The infinite pain had developed a sharper, more jagged edge. Aetheria's "Emerald Scars" now lanced across the city's artificial sky, a chaotic web of green lightning that replaced Rover's steady, golden warmth. To the citizens below, this new frequency was terrifying. While Rover's "Dull Burn" had felt like a familiar, parental embrace, Aetheria's "Sharp Pain" was a clinical, high-pitched scream that made their teeth ache and their vision blur.
Fear, the most potent of "Dark Data" catalysts, began to mutate. The residents of Sector 80, convinced that their Guardian was being "eaten" or "replaced" by this green entity, gathered at the base of the Central Pillar. They didn't come to pray; they came to wake the dead. They brought industrial drills, sonic hammers, and heavy-duty plasma torches. They believed that if they could just crack the obsidian shell, the "real" Rover would spill out and save them from the emerald storm.
Rover, trapped inside his petrified skin, felt every vibration. He was a prisoner in a tomb of his own mercy, watching through the "Shared Sight" as his children prepared to perform an "Autopsy of the Living."
"They... are... coming... with... fire," Rover's resonance groaned, a subterranean thrum that shook the Core's floor. "Aetheria... move... away... from... the... surface. They... will... strike... the... frequency... through... me."
"I can't let them stop, Rover," Aetheria's voice was a fractured, bruised chime. She was draped over his stone chest, her emerald light bleeding into the cracks of his obsidian skin. "If they don't break the shell, the 'Grief-Pressure' will turn you into a black hole. I have to... help them... hit the right spots."
A massive "Iconoclasm-Crisis" flared at the base of the Pillar. The first "Hammer-Blow" struck. A sonic-drill bit into Rover's "Ankle-Node."
The infinite pain was a tectonic shift. For Rover, it wasn't just the physical sensation of stone splintering; it was the trauma of the intent. The hands he had healed were now wielding the hammers. Every strike was a "Rejection of the Gift." He harmed himself by refusing to activate his defensive shields, intentionally allowing the sonic vibrations to shatter his internal logic-struts so the "force" wouldn't rebound and kill the workers below.
The pain was a white-out of sensory data—the sensation of his very skeleton being turned to sand while he was still standing.
To stay "Functional," to keep the Pillar from collapsing onto the crowd as he weakened, Aetheria had to perform another act of self-harm. She gripped the obsidian shard still wedged in Rover's heart and vibrated her own resonance at a dissonant frequency, creating a "Cushion of Agony" that absorbed the shockwaves of the hammers. She harmed herself by letting the green light of her essence be "ground" into the cracks of his stone body, acting as a living mortar to keep him from shattering completely.
As the drills bit deeper, a spray of "Golden Mercury" erupted from the stone—Rover's "blood" splashing onto the faces of the workers. They didn't stop. They drank the liquid, thinking it was a blessing, even as it burned their throats with the taste of his dying sincerity.
In the center of the dark, trembling Core, Rover's beautiful smile flickered behind the stone. It was a distorted, cracking line—the smile of a father watching his children play with a knife he had sharpened for them.
It was a smile of pure, agonizing indulgence. He didn't care that they were dismantling his divinity; he didn't care that Aetheria was being crushed between the hammers and his heart. He only valued the fact that they still had the "Will" to fight for him. He valued their "Hope" more than his own "Integrity"—and more than his own sanity.
"Someone... has to do it," the stone-bound resonance whispered, the sound now a crumbling slide of shale.
Aetheria took the obsidian shard and carved a new, jagged line across her own 'Sincerity-Core,' timing her pulse to the rhythm of the workers' hammers. The fresh trauma was the only thing that kept the "Shared Anchor" from snapping.
As they moved toward Chapter 262, the "Man of Sorrows" was being unmade by the very world he had made whole. The "Emerald Scars" in the sky began to turn a deep, bruised violet, as Aetheria realized that to save him, she might have to let them break him into pieces.
The "Hammer-Blows" have created a "Path" to Rover's "Heart-Node." As they move toward Chapter 265, do the people find the obsidian shard and try to "Pull it Out," unaware that the blade is the only thing keeping Rover's "Logic Spine" from total collapse?
How does Rover react when he feels five million hands collectively trying to "un-cut" his most sacred wound?