AFC - Chapter 4.0: The Echo of a Conviction

Arc of Forgotten Fragments (Floor 2)

Elia, with the untitled book in her hands, stood in the silent heart of the ancestral library. The notches, the vibrant red ideogram, the intuition about the acoustics: everything converged at one point, in the certainty that it was not just an object, but a key. She moved deliberately, her steps on the wooden tatami resonating with a softness that, strangely, did not break the silence, but contained it. It was as if the library itself waited, a vast resonance chamber about to be awakened.

The library, which moments before was a sanctuary of silence, had transformed into a vast heart beating with echoes of hidden truths. Every creak of the wood, every dancing shadow from the rice paper screens, seemed to whisper secrets waiting to be unearthed. The light, filtered through the high skylights, fell in lazy beams on shelves full of dust-covered tomes, some so ancient that their leather had become as brittle as history itself. The air smelled of mold, old paper, and the faint fragrance of burnt sandalwood, an aroma that seemed to encapsulate the weight of centuries of knowledge and oblivion. It was an aroma that, for Elia's Emotional Presence, smelled of time. Of solidified time.

"The notches… the distinct acoustics… the silences…" The words of her own understanding resonated in Elia's mind, an echo of her epiphany moments before. The book was not just a tome; it was a map, an instrument. And Ho Siyu's body, a bridge.

"If knowledge is encoded in space and time, then this body, this Ho Siyu, is the key to decoding it. Every step, every breath in this borrowed form, is not just an action, but an interaction with the narrative itself."

Her fingers brushed the dusty cover of the book, and a sense of anticipation, almost dread, seized her. The Elder of the Dream Weave had warned her, but Elia's curiosity was an insatiable hunger.

Elia slid her finger along the first notch, her Emotional Presence flowing into the incision, an ethereal but firm connection. It was that connection, that conscious infusion of her own Emotional Presence, that activated the narrative malleability of Ho Siyu's body. A wave of vertigo hit her, more intense than any physical vertigo. The world seemed to stretch and contract, the bookshelves became gigantic, the shadows lengthened and danced with a dreamlike distortion.

Ho Siyu's clothes loosened, falling in absurd folds around her, the soft silk dragging on the floor. Her hands, which a moment ago were those of a young woman, became small, plump, with short, still unformed fingers. Her tiny feet did not reach the ground, leaving her suspended a few centimeters from the cold wooden tatami. Elia, in Ho Siyu's body, was now a child, barely pre-teen, and the sensation was strange, almost alien.

She felt no panic, only a clinical curiosity, a detached fascination.

"Interesting. The Tower warned me about narrative malleability, but this… this is real-time rewriting. My Emotional Presence is the pen. I can use this form to manipulate the narrative, to delve deeper into the threads of this existence's history."

Every fiber of that childlike flesh was malleable, yes, but it also resonated with a lost innocence, a melancholy that was not Elia's, but that of Ho Siyu at that age. It was an echo of the silent curse that perhaps was already beginning to weave itself even in her childhood, before she understood the true weight of being a Ho in the Castellan Family.

Siyu's skin felt softer, her bones more flexible, but she also perceived a fragility that was not Elia's own. It was the confirmation of the narrative malleability of the body she inhabited, a tuning to the thread she had to follow, a frequency adjustment to access deeper memories.

"If I can change my form, what else can I alter in this narrative? What limits exist?" At the same time, the first vision enveloped her mind, not as a projected image, but as a complete immersion.

The library walls blurred, replaced by the vivid image of a twelve or thirteen-year-old Ho Yiran, sitting with her knees drawn up beside the pond in the secret garden. Her small body curled in on itself, as if wanting to disappear. Her face, streaked with fresh tears, reflected a deep melancholy. Elia not only saw Yiran, but felt the cold despair of that pond, the bittersweet scent of withered lotuses, like the breath of a broken promise, a hope that never bloomed. The child Yiran extended a trembling hand, almost touching the inert surface of the water, her reflection absent.

"It's desolate. A young soul, so full of sorrow," thought Elia, observing every detail, every micro-expression of the child Ho Yiran. She felt a pang of compassion.

"What burden did this child carry, even at this age? My Emotional Presence allows me not only to see, but to feel these echoes of the past, almost as if they were my own."

Ho Yiran whispered, her voice barely a thread, broken by a sob. —The lotus heart is empty… why am I here? There is no light, no hope. Only emptiness…— The image faded as quickly as it had arrived, leaving Elia with a persistent echo of sadness in Siyu's chest, like a dissonant note that kept vibrating.

Elia slowly recovered, Ho Siyu's small body feeling strangely alien, like a garment that didn't quite fit, but that she had to wear. The book in her hands, now disproportionately large, urged her on, its red ideogram pulsing with a faint light. The next notch led her to another immersion. This time, Ho Yiran, about fourteen years old, stood on a balcony, the moonlight bathing her figure in silver. Yiran's long hair, gathered in a simple braid, shone under the full moon, but her face, though more mature, still carried a deep sadness. Her gaze rested on a small child, with a blurry face, playing in the garden below, their childish laughter barely audible, a sound that was both sweet and bittersweet.

Yiran's expression was one of desolate tenderness, a mixture of almost maternal affection and a sadness so profound that Elia's Emotional Presence felt it as a direct stab to the soul.

"Who is that child? Sengo? The vision blurs him, but Yiran's emotion is undeniable. Love, loss, something very much like despair." Yiran clutched a worn wooden case and a rolled scroll to her chest, as if they were the last vestiges of a comfort denied to her, or perhaps, the only pillars supporting her. She could feel the faint scent of damp earth and the bitter sweetness of a secret Yiran guarded closely, a weight that Elia, through Siyu, shared at that instant. The murmur of an almost inaudible lullaby accompanied the vision, a melody that Yiran hummed with a sadness so deep that Elia felt tears in Siyu's eyes.

An ancient, whispering voice, clear as the clinking of dry bones, resonated in Elia's mind. It was the voice of Elder Lin, filled with calculated coldness.

—She is the key… the perfect vessel to reactivate the glory of the Castellan Family. We have finally found a way. The lost prodigies… the essence of the lineage… all reside in her.

The voice grew deeper, more somber, laden with the weight of generations of intrigues.

—The pact with the Hephaestus Family is not just for heirs, Siyu. It is for the control of this entire planet, the true golden threads that hold not only the narratives, but the very universe of Kravnos. We need a sacrifice. A catalyst. An irreparable void. And then, the essence will awaken. The price is high, but the reward… the reward is supremacy in the Fabric of Realities.

Elia's mind, beyond the human comprehension of the Hos or the Castellans, struggled to reconcile Yiran's power with the Law of Causal Singularity.

That unbreakable norm of the Omniverse which established that any element or power from distinct universes must adapt to the new environment or, otherwise, dissolve, mutate or vanish. Yiran, with her innate elemental manipulation and her supernatural adaptation to any external magic, did not adapt; she transcended, an anomaly, an aberration, an abomination in the very fabric of universal logic.

It was a living echo of the violated Law of Logic Exchange, a walking paradox that manifested from the foundations of the Castellan Family.

—An abomination? A being that defies the fundamental laws of the universe?—Elia felt a shiver that was not from the cold of the library.—Is that why the Castellan Family is so secretive, so jealous of its mixed lineage? It's not just an inheritance; it's a mutation, a crack in reality. And if Yiran is the key, what does that mean for the universe of Kravnos? And for me? My Emotional Presence pushes me to understand, to unravel this paradox, because somehow, I feel it directly concerns me.

She wondered if the Elder of the Dream Weave, with her cold Castellan wisdom and her eyes that seemed to see beyond the veil, was fully aware of the true magnitude of the aberration Yiran represented, or if Master Ho, with his apparent paternal concern, only saw the power and not the implicit curse in each of the Castellan prodigies. The idea that the very guardians of the laws could be the greatest transgressors was deeply unsettling.

With trembling hands, which despite the regression to Siyu's childhood, maintained a firmness that was Elia's own, she touched the next notch, the deepest one, almost hidden on the spine of the book, feeling a pang of hope. As she brushed it, the library seemed to tremble more violently than ever, the shelves creaked, and a guttural sound, like the crunch of ancient stones shifting, emerged from the heart of the corner. A fragment of shelving, heavy and carved with ancient Castellan symbols, slid to one side with a slow, resonant screech, revealing a dark and narrow passageway. The darkness, total and absolute, seemed to absorb the little light left in the library.

But in that darkness, a light. The blue light of Elia's pendant, identical to the one Yiran had whispered as an anchor, a name.

"I don't want to forget Sengo," it flickered with increasing intensity in the darkness. It was an answer, a call. The name "Sengo" now acquired an unbearable weight, a resonance that transcended the vision and connected directly with Elia's reality.

Elia's mind raced, a whirlwind of theories and questions.

"Is Sengo the child from the vision? A lover? A son? Or something more? Is the scribe Lin, with his whispers, a forgotten Fragment of an earlier narrative, or a guardian of these Castellan Family secrets, manipulating the threads? Every fragment of the story the book shows me is a link in a chain, a clue for my next move. The Fragment ideogram in the book, the blue glow of my pendant, the connection with Yiran and that name, Sengo. Everything comes together, but to what? To my own purpose?"

"My Emotional Presence tells me that this path is correct, that here lies the key not only to Yiran, but to the Tower itself and my mission. It is an intuitive guide, a certainty that goes beyond logic."

Elia felt she was on the verge of a revelation that would not only define Ho Yiran's destiny, but also unravel the deepest mysteries of the Universe of Kravnos and, perhaps, of her own existence.

"This is not just a path for Ho Yiran," Elia thought, a shiver of anticipation and dread running through her. "It is a path for me too. A fragment of my own history, perhaps. What was my mother hiding? Why did she tell me 'Live' in a place where existence is so precarious? Is there a connection between Narrative Mimicry and the malleability of this existence? Am I, Elia, using my Emotional Presence to weave my own destiny within this narrative, or am I being woven by it?"

The blue light flickered again, not just as a heart beating in the darkness, but as a beacon calling to her, an inescapable truth. The pendant, which had glowed when Sengo was mentioned, now pulsed with an urgency that was not just a beacon, but a call, a memory that the pendant shared with Elia, and perhaps, with Sengo himself. It was not just the guide; it was the first note of a symphony of echoes and souls that were about to be unleashed.

Elia knew she had no choice. Yiran's truth was there, and the next step was inevitable. She had to enter. Yiran's revenge, the future of her unborn children, and Elia's own purpose in the Tower depended on it.

She stood up with determination, Ho Siyu's child body returning to its original state without contradicting the weight of the decision. The silence of the library closed behind her, sealing her decision. A cold breeze, laden with the breath of centuries of Castellan secrets, and the scent of dust and ancient magic, enveloped her as she took the first step into the darkness, wondering if what she would find would free her or condemn her to an even more uncertain fate, to a story she might never escape.

The last flicker of blue light in the deep darkness of the passageway was the only promise that accompanied her as she entered the silence, a silence that was no longer empty, but the antechamber of a revelation.