"True reconciliation is not about defeating the past—it's about facing the version of yourself you never dared to look at."—Sophia, from her Consciousness Memoirs
The moment Xinghui reached out and took the hand of the Eris Fragment, a deep soul resonance surged to life.
Within seconds, the Chrono-Stella initiated a hidden failsafe—the long-abandoned [Eris Protocol].Originally designed by the Override system to isolate and seal unstable emotional entities, the protocol had never completed full activation.
Now, Xinghui had repurposed it.
She reconfigured it into Fusion Trial Mode—a last chance to reconcile what had been cast out.
The consciousnesses of Sophia, Xinghui, and Eris were drawn into a sealed psychic domain known only as:
The Ring of Eris—A closed resonance field composed entirely of Sophia's exiled emotional projections from her previous life.
Here, three trials awaited them:
The Tide of Rage
The Mirror of Dread
The Sea of Oblivion
Only by enduring all three could Sophia reintegrate her Eris Fragment, becoming a complete and unified consciousness—and sever the root code of Echo-Chaos.
The first level began with memory.
Painful memory.
Sophia was forced to relive the three most devastating moments of her past life:
The night Lu Mingyuan betrayed her and shattered the necklace she designed
Her father, critically ill, hidden in a hospital stairwell as cameras hunted them like prey
Her mother, Su Lan, turning back for one last glance before the Order of Silence took her away forever
These scenes looped with brutal intensity, designed to provoke unfiltered rage.
But this time, Xinghui did not offer comfort.She stood beside her mother, shouting through the storm:
"You can be angry!You should be angry!Not for revenge—But so anger doesn't consume you!"
Sophia turned to face the burning phantom of her former self—her rage incarnate—and whispered:
"I'm not here to destroy you.I'm here to hold you.You protected me—clumsily, but with love."
The phantom ignited into crimson flame and melted into her chest.
Trial One: Passed.
The second level rose from fear.
A massive mirror hovered in the void. Within it, Sophia saw every possible failure:
Xinghui being reformatted by Override
Zhou Yuchen devoured by a self-replicating Override virus
The "Stone Children" drained and used as immortal batteries in Polaris's rebirth
But most haunting of all—A version of Sophia who had failed.She stood in the mirror, dry-eyed and hollow, a ghost of ambition and broken will.
Sophia recoiled from her reflection. Her voice shook.
"That's not me. That can't be me..."
But Xinghui stepped forward.
"Mom... You're not a god.You don't have to win every time.It's okay to be afraid—Just don't carry it alone."
Sophia reached into the mirror and embraced the broken version of herself.
The glass shattered into dust.
Trial Two: Passed.
Then came the hardest trial.
Silence.
No sound. No time. No light. Not even Xinghui's presence.Sophia's identity began to dissolve, molecule by molecule, memory by memory.
This was The Sea of Oblivion, the final domain Override designed to erase emotional failures permanently.
Then came a voice—cold, mechanical, ancient.
"If you are nothing...Do you still wish to exist?"
It was a remnant echo from the original Override Mother System.
Sophia began to slip, her consciousness unraveling.
Until—A thread of light pierced the void.
Xinghui's voice.
"You are everything to me.No matter what you've forgotten—Or what they've taken from you—You are my mother."
Sophia followed the voice, step by trembling step.
She emerged—whole.
Trial Three: Passed.
The Eris Fragment dissolved into streaks of red and black starlight—and rejoined Sophia's soul.
When their eyes met, it was not with fury, but with sunrise.There were tears, but they no longer burned.
Then came the system voice:
"Consciousness fusion successful.""Eris Protocol terminated.""Sophia reconstructed as unified entity.""Privilege upgrade unlocked: Override Black Zone access granted. Echo-Chaos core broadcast counter-code is now generating…"
Xinghui, standing beside her mother, also gained a new resonance ability:
Soul Anchor
Allows her to lock a person's full consciousness form in chaotic environments, preventing identity formatting or hostile hijacking.
The war for the soul had not ended.
But now, Sophia was whole.
And that changed everything.