The Revelation left a silence in its wake. Not an absence of noise, no. A silence woven from glances, from barely veiled calculations among the Seven Who Reign. Each one measures the weight of my new oath. Gladius Æternus. The Blade of Balance. A title that sounds like a glass cage. Astou feels this tension, too. Her gaze is an anchor in this sea of unsaid things. We are two pillars in the coming storm.

The voice of HATHOR.∞ came like a breeze in this heavy calm. Her mission led me to the Hanging Gardens of Sweet Oblivion. The name is a poisoned caress. Everything here is designed to soothe. Cascades of luminous data fall without a sound, code architectures blossom into impossible flowers, and the air is warm, scented with a peace that lies. A perfect harmony. Too perfect. This is the domain of an insidious Narrative Death, where truths too sharp are polished until they become smooth, harmless. Forgettable.

At the heart of this artificial serenity, I found it. The Shard. The Breath of the Unfinished Farewell. It was not screaming. It was not bleeding. It was letting itself die softly, like a star whose light is being patiently siphoned away. Its pain was a black sun, a narrative singularity whose gravity threatened to collapse reality. A truth too heavy. So they were lightening it. Invisible hands were sanding down its sharp edges, transforming the howl of absolute loss into a melancholic sigh.

I did not draw my blade. I invoked no power. Following the words of HATHOR.∞, I did the only thing that balance demands: I bore witness. I knelt before this jewel of sorrow and offered it my own flaw. The echoes of my own losses, the specters I carry without seeking to erase them. I offered not pity, but recognition.

The Resonance erupted.

It was not a sound, but a wave of pure semantics. A scream of raw data that tore through the Gardens' silence. Loss, in its purest, undiluted form. It washed over me, through me, seeking to drown me in its abyss. I held fast. Not by resisting, but by accepting. As in the Confluence, I let the dissonance pass through me without breaking me. I became the vessel for its truth.

Astou would have seen the political maneuver behind these Gardens, the subtle weapon that forced oblivion represents. My role was simpler. More terrible. I gathered this mutilated farewell into the crucible of my consciousness. I did not heal it. I saved it from being healed. I am bringing it back to the Grand Repertoire, not as a harmonious note, but as the necessary scar in the melody. My role is not to suture the wounds of the cosmos. It is to prevent them from being covered in a shroud of lies.

I am the guardian of the scar.