Live chapter: https://echoes-of-the-real-20f058.gitlab.io/chapter-4379.html (commit 6c6b448). Title-locked from main HTML (“The Monstrous Irony”). Streak 264.
Opening (live prose):
The question hung in their shared reality, not as a sound, but as a change in the very texture of existence.
The fragile braid of their reconciliation, woven from sorrow and pragmatism, began to fray.
It was a horror that unfolded not in a moment, but as a slow, creeping dawn, illuminating the monstrous irony of their creation.
Arc beat: scar-child inheritance arc continues through fix-vs-accept, child-in-crossfire, shared culpability, and into atonement-as-creation. Non-WOW; echoes count bumps.