The night where the bodies came early
Without warning, Edenfall began to change its pace.
Not because of threat. Not because of external command.
The bodies of its inhabitants… moved before thinking.
Neck twists toward a sound that hadn't yet occurred. Hands reaching out just before someone fell. Footsteps correcting directions as if anticipating a mistake.
Riva was the first to notice it clearly:
"We're not reacting to the present.
We're aligning ourselves with what hasn't happened yet."
A collective emotional synchronization was detected.
A physical network of pre-reflexes.
Velos called it Pre-Returned Language . A language where the body remembers… what hasn't happened yet.
Akihiko and the Shadow of Himself
While training alone in the Eleventh Ring, Akihiko felt someone accompanying him.
But when he turned around… he saw his own shadow moving differently.
He didn't imitate.
He didn't respond. He anticipated.
During a jump, the shadow landed early. During an attack sequence, his silhouette defended itself… before the blow.
Akihiko didn't feel fear.
He felt… affiliation.
His body was having a dialogue with itself… from the future.
In his training notebook, he wrote:
"I am not my past.
But my body is already carrying what I will be."
III. Birth of the Pre-Intention Archive
Sael assembled a mixed team of Ironworkers, coaches, and sensitive citizens. The goal: to record all spontaneous actions that occurred before they were necessary.
Pre-Intention Archive (PIA) was created . During its construction, more than 300 matches were collected:
Helpful gestures before stumbling. Defensive movements before attacks. Avoidance of objects that had not yet fallen.
No one considered it a premonition. It was something more corporeal. More relational. More… affiliative.
Juno explained:
"Maybe we're not predicting.
Maybe we're just united enough…to move for another before they need it."
First Contact of the Returning Echo
During a night session in front of the Wall of Delayed Contact, Lirea executed a gesture that had no meaning. A flick of the wrist and a light step. Nothing more.
Hours later,
the wall didn't repeat that movement. It projected another. One that Lirea had made years ago. One that she herself had forgotten.
He understood that the wall not only responded…
it resonated with the body's deep memory.
Returning Echo arose :
A gesture made in the present… which activates an echo from an unconscious memory… and returns it to the now in a new form.
It was the body… responding to itself without nostalgia.
Interference of Resonant Antivowels
A new breed of enemy emerged: the Resonant Antivowels. They didn't move.
They didn't attack. They simply disrupted the collective rhythm.
His mere presence caused desynchronization.
Stumbles between allies. Misalignment of steps. Disconnection.
Velos tried to use the Incomplete Body Code.
But the Resonators didn't cancel gestures… they altered the body's "when."
Riva, however, discovered the answer: a technique called Modular Discontinuous Breathing (MDB) . It was a way to change the rhythm without losing intention.
They applied it during a nighttime confrontation. And the Resonators began to disappear into synchronization gaps.
—"We didn't beat them," Sael said.
—"We just… stopped dancing to the same beat."
Sael and the Flower of the No Cause Movement
In the center of the Reverse Garden, a small flower sprouted.
No one planted it. No one watered it. But it grew… right where someone had unintentionally extended their arm.
The flower grew only with purposeless gestures.
With nonfunctional movements.
It was as if the earth was responding… to what it sought to achieve nothing.
Sael protected it under a transparent dome. And he wrote at the bottom:
"This was born from what we didn't want to achieve.
Only from what we let go."
VII. Epilogue – When the body anticipates pain
Akihiko was walking through Ring Three when, without knowing why,
he raised his hand just in time…to avoid a stone fragment from hitting his face.
He didn't see it coming.
No one threw it. But his body already knew.
And for the first time, he didn't wonder why he'd reacted that way. He just whispered:
-"Thank you."
END OF CHAPTER 180