I. Medora, the city of sleeping resonance
Medora had been one of the first to embrace flourishing. Built on low-vibration rivers and sunken libraries, the city was known for its network of emotion readers: people trained to detect the subtle echoes of human decisions. Here, white roots intertwined with the water channels and formed a living web of shared emotions. The system was simple: whoever felt, flourished.
But that network began to break from within.
Not by violence.
Just in case.
The whispers came like mist: ancient voices, doctrines of pure judgment, authorless phrases. "Error is born from permission." "A flower doesn't judge, but that doesn't make it wise." "Silence is not death. It is order."
The roots stopped moving.
II. The Choir of Reasonable Shadows
The attackers carried no weapons. They were orators. Undercover members of the New Inquisition. They came to the libraries and bridges of Medora with untitled books and emotionless speeches. They sat in debate with the emotional readers. They didn't attack them. They persuaded them. They offered logical order. Certainty. Proportional punishment.
Some accepted. Others began to doubt. The roots, responding to the collective emotion, began to entangle each other.
Medora's flourishing network was being devoured… by the calculated word.
III. The Return of the Silent Voices
Akihiko, upon learning of the partial collapse in Medora, arrived with Kazun and Lior. They discovered that the resonant spaces had been replaced by cold reflection zones. In the central plaza, where children with white markings had once sung, public debates were now held with roving judges.
The citizens hadn't been forced. They had been convinced.
In the Great Library, they encountered a woman named Nyara , a former priestess of vibration, now a passive follower of the new judgment. She explained:
—"Flowering gave us emotion… but not structure. Judgment… gives clear lines. It protects us from excess."
Akihiko didn't argue. He just placed his hand on the stone mural where roots had once sprouted.
Nothing happened.
But as Lior approached, crying, speechless, a small flower emerged from the wall .
The square fell silent. Not out of judgment, but out of understanding.
IV. The dilemma of formless flowering
Kazun proposed action. He drew his spirit dagger and offered to cut through the areas of symbolic corruption. But Akihiko stopped him.
—"If flowering needs to impose itself… it stops being a seed."
That night, they gathered the few emotional readers who still retained their capacity to feel without judgment. And together, they formed a choral reading , an ancient act in which each person projected an emotional memory into the center of a dormant root.
It wasn't quick. Nor strong. But at dawn, Medora Garden vibrated again.
Not with euphoria. But with acceptance.
Because blooming wasn't about resistance. It was about remembering why one had forgotten.
V. Serak responds with irony
From his tower, Serak read Medora's report. He wasn't upset. He didn't plan punishment. He just wrote:
"You don't always have to kill flowers. Sometimes, you just have to teach them to bloom in the wrong direction."
And he turned his attention to another target: the city without memories.
Because if emotion could save Medora, what would happen to a place that remembered nothing?
END OF CHAPTER 118