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"What happens when a lie becomes more beloved than the truth?"
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The debriefing room was cold.
Too quiet for comfort.
Ritsuka sat with hands clasped, jaw tight. Mash stood nearby, her hands still trembling, eyes cast downward. Da Vinci looked unusually grim. Gordolf hadn't spoken since their return—his usual loudness swallowed by what they'd all seen. Or hadn't seen.
It was Holmes who broke the silence.
"There was no resistance because we weren't fighting the Singularity's logic."
He turned to the screen, displaying data from the city: leyline distortions, mana density, emotional resonance waves—all too clean.
"We weren't walking into history. We were walking into an ideal."
Sion stepped forward, throwing a new display onto the table. "I ran a parallel analysis. There was no anchor—no historical moment being preserved or corrected. The laws of that place were artificially constructed. Something has rewritten the emotional truth of the region."
Da Vinci added, "The people weren't just brainwashed—they were characters in a fairy tale. The kind that numbs your heart while wrapping you in gold thread."
Holmes nodded. "Precisely. We have reason to believe this is the emergence of Beast IV/L."
Mash's head snapped up. "Beast… IV?"
"'L' stands for Laudatio—the beast of hollow praise. One of the variants theorized but never confirmed." Holmes's voice dropped. "It doesn't destroy through fear or despair. It destroys through comfort. It devours suffering and replaces it with sanitized fiction. A world without thorns. Without grief. A world where everyone is 'happy.'"
Ritsuka's voice was low. "Even if it's fake?"
"Especially if it's fake," Holmes replied. "Because the more beloved the lie becomes, the more reality itself bends to fit it."
Sion scrolled through old data—legends, myths, bardic retellings. She pulled up scattered information on Leonas, the King of Thorns.
"In the true records—he was no gentle king. They called him cruel. Sharp-tongued. Radiant, yes, but never warm. He conquered through force. Made enemies of gods and mortals alike. But he died saving them all."
Ritsuka whispered, "But in that city…"
"He lives," Holmes said darkly. "Smiling. Merciful. Fake."
Da Vinci nodded. "This Akrytos is a theater stage—and someone rewrote his legend into a bedtime story."
A long silence.
Then Holmes straightened.
"There's only one way to collapse the illusion."
Sion raised a brow. "You're not suggesting—"
"Yes." Holmes's voice cut through the air. "We summon the true King of Thorns."
Da Vinci looked hesitant. "But summoning a Heroic Spirit into their own distorted legend… That's taboo. His Saint Graph will be unstable. The world might reject him."
Holmes stared at the data. "Then we'll anchor him with contradictions. The records that remember the blood. The pain. The truth."
Mash whispered, "You think he'll fight his own fairy tale?"
"I'm counting on it," Holmes replied.
And far away, deep in the data void of the Singularity…
…The smile on the marble statue flickered.
Cracks spread from the corners of its lips.
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The lie is deep, but the truth remembers.
And it's waiting to be called.
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