I. The day after the frustrated oblivion
Syria didn't celebrate.
After the emotional core collapsed and the attempt at massive reprogramming collapsed, the city didn't erupt in cheers or marches. What came after the rescue… was the brutal sound of memory returning.
Thousands of citizens began experiencing incomplete, broken, and distorted memories.
Some woke up crying from wounds they didn't know where they came from. Others began to hate people they had never met.
In hospitals, neuroblockers ran out. In the streets, groups of people without identities formed silent circles.
And amid the fireless chaos, the government remained quiet.
Because even its leaders… had been partially edited.
II. Collateral Damage Meeting
In a shelter beneath the trade sector, Akihiko, Riva, Juno, and Marek watched the post-mission recordings.
The city hadn't been saved.
It had been trapped between two realities: the new, emotionless one… and the old, illogical one.
—"We have caused a collective cognitive implosion," Riva said.
Marek lit a cigarette. "Better than an emotional dictatorship. Or not?"
Akihiko didn't respond. He was staring at a face on the monitor: that of a crying little girl hugging a mother who didn't remember her.
—"Ysin knew this could happen. He wants the world to be afraid to remember."
III. The Inner Council – Veiled Betrayal
In the remains of Syria's former parliament, a secret meeting was taking place between five figures with residual power.
Among them are Alren Maek , strategic operations advisor, and Theria Sol , data minister.
—"What if we let the Ebon Shadow advance to a certain point?" Alren proposed.
—"What for?" Theria asked.
—"So that the people demand order.
So that they demand vigilance. So that… they accept it without a fight."
The others remained silent.
And so began the first intentional political fracture in favor of The Ebony Shadow.
IV. The Visit of the Ebony Messenger
That same night, a faceless messenger, dressed in a gray suit and a black scarf around his neck, entered the central hospital in Syria.
He didn't say a word. He simply placed an envelope on the principal's desk.
Inside, a single printed sentence:
"The next city will not be convinced. It will be dominated."
And a list of 12 names.
All of them: leaders of the emotional reconstruction movement.
Akihiko received a copy of the message from Lorn. And he knew the counterattack would be surgical.
V. Varosk – The next target
Varosk, a city of structured justice, sacred archives, and symbolic trials, was the next logical target.
There, records were still believed to protect the truth. But Akihiko knew that if The Ebony Shadow controlled written history , they would control the past itself.
Juno spoke first: "Are we going to infiltrate without support again?"
—"No. This time… they'll get ahead of us.
They're already in Varosk."
VI. The Fourth Lethal Enters the Scene – Serah V.
In a stately mansion south of Varosk, a woman wearing white gloves and a long dress was looking at an old painting of her family.
Serah V., the fourth Lethal.
Fallen heritage, power resurrected with cruelty.
She doesn't shed blood.
She buys souls... and rewrites laws from within.
He had already infiltrated the history committee, the national archive, and drafted a new set of official truths.
Their plan:
Eliminate oral testimony. Control emotional education.
And make unrecorded memories illegal.
Akihiko receives the report late. Varosk has already closed its borders.
And the propaganda announces:
"Only what is written is real.
What you remember… is suspect."
VII. The promise of counterintervention
Riva creates a plan: double infiltration, synchronization with dissidents within the archive, and capture of Serah V. before the signing of the Official Memory Decree.
But Marek hesitates. "What if the people don't want to be liberated?"
Akihiko looks at his sword.
—"Then we'll have to remember for them.
Even if they hate us for doing it."
VIII. Ysin's Hidden Message
Before leaving Syria, Akihiko receives one last message.
A print left in his room:
"I didn't fail.
I sowed."
And below, coordinates. An unnamed island.
But Akihiko could no longer divide himself.
Varosk fell. History was being rewritten. And the war against memory… had just changed shape.
END OF CHAPTER 145