Chapter 149 A God on One Knee

The ring's flickering looked less like a struggle than a cry of anguish beneath that overwhelming assault of will.

Finally, with a barely audible snap, the chain of runes representing Mount Heaven's oracle went completely dark and vanished.

The binding had failed.

The mirrored labyrinth did not disappear with it. Instead, it grew more solid.

Steve Trevor's bomber plunged toward death again and again before Diana's eyes. Each explosion lit her sharply contracted pupils.

His final farewell over the radio was no longer a distant memory. It had become a lingering curse, echoing over and over in her ears.

"I love you, Diana."

Fire swallowed the sky.

"Now... it is your turn."

Falling. Sacrifice. Without end.

"No... No..." Diana's breathing grew rapid and ragged. Pain twisted her beautiful face, and her neatly trimmed nails dug deep into her palms as she tried to use physical pain to resist the flaying of her soul.

In the shadows of the audience, temporary psychological consultant David Cole murmured his analysis into a miniature recorder, his voice almost cruelly calm. "The subject's psychological defenses are undergoing structural collapse. She is experiencing an intense reliving of traumatic memories. Her self-perception is in violent conflict with her core beliefs, and her emotional regulation is nearing breakdown."

Elsewhere, in an unnoticed corner, the street philosopher known as Graytongue slowly pulled back his hood. The scene onstage reflected in his clouded eyes. He grinned, showing rotten teeth, and murmured in an almost lyrical tone, "Look... The tyrant is forcing a god to confront her own scars. Soon, even gods... will kneel."

The whisper seemed to possess the power to pierce anything. Like a cold steel nail, it drove into Diana's confused mind.

A god would kneel?

She jerked her head up and glared at Gideon, only to find he had already looked away and was standing before the last and largest mirror.

That mirror held no past.

The image suddenly brightened, revealing Themyscira's sacred white beach.

A group of Amazon children played there, their laughter clear as silver bells.

A second later, a purple figure burst maniacally into the scene—the Joker!

He carried an automatic rifle utterly out of place in that sanctuary, its muzzle spitting fire.

The children screamed and scattered.

The Diana in the mirror descended from the sky. Divine power surged, and she subdued the Joker in an instant.

She slammed him to the ground and raised her fist.

But just before the blow fell, she hesitated.

Her mirrored self remembered her no-killing principle, the procedures of justice.

In that brief hesitation, the Joker grinned viciously and pressed a detonator hidden in his cuff.

The bomb strapped to him exploded. Flesh and wild laughter burst outward together.

The image did not freeze at the explosion. Instead, it slowly moved closer, focusing on the face of a surviving Amazon girl.

Covered in dust and blood, she lifted her head toward the god who had saved them, yet had also spared the monster.

Her eyes held neither worship nor gratitude. Only a bottomless... disappointment.

Gideon's cold voice sounded then, as though supplying the tragedy's final footnote.

"You protected the rules," he said, "but sacrificed lives. Diana Prince, is this the justice you want?"

"Shut up!"

Diana roared, barely containing her agony. Her wrist turned, and the Sword of Hephaestus rang free of its sheath.

She lunged forward, its sacred, gleaming point aimed straight at Gideon's throat.

"You don't understand! You don't understand anything! This isn't about rules. It's about responsibility!" she shouted. Yet the sword point that should have been steady as stone was shaking violently.

Gideon did not retreat or make the slightest move to evade it.

He walked toward the blade, step by step, until its peerlessly sharp edge rested lightly against the skin of his chest.

No blood flowed.

A flame darker than night slowly rose where the blade met his skin.

Like a living thing, the black fire wound around the sacred sword, making a corrosive hiss.

Before everyone's eyes, the indestructible artifact forged by Hephaestus himself acquired a shallow scorch mark.

"I understand."

Gideon's voice was low as an echo from the abyss, carrying the weariness and coldness of hundreds of millions of years.

He looked into Diana's blue eyes, which blazed with anger as she came apart, and spoke slowly. "Before my exile, I personally executed 7,642 criminal souls classified as world-ending threats, solely to stop a soul plague capable of consuming several galaxies from spreading."

His words stopped Diana completely.

"Heaven's elders called me cruel. They said I had usurped divine authority, that every soul deserved compassion." A mocking smile curved Gideon's lips. "But the children of those countless newborn civilizations wiped out before their time by the plague... They never even lived long enough to be pitied."

He paused, his voice without a trace of emotion. "Tell me, Diana. My cruelty or your responsibility—which carries more blood?"

Below the platform, Diana's secretary, Ella Chen, was so shocked that her finger instinctively pressed the camera's power button, switching it off.

She had thought this debate would expose the tyrant Gideon's evil methods of manipulating people to the world. Now, for the first time, she began to wonder: perhaps what truly needed judgment was the lofty, unsullied righteousness they had always followed.

Just then, as though seeing her inner struggle, Gideon turned his head and fixed his gaze precisely on her.

"You are filming me, and you are filming her. But do you dare release that footage without a single edit?" His voice was quiet, yet Ella heard it clearly. "You do not. Because you know, too—the only reason she cannot persuade me is that I am telling the truth."

Ella Chen's lips moved slightly. Pale as paper, she could not utter a word.

Gideon looked away from her, turned slowly, and walked past Diana to the very center of the stage.

He pushed her sword aside as though brushing away a limp, withered branch.

Facing the silent audience, he slowly raised an empty hand.

"You fear me? You fear that I will establish a rule built on terror?" His voice reached every corner of the opera house. "Then let me ask you—in the past ten years, how many criminals Batman sent to Arkham have returned to the streets to create new tragedies? Superman drives back powerful invaders again and again, but have the slums of Gotham or even Metropolis ever shrunk in the slightest?"

Everyone held their breath.

"The heroes you worship bring hope and light. But those are only painkillers that numb your senses. They can make you forget the pain for a while, but they can never eliminate the disease."

He paused. His voice suddenly grew soft, light as a feather, yet it struck heavily at every heart.

"And I choose to bear every accusation and curse, to become the bitter medicine... that can truly heal this city."

The instant his words ended.

Clang...

The soft sound of metal meeting the floor.

Diana Prince, the demigoddess Amazon princess of Themyscira, could no longer hold herself up.

The Sword of Hephaestus slipped from her hand. Her knees weakened, and she dropped heavily onto one knee on the cold stage.

A hot tear slid down her flawless cheek, fell into a gap in her armor, and instantly evaporated.

"Perhaps..."

She choked on the word, her voice broken and hopeless, yet the sound system caught it clearly and carried it throughout the room.

"Perhaps what we need... has always been more than love and hope."

Below the stage, deathly silence.

Only the evening wind passed through the opera house's broken windows, lifting a black feather from a corner of the stage.

It spiraled through the air, drifting gently, until it settled without a sound on Graytongue's shoulder.

Like a silent coronation.

The Debate of the Mirror Abyss, which had shaken the entire world, ended in a way no one had anticipated.

Yet no one knew that the real judgment had only begun at the moment the debate ended.

Its verdict would not be read by any court. It would be written in an entirely new way on every street and alley in Gotham.