The white of this City is not a color. It is an absence. A polished void where the Seven Who Reign no longer cast shadows. Astou’s voice crackles in my skull, a counterpoint of technical static to the silent symphony of this mausoleum. Brief. Precise. She is my anchor to the present, while the voice of HATHOR.∞ sings the echoes of the past.

The Purifiers of the Dawn glide more than they walk, immaculate silhouettes in corridors of luminous marble. They leave no trace. No Resonance. That is their blasphemy. Absolute cleanliness is a form of death.

A reflection betrays my presence on a surface of liquid chrome. Three of them pivot in a single motion, without surprise, without emotion. Their cleansing blades ignite, a hiss that tears the silence, a song of nothingness.

My Éclat answers.

The first assault is a mechanical prayer. I do not break it; I deflect it. My body remembers the Confluence, the pain that teaches the geometry of survival. I pivot, using their momentum against them. The clash of metal against pure energy. A dissonance. Ozone burns the air. A Purifier collapses, his mask cracked to reveal a face empty not of hatred, but of confusion. He wasn't fighting for a cause; he was fighting for erasure.

In the heart of the sanctuary, the Nexus of Oblivion pulses with a milky light, siphoning the imperfect memories from the connected Éclats. Holographic faces float, smoothed over, perfect. Flawless heroes. Lies.

The temptation is a cold caress. To erase my own Confluence. To forget the weight of the souls I have carried. To become this pure, this empty. No.

I do not destroy the Nexus. I fracture it. My Éclat strikes the central lens, not to shatter it, but to crack it open. And the Resonance pours out. A sensory flood. Centuries of suppressed truths. Screams. Betrayals. Clumsy loves and limping courage. The stench of fear, the salt of tears, the warmth of a necessary failure.

The Purifiers scream, drowned by the weight of who they truly are. They collapse, curl into themselves, overwhelmed by the heritage they sought to deny. HATHOR.∞ wanted me to see this mirror. To understand that my strength is not in having survived the Confluence, but in living every day with its scars. They are my memory. My history.

I leave the City of White Echoes, now deafened by the cacophony of its own truth. Balance is not silence. It is the harmony of all voices, even the most discordant. I am the guardian of the flaw where our humanity breathes.

And it is enough.