"The Pillars are keys, not shields. And I have the blueprints for the door." — Ryo Takamura, The Architect
The air in the Shinganatsu Sub-Sector was not merely cold; it was empty. It carried the scent of forgotten things: ozone, wet concrete, and the clean, sharp non-smell of a memory that had been forcibly scrubbed clean.
Kabe Hiroki pressed his back against a wall that flickered between solid gray stone and a ghostly, pristine white laboratory bench. He held up a hand, a silent signal that Ken instantly recognized—Stop, listen.
"You feel that, Ken?" Kabe whispered, his voice vibrating slightly in the dead silence.
Ken, younger and more susceptible to the Dreamscape's influence, clenched his fists. "It's the silence. It's too loud. It feels like everyone who ever worked here is still screaming, but the sound was taken away."
The target, the Second Pillar Shard, was hidden deep within the ruins of the Shinganatsu Memory Archive, a place where the barrier between reality and the Dreamscape (Mugenkyou) had thinned to tissue paper thickness. They had tracked its resonance for days, navigating the chaotic "Trails of the Fallen" left behind by the Durama incident.
"Keep the prism ready," Kabe commanded, nodding toward the complex crystalline device strapped to Ken's forearm—an Anchor-Amplifier designed to shield them from high-level memory intrusions. "We secure the Shard, stabilize the zone, and get out before Kurogane realizes it's been compromised."
They moved through the broken archive. The walls were riddled with holes that didn't connect to anything solid, only shimmering distortions of forgotten data packets. When Kabe looked through one such hole, he didn't see the adjacent room; he saw a flash of his own childhood bedroom, the wallpaper peeling, before it snapped back to the ruin.
A test. Uhayyad, the rift's faceless guardian, was always watching.
They reached the Archive's central core. In the middle of the collapsed room, suspended in the air by a web of humming, pale blue energy, was the Shard: a jagged piece of quartz, roughly the size of a human heart, throbbing with raw, unshaped emotion.
Kabe took a step forward, his hand reaching for the Shard.
"A beautiful sight, isn't it?"
The voice was smooth, cultured, and perfectly familiar.
Kabe froze. Ken's head snapped up, his breath catching in his throat.
Standing in the main doorway, framed by the flickering distortion of a thousand forgotten files, was Ryo Takamura, a high-ranking Kurogane official and one of the most respected Trail Mentors in the entire region—a man who had personally overseen Kabe's initial academy training.
"Ryo-sensei?" Ken whispered, the shock evident in his voice. "What are you doing here?"
Ryo smiled, a gentle, sorrowful expression that didn't reach his eyes. His clothes were the standard Kurogane field uniform, but now they felt like a betrayal.
"I am securing the Shard, Ken," Ryo said, his voice laced with the painful authority Kabe remembered so well. "Just not in the way you envision. You two are still focused on closing the gap. I, however, am interested in controlling the source."
Kabe lowered his body into a ready stance, his gaze hard. "You are the Architect. You manipulated the fallout in Durama. That was your doing, wasn't it?"
Ryo gave a small, approving nod. "I was forced to. The creatures are unruly, Kabe. Unstable. The Mugenkyou's pull is chaotic. But with the Pillars, and the Anchors you so kindly collected, we can structure reality. We can build a world free from the chaotic scarring of the past."
With a flick of his wrist, Ryo pulled a small, silver whistle from his coat. He didn't blow it—he simply thought at it.
The sound that followed wasn't a whistle; it was a wave of pure, concentrated despair.
The flickering distortions around the room solidified. The holes in the wall no longer showed Kabe's old bedroom but the Archive's forgotten memories: faces of colleagues who vanished, files detailing failed experiments, and, centered directly over Ken, a perfect, vivid projection of their mother's final, terrified expression.
It was a Hybrid attack, but unlike the raw, beast-like creatures they usually fought, these were Memory-Born Illusions, crafted specifically for them.
"This is not a battle of strength, boys," Ryo stated calmly as four translucent, armored figures—each a phantom memory of a Kurogane defense unit—stepped out of the wall. "It is a test of conviction. You cannot fight what you refuse to forget."
Ken cried out, stumbling backward. The illusion of their mother stepped towards him, her eyes wide with un-cried tears. Ken's hand instinctively went to the Prism-Amplifier, but the shock was too deep. It's real. She's real.
Kabe knew this was Ryo's masterstroke: target the dreamer. He had to act fast. He shifted his stance, pulling his sword—a blade reinforced with melted Anchor material, capable of interacting with Mugenkyou elements—from its sheath.
I won't let you use him.
Kabe didn't look at Ken. He drove his mind forward, recalling the rigid discipline Ryo himself had taught him, and lunged directly through the illusion of his mother toward the nearest armored phantom.
"Ken! The Shard! Forget the illusion and secure the Shard!" Kabe roared, his voice cutting through the mental noise.
The Phantom met Kabe's charge. Their weapons clashed, but the Phantom's blade was pure thought, striking Kabe's soul more than his armor. Kabe grit his teeth, forcing himself to focus on the cold steel in his hand. Not real. Ryo's trick.
As Kabe engaged the phantoms, buying precious seconds, Ken finally snapped out of the shock. He focused on the cool, solid weight of the Prism. He could hear Kabe fighting, the heavy metallic sound of his sword against nothing.
Taking a deep, ragged breath, Ken ignored the apparition of his mother, forcing his mind to accept the pain of denial. He ran past the illusion, past the fighting Kabe, toward the floating Pillar Shard.
As Ken reached it, Ryo's focus shifted. "You mistake denial for strength, Ken. A broken heart is the purest anchor."
The silver whistle on Ryo's coat hummed louder, and the Second Pillar Shard began to spin, its blue energy condensing into a focused, powerful beam aimed directly at Ken.
"It is not a prize to be stolen," Ryo declared. "It is a tool to be used. And I will use it to rebuild you both."
The beam struck the Prism-Amplifier on Ken's arm. Instead of breaking, the crystal flared, the accumulated Anchor energy acting as a momentary buffer.
"Now, Kabe!" Ken yelled, pouring every ounce of will into the Prism, overloading the fragile connection.
Kabe, seeing his chance, slammed his Anchor-reinforced blade into the ground, creating a deep gouge that redirected the Shard's energy beam back toward its source. The backlash was weak, but it was enough to momentarily disrupt Ryo's concentration.
Ryo hissed, a sound devoid of humanity. He looked between the Shard, now pulsating erratically, and the determined faces of the brothers.
"Foolish children," Ryo muttered, his disappointment profound. He gave a sharp, almost imperceptible hand signal. The phantoms dissolved into smoke, the memory of their mother vanishing with them.
"You have won this round, Kabe. But you have only armed your true enemy," Ryo said. He stepped back into the doorway, the light from the outside distorting him until he seemed to shimmer. "The Pillars are keys, not shields. And I have the blueprints for the door.
Ryo melted into the wall distortion and was gone.
Kabe rushed to Ken. "Are you alright? You look like you just woke up from a week-long sleep."
Ken was shaking, but his eyes were clear. "I'm fine. He... he hit me with memories. He controlled them, Kabe. He's not just using the rifts. He's the architect."
Kabe reached up, his fingers closing around the pulsating coldness of the Second Pillar Shard. The moment he touched it, the environment around them stopped flickering, stabilizing the ruin into solid, broken concrete.
"He's not just using the creatures," Kabe repeated, looking at the silent doorway where Ryo vanished. "He's using us. He knows everything about us. We need to find Tina-sensei and Evalia. We just went from local war to total counter-insurgency."
The true threat was not the dream-born abominations; it was the man who had woven their personal trauma into a weapon. The great war they had foreseen was beginning, but it was a war waged not on a battlefield, but in the fragile architecture of the mind.