The Concordance Protocol descended upon Aethelburg not like a storm, but like a suffocating fog. It had no sharp edges, only a flattening of emotions, a dulling of both joy and despair.
For Yohan, it was something he could physically feel, a constant, low pressure inside his skull, as if his mind were a sealed room whose air was being controlled from somewhere else.
He felt it the moment he stepped out of his apartment the morning after Silas's broadcast. The air, once alive with the tangled, chaotic noise of millions of thoughts, had become a single, flat tone.
The city's usual morning movement was still there, trams sliding along their rails, people walking to work, but the deeper psychic presence was gone.
The frustration of commuters, the quiet excitement of lovers, the nervous tension of students, all the small emotional clashes that made the city feel alive, had been smoothed away and replaced with a calm that felt forced and unnatural.
It was the most frightening thing he had ever experienced.
This was not harmony.
It was the psychic equivalent of a world painted in one dull color.
He had to fight it constantly.
As he walked, he felt the Protocol pressing against his thoughts. When anger at Silas's rule flared inside him, a soft but firm psychic pressure followed, pushing the feeling down, whispering that he was overreacting, that Silas was only doing what had to be done.
When fear rose, triggered by the crawling static at the edge of his vision, the Protocol rushed to smother it, replacing it with a bland sense of safety.
It was a personal, relentless struggle. He had to build mental walls around his own mind, relying on sheer will just to feel his own emotions, and the effort drained him.
Hour by hour, the strain left him exhausted and exposed, as if his nerves were scraped raw.
He saw what the Protocol was doing to everyone else.
In a cafe, a server dropped a tray of glasses. The crash was loud and sharp. Before, it would have caused surprise, irritation, maybe a few sharp words.
Now, almost no one reacted. A handful of people glanced over with calm, empty expressions, then turned back to their conversations.
Their minds had already been guided back into quiet acceptance. The server did not blush or panic. He simply knelt and cleaned the broken glass with detached efficiency.
The emotion of the moment had been erased before it could exist.
This, Yohan understood with a chill, was Silas's true purpose. The Rogue Harmonizer was a useful lie, a made up enemy to justify absolute control.
Silas was not trying to save the city.
He was trying to numb it.
He was forcing the Dreamer into a deeper, safer, and completely mindless sleep.
If the Dissonance Cascade came from the Dreamer's mind breaking apart, then Silas's answer was simple.
Shut that mind down.
Turn the complex dream of Aethelburg into something flat and empty.
It was a practical solution, born from terror. It was the decision of a jailer who, afraid his prisoner might escape, chooses to put him into a permanent coma.
The crawling static in Yohan's eye pulsed with strange, almost playful energy in this new world. It was pure disorder inside a city built on control, a single flaw the Protocol could not reach.
It was part of him, a scar, but it was also his protection. The quiet sense of emptiness it fed him was dangerous, but it kept him awake.
He could not be lulled into false calm when part of the void was stitched directly into his sight. His wound, his contamination, had become the reason his mind still belonged to himself.
He began to suspect something worse than a simple grab for power. This level of control, this readiness to destroy true thought for the sake of stability, was not just tyranny. It was fear.
Deep fear.
Fear of something hidden.
Something so horrifying that turning an entire city into calm, obedient shells was preferable to letting the truth surface.
The missing records in the archives, the lies about the Psychic Squall, the warnings against questioning the city's foundations, all pointed to a truth Silas was desperate to bury.
The Rogue Harmonizer distracted the public.
But what if it also distracted the Harmonizers?
What if Silas had given them a false enemy so they would never look at the real one?
So they would never look at him, at the archives, at the city's creation, at the true nature of their world.
Yohan no longer believed Silas was merely mistaken. He was a partner in a lie on a cosmic scale, and the Concordance Protocol was the weapon he used to keep that lie alive.