Chapter 144 Do Not Be Afraid, I Will Lie for You

The awakening of that ancient will raised no towering waves. Like a drop of ink falling into clear water, it was silent, yet had already begun to spread.

Themyscira's forbidden sanctuary of dreams.

Boiling holy water churned and foamed in the crystal pool, releasing a searing heat capable of purifying every evil presence.

It was hot enough to melt mortal steel, yet Nephita, the guardian of dreams, kept both bare hands fully submerged, her face expressionless.

Her duty was to use this holy water and her own will to repair the Amazons' damaged sacred artifacts.

Now she was attempting to mend the Lasso of Truth.

The golden cord, once brilliantly radiant, floated dimly in the center of the holy water. At its core, a web of cracks almost invisible to the naked eye stubbornly remained.

Whenever Nephita focused and tried to close the wound with divine power, a wisp of smoke purer in its blackness than the abyss seeped from deep within the cracks.

The smoke carried no evil presence. Instead, it contained a cold, absolute logic that sliced through the holy water's purifying power as easily as the sharpest blade.

Nephita tried again and again. Fine beads of sweat formed on her forehead.

She tried chanting a restoration spell. The holy water boiled more fiercely, but instead of healing, the crack spread a little farther with each incantation.

She jerked her hands out. Drained of color by the holy water, they now trembled uncontrollably.

"No..." she whispered into the empty sanctuary, as though reporting to an unseen being. "It cannot be repaired. Whenever my will touches the name Gideon, or I try to use the power of truth to forcibly deny the paradox he implanted, the cracks deepen."

She drew a deep breath, picked up the crystal pen beside her, and rapidly wrote in a journal made of moonstone tablets. The pen scraped across the stone with a teeth-grating sound.

"Record: the corruption is not caused by an external force... It arises from a contradiction within truth itself. The lasso is... negating itself."

As she wrote the last few words, her voice was full of bewilderment and fear.

An artifact founded on the absolute had begun to deny itself. That was more terrifying than its destruction by any enemy.

Outside the sanctuary's heavy stone doors, a young figure pressed close to the gap and heard everything.

Lysandra, a young Amazon recruit, stared in horror and uncertainty. Her eyes had once been full of worship and fervor.

She had been one of the warriors angered by Princess Diana's doubts in the temple that day.

Now even the guardian of dreams had personally confirmed the irreversible corruption.

She saw Nephita pass a hand over the lasso in despair. A tiny golden fragment, finer than a hair and utterly without luster, broke free from a crack and sank to the bottom of the pool.

The instant Nephita turned to seal away the journal, Lysandra moved like a startled hare. With the training arrow she carried, she reached through the gap in the door and silently hooked out the fragment of golden thread.

She did not even dare touch it. She quickly rolled it in a piece of hide and tucked it into the amulet she wore against her body.

Were the oracles... truly no longer absolute?

The thought took root in her heart like a seed growing out of control.

Meanwhile, above the North Sea, atop the floating ruins of the monastery fashioned from blue energy.

Gideon stood at the edge of a cliff. The gale whipped the hem of his black clothing but could not move him in the slightest.

Above his palm hovered the third and final crystal containing memories of his life as an angel.

Sealed within it was the coronation ceremony from when he first became the Edge of Judgment.

In the image, the young seraph Gideon bathed in Heaven's most brilliant sacred light. His gaze was steadfast and pure, filled with unquestioning faith in divine law.

He personally accepted the Blade of Judgment, burning with eternal fire. Then, before countless angels, he cast every soul record documenting doubters and thought criminals into the divine incinerating flames, reducing them to ash.

Back then, he had believed he was defending justice, removing impurities from the body of Heaven.

As he studied that fanatical, unfamiliar version of himself within the crystal, a deeply mocking smile suddenly touched Gideon's lips.

"I, too, was once what you call a messenger of justice..." he murmured, as though passing judgment on his former self and on the gods of Olympus and Heaven alike. "Until I discovered that judgment was merely the most efficient ritual the powerful had invented to conceal their own fear."

The instant he finished speaking, his fingers clenched.

Crack!

Without mercy, he crushed the indestructible memory crystal into countless motes of black-glimmering dust.

He opened his hand, letting those remnants of fanatical justice scatter into the wind.

They did not disperse. Instead, they gathered into a strange black haze of snow, carried by the North Sea's currents in a vast drift toward the southern islands.

A plague of thought had been sown.

The temple on Themyscira.

Late at night, Diana sat alone on the cold floor, tightly gripping the battered Lasso of Truth.

Earlier that day, she had consulted the royal council minutes personally signed by her mother, Queen Hippolyta.

The cold words in that record had plunged her into an icy abyss: Operation Purifying Fire.

Assemble the Amazons' finest fleet. Deploy the fire of divine punishment stored within the volcano's core. Burn the waters occupied by Gideon, and every potential source of contamination within them, into absolute nothingness.

She knew those waters were not deserted. Fishing vessels and research ships from around the world passed through them year-round.

Her mother's order amounted to reducing thousands upon thousands of innocent mortals to ash along with him.

She had immediately rushed into the queen's chambers, trying to use the Lasso of Truth to persuade her mother to abandon this madness.

She offered one end of the cord to Hippolyta, praying that truth would reveal its power once more.

But just as the golden cord was about to touch the hem of the queen's splendid robes—

A sharp, heartbreaking snap rang out.

The Lasso of Truth broke of its own accord, two cun from the queen.

In that moment, Diana's world collapsed completely.

Even truth itself no longer supported this war waged in the name of justice.

By destroying itself, it had given the cruelest possible answer.

Now she had returned to the North Sea.

She carried no weapon and wore none of her Wonder Woman armor. Only a plain white robe covered her, unable to keep out the cold sea wind.

Barefoot, she walked along the energy bridge, step by step, until she stood before Gideon.

Her voice was weary and hoarse as never before. "If you really can see how everything ends, as you claim... then tell me. If I go back and stop my mother from sending her forces, will that mean... more people dying on Themyscira?"

Gideon did not answer.

He simply looked at her in silence. His black eyes seemed able to pierce her soul and see every struggle, every pain within it.

Suddenly, he reached out and gently brushed the corner of her eye with his long fingertips.

An almost invisible tear track remained there, long since dried.

"You will lose your people's trust. They will see you as a traitor to Amazon glory. You may even... be stripped of your title as princess." His voice was flat and cold, as though stating an established fact.

Diana trembled slightly.

He paused. His fingertips slipped gently down, and a strange, almost cruel tenderness entered his voice:

"But at least, every day afterward, you will be able to face yourself in the mirror without shame."

Diana returned to Themyscira.

At the emergency royal council meeting, faced with her mother's cold gaze and the generals' impassioned demands for war, she remained silent for a long time.

At last, she raised her head, looked across every one of her sisters present, and slowly spoke. "I have witnessed Gideon's power with my own eyes. He has not come to destroy... He has come to force us to confront our own hypocrisy."

She concealed the lasso's breaking. With unprecedented calm and certainty, she told the first and most consequential lie of her life as a divine daughter, a lie that concerned the entire system of divine authority.

The meeting ended in deathly silence. The decision to send troops was postponed indefinitely.

That night, Nephita, the guardian of dreams, cast the moonstone journal filled with her frightening discoveries into the sacred fire.

Watching the tablet turn to ash, she whispered so softly that only she could hear. "She lied... But this time, the gods sent no punishment."

Far away, on a high cliff above the North Sea, a new black feather was slowly unfolding in Gideon's hand, born from Diana's lie and her choice.

It was more solid than any that had come before it. In the moonlight, its edges gleamed coldly like a blade.

He raised his head toward Themyscira, as though he could see the solitary figure standing in its temple.

"Do not be afraid, Diana..."

He spoke softly. The sea wind scattered his voice, yet it seemed to ring through the heavens.

"Sometimes true mercy means bearing the sin of lying for someone else."

Before his words had faded, the lights of an unremarkable fishing boat silently went out on the distant sea within his sight.

It adjusted its course. At its bow, a flag bearing a black feather fluttered in the wind, barely visible in the night.

Quietly, it was entering Themyscira's reef-filled waters, which legend said no vessel could approach.

The night tide receded, revealing jagged black reefs.

Gideon's figure stood motionless upon them, like a statue that had been there since the dawn of time.