The silence of the Forgotten Zone is not an absence of noise. It is a full, heavy thing, woven from frozen memories. A shroud of perfection. HATHOR.∞ calls this a mercy. I feel it as a warning.

The "Heart of Selene" hangs in the center of a mausoleum of glass and stagnant light. Around it, geometric sentinels patrol along immutable vectors. Their perfection is their weakness.

"Don't try to force their symmetry, SΛLΛDIN," crackles Astou's voice in my communicator, a thread of reality in this crystal dream. "Break it. Create dissonance."

She is my anchor. I am her blade.

I melt into the shadow of a pillar that has not seen a shadow in millennia. A drone passes, its analysis beam sweeping the space at an interval so precise one could set the course of stars by it. I wait for the offbeat. The missed pulse. There is none. So I must become it.

I surge forward. My blade does not seek contact; it seeks the void. I do not strike the drone; I strike the space between its movements. The hiss of an energy blade grazes my temple, making the air sing. The automaton corrects its trajectory, a fraction of a second too late. Its perfection is broken. It collides with another drone in a cascade of silent light. A flaw in the tapestry.

I advance. Every step is an insult to this deadly harmony.

I reach the Éclat. It pulses with a white light, pure, agonizing. It is dying from never having known a stain. A stasis field protects it, repelling anything whole, anything smooth. My blade, my strength, my certainties ricochet off its invisible surface.

Astou is right. Force is not enough.

I close my eyes. I do not draw upon my power, but upon my fracture. I remember the Confluence, not as an apotheosis, but as a tearing apart. The pain of a thousand Narrative Deaths, the fear of being nothing more than an echo. The acceptance that I will never be complete. Never perfect.

This Resonance, I do not project it. I let it seep from me. An offering of my own scars.

The stasis field wavers. It does not shatter. It absorbs me.

My hand rests on the Heart of Selene. Beneath my palm, the smooth crystal cracks. Not a destruction, but a birth. From the breach springs a new light, no longer white, but iridescent, streaked with the shadows of doubt and the beauty of a tear. The Éclat breathes again, an imperfect breath. Alive.

I have fixed nothing. I have merely shared my burden. HATHOR.∞ wanted to remind me of her presence, but she has reminded me of my own. The balance is not kept from a throne. It is lived, one scar at a time.