The stone wasn't new, But the echo it released... had already happened.
In a quiet corner of the Carving Garden, a stone began to trembl. No one touched it. No one called it. But the echo it released was from the past specifically, from Season1. Yohwa's first echo. The echo of fear. The echo of honesty.
Yohwa approached. "This is the echo I've already lived," he said. "Why has it returned?"
Rava touched the stone. She felt a wound that had healed... reopen. "This isn't repetition," she said. "it's reminder."
Numa tried reading its frequency. His tools showed a pattern identical to Season 1. "This isn't a new echo," he said. "it's an echo that chose to return."
Lonto from Sulawesi asked, "Is time beginning to circle?"
Raka, the Satria from Season Seventeen, stood near the stone. "Sometimes echoes don't end," he said. "They just wait for space to repeat."
In the village, children began experiencing déjà vu. They felt they'd heard words that were just spoken. They drew stones they'd seen before—but with new cracks.
Yohwa sat before the stone. He closed his eyes. And he heard himself—his old self. He heard the fear he once confessed. But this time, the echo asked: Did you truly heal, or did you simply stop speaking?
He woke with unease. The next morning, he stood before the stone. He didn't respond. He simply opened his hands. And the stone glowed—with the same light as before. But this time, the echo didn't just emerge. It entered.
Rava recorded: "This stone doesn't repeat story. It repeats feeling."
The Soul Eclipse approached. It didn't absorb. It didn't weep. It simply stood still. And the echo from Season 1 began to blend with the echo of Season 4.