The soundless fracture
Edenfall awoke with a crack in one of its main walls.
Not from an attack. Not from deterioration. But from accumulated emotional pressure without physical expression.
Riva named it Emotobody Overload Crack .
It was the first structural damage caused by the body…
being unable to process what it felt.
The material didn't fail.
What failed was the space between the intention and the gesture.
Sael touched her. He felt it wasn't a fracture.
It was a cry that couldn't be released.
The Return of the Number Four
One of the Ironclads, number Four, asked to speak. Not with words.
But with fists.
—"I've felt something I don't understand.
And I can't resolve it with silence."
Akihiko accepted the challenge. The two fought in Ring Four,
where the FCFA had previously trained.
The fight was different this time:
Less technique. More momentum. Erratic blows, but loaded with something that was trying to get out.
When he finished, Four fell to his knees. And he cried. Not because of physical pain. But because his body had finally managed to say what it couldn't think.
"I was angry…
but not at you. At what I was taught not to feel."
III. The archive of non-vocal screams
Juno and Lirea began to record something new: voiceless screams, emitted during fights or moments of physical tension.
They were picked up by subcutaneous sensors. They weren't sounds.
They were physical expulsions of emotion.
They registered them in a database: Archive of Non-Vocal Screams (AGNOVO) .
Each entry had:
The type of contraction. The breathing pattern. The unconscious emotional purpose.
Veils he called them:
"Memories in internal volume."
Partial Attack – The Cutting Void
A new type of Antivocal appeared. Slimmer.
More flexible. It wielded an impossible weapon: A formless staff that severed intentions.
It didn't hurt the body.
But when it touched you... you forgot why you had wanted to attack.
Riva called it Vacuum Shear.
And for the first time, Marek stepped back without taking any damage.
Naeya faced him. And used his Return Pulse technique . But he failed.
Until he let himself be hit. And as he fell, he used his knee as a body memory point: He remembered why he was there. His body reconstructed the intention through the pain.
With a single blow to the center of the staff…
he broke it. And the Cutting Void shattered into waves that found no echo.
Sael and the Sphere of Last Contact
After the battle, Sael collected fragments of the broken weapon. He didn't study them. He wrapped them in his hands and simply held them for three days.
On the fourth day, his fingers stopped trembling. A spherical shape remained in his palms: a vibrating mass that only responded to touch…
if it came from someone who had fought with purpose.
He called it the Sphere of Last Contact. And as he placed it in the Reverse Garden, he uttered a phrase:
"Don't strike out of fear.
Strike when you can no longer contain what you are."
The ceremony of the eleven reflections
The Edenfall leaders, along with the Ironclads, organized a ceremony: Eleven fighters.
Eleven mirrors. Each combatant was to stand before their reflection…and strike without breaking.
The goal wasn't to fracture. It was to see how much pain could be contained without disappearing.
Riva didn't participate.
He watched. And at the end, he wrote:
"Not everyone should fight.
But everyone should know what part of themselves… still wants to respond with their hands."
VII. Epilogue – The tact that teaches not to repeat
That night, the Rings of Persistence stopped vibrating.
Not because they had forgotten.
But because they no longer needed to repeat it.
Edenfall's body had also learned. And physical language…
was no longer reaction.
It was conscious memory.
END OF CHAPTER 175