The echo before awakening
Since Akihiko's dream, something had changed. The open spiral symbol on Edenfall Alpha began to change on its own.
New lines appeared throughout the night, as if someone had rewritten the message without touching it.
Riva scanned it.
It wasn't paint. Nor was it vibration or a known technique. It was deferred memory.
Each new stroke coincided with a decision Akihiko hadn't yet made.
And that terrified him.
—"It's not that they read us.
They write to us… from what we haven't yet done."
The formation of the Vahar Circle
Following the appearance of the word "Vahar" , the Council decided to form a symbolic research group composed of the only individuals who had reacted unusually to the term:
Sael (physical reaction). Lirea (lateral vision without visual stimulus). Veils (interfered memories). Naeya (altered pulse).
The team was called the Vahar Circle . Their mission: to trace the origin of the word, its purpose, and the figure associated with the concept.
Sael was the first to break the silence: "Vahar… is not a being. It's a direction.
A way to reach something that doesn't exist… unless someone needs it."
III. The Kirel Zone fissure
The group traveled to the Kirel Zone , an ancient affective settlement that collapsed in the pre-Akasha era. There they found a collapsed temple covered in residual thought plates.
When activated, they projected incomplete fragments:
A mother searching for a child who was never born. A soldier blaming himself for a war that no one remembered. A child… without a face, asking:
"Can I have a name if I don't have a story?"
Velos shuddered. "That's me.
It was me. But I don't remember experiencing it."
And in the center of the room appeared a broken engraving: "Here wept the first who understood that silence also demands a response."
The Storm of Echoes Vahar
As the Vahar Circle descended into the subterranean levels of the temple, they were caught in an emotional atmospheric anomaly known as the Vahar Echostorm .
It is a living narrative manifestation,
capable of converting unexpressed ideas into temporary realities.
Each member of the group was forced to face their own scenario:
Naeya relived the childhood he forgot. Velos heard voices that promised him he would be someone if he gave up his memories. Lirea saw her face in the hooded figure. Sael … saw himself from the outside.
Like a broken child trying to understand what he felt without ever having had a childhood.
When they left, Sael left a phrase written in blood on the wall:
"Vahar is the way the unnameable touches the one who still wants to mean something."
The incomplete awakening of the Andante
In Edenfall, Riva detected the Andante 's presence within a sensory processing tunnel. But this time… it wasn't moving like before.
He paused. He observed. He left traces. And in front of a black screen, he wrote with particles of shadow:
"I don't come to dominate.
I come to dissolve the need for anything to have meaning."
Akihiko descended alone. And seeing him, he felt like he was standing before the culmination of every doubt he had ever resolved.
—"What do you want?" he asked.
And the Andante replied: "Nothing.
And that is enough for me."
The gesture without explanation – Sael and the non-word
Back in Edenfall, Sael locked himself away for three days. When he emerged, he found himself with a sphere carved with a symbol that wasn't language,
art, or mathematics.
He handed it to Riva.
"I can't explain it. I just want… it not to disappear."
As he touched her, Riva felt something she couldn't verbalize. And for the first time in her life, she cried without knowing why.
The sphere was sealed and placed in the center of the Reverse Garden. Nameless. Functionless. Just existence.
VII. The Vahar Threshold – Partial Revelation
At the end of the chapter, the Vahar Circle found a staging point in the Kirel Zone. A door with no frame, no lock, no surface.
It was simply a space where the air curved.
Velos approached,
and the door whispered to him:
"If you cross, you won't come back with more sense.
You'll come back with less need for it."
Sael stopped him. "We're not ready yet.
First… we must accept that some questions are worth more when they resist answers."
The chapter closed with that image: the Vahar Circle at the threshold. Without crossing. Without running away. Just looking.
END OF CHAPTER 167