It had lived long.
Longer than empires.
Longer than flame.
Longer than silence.
It had not been born—it had been chosen.
And then fed.
Fed by fear.
Fed by the need for control.
Fed by those who thought some stories were too dangerous to be told, and others too small to be remembered.
The Lie had no single name.
Because every world gave it a new one.
And each time, it wore that name like armor.
Like a throne.
Like skin.
It first felt the Garden not as threat…
…but as ache.
An itch beneath the skin of reality.
Not because it wanted to invade.
Because it knew what it had once been—
—before it was a Lie.
And it remembered.
And it longed.
In the Wastes beyond the Garden, the Lie took form—not monstrous, not deceptive.
But tired.
It was shaped like a child who had grown too old in too little time.
Eyes like mirrors that never gave back your reflection.
Hands that trembled—not from malice, but from weight.
A face half-formed from every mask it had ever worn.
