I. The skull under the stone
On the outskirts of Tairoku , a quiet town where minor mafias coexist under fragile truces, Akihiko arrived with Ikari and Seiji in search of rest. The sky was covered with pale clouds and the earth smelled of wet iron, as if it had just rained blood.
They took refuge in the ruins of an ancient monastery dedicated to the Inner Tree. Only broken columns, fragments of carved prayer beads, and an altar covered in thick moss remained.
That night, as the fire sparked, Akihiko walked away, drawn by a dull pulse in his chest.
He found it: a stone slab that was not loose, but set in place .
He moved it with his hands. Beneath it, there was no grave.
There was a skull embedded in black root , its eyes open.
And as soon as Akihiko touched it, the vision began.
II. Vision of the Hollow Root Clan
Akihiko found himself standing on a plain where the trees were all cut down. The ground was ash . In the distance, a citadel hung from broken ropes. It was a place he had never seen, but one he remembered , as if it were written in his blood.
In front of him, dozens of figures dressed in linen cloaks marched. They carried broken branches on their backs, and on their chests, the symbol of a root devoured by fire.
" Yovaren Clan ," a voice whispered. "Those who tried to change the root."
He saw a man with the mark inverted: not a broken spiral, but a perfect, complete spiral.
That was Eravan , the clan leader, who had made a pact with the Tree… to break it .
They wanted to tame memory. To edit it. To make the Tree forget its own judgments.
And the Tree answered .
Akihiko witnessed the massacre.
The heavens opened. It wasn't fire.
Roots fell.
They clutched bodies. They strangled names. And most atrociously: they erased their faces .
One by one, the souls of the Yovaren clan disappeared. They didn't die.
They faded from history.
And yet one survived.
A child.
Marked on the shoulder.
The same symbol Akihiko wears on his chest now.
III. Waking up with mourning in your throat
Akihiko came to, covered in dirt, his nails bleeding.
Ikari found him agitated, his eyes staring into space.
"Did you see anything?" he asked.
—It wasn't a memory.
It was a hidden judgment.
Seiji approached cautiously.
—A trial of whom?
—From the Tree… to a clan that tried to rewrite memory.
—And why did you see it?
Akihiko touched his chest. The mark throbbed like a drum inside his skin.
—Because I bear his scar.
IV. The sealed archive of the Yovaren Clan
In the city of Zurei , beneath the Black Library of the Fallen Archivists, Mizuki sent one of his most dangerous agents: Kaoru , a memory forger doomed to madness.
Their mission: to find any documents related to the Yovaren Clan , whose existence had been officially banned by the Twelve Families over 400 years ago.
Kaoru crawled between chained books and rusty bookshelves. She used her own blood as payment to enter the "Broken Word Pavilion."
There, he found a single fragment:
"Eravan, the Tongue of Silence, tried to rewrite the root.
Not with hatred. With compassion. He wanted to cure the sins of the Tree. And so he was devoured."
Kaoru cried. Then she laughed. Then she fell to her knees.
Eravan's name no longer existed in the records.
But now someone remembered it again.
V. Renjirō's reaction
On his dark throne, Renjirō Kurobane received news that the mark of the Wounded is resonating with lost memories .
His daughter, Naomi , showed him a papyrus written under only one root. It contained a name that not even the Kurobane family had kept in their archives:
"Yovaren."
Renjirō stood up for the first time in days.
—If the mark accesses the Tree's errors, then Akihiko isn't a symbol.
He's a crack in judgment itself.
—What shall we do, Father?
—Nothing. Yet.
But if he remembers the forgotten…
maybe they'll start looking for him.
VI. The trembling seed
That night, as Akihiko slept, he had one last flash of vision:
A field of nameless bodies.
A weeping root. And in the background, a tree older than all the others.
One that was not connected to the Central Tree.
One isolated , exiled.
At the foot of that tree, a little girl watched him with sad eyes.
And he said:
—If you remember… we can exist again.
END OF CHAPTER 83