I. The first fractures in the white net
Across the continent, in cities that had embraced the flowering, anomalous patterns began to be recorded. The normally synchronized white roots showed sporadic interference : slight tremors, halted pulses, blooms that didn't reach their full potential.
In Shinkairo, white leaves sprouted with gray flecks. In Kagebara, some spiritual resonance tattoos changed shape overnight. In Nhalem, certain memories returned… distorted.
The channelers called it an emotional pulse fracture. But Akihiko knew it wasn't that.
It was the beginning of a mutation.
II. Kazun and the gray root
Since awakening from his contact with the Mirror of Forgetfulness, Kazun hadn't been the same. He couldn't remember some names. Sometimes he confused dreams with reality. But something new had been born within him: a spiraling, ash-gray root that vibrated not with emotion or memory, but with integrated absence.
"I don't feel like I used to," she confessed to Akihiko. "But I know it's me."
Akihiko didn't correct him. Because he understood.
The blossoming now had a new node: one that didn't need certainty to grow. One that accepted loss as part of the flower.
And that root… began to resonate with others.
III. The Amorel Case
In the floating city of Amorel, famous for its cult of emotional transparency, gray roots began to flourish without having been sown.
The spiritual leader of the place, Maestra Vëll, ordered a vibrational study. What they discovered brought her to her knees: the gray roots vibrated with unresolved guilt, unredeemed decisions, and denied memories.
One of the channelers, upon touching one of those roots, whispered:
—"This flower… reminds me of what I never dared to regret."
And he burst into tears.
The gray roots didn't replace the white ones. They wove themselves into them.
IV. The origin of the black root
Meanwhile, in the Tower of Lucid Shadows, Serak watched his experiment. The black root growing from his fist was no longer an extension of judgment. It was pure denial . He didn't deny by mistake. He denied by will.
Every time something new blossomed, Serak responded with a reverse vibration. He didn't scream. He didn't destroy. He simply turned the blossoming into a doubt with no return.
—"They flourish with memory. I flourish with the certainty that forgetting was right."
The black root didn't want to dominate. It wanted to invalidate .
V. The meeting in the ash fields
Akihiko, Kazun, and Lior traveled to a place where roots were said to no longer sprout: the Ash Fields , ancient war zones where neither judgment nor blossoming had managed to take root.
There, they found a gray sprout. Just one. Surrounded by soulless earth.
Akihiko placed his hand on it. And the root reacted to the silence.
Kazun knelt down and said:
—"No one cried here. No one blossomed here. Perhaps that's why… this root grew alone."
And then something impossible happened: the white, grey and black roots vibrated at the same time.
Not in harmony.
In dissonance… but coexisting.
VI. Sora's Omen
That night, Akihiko dreamed of Sora. She was no longer a child. Nor a spirit. She was part of the wind. Part of the echo.
His words were few:
"The flower that accepts its wound… doesn't heal. It transforms."
"And when the three bloom… the world will choose without guidance."
Akihiko woke up with a new scar on his chest: a spiral of white, gray and black lines.
It wasn't a brand.
It was the beginning of a trial without judges.
END OF CHAPTER 121