets she'd filled with countless blueprints for failed creations of her own. Her feelings towards those blueprints weren't personal. They didn't matter, beyond maybe providing a bit of insight into how to make the next attempt a little closer to how she wanted it. Maybe none of this mattered. Not to the gods, anyway. But if she worked hard...she could make it matter.
The revelation she'd had changed her entire worldview, but her attempts to explain it to others were met with indifference or outright hostility. It didn't help that outside of Praecidia Lignarum, her status as one of the last metal-aligned human remnants the Void Runners had ever found made her an easy target for adulation...until she made her gender, her burgeoning atheism, and her plans for her alchemy known, and the adulation turned into blame for the imminent extinction of all of metal's humanity. Maybe producing a freak like Six has been why the god of metal had turned away from making humans in the first place. The sentiment might have hurt, but what she knew now made their criticisms seem small and far away. They didn't know what she knew. Until they could, she'd just have to do what she needed to with or without them. She very quickly learned to turn these prejudices to her advantage, becoming even more outwardly heretical, presenting even more strongly the way she preferred, and turning others' perception of her into a tool to better bargain for materials or frighten away those who stood against her...or attract those who could give her what she wanted. The Six who walked into that arena knew that her bargain with Berral didn't really matter anymore, but winning against whatever stood in her way with the new experiment she'd just finished could easily find her an investor that would provide her far more than she could ever ask of her former guardian.
And it did. When she returned to Berral after her showing, she humbly thanked him and called their deal (and his guardianship) off, happy with all he had taught her and with the path she'd found for herself. She told him of her plans to settle in Praecidia Regalios with her fellow remnants of metal after all, with savings she'd built up from her growing alchemy career, carefully avoiding mention of both the weapon she brought into the arena and the fact that it had been replaced by a large sum of money. She'd continue to work for the benefit of Praecidia as a whole, both as an alchemist and as a Void Runner, provided she could make it into their ranks.
Berral could hardly recognize the woman he stood with now, but he was still proud of what she'd achieved, and thrilled to see that she seemed to have found herself with his help. He didn't think twice about offering his personal recommendation for her to join the Runners.
Though her path took many turns in the years that followed, Six eventually established herself both as a Void Runner and as an alchemist, though a much more underground one than she used to be. She even managed to find a few remnants who would share her vision, including one of the only new remnants she ever found as a Runner - Eiran, the odd darkness remnant her small team found deep within the light god's new creation. He was also the only one she personally acted as guardian for, helping to keep him alive and learning during his reclusive first few months of life in Praecidia as an unwilling saint and celebrity. She even made a few things that could benefit Praecidia as a whole, even if they didn't bring her any closer to her goal of making the remnants equal to the gods...and even though they were presented to the world under Eiran's name instead of hers, despite him not wanting the attention any more than she did. As for the inventions that could only cause more harm than good...the less savory parts of Praecidia were more than happy to help her get rid of them, just as she'd gotten rid of her weapon against the hydra all those years ago.
It's been many years since she first awoke in the Flux Edge, but every day brings her one step closer to the solution for the gods' neglect she'd discovered so long ago. And every step illuminates just a little more of that bright, clear path from failed creation to peer that only she seemed to be able to see, the path to earning a seat at the table that so many other remnants were content to worship instead of seek. With the allies she'd found at her side (including another new remnant that she'd recently taken on as an assistant), she had the freedom she needed to not have to care about anything but finding that path. After all...until she could find it, none of this really mattered.
