Varosk, the city that now doubts itself
After the collapse of the Central Archives and the fall of the Official Memory Decree, Varosk awoke without direction.
Public screens alternated between contradictory messages. Citizens walked the streets with open books, as if checking whether they still believed what they were reading.
The courtrooms were filled, not with protests, but with questions. " What part of what I know was put inside me? " " Who wrote my memories?"
In schools, teachers asked for silence. Not because they didn't know what to say... but because they no longer trusted what they were teaching.
And in the center of the city, a phrase was painted on the marble:
"History isn't the truth. It's the version that no one questioned in time."
Akihiko and the new dilemma
Gathered in an abandoned crypt beneath Varosk, Akihiko, Riva, Juno, and Marek analyzed the results of the operation.
Serah V. had been arrested. The files had been released. But something else had happened: the population was no longer anchored.
—"Awakening a people is not the same as liberating them," Riva said.
—"Now they know they were lied to. But they don't know how to rebuild themselves."
Akihiko, more silent than ever, held up a crumpled piece of paper. It was Ysin's note:
"I didn't fail. I sowed."
And on the back, the coordinates of an unnamed island.
—"Time to see what he planted."
III. The Nameless Island
800 kilometers south of Varosk, surrounded by permanent fog and erased from all maps, lay a small, rocky island.
Ancient satellites had marked it as disputed territory, but no one could remember who.
Akihiko and Juno arrived on a smuggling boat. There was no dock. There were no signs. Just a structure: a dark stone tower, its architecture impossible.
The door had a symbol engraved on it:
An eye split by a diagonal line.
Juno spoke first: "It is the seal of those who cannot lie.
An extinct order."
Akihiko pushed open the door.
Inside, only silence… and carved stone.
The monoliths of confession
Inside the tower, they found six monoliths arranged in a circle.
Each contained hand-carved phrases .
Phrases that weren't instructions. They were confessions.
"I betrayed my blood for a truth that no one asked for." "The people want justice… until they discover they don't understand it." "The Shadow doesn't impose itself. It lets itself in when fear disguises itself as order." "I lied at the final judgment. And they believed me." "I recorded as history what was only a secret order." "I don't know what part of me is real anymore."
Akihiko touched the sixth monolith. A mechanism activated. A descending door revealed a corridor.
Juno tensed her weapon. "Is this a trap?"
—"It's a warning.
Ysin wants us to go in. Because what we find… can break us more than any lie. "
The synthetic memory laboratory
At the end of the corridor, they found an underground chamber, sealed with cold armor.
Inside: cryogenic tubes. Flashing screens. And an entire wall covered in cables forming an artificial neural network.
In the center, a digital journal is lit.
Signed by: Dr. Elian Saal – Division Y-13.
Akihiko read in a low voice:
"We managed to synthesize artificial memories without the need for living subjects.
Memories designed from scratch, stored in capsules, mass implantable.
The Ebony Shadow doesn't want to control what people feel. He wants to create entire generations that never existed... but remember living .
Juno stepped back. "They're fabricating lives.
Entire identities, programmed. This isn't control. It's… replacement. "
Akihiko didn't respond. He just approached one of the capsules.
Inside, a woman was sleeping. Her face… looked familiar.
The Forbidden Archive: Ebony Genesis
Behind the lab, they found a sealed vault with biometric codes. Riva unlocked them remotely from Varosk.
Inside, a central server.
A single active folder:
"Project: Ebony Genesis"
They opened it. Hundreds of profiles.
Names, biographies, programmed emotions, fake family networks.
Akihiko found one with his last name.
—"This can't be…"
He was a son. A son she never had.
But the file showed photos. Letters. Memories created.
A false bond… so perfect it hurt.
VII. Akihiko's reaction
Juno wanted to erase the data.
Akihiko wouldn't allow it.
—"If this exists, destroying it isn't enough.
We have to show it to the world."
They copied all the information. They activated the evacuation protocol. The tower was beginning to collapse.
As they fled down the coast, Akihiko held the file to his chest.
—"Ysin didn't sow oblivion.
He sowed false identities.
An alternate humanity… that could replace us. "
VIII. Someone wakes up
Days later, in a hidden compound in the northern region, a capsule activated. The woman Akihiko saw in the tower… awoke.
His first sigh was soft. He looked at his hands. He stood up slowly.
And with a calm voice, he said:
—"Where… is my son?"
END OF CHAPTER 147