The smell of burnt grain and rusted steel filled the air — truth had a scent now.
Peter Salazar stood in what used to be his father's rice fields, barefoot in the mud, his hands trembling as fire swallowed the horizon. The war wasn't between nations, nor gods, nor classes. It was between truths — too many of them.
When the first "Honesty Riots" began two years ago, people thought it was righteous — a cleansing of corruption and deceit. But without the veil of lies, the world had lost its balance. Neighbors shouted their resentments until they fainted from exhaustion. Families fractured. Lovers confessed their contempt. Soldiers refused orders they no longer believed in.
And now, two factions — the Verisyn Loyalists and the Free Will Front — tore the country apart.
Peter didn't belong to either. He was the son of a quiet farmer who once said, "Sometimes silence is mercy." But in a world where silence meant suspicion, mercy had no place.
He watched as men in gray armbands marched past the fields, chanting, "Truth is purity! Lies are death!" Their rifles gleamed with conviction. Across the river, another group shouted back, "Freedom above truth!" — waving banners painted with the symbol of a coiled tongue.
Peter crouched low behind the water pump as two gunshots cracked the air.
He'd heard those sounds for months now, but what frightened him wasn't the gunfire — it was the shouting that came before it: raw honesty, unfiltered, venomous. People didn't kill for money or revenge anymore. They killed because they meant it.
"Pete!"
A voice — high, breathless. It was Lira, the daughter of the local apothecary, sprinting through the smoke. Her apron was bloodstained; her face streaked with soot.
"They burned the town hall," she gasped. "They said the mayor admitted he never believed in the Oath. They dragged him out—"
Her voice broke, but she didn't lie; she couldn't. Her body would've collapsed before she could twist the truth.
Peter grabbed her hand. "Come with me. We'll head to the south ridge."
She shook her head, clutching a small glass vial wrapped in cloth. "I can't. My father—he said he found something. A counteragent. Said it could stop the reaction. He wanted to give it to the Council—"
Peter's pulse froze. "A counteragent? You mean… people could lie?"
Lira nodded. "That's why they're hunting him."
The air thickened with smoke and dread. From the northern path came the hum of engines — Loyalist trucks, their flags fluttering with the Verisyn emblem.
"Where's your father now?" Peter asked.
Lira's eyes glistened with too much truth. "They took him."
For a heartbeat, everything went silent — the world holding its breath, trembling between two absolutes. Peter had grown up in a world that worshipped honesty, and now it was tearing itself apart because of it.
He looked toward the firelight consuming the town and whispered words that, if Verisyn allowed it, might've killed him:
"I don't think truth can save us anymore."
Lira didn't faint — she only stared, wide-eyed. Somewhere inside her, something shifted. Maybe disbelief, maybe the first flicker of a lie.
And when the trucks crested the ridge, Peter tightened his grip on her hand and ran toward the smoke, where the last fragments of mercy might still be hiding.