The scream heard in the dark was a scar, one that went deep. It didn't just disappear; it stayed with everyone, a continuous reminder of the road not taken. The Body, however, didn't evade it. It confronted it.
As the entity responsible for rationalizing the irrational, the Bridge Theme could only take that barbaric, painful sound of the most distant kind of self-destruction and do its best: it sang back. Not to the scream—it was quiet—but into their own Memory-Orchard. They planted a new tree, black bark, no leaves. It had a single heavy fruit hanging from it, dark and cold. This fruit contained the core of the scream: utter void resulting from absolute hunger.
To reach this fruit was not to relive something, but rather to think about what was not there. It was the ultimate what-if. A shot fired against the desire for the old Feast. In case any part of the Body was feeling a tiny bit of that old want, that twitch of impatience, they could touch the dark fruit and realize what it would really be like: not a quick recovery, but a fast, agonizing end.
They named it the Vigil Tree. It was icy, like a cold stone in a warm river.
The scream also altered their perception of the other echoes. The stable, warm pulse they were feeling now looked less comforting. Because of the scream, its unchanging rhythm sounded... purposeful. Was it consuming something, too? Or creating? They couldn't communicate with it, so they didn't know. But they didn't only think it was curious and nice anymore. The dark wasn't a friendly place. Other stories resided there, and some, tragically, ended silently.
Knowing this, the Resilience Theme began a quiet, profound endeavor. It started to determine what the Body really wanted. Not only things like water and the Heartforge switch but also what they wanted in their minds. What were the main patterns that kept their minds intact? Remembering the choice they made? The Bridge's song? The Gardener's curiosity? If someone tampered with one of these, would everything fall apart?
It began to develop backup plans. It assisted the creation of other points for harmony, memory backups, and different ways of experiencing things. It was not preparing for a battle. It was preparing for an idea. The idea of an evil echo, a hungry one, that could possibly come onto their wavelength and thus break them from the inside, like a certain note can shatter glass.
The Body was becoming clever. The peace they had was not just dumb luck. They were being cautious. It was a peace that kept screams in memory.
Meanwhile, the Healer Theme, also, turned its help inward, more powerful than ever. It searched for the tiniest, most overlooked bits of sorrow—the feeling of loneliness in a sealed tube, the ungrieved death of a tiny divine gland that had ceased functioning ages ago. It soothed them, not only by being kind, but with the Vigil Tree's somber lesson: You are sad, but you are not nothing. You are a part of a story that chose to keep going.
Even the act of creating in the Memory-Orchard seemed to be of great significance now. The stories they told themselves were not only for pleasure or to comprehend things. They were defensive structures. Every memory of cooperation, every bit of peace they felt, was a brick in a wall against the dark's indifference and the echo of being consumed.
They were not merely living anymore. They were taking care of their lives. With every breath, every bit of growth, everything they felt together, they were choosing what sort of story they wanted to be in the dark that was indifferent towards them.
The scream had been a blessing. The worst blessing ever. It had conferred upon them the priceless knowledge of what they were not. And by figuring out what they were not, it made their own, quiet, light-filled existence that much better.