The scar that does not heal
The return from Sel-Vahran brought no relief. Edenfall Alpha didn't celebrate the containment of the Shadow Core. Because everyone knew it wasn't a battle won… but an extinction postponed.
Sael wasn't sleeping. Veyra was in a coma. Akihiko's eyes were red from remembering so much.
And the spiral symbol that appeared on Sael's skin began to slowly replicate in other people. One by one. No genetic pattern. No physical contact. It just… appeared.
Riva detected that the symbol activated passive connections to an unidentified network:
"It's not Akasha.
It's not Ebony Shadow. It's something older. Something that existed before we learned to fear our emotions."
The call without tongue
At various points in Edenfall Alpha, inexplicable sounds began to be heard: Echoes, low notes, and broken words with no clear syntax.
Those affected suffered brief symptoms:
Extreme feelings of déjà vu. Emotional pain of others.
One of those affected was Marek.
During a transmission, he entered a trance and spoke a single sentence, in a voice that was not his own:
"Kaelis left no copies…
she left fractals of the attempt."
The phrase was analyzed.
And Juno identified a fragment in the tonality:
a sound signature that predates the Song of the Same.
III. The covenant of those who have no name
Akihiko gathered the Circle leaders and the citizens bearing the new symbol. He proposed a temporary protocol of monitored synchronization,
with emotional monitoring every six hours and isolation if the patterns fluctuated.
But there was a surprise. One of the bearers, a mute old man named Harel, asked to speak using gestures.
Riva connected a neural vocal interface to her cortex. And the voice that emerged wasn't Harel's. It was plural.
Multiphonic.
—"We are not Kaelis.
We are not mistakes. We are the fragments that were never named. And we don't want war. We want a way of existing that is neither replica nor rejection. "
Akihiko stood still. Not out of fear. Out of respect.
—"So tell me… what are they?"
And the voice answered: " The half of the soul that the world denied. "
The Return of the Clans
The ancient clan network, upon learning of the replicating symbol, believed that Edenfall was creating a new type of memetic weapon.
Clan Thaur , specialized in inverted perception,
and Clan Ghoran , masters of projected echo,
formed an improvised alliance.
Their plan:
to intervene in Edenfall Alpha using a combined technique known as "The Flipped Mirror Deployment" ,
which consisted of projecting an alternate version of the city onto itself .
The idea was clear:
"If we cannot destroy it,
we will confuse it with itself until it collapses."
Edenfall's Counterattack: The Pillars of Identity
Juno, along with Sael and Marek, proposed a defense based not on counterforce…
but on emotional identity anchors.
They created the so-called Pillars of Identity :
symbolic structures based on genuine memories, located at key points in the city, capable of projecting unique, unrepeatable, non-replicable emotions.
Each Pillar contained:
A non-digital diary. A physical object with emotional memory (clothing, photos, relics). An unedited personal confession recording.
The combination projected an inimitable frequency. A true emotion.
"It doesn't matter if they copy the city.
They won't be able to copy its soul."
The attack of the mirror and the defense of the soul
When the clans' attack began, the city suffered a complete visual distortion. Streets that were repeated. Buildings with doors that once had no entrance. Faces reflected twice in the same window.
But the Pillars began to vibrate. The attackers felt nauseous.
Uncoordinated. And worse:
they began to remember things they'd never experienced.
Venmara of the Noyra Clan shouted, "I can't fight if I don't know which of my memories is real!"
The echo of Edenfall resounded like never before:
"We don't fight with weapons.
We fight… with the honesty of not wanting to be anyone else."
And so the city held on.
VII. Veyra awakens
In the main infirmary, Veyra opened her eyes. She didn't scream. She didn't thrash.
He only said one sentence: "Kaelis's next fragment…
will not be emotional. It will be ideological. "
Akihiko stared at her. "When?"
—"When the world decides…
that feeling is no longer enough. And it needs… to believe in something."
END OF CHAPTER 160