I. The Nation of the Sealed Scream
Far to the south, where the earth opened into crystalline deserts and the storms were as old as the echoes of the first judgments, lay Kalen-Oz , a city-nation isolated by choice and fear. They had no temples. They had no roots. They had only one sacred law: absolute silence.
The inhabitants of Kalen-Oz were raised from birth with black masks covering their mouths. No one spoke. No one screamed. Everything was communicated through gestures, coded vibrations, and trained gazes. Their leaders, known as the Keepers of Silence , claimed that judgment had not been extinguished. It had only been sealed… by their impurity.
And that the only way to protect the world was to prevent the vibration from ever existing again.
But even in Kalen-Oz, something began to crack the walls of silence.
II. The cracks in the silent dome
The city was surrounded by a spiritual containment dome, fueled by black stones mined from the bowels of the desert. They called them denial stones : materials that didn't absorb resonance, but rather dissolved it.
For centuries, they worked.
But one morning, a single stone changed color. From black to gray. Then to white. And finally, to clear.
The Guardians panicked. They thought it was sabotage. But there was no sign of an intrusion. Only the faint, barely perceptible vibration coming from inside the city. From a child.
His name was Kiru .
He was born deaf, mute, and blind. But his hands trembled when he slept. And when he touched the ground, roots sprouted by themselves .
III. The dissonance of the forbidden
Kiru's family was arrested. The boy was taken to the Sanctuary of Mudez, a stone enclosure where, for generations, spiritual remains discovered by mistake were buried. There, the Guardians attempted to seal him with a circle of black stones.
But the circle didn't respond . Instead, it cracked. And at its center, the boy began to hum… without making a sound. A vibration without a voice, without a song, without a word.
In other parts of the city, masks began to crack. Some shattered from within. Others cracked under the gaze. No one knew why. But everyone felt an ancestral urgency: the need to speak. To shout. To say what had been silenced for generations.
The vibration returned. Not as punishment. As a response.
IV. Akihiko and the Echoless Temple
The news reached Akihiko not by word of mouth, but by the root in his arm. One night, while sleeping among the gardens of Hakkoku, he dreamed of a desert without a sky. And in the middle, a white tower without doors, where words swirled around, finding no way out.
When he awoke, the root had grown a new shoot. Its direction was clear: Kalen-Oz.
The journey was long. Cruel. The desert was alive. It swallowed sound. Akihiko's every step seemed to disappear behind his heels. But when he arrived, he wasn't greeted by guards or armies. He was greeted by an unmasked old woman , kneeling in front of a stone mural.
"We were waiting for you," he said, without opening his mouth. His words were written in the sand.
And Akihiko knew he had reached a place where the resonance was still imprisoned… but not dead.
V. The judgment of the buried word
Kiru was taken to the center of the city, where the Keepers planned to perform the final ritual: sealing his body in stone, as a warning. But that night, all over Kalen-Oz, roots began to sprout. Not from the ground. From the walls. From the towers. From the sealed books.
And in the cloudless sky, a figure appeared, wrapped in faint light: a female silhouette with flowing hair and closed eyes. No one knew who it was. But Akihiko did. Sora.
She didn't speak. She just extended a hand toward Kiru. And the boy, for the first time, made a sound.
A single note. Pure. Incomplete. Beautiful.
The dome shattered. The stones of denial melted. The masks disintegrated. And the city… screamed.
Not out of fear.
For having remained silent for too long.
VI. Kalen-Oz blooms in redeemed silence
The next day, the Guardians disappeared. No one drove them out. No one pursued them. They simply… vanished. As if their purpose had expired.
Kalen-Oz didn't become a temple. Nor a sanctuary. It became a space of slow resonance , where silence was no longer a punishment, but a choice. And where the roots grew slowly, as if learning not to rush what needed to be heard.
Akihiko left the city in silence. But this time, not out of respect. But because there was no need to say anything.
The world was already listening.
END OF CHAPTER 114