Echoes of an Awakening City
Edenfall had awakened. No longer a silent city, it was a living entity, breathing through memories, unspoken sighs, and unhealed scars. From the obsidian towers to the tunnels of the submerged levels, everything trembled with a new kind of energy: the return of pain as a life force.
"The city no longer forgets," Lirea said, looking out at the streets where people walked amid murmurs, reconnecting with their broken humanity.
The collective emotional recovery activated the Dormant Cores, small capsules buried in the foundations that stored human memories forbidden by the Throne. Edenfall began to write her story in tears.
The First Heartbeat of the Faceless Girl
In the center of the Shadow Observatory, the figure of the Ninth Pillar—the faceless girl who emerged from the Void—began to move slowly. Each step left a trail of emotional mist. Akihiko, Lirea, and Naeya watched her with reverence and awe.
"Is she human?" Naeya asked.
"It's what we were when we stopped feeling," Akihiko replied.
Upon touching it, the three were transported to a mental landscape where they could see the city's collective traumas. Wars, massacres, betrayals... all of these events had been compressed and hidden within it.
She didn't speak, but she cried.
III. Shoen Rikudō: The Giver of Nothingness
As Edenfall awoke, Shoen Rikudō rearranged the pieces of the Throne. UMBRAL had been destroyed, but not its legacy. He gathered the remaining members in the Crypt of Seals: Saska, Deimon, and the newly awakened Alvers.
Shoen activated his full ability for the first time. His power was " Primal Silence ": the ability to render any expressed emotion meaningless. He could turn an "I love you" into noise, a scream into emptiness, a plea into air.
"If Edenfall wants to remember... then I will force the world to forget her."
The Crypt became a sonic void, an emotional anti-universe. And there, Shoen began the making of the "Tenth Pillar."
Akihiko and the Theory of Painful Convergence
Akihiko understood something when he connected with the faceless girl: Edenfall was a single mind, a single collective wound. To fight the Throne, it wasn't enough to resist. You had to integrate. Not reject the pain, but incorporate it as a unifying force.
"If the Throne creates pillars to divide us... we will be the One Pillar that remembers."
Lirea activated the Ancient Sunken Library. There, each wall was a page written in emotional blood. They found records of former Void users who had managed to merge with their pain.
Akihiko set out to be one of them.
The Hunt for Echoes
Shoen sent Saska to eliminate all those who had ever channeled memories: psychologists, musicians, street performers. The "Hunt for Echoes" began. Each murder erased an emotional synapse from the city.
Kael and Naeya confronted her on the Bridge of Sorrows. There, amid screams heard only by the soul, Saska displayed her new power: "Memethicide," the ability to erase a collective idea from the subconscious of everyone present.
Naeya almost forgot his mother's face. Kael forgot why he fought for Edenfall.
But a song resounded: the Faceless Girl wept. And her crying restored the idea.
"A tear can rebuild what a weapon undoes."
Saska fled. For the first time, the Throne had lost ground in the symbolic arena.
The Wall of Unchanging Pain
On the border of Edenfall, the inhabitants built a memorial composed of everything that could not be forgotten: destroyed photographs, burned objects, broken words written on the walls. They called it The Wall of Unchanging Pain .
"Here's what can't be erased," a girl wrote in chalk. "Because if you erase it... I disappear."
Akihiko visited him and left his katana's sheath empty, as he was now struggling with his memories.
"There is no sharper edge than an emotion that keeps bleeding."
VII. Last Breath before the Tenth Pillar
Shoen looked down upon the city from the top of the Throne. In his hands, the prototype of the Tenth Pillar throbbed like a black heart. He knew the next move would be the most lethal.
"It will be the final cry... or the first true silence."