I. The rumor that cannot be erased
In the north, where the mountains lay asleep, covered in ash, someone carved a symbol into a stone. Not with a chisel. With fire. An open circle, with a root crossing it from side to side. It was the mark of the Black Tree. No one knew who did it. No one saw it. But a week later, that same symbol appeared in five different cities, on five different continents.
It wasn't propaganda. It was a warning. Or a promise.
The Carbon Accord received the news with restrained concern. The symbol wasn't aggressive. It wasn't accompanied by threats. But it had something more dangerous: it had spiritual coherence . It didn't come from the Tree. But it vibrated as if it did. The oldest sensors registered it as a compatible anomaly. As if the new system being formed had already been accepted by the world... before humans.
Okuma, from his stone throne, did not speak. But his mask vibrated for hours. And that was enough to trigger the Accord's next move: a group of spirit interceptors was dispatched to track the source of the signal. Their destination: the Bastion of the Silent Flame .
II. The Bastion of the Silent Flame
It was an ancient spiritual fortress, forgotten after the last root purge. It was said to be home to the last bearers of the red song: a form of vibration associated with the most radical judgment, one that condemned not what was, but what could become.
The Accord's interceptors arrived with state-of-the-art vibration technology. They wanted to test whether the new root, the one that had blossomed in Kagebara, could be located, contained, or replicated.
But as they entered, something went wrong. The devices went off. The echoes clashed. The Bastion was no longer a place. It was a temporal crossroads.
And in the middle of the great hall, engraved on a wall covered in ash, they found a phrase:
"The tree was once a seed. But now there is a forest."
And a signature: Sora.
III. Akihiko and the pilgrim root
Meanwhile, on the outskirts of Kagebara, Akihiko walked alone. He had left the city behind. Not as a fugitive. But as someone who had already completed a stage.
He carried the stone in his coat. But now, it vibrated without touching it. A root, as small as a finger, grew inside. No one had planted it. No one nourished it. It was a nomadic root. A wandering root.
Akihiko knew what it meant: the world had accepted the possibility of a new network. One that wouldn't be born from a central Tree… but from people who had survived all trial.
That night, while sleeping in an abandoned cabin, he had a dream.
Sora looked down at him from a hill. She was no longer the girl from the hill. She was something else. She didn't speak. But her presence was music without sound. In her hands, she held a root identical to the one now growing inside him.
And then, a single phrase, without voice, without vibration, without word:
"The world no longer asks permission."
END OF CHAPTER 109