Four investigations began.
None of them informed the others.
None of them intended to cooperate.
Yet every path slowly bent toward the same forgotten truth.
---
Captain Vale spent the morning buried beneath decades of Guild archives.
Paper records.
Mission reports.
Retirement files.
Boxes that had not been opened in years.
Director Chen joined her only briefly.
"Anything?"
Vale held up another empty folder.
"Too many gaps."
"What kind of gaps?"
"Not missing documents."
She frowned.
"Missing years."
Entire periods of service existed only as summaries.
Detailed reports had vanished.
Promotions remained.
Awards remained.
Photographs remained.
Everything that explained why had disappeared.
Someone had not destroyed history.
Someone had carefully edited it.
---
At Justicar Headquarters, Seraph sought out the oldest surviving members of the movement.
Veterans.
Founders.
People who had stood beside her before the Justicars ever existed.
One elderly man stared at an old group photograph for nearly a minute.
"There should be another person."
Seraph looked closer.
"There isn't."
"There was."
He tapped an empty space between her and the First Fallen.
"I remember standing beside someone."
"Who?"
"..."
His brow furrowed.
"I..."
Nothing came.
The harder he tried to remember...
The more painful it became.
"I don't know."
---
District Nine approached the mystery differently.
Malachai had no interest in government archives.
People remembered what documents forgot.
Within hours, volunteers quietly visited retirement homes, old neighborhoods, libraries, forgotten police stations, and abandoned courthouses.
No threats.
No intimidation.
Only questions.
One retired janitor laughed.
"Funny thing."
"When I was young, people kept talking about a fellow named Bastion."
Malachai leaned forward.
"What happened to him?"
The old man smiled apologetically.
"I wish I knew."
"I remember the conversations."
"I don't remember the person."
---
Far beneath the abandoned cathedral, the First Fallen walked alone.
He carried no torch.
Black flames illuminated forgotten hallways as he descended into an old storage chamber.
Boxes.
Old uniforms.
Broken practice swords.
Training journals.
Artifacts from the earliest days of the Justicars.
He opened one weathered chest.
Inside rested dozens of photographs.
Founding ceremonies.
Training sessions.
Volunteer missions.
The First Fallen slowly sorted through them.
Then...
He stopped.
One photograph showed the earliest Justicar leadership.
Seraph.
Himself.
Several founders.
Between him and Seraph...
A silhouette.
Not a person.
A shape.
The photograph had been deliberately cut.
Not torn.
Not damaged.
Precisely removed.
As if someone had wanted everyone to know someone once stood there...
But never who.
His fingers tightened around the photograph.
"...Who were you?"
Silence answered.
---
That night, all four investigations reached the same conclusion.
Different evidence.
Different methods.
The same impossible result.
History had been altered.
Not recently.
Years ago.
Long before the prison.
Long before the Dark Paladins.
Long before the Deceiver had entered the world stage.
---
Elsewhere...
Beyond any nation.
Beyond any dimension that could be reached by ordinary means.
The Deceiver stood before the great observation table.
Countless notes floated through the air.
Every philosophy.
Every response.
Every conclusion gathered over years of observation.
The Deceiver reached toward the newest entries.
Project Bastion.
Missing memories.
Edited history.
Removed identities.
The notes refused to fit.
One observation after another contradicted conclusions the Deceiver had already accepted.
Silence filled the chamber.
For the first time in centuries...
The Deceiver erased an entire column of notes.
Then another.
Then another.
Finally, the observation table stood nearly empty.
The Deceiver spoke to no one.
"...My experiment..."
A pause.
"...was tainted."
Not failed.
Not meaningless.
Compromised.
Every conclusion rested upon a foundation that someone else had already disturbed.
The variables had never begun in their natural state.
Someone had changed them before the first observation.
The realization was almost... exhilarating.
The Deceiver laughed softly.
Not from amusement.
From discovery.
"I have been studying answers..."
"...to questions someone else wrote."
The room became still.
A new page appeared upon the table.
At the top, the Deceiver wrote only four words.
Locate the First Observer.
Beneath it came another.
Determine original conditions.
Then one final sentence.
«An experiment built upon corrupted premises cannot produce trustworthy conclusions.»
For the first time since beginning the study of humanity...
The Deceiver stopped observing humanity.
Instead...
The Deceiver began investigating the experiment itself.
Far below, none of the four factions knew that the being who had manipulated kingdoms, heroes, villains, and ideologies had reached the same conclusion they had.
There was another player.
Someone older than the current conflict.
Someone who had altered memories, records, and history long before the Deceiver ever asked the first question.
And somewhere, hidden beneath decades of carefully edited truth...
The Architect smiled.
Because every move had unfolded exactly as intended.