Returning to the apartment felt empty. Everything was in place, clean, orderly, lifeless.
Elara was in the kitchen, preparing their evening meal.
She hummed quietly, and her smile was bright, but her eyes were calm and empty.
"You're back," she said evenly. "Was your trip productive?"
"Yes," Yohan lied. "Very. The outer sectors are stable."
He watched her, looking for any sign of the woman he knew. There was nothing, as if she was a perfect imitation, but hollow underneath.
He had to try one last time.
Over their meal, a bland paste the Concordance Protocol encouraged, he began. He did not mention Lyra or the Dreamer. He spoke in the language of their old life.
"Elara," he said, careful. "The Dissonance, the Echoes, it is not a Rogue Harmonizer. It is the network itself. The problem comes from the Sanctum of Concord."
She paused mid-bite. "Oh? That sounds serious."
"It is," he pressed. "Everything, the Inversion, the Crimson Sky, the Concordance Protocol, it all comes from there. Silas is hiding the truth. I have to get inside. I have to stop it."
He watched her, waiting for fear, alarm, or anger.
She chewed, then smiled gently. "You should be careful, then. The headquarters has very good security."
No fear.
No understanding.
No reaction.
Just a neutral statement.
The Concordance Protocol had erased her connection to danger, loyalty, or love. She was gone, leaving only a shell.
"Yes," he said. "I will be careful."
She nodded. "Good. This paste is bland, isn't it? I'll add some salt." She moved to the cupboard, humming.
Yohan watched her go. The Elara he knew was gone, and he was the only one who remembered her, and with the chilling confirmation of Elara's fading, Yohan's perception of the world sharpened into a painful, hyper-aware focus.
He began to see the same pattern of simplification, the same hollowing-out, everywhere he looked. The city of Aethelburg, once a vibrant tapestry of individual lives, was becoming a monotonous, repeating pattern.
The consensus was curdling into a monotony. He took to walking the streets, not as a Harmonizer, but as an observer, a ghost cataloging the decay.
He would sit in plazas and listen to the conversations around him. Before, the air would have been filled with gossip, debate, laughter, and complaint.
Now, the conversations were uniform. People discussed the weather, the efficiency of the tram service, and praised the city's leadership.
Their words were positive and pleasant, but their vocabulary was shrinking. Topics were narrowing to a small, approved list of safe, non-dissonant subjects.
He watched two women who might have once been close friends sharing secrets over coffee. Now their conversation was a sterile exchange of platitudes. "It's a lovely day," one said. "Yes, the sun is very pleasant," the other replied. "It's good that things are so calm now." "Yes, safety is very important." There was no intimacy, no spark, no genuine connection.
The uniformity extended beyond conversation. People's gestures were similar, their expressions limited. The range of public emotion had been compressed into mild contentment.
There was no passionate anger, no deep sorrow, no ecstatic joy. The unique, quirky mannerisms that made individuals distinct were being smoothed away. People walked at similar paces, and dressed in muted colors.
The city was losing its texture and personality.
Yohan realized he was witnessing a massive, city-wide psychic entropy. The Concordance Protocol was not just dampening negative thoughts. It was discouraging complexity of any kind.
The system favored the simple, repetitive, predictable. It was easier to manage a million identical, simple minds than a million unique, complex ones.
The Dreamer's mind, under Silas's control, was shedding complexity, its processing power throttled to the bare minimum to maintain the simulation.
The characters in the dream were simplified, their detailed backstories and motivations replaced with simple, functional loops.
The static in Yohan's eye pulsed as he walked through the city. His own thoughts of fear, anger, and love made him conspicuous. He had to hide his mind from the Protocol.
He was a cognitive fugitive.
This observation made the mission clear. It was no longer just about saving Elara. The city's individuality was at risk. If he did nothing, he too would be erased, reduced to a compliant, empty shell, humming the same tune as everyone else.