. The emotional fissure of shared spaces
Following the recent attacks, a distortion began to be noticed in the training spaces: when walking through the Persistence Rings, some bodies manifested involuntary microtremors.
They weren't illnesses. They weren't physiological reactions.
They were fragmented gestures, residues of other bodies that had trained there and had not concluded their physical intention .
Riva classified it as Interrupted Impulse Transfer (IIT) . He warned:
"We're not just teaching each other techniques.
We're inheriting unfinished reactions."
The reunion of Veils and Seven – Unnarrated Duel
Velos met up with Seven in front of the old Alpha training core.
They didn't greet each other. They didn't speak. They simply adopted opposite postures… and began to move.
It wasn't a fight. Nor was it a dance. It was a clash between two physical languages that refused to prevail .
Veils's every move seemed to apologize before arriving.
Seven's every gesture held memory… but no justification.
When they finished, they hugged each other without fully realizing the gesture. And they left, having won nothing... but having lost nothing.
III. The first contact of the Incomplete Letter
Sael found a little girl in front of the Incomplete Letter.
She couldn't read. But when she touched the sheet of paper, she began to cry for no apparent reason.
Her hands trembled silently.
Every time she touched an unwritten word, her body seemed to comprehend something her mind couldn't yet express.
The girl's mother asked what had happened. Sael replied:
"It's the first time someone's body has responded…
without having read anything."
From that day on, the Unfinished Letter was protected by a circle of active silence. Not out of censorship, but out of respect.
The Appearance of the Mirror Without Image
Riva received reports of an object on the fringes of the Reverse Garden: a shapeless sheet of metal.
She didn't reflect anything.
But anyone who looked at her felt her posture shift slightly.
Juno was the first to stand before him for hours.
Every so often, she would step back, forward, or tilt her torso without realizing it.
—"I don't see myself…
but I feel how my body wants to show itself."
Riva named it Mirror Without Image .
And he determined that its effect wasn't mental. It was muscular.
A postural reflex that responded to the hidden desire to be seen… without the need for validation.
Intervention of Simultaneous Antivowels
A new subdivision emerged: the Simultaneous Antivocals.
They didn't act individually. They only functioned if they executed perfectly coordinated movements.
They attacked the Ninth Ring.
Their actions mirrored each other's.
Akihiko fought with Naeya, applying Pressure-Shadow Language fused with Retained Self-Reflection for the first time.
They didn't block.
They didn't respond with violence. They simply desynchronized the enemies… breaking their unity through subtle divergence.
When the Antivowels fell,
one of them whispered:
"You didn't defeat us… you just stopped echoing us."
The Code of the Incomplete Body
Velos began to compile broken physical patterns, gestures that had never been completed. Stopped walks.
Unreturned greetings. Suspended hugs.
He named it Incomplete Body Code .
And he wrote:
"This isn't technical.
It's proof that even the unfinished… still wants to be remembered."
Each recorded movement had a color key.
Not to catalog it, but so that whoever performed it could recall it if they ever needed it again.
VII. Epilogue – Where silence still allows movement
That night, Akihiko and Sael walked along the edges of the Reverse Garden. They didn't speak.
But their steps aligned without them noticing. Their breaths matched. And in an instant,
they stopped at the same time.
It wasn't choreography. It was definitely body. Movement without explanation. Presence without approval.
END OF CHAPTER 178