The whisper of the air that no longer weighs
Edenfall Alpha began to change.
Not through destruction. Not through sabotage. But through subtle abandonment.
There were streets that dawned nameless. Squares where benches disappeared without a sound.
Murals that peeled away their own paint.
The city didn't suffer.
It didn't collapse.
It was forgotten.
Riva diagnosed it as a phenomenon of "Gradual Symbolic Disconnection."
It wasn't an illness. It was a voluntary withdrawal from meaning.
And that absence… felt heavier than any previous threat.
The Birth of the Necessary Void
The Vahar Circle debated day and night.
Sael proposed a new term:
"This isn't chaos.
It's reverse architecture. The Necessary Void is being built ."
Naeya defined the concept:
An environment where every structure has the purpose of not being indispensable . A narrative that doesn't need a reader. An emotion that does not need a body.
Velos reacted with chills.
"This is the ultimate evolution of the Manifesto of Pure Form.
It no longer wants to suppress us. It wants to become so useless… that we can't fight it."
III. First Encounter: The Broken Bridge
On the eastern border, the team found a perfectly good bridge… but with no support points.
It floated. But it wasn't held up by anything tangible.
Velos crossed first.
Each step erased part of his clothes, his name, his scent. But he kept going.
When he reached the other side, he only said:
"There was nothing there.
And that… was enough."
Juno was next.
But she turned back before she was halfway across. "I don't want to know the place I'm not expected to return to."
The Silent Choir – Echoes of Non-Formal Resistance
Despite Vahar's advance, small groups began to emerge, resisting unexpectedly. They didn't fight.
They didn't proclaim. They simply continued to speak.
A boy who told made-up stories. An old woman who wove names no one used anymore. An architect who designed rooms that led nowhere but to themselves.
They were called The Silent Choir.
And each one, unknowingly, generated a "Node of Inexplicable Value."
Juno traveled to find them.
And when she did, she simply said, "They're not saving us…but they're saving what makes us want to be saved."
The figure who learned to listen
That night, in the Reverse Garden, Sael felt the air breathe differently. And the faceless figure reappeared.
But not as a shadow. But as a sound. A melody without rhythm, without harmony, without intention.
And yet…
it was music.
Sael didn't speak.
Neither did the figure. They shared only 42 seconds of unexplained presence.
At the end, Sael wrote:
"He doesn't need a face.
Because he no longer needs to ask who he is. He only hears… what we never said."
The controlled defragmentation experiment
Riva proposed a radical act:
to create a space within Edenfall where emotional disconnection could be experienced without social consequences.
He called it Vaharica Room.
A white room. No sound. No history.
Volunteers came and went. Some said they'd seen their parents. Others, the moment they stopped being themselves. Some… didn't say anything. They just hugged someone on their way out.
Sael walked in and cried for the first time, not knowing if it was pain. "Maybe… I just found myself at a point where I no longer needed reasons to exist."
VII. The Symbolic Summit – The New Emotional Manifesto
The Edenfall Council, the Silent Choir, the survivors of Verkal, and the Vahar Circle researchers gathered to discuss an unthinkable idea:
Create a counterproposal to the Pure Form Manifesto ,
but one that is not opposed, but complementary.
Not a shout. Not a song. Just a collective whisper:
"It's okay not to understand." "It's okay to be meaningless." "It's okay to need without having any way to explain why."
The new text was titled: The Useless Compass of Desire. It was inscribed on the city's central wall in transparent ink.
It could only be read if someone doubted themselves while looking at it.
VIII. Partial Epilogue – What Remains
That night, Sael returned to his room. On his desk was the drawing he'd made weeks earlier. The faceless face.
But now… the painting had eyes. And those eyes didn't look at anyone.
They simply existed.
Sael smiled.
And he wrote underneath:
"This isn't the end.
This is the point where I start to stop looking for him."
END OF CHAPTER 168