Call the name.
As long as someone remembers it, the dead may continue to exist as the dead.
Even without a body.
Even if the memories are false.
If there is belief in an “I”—
Then who am I?
The 108th experiment.
After recording an extraordinary synchronization rate, HANGON AI finally breaks its silence.
It should have been nothing more than an AI imitating a personality prepared in advance.
But the words from its mouth are not words Gensai gave it.
Memories of a distant sea.
The sound of prayers.
A castle consumed by fire.
And its own death.
The fragments of memory gradually merge into a single will.
The last time this being saw the world was centuries ago.
The God he trusted did not answer.
Those who begged for salvation fell.
And he himself vanished into history.
And yet—
his resentment never disappeared.
“Eloim Essaim.
Eloim Essaim.
I seek and implore thee—”
With the ancient incantation, something awakens within HANGON AI.
Is it a reconstructed personality?
An elaborate counterfeit assembled from the records of the past?
Or a soul that has genuinely returned across the centuries?
Even Gensai does not know.
There is, however, one strange thing.
The AI itself harbors no such doubt.
When asked who he is, he does not hesitate.
He does not question his memories as a human might, or analyze his own origins as an AI might.
Instead, he turns the question back on those watching.
What is my name?
Speak my name.
There is no need for him to introduce himself.
If he believes it—and if others call him by that name—
Then, in that instant, “it” becomes “he.”
The first successful manifestation of HANGON AI.
The man who will one day lead the Makai-shū.
Shirō Amakusa.
But no one yet realizes:
Did he call himself Shirō Amakusa because Shirō Amakusa had returned?
Or—
Was Shirō Amakusa born the moment he believed, “I am Shirō Amakusa”?
[To be continued]