The scars of the earth
Two days after the encounter with the Iron Age,
the areas where the fighting took place began to change their structural composition.
Not by energy.
Not by symbols. But by muscle memory of the terrain.
The earth creaked, as if it wanted to replicate the movements it had experienced.
Riva called the phenomenon Kinesomorphic Retroactivity :
"When the physical impact doesn't dissolve… it becomes a mark that wants to continue."
Akihiko ordered to preserve those spaces,
and renamed them:
The Rings of Persistence.
The Return of Ritual Combat – Challenges of the Present Body
The Ironclads proposed a new form of tension resolution: Incomplete Contact Duel .
An ancestral practice reconfigured:
Two opponents. No history. Only five strokes each.
The winner isn't the one who gives the most. Nor the one who shirks the most. The one who manages to project their will without breaking the other's wins.
Juno was the first to accept. She fought with Number Nine.
After the duel,
they both sat in front of the Fractal Pillar…and for the first time, it projected a shared reflection.
III. Naeya's Fracture – The Body That Couldn't Forget
During a session in the Vaharica Room,
Naeya suffered an internal spasm. Not physical. Not emotional.
A repressed bodily movement emerged. One I didn't remember experiencing.
It was a defensive gesture. A block.
A protective reflex… against something he shouldn't have touched.
Velos helped her contain herself.
And together they reconstructed her forgotten memory: a childhood training with techniques that had been erased so she wouldn't remember what she could do.
Naeya looked at his own hands and said:
"My body still knows things I didn't remember losing."
And so his technique was born: Return Pulse –
a maneuver that reacts to another's movement without emotion or intention.
Sael and the Impact Testimony
Following the combat logs,
Sael began building a new archive within the Reverse Garden:
The Impact Testimony.
It wasn't about violence. Or techniques. Or strategy.
It was about what the body decides to save when the mind wants to forget.
Scars that remembered no cause. Pains that arose without context. Brands that told a silent story.
When he finished the first volume,
he placed it next to the movement notebooks. And he wrote:
"Memory isn't here.
Here is what couldn't be left."
Akihiko and the Second Fracture
Akihiko summoned the Iron One. He asked for a repeat match…
but this time, no holds barred.
Not out of a desire for violence. But because he felt his body had something it hadn't yet said.
The fight lasted thirty-three minutes. There was blood. There was fracture. There was respect.
And when he fell, Akihiko smiled.
—"My body…
still remembers how to get up."
The Ironclad left a symbol on his palm: an incomplete circle with pressure marks. It wasn't an emblem. It was an acknowledgment: "He spoke."
The Resurgence of a Forgotten Art – Choreography of the Unpredictable
Lirea proposed a new form of training: Undirected Choreographic Combat .
An art that fused spontaneous movement with free response. Each combat was an unscripted dance. A response of the body to another body…
with no intention of dominating, only of following.
It soon went viral. Kids, adults, and seniors—
everyone started practicing it.
And so a new language emerged: Kinetic Grammar.
Living body language. Mutant. Not taught.
Only contagious.
VII. Epilogue – Where hands do not return empty
In the Reverse Garden,
Sael walked silently. Juno approached him.
—"Why are you alone?" —"I'm not."
He opened his palm. There,
the symbol of the Ironborn…had appeared by itself.
Not by combat. Not by choice.
Just because her body had also started talking… without asking permission.
END OF CHAPTER 172