The Night of Bleeding Echoes
Edenfall did not sleep. The city throbbed with a new pulse, a mixture of resistance and anxiety. Even though the Dark Founder had been temporarily contained, his essence still coursed through the invisible channels of the air, shattering memories and sowing doubt in the collective soul.
Akihiko opened his eyes that morning, feeling a slight tremor beneath his skin. It wasn't physical, but something deeper: the dislocation of his own narrative . Beside him, Naeya wasn't sleeping. He was getting a new symbol tattooed on his collarbone: the Endless Continuation .
"I don't intend to allow this story to have an ending dictated by anyone."
Meanwhile, Lirea wandered through the oldest alleys of Edenfall, where the symbols of history still wrote themselves on the walls. She saw a phrase that chilled her blood: "That which has been contained, learns to wait."
The Seven Witnesses of the Founder
In a forgotten corner of the Central District, an ancient artifact was activated: The Mirror of Primal Reversal , a forbidden device that stored every clan's first encounter with the Dark Founder. No one knew who had created it. All that was known was that its activation meant the Founder had begun rewriting past events in search of a new version where he would win .
The leaders of the remaining seven clans were immediately summoned. They introduced themselves:
Kaaren of the Ironclad.Vassya of the Crimson Shadows.Static Fang's Reijo.Akariel of the Captive Dawn.Shenra of the Silent Blood.Tohma of the Broken Breath Clan.Lirea as a representative of the Eternal Bond Clan.
Each person had to look at their past in the Mirror, seeing how the Founder tried to shape their personal history. The trauma was brutal. Some relived their birth as if it had been written by someone else.
"It's not just power… it's authorship," Tohma said, trembling.
III. The Fracture of the Hidden Page
Akihiko was the last to face the Mirror. What he saw wasn't his past, but a chapter never written , a fork in the road where he himself agreed to become the Dark Founder's arm. A version of Akihiko without will, without pain, without humanity. A perfect warrior, but without history.
He refused. He destroyed the Mirror with the Void, but not before accidentally freeing a lost page : an incomplete narrative fragment that the Founder had tried to erase.
That page floated in the air… and began to write itself.
"The day Edenfall stopped resisting, the Founder walked freely, and his first act was…"
The ink stopped. The unfinished sentence began to consume matter around it.
The Defense of the Living Book
Naeya, along with a group of ancient storytellers hidden in the depths, came to save the city: The Keepers of the Living Book , a secret order that protected the conscious text of Edenfall.
"The city is writing itself to survive, but it's wounded. There are gaps, endless phrases, orphaned ideas."
The Keepers began a Rite of Recoding , a ceremony where combatants shared their rawest emotions to "feed" the city with true experiences.
Akihiko, during the rite, displayed the memory of his first fear: not of the Founder, but of himself… when he realized that his power could destroy everything he loved.
That act of vulnerability restored a part of the living text, allowing Edenfall to generate a new emotional barrier , a layer that could only be crossed by those who still doubted their own story.
The Call of the Reborn Founder
Despite all efforts, the lost page continued to be written. And by the end of the night, it was completed:
"…his first act was to rename the sky."
Edenfall dawned without a firmament. The sky disappeared. Only a white canvas where the stars had once been.
Then a voice filled every corner:
"Now, everything that happens will be under my name."
He was the Founder. Complete. With body. With words. And with the city as his canvas.
But before their dominance became total, Akihiko, Naeya and Lirea summoned the final card: the Unwritten Page , a fragment of the Living Book that had yet to be formed, and could only be written in the most desperate of moments.
"We won't let him sign our story."