"The structure of the heart is built on twin pillars: the things we mourn, and the things we pursue." — Kabe Hiroki
Kabe moved across the cracked, crystalline plain with agonizing slowness, the lead containment unit resting on his shoulder. It was heavy with physical material and heavier still with the conceptual burden of the Pillar of Grief. The Shard inside pulsed like a failing heart, filling Kabe's mind with an incessant drone of loss and self-recrimination. You failed your mother. You failed your team. You failed Ken.
He was heading straight for the pristine, emerald circle surrounding the Tower of Silence—the Geometry of Scars Ryo had created using the Pillar of Hope.
Ken, positioned a kilometer back at the edge of the plains, watched through the magnified lens of his Prism-Amplifier. The Anchor field Ryo generated was a shimmering wall of ordered reality. It was flawless everywhere except for one point: the connection point between the newly healed earth and the jet-black obsidian base of the Tower. Even a perfect Anchor needs to connect to the structure it protects.
That's the seam, Ken realized, tapping coordinates into his Prism's tactical overlay. The stress point where two perfect concepts meet.
"Kabe, the weakness is at the base, precisely nineteen degrees northeast of the spire's primary axis. That's the structural weakness in Ryo's perfect Anchor," Ken transmitted mentally, his voice strained by the effort of conceptual focus.
Kabe heard the coordinates, but the Pillar of Grief was actively fighting Ken's input, warping the sound of his brother's voice into a judgment. Nineteen degrees of failure, Kabe.
He pushed through the noise and reached the edge of the Anchor perimeter. The boundary felt like stepping into an invisible, static field—the air suddenly warm and clean. The contrast between the chaotic Mugenkyou energy behind him and the flawless stability ahead was jarring.
He saw Ryo Takamura standing at the base of the Tower, clad in pristine white Kurogane armor that seemed to absorb and reflect the healing green light. Ryo held a translucent shard that glowed with a pure, brilliant white—the Pillar of Hope.
"Welcome, Kabe," Ryo said, his voice echoing with synthetic calm across the silent plain. "I knew you would come. And I knew you would bring the Pillar of Grief. You truly are the ideal Ancient Guardian—disciplined, yet tragically predictable."
Kabe dropped the containment unit, the clang of lead on the restored earth sounding deafening. He drew his Anchor blade, its dark metal contrasting sharply with Ryo's white armor.
"You won't open the Final Gate, Ryo," Kabe stated. "This world doesn't need your perfect, ordered memory."
Ryo smiled faintly. "This world needs to forget its injuries, Kabe. The Pillar of Hope ensures that the future is only constructed from positive causality. But to do that, the foundation must first be purged. That's where your Pillar comes in."
Ryo raised the Pillar of Hope. The pristine green growth around the Tower intensified, and Ryo's voice gained a conceptual weight that pressed Kabe down.
"You carry the weight of all failure, Kabe. I carry the promise of all success. The Pillars are twin forces. When I align them, I won't just stabilize this region—I will create the final, total conceptual barrier. A prison of Hope. And you, and your grief, will be the final, necessary sacrifice to seal the door."
Ryo began to chant, the words not a language, but raw conceptual energy. The Pillar of Hope pulsed, generating a sphere of pure, unassailable Anchor energy around Ryo and the Tower.
Kabe knew he couldn't fight the Pillar of Hope directly; it was too stable, too powerful. He had to use chaos to break the order.
Following Ken's coordinates, Kabe kicked the lead containment unit nineteen degrees northeast of the Tower's axis, then ripped the shielding off. The Pillar of Grief was fully exposed, and its chaotic power slammed into Kabe's mind.
This time, Kabe didn't fight it. He embraced the torrent of anguish, channeling his pain not as protection, but as a conceptual weapon.
You taught me that pain is geometry, Kabe thought, focusing on the coordinates Ken had provided. And geometry can be broken.
With a primal roar that tore at his own throat, Kabe drove his Anchor blade directly into the earth near the Pillar of Grief. He forced his own primal, disciplined will into the Shard, overriding its wild output and aiming its chaos like a focused laser beam.
Conceptual Overload - Optimized for Anchor Disruption.
The Pillar of Grief exploded conceptually. The sphere of ordered Hope surrounding the Tower didn't shatter; it corrupted. The green, stable light turned toxic, swirling into a horrifying, sickly yellow-green.
Ryo staggered, his eyes wide in disbelief. "You weaponized your own failure? Impossible!"
"You taught me how," Kabe managed, his knees buckling under the psychic pressure. The pain was unbearable, but the disruption was perfect. Ryo's Anchor field had collapsed inward, creating a brief, chaotic seam at the point Kabe had targeted.
"Ken! Now!" Kabe screamed.
Ken, already pouring energy into his Prism-Amplifier, used the momentary collapse of Ryo's ordered space. He channeled all his conceptual defense energy into the Prism and fired.
The beam wasn't an attack; it was a conceptual bolt. It tore through the chaotic seam Kabe had created, bypassing the weakened Anchor field and slamming into the base of the Pillar of Hope.
The Pillar of Hope did not break. Instead, the force of Ken's conceptual defense—the power of the Trail Walker—shunted the Pillar, disrupting Ryo's alignment.
The entire Tower of Silence shuddered. The pristine green earth fractured, and the obsidian spire let out a grinding, conceptual sound that made Kabe and Ken clutch their heads.
Ryo, stripped of his flawless defense, turned his full, murderous attention toward Kabe.
"You sacrificed your own sanity for a delay," Ryo snarled, drawing his own energy weapon. "The Final Gate will still open, and I will still rewrite the world. And you will be the first entry in the Book of the Forgotten."
Before Ryo could fire, the ground beneath the Tower of Silence gave way. The force of the two Pillars clashing, Grief and Hope, had opened something ancient beneath the surface.
A plume of black, crystalline smoke erupted from the fissure, not smelling of memory or despair, but of raw, untamed power.
In the smoke, the brothers saw a flicker of something vast, ancient, and impossibly powerful. It was the first true Mythic Entity they had ever faced—a creature of pure conceptual geometry, awakened by the clash of the Pillars. It had been slumbering beneath the abandoned research site all along.
The true antagonist, Uhayyad, the Rift Overlord, had finally been drawn out. The war had just gone Mythic.