Stepping through the massive obsidian gates of the Scriptural Vault, the absolute silence vanished, replaced in an instant by a chorus of despair: the "Whispers of Dead Gods."
A forest of colossal bookshelves stretched to the horizon, standing in orderly rows like monuments to a dead Reason. Each shelf rose like a pillar supporting the heavens, crammed with hundreds of millions of "superfluous records"—every scrap of history culled from the world.
Koyoi felt the very foundations of Reason trembling beneath the flagstones, vibrating with information overload. She drew the freezing air deep into her lungs. It smelled of old ink and the death-scent of paper unopened for ten thousand years. Her fingers brushed a nearby pillar, meeting a lethal cold no living thing should touch, and the faint tremor of those ceaseless whispers.
The more she listened, the more the wordless grief of forgotten people and lost gods flooded her mind—a silent avalanche of memory pouring from the gaps between the books.
“Don’t listen. Never lend them your ears. The whispers in this place are a potent poison, records designed to devour the living spirit from within.”
Kuon spoke in a voice from the depths of an abyss, his hand clamped over his prosthetic left eye. The artificial orb flickered with a violent, pale light as it buckled under the crushing weight of the records radiating from the shelves.
“I know,” Koyoi said, her voice steady. “But their voices... they sound so desperate.”
Asahi took the lead, using his heavy scabbard to sweep aside the piles of book debris blocking their path. As they moved deeper into the heart of the forest, the faint light from the entrance faded, replaced by an eerie, blue-white phosphorescence bleeding from the books themselves. It was a cold, clinical light, casting the silhouettes of erased truths into the mist.
At the edge of her vision, an ancient volume fell open. Thousands of names took flight from its pages like a swarm of black butterflies, fluttering upward before vanishing into the dark. Though the loss pained her, Koyoi did not look away. She traced the edges of the shadows with precision, measuring the path against the inner compass of her soul.
“Just watch them for now,” Kuon said, his grip tightening over his eye. “Watch... until the true End of Reason begins at that single point.”
“Let’s go,” Asahi declared. “We’re taking back the true Answer to this world’s Reason.”
Together, the three of them plunged into the deepest reaches of the information abyss.