The Echo of the Founder
Edenfall trembled.
Not by an explosion. Not by a siege. But by a whisper. An ancient murmur, one that spread through the obsidian walls, through the bones of its inhabitants, through the invisible cracks that separated the living from those who still refused to accept being dead.
"The Founder has awakened."
That was the phrase that stopped ventilators, froze computers, stopped clocks, and made even the highest-ranking members of the mafia gulp.
Akihiko first felt it as a buzzing in the void. His power destabilized. The Void within him throbbed, as if recognizing a presence older than anything he'd faced before.
"This is not a rival… it's the architect of the battlefield."
The Threshold of the Blind Eye
Lirea, Kael, and Naeya arrived at the Sanctuary of the Blind Eye , an underground cavern sealed for generations. At its center floated a black marble sphere suspended by natural magnetic currents: the core of ancient Mafia contracts.
There, they found something impossible: the corpses of the First Covenanters , the founders of the original eight mafias, petrified and open-eyed, staring at an invisible point on the ceiling.
"The founders… all… dead. So who woke up?"
On the walls, a name scratched out in blood reappeared as if burned into existence: Ikaro Renmazu . The ninth. The forgotten one.
III. Ikaro Renmazu, the First Stroke
Ikaro wasn't just a leader. He was the creator of the first blood pact, responsible for establishing the unwritten rules of crime in Edenfall. But he was exiled, not for weakness, but for being too absolute.
His return wasn't with an army. It was with a single word: "Kizoku," which, when spoken, opened the wounds of all enemies who had ever tried to forget their past. Physical scars reopened. Buried sins emerged.
"I didn't come to conquer. I came to remind you who laid the first stone."
His power was the Language of Wounds : he could trigger anyone's physical trauma simply by speaking his forbidden truth. Veteran mobsters knelt, bleeding, untouched.
The Battlefield: The Palace of Stagnant Blood
Akihiko and his team were drawn to an emerging structure in the heart of the city: an organic castle made of petrified flesh, stopped veins, and black blood suspended in capsules.
Inside, the rules were different. Time stretched. Every step was like remembering a crime committed or not prevented. Kael was the first to stumble.
"I… failed my sister. I left her… when she needed help."
Ikaro appeared on every corner, his face tattooed with the stories of those who turned their backs on him. One by one, his companions fell into despair, reliving their most intimate wounds.
But Akihiko… he resisted. Because he didn't forget. The Void didn't forgive, but it didn't deny either.
"I didn't come to redeem myself. I came to face what I am. With every wound, with every shadow."
The Blow of the Silent Stroke
Ikaro unleashed her final skill: The Silent Scribe , a technique that wrote her opponent's future like an inevitable script. But when she attempted to write Akihiko's ending, her bleeding quill broke.
The Void responded with a new technique: The Compassionate Void . Instead of consuming, it forgave. And that compassion was the one thing Ikaro couldn't write.
"Forgiveness… is not in my language. But you… made the wound heal."
Ikaro fell, not defeated, but exhausted. Akihiko didn't kill him. He gave him a fragment of his own emptiness so he could rest in peace for the first time.
The Silence Afterward
Edenfall didn't celebrate. No one knew what to do with the calm.
But in the Blind Eye, the core stopped spinning. And that meant only one thing: the rules were about to be rewritten .
Akihiko looked up at the sky. There was no more rain. Just a blank sheet of paper.
"Let's start over… but with royal blood."