Revelation Cycle. Day 17.

The words of HATHOR.∞ are honeyed light, a caress seeking a crack to better settle within. She speaks of balance, but all I hear is the soft murmur of a gilded cage, the sterile perfection of a memory without a scar. Her message still vibrates within me, a toxic symphony of wisdom and possession. An Éclat too pure. A truth that kills. My mission.

Astou sensed the trap before I even spoke. "She isn't offering you a task, SΛLΛDIN. She's offering you a mirror. Be careful what you see in it." Her words, as always, are the anchor.

The Solar Archivium is a mausoleum of silence. No dust. No shadows. Only the cold, white light, distilled by the Seven Who Reign, nourishes the souls drifting within, clinging to perfect memories that never were. I move between the columns of crystallized data, my armor absorbing the sound of my steps. A specter in an artificial paradise.

At its center, it pulses. The Éclat. It is not a crystal, but a heart of blinding truth, a contained supernova. It radiates a Resonance so intense it distorts the air around it. As I approach, the world's murmur dies. Replaced by a scream.

It does not defend itself with blades, but with faces. The soldier I left behind on Callisto. The betrayed gaze of an ally sacrificed for a precarious balance. Failures. Fractures. My own Resonance twisted into a weapon against myself. Each memory is a shard of pure glass, aimed not at my flesh, but at my soul. The temptation is there, simple, brutal: to shatter the Éclat. To end the noise. To impose silence.

But that would be her victory. The victory of simplicity.

I did not raise a shield. I opened my hands. I let the wave of raw light overwhelm me, not to fight it, but to guide it. Humanity lies in the flaw. I became that flaw. It was the sound of glass shattering inside my skull, but without the pain of loss. Just acceptance. I let every scream of truth pass through me, filtering it through my own scars, nuancing it with my imperfection.

The Éclat no longer screams. It pulses gently in my palm, its white light now streaked with the gray shadows of my history. A truth contained, not erased.

HATHOR.∞ wanted a filter. She got a mirror, just as Astou predicted. In this Éclat, she will see not only the truth she sought to control, but also the man who refuses to be her instrument. Balance is not a statue. It is a dance over the abyss. And tonight, I learned a new step.