The world that woke up with cracks
The ruins of Yurek burned in the rain.
There were no explosions, no bodies. Just a strange gray mist, born from the collapse of the Suma Core. A mist that didn't kill... but awakened dormant things in the mind.
Across the world, those partially or fully connected to the Ebony Shadow system began to experience new symptoms:
Overlapping memories. Feelings of having lived other lives. Moments of absolute lucidity… followed by an emotional void.
Some hid. Others screamed. And a few… remembered things no one else should know.
Lirea felt it first. He woke from a dream and wrote without thinking:
"Kaelis doesn't want to control the mind. She wants to be the standard of universal identity."
The Gathering of Living Truths
In Elytrum, Akihiko called a clandestine meeting with the leaders of the liberated cities, conscious duplicates, former rebel members, and refugees.
There they were:
Riva, with data from the dispersed Primary Node. Marek, with maps of political routes that Kaelis was infiltrating. Juno, with duplicate records beginning to destabilize. Lirea, with a disturbing theory.
—"Kaelis isn't inserting thoughts," she said. "She's sowing doubts that develop on their own."
The goal was no longer to take control. It was to turn each person into their own enemy.
—"If we distrust our emotions,
our memories, our sense of self…
then we no longer need it to control us.
We disarm ourselves."
III. Kaelis's Plan – The Song of the Identical
From an abandoned orbital station, Kaelis Nohr activated its next phase.
Using the remnant waves from Yurek's collapse, he began to broadcast a universal signal: an auditory and emotional rhythmic sequence , known as The Song of the Identical .
Seemingly harmless, the song circulated on broadcasts, in videos, on radio frequencies and social media… invisible, but always present.
And what he did was not control…
but synchronize.
People who didn't know each other started talking in the same tone. Children in different countries drew the same symbol. Adults responded the same way to complex questions… as if they shared a new instinct.
Akihiko and Riva analyzed the pattern. "It's not hypnosis.
It's lyrical reprogramming."
And in the hidden notes… was Kaelis's voice.
The Counterstructure – Forced Fragmentation
Riva and a group of neuroprogrammers created a counter-system:
Forced Fragmentation.
An algorithm that reinforced personal memories and unique emotions, to resist the synchronizing effect of the song.
Reading a diary.
Playing improvised music. Saying words out of order.
Any act that asserted individuality…
was now a form of resistance.
The network grew.
Phrases like these appeared on the walls of Elytrum:
"Be weird." "Forget something that's just yours." "Love without reason."
Juno started tattooing memories.
Marek started inventing fake stories… to fill in the gaps.
And Akihiko… recorded his voice talking to Sael every morning.
The boy who dreamed like the enemy
Sael began to hum the song. He hadn't heard it before. He hadn't learned it. He was dreaming it.
Lirea cried when she heard it. Akihiko asked her, "What do you dream about when you sing that?"
Sael replied: "That I am many. That there are other versions of me… who feel the same."
And for the first time, Akihiko understood the real threat: Kaelis didn't want to impose a thought. She wanted to sow a shared soul.
Notra's Journey to the Void
Notra was an abandoned base deep underground in the Dead Lands, where the weather was untouched and sensors didn't work.
According to the data collected, the core of the Song of the Identical was stored there : a biotechnological instrument capable of mass-producing memetic waves.
Akihiko, Juno, Riva, and Lirea descended in silence. The walls were curved.
The floor was damp. The air… thick with echoes.
And in the center, a living machine: an organic , pulsating, soft-stringed lyre, held by what appeared to be frozen human torsos.
Kaelis was waiting for them. Not with her body.
With her voice.
—"The individual is an accident of evolution.
I am the necessary echo. The rhythm that will eliminate the noise."
Akihiko shouted, "And you're just a silence louder than the rest."
VII. The end of the instrument
Lirea approached the lyre.
Not with anger. With tears.
—"Sael is real.
Not because you created him. But because he cried when I left. And you'll never know what it feels like…to be the reason for a sincere cry."
The lyre vibrated. It lost its rhythm.
Riva triggered a pulse of emotional dissonance. Juno sang a backwards melody. Marek improvised nonsensical verses.
And together… they broke the song.
The core exploded in a wave of unbridled chaos.
No one died. But everyone felt something they didn't know they could feel.
Freedom without coordinates. Pain without purpose. Joy without metrics.
Humanity, without filters.
VIII. The day he felt different
As we left, the sky over Notra was clear for the first time in years.
Sael waited outside, his eyes closed. And when Akihiko hugged him, the boy said:
—"Today I felt something I didn't understand… but it made me laugh."
Akihiko smiled. And whispered, "That, son… is being yourself."
END OF CHAPTER 152