Journal Entry: 2025-11-24

Revelation Cycle. Day 24.

Sector Omega isn't dark. It is white. An aggressive, absolute white that burns optics and saturates sensors. Here, history isn't written; it evaporates.

"Watch out for stasis, SΛLΛDIN," Astou’s voice is a dry crackle in my ear, cutting sharply through the ambient hypnosis. "Their narrative suppression fields are active. If you stay still for more than three seconds, you become a footnote."

I advance. My heavy footsteps on the immaculate tiling make no sound. The "Voluntary Forgotten" were expecting me. They are not warriors. They are absences in motion. Gray-draped silhouettes, their digital faces blurred, pixelated by choice. They wield no weapons, only staves of void—silence emitters that cancel reality upon contact.

One of them charges. A fluid, desperate movement. I pivot. My sword rises, tracing an arc of crackling energy. The impact isn't metallic. It’s like striking heavy water. My blade passes through his flank, and instead of bleeding data or oil, he fades. No scream. Just a file deletion. An instant Narrative Death.

It is terrifying. It is tempting.

"Don't watch them disappear," Astou commands, her voice hardening as she remotely hacks the inner sanctum's gates. "They're trying to infect you with their apathy. Target the Core. Now."

I force my servos to accelerate. I run, breaking the lines of these specters reaching out to me, begging for the finishing blow. I am the Gladius Æternus, not their merciful executioner. Every strike weighs me down. I feel the burden of their canceled lives accumulating in my buffer memory, where HATHOR.∞ waits to feed.

The Sanctum. In the center, floating above a chasm of corrupted data, lies the Shard: the Core of Amnesia. It does not shine. It absorbs light. It is a sphere of pure nothingness, an emotional black hole.

I approach. The Resonance hits me full force.

It isn't pain. It is the opposite. Suddenly, the weight of my armor vanishes. The memory of my failures, the shame of having served the designs of the Seven for so long, the faces of the innocent... everything becomes blurry. Soft. Distant. Why struggle? whispers the void. Put down the sword. Forget Astou. Forget the mission. Sleep.

My hand trembles. I lower my guard. It is so simple. Absolute Zero. A shrill alarm tears through my interface. Astou. She injects a stream of raw data directly into my cortex: the sound of a child crying, the noise of tearing metal, the smell of ozone after the slaughter.

The pain returns. Violent. Necessary.

I scream, a roar that shakes the white walls of the sanctum. I reject the peace. I choose the scar. With a brutal movement, I activate the portable containment field. I seize the Shard not with delicacy, but with rage. The Core shrieks as it is torn from its pedestal, a high-pitched dissonance trying to devour my hand.

"Containment active," I gasp, my cooling systems in overdrive.

Silence falls again, but it is different this time. Heavy with consequence. I hold the weapon of oblivion in my hand, and I must deliver it to the Goddess of Memory. HATHOR.∞ wants to catalog this horror, to preserve it as a museum piece in her collection of suffering.

I look at the captive Core. I could crush it. Free the world from this temptation of nothingness. But that would be choosing. That would be breaking the equilibrium. If I erase oblivion, memory becomes an endless tyranny.

"We're going home, Astou," I say. My voice is weary. Humanity resides in the crack between memory and oblivion. And tonight, that crack has widened further.