After the crying
Vorlenn awoke like a creature barely recognizing its own skin.
Emotions returned like an overflowing torrent. Schools allowed art again. Couples reunited in silence, in guiltless embraces.
But with the return of emotions, fear also arrived.
The fear that this freedom wouldn't last. The fear that what we experienced during the Silence era had left irreparable cracks.
And the deepest fear:
Who were we really, before we forgot how to feel?
Akihiko stood in front of an old train station converted into a cultural center. Sael was sleeping on his lap. Lirea was giving a lecture to hundreds of active duplicates arriving from various cities.
"We are pieces of a story that was never written fairly," he said.
"But we can still choose what to write now."
Gathering of Shadows – The Ebony Shadow Responds
From the ruins of a communications fortress in the north, the remaining members of the Ebon Shadow's inner circle gathered in closed council.
There were no longer seven.
Now there were four.
Ezra, the bringer of the Judgment of the Abyss.
Ysin, the Bone Counter. Serah V., silenced, held in an international enclave. Malith, destroyed.
But a new face appeared at the meeting:
Kaelis Nohr , an unknown voice, face sealed behind a metal mask.
—"The mistakes have been educational.
Now we leave manipulation behind. And we will embrace… integration. "
Kaelis proposed a new plan:
"Make the world one.
No duplicates. No originals.
Just reconfigured humans,
where everyone carries within them a fragment of the same core."
Ysin approved. Ezra smiled. And so began Phase 3: Absolute Symmetry.
III. The Reverse Code
Riva, investigating Malith's protocols, discovered a residual sequence hidden in Vorlenn's systems:
a piece of code called Primary Node 1.
—"It wasn't part of emotional control.
It was part of something bigger. A genetic map… a structure shared by duplicates and real humans."
In other words, the world wasn't just being controlled.
It was being transformed into a network of shared minds.
Akihiko stopped dead in his tracks. "They don't want us to remember.
Or feel.
They want us all to share a single mental pattern. "
The awakening of a vanished city
The Primary Node data pointed to a place that didn't exist on current maps: Yurek , a city abandoned during the Great Rupture, declared uninhabitable.
But the oldest records spoke of an experiment:
"Social Unit 000 – Suma Project."
The Shadow had used Yurek as its original base. There… the reconfiguration of the world began.
Akihiko, Juno, Marek, and Lirea traveled to Yurek's core.
There was no city. Just a buried structure.
Single access:
"Total Integration Center – Suma Nucleus."
Within the Suma Nucleus
The installation was a living space. It had no corners.
Everything flowed. The walls reacted to the emotional presence of the intruders.
A voice emerged: "Welcome to the place where the individual ceases to exist."
The voice was Kaelis Nohr 's . Cold. Precise.
Nonthreatening… but irrevocable.
—"Here, all thoughts will be shared.
All memories, fused. Humanity… will cease to be a sum of parts.
And will become an indivisible whole. "
Lirea felt her heart beat faster. Sael began to cry.
The place recognized fear… and absorbed it.
The Fragmented Soul
At the center of the core, they found an organic server. It wasn't an ordinary machine.
It was living neural tissue, connected to hundreds of stolen memories.
In the core, Akihiko saw memories that weren't his own.
But that felt like his own.
A childhood she never lived.
A love she had never known. A death that wasn't hers.
The server was trying to merge his souls with others.
Riva shouted from the communicator: "If the core finishes the fusion, you will cease to be individuals! You will not know who you are!"
Akihiko ordered:
"Turn it off. Even if it hurts."
Riva launched a reverse emotional overload.
Each member of the team projected their most intimate memory onto the core:
Juno, the death of her sister. Lirea, Sael's first drawing. Akihiko, the farewell to someone who loved and let go.
The core… couldn't stand so much individuality.
And it broke.
VII. After the crunch
The facility began to crumble. Systems collapsed. Artificial mental connections dissolved.
And in the midst of the tremor, Kaelis spoke for the last time:
—"You don't need to be one. But when you become many…
you will remember that chaos is also a prison."
VIII. The final promise
Upon returning to Elytrum, Akihiko wrote a letter. Not to his allies.
Not to the duplicates.
For the child who still slept in her arms.
"Sael, if you ever doubt who you are...
remember what made you cry. Pain may hurt... but it's also what proves you're real."
And with that, they understood something deeper: the war was no longer about control.
It was about the very possibility of being human.
END OF CHAPTER 151