The weight of the "Holy Lie" evaporated the instant Midnight's whip cracked the air, signaling the end of the match. For Shiozaki Ibara, the crushing gravity of the High Priestess card vanished as if it had never existed, leaving her body light, hollow, and trembling.
She remained on her knees for a long, agonizing moment, her green vine-hair splayed across the concrete like a weeping willow. The stadium was a cacophony of hushed confusion—the boos had died down into a strange, uneasy buzzing. To the spectators, the "Saint" had simply wilted at a touch.
Loki Hargreaves stood over her, his silhouette sharp against the midday sun. He breathed in the scent of scorched earth and crushed vegetation, his lungs burning from the mana he had just incinerated to hold the illusion.
"You... you are a thief of peace, Hargreaves-san," Ibara rasped. She refused his outstretched hand, pushing herself up with a jagged, desperate dignity. Her vines were limp, their thorns dulled by the mental exhaustion of fighting ghosts.
She looked at him then, and Loki felt the weight of a gaze that didn't just see his face, but tried to audit his soul. "You did not best my vines with strength. You reached into the sanctuary of my mind and planted a weed of doubt. It is... a most unholy way to contest a trial."
Loki retracted his hand, tucking it neatly into the small of his back. He adjusted his monocle, the gold rim glinting with a cold, aristocratic light. "A trial is simply a performance where the stakes are real, Ibara-san. I didn't plant the weed. I merely showed you that your garden had no walls. Practically speaking, a wall that only exists in the mind is no wall at all."
She brushed the dust from her uniform, her expression softening into a look of profound, sweet pity that felt more cutting than any insult. She looked at him not as a rival, but as a patient.
"I cannot acknowledge this as a true victory of spirit," she said, her voice dropping to a melodious, heartbreakingly soft murmur. "It was a deception of the highest order—a heresy of the senses. And yet..." She stepped closer, and for a second, the scent of wild clover and incense filled Loki's personal space. "To possess such a gift for falsehood... you must be very lonely behind that glass eye of yours. I shall continue to pray that you find a Truth you do not feel the need to edit."
She leaned in, her eyes searching his for a spark of honesty. "I wish you a blessing for your future matches, Deceiver. May the light blind you until you can finally see."
With a final, serene bow that felt like a funeral rite, she turned and walked away. Loki watched the trailing ends of her vines sweep the concrete, a dry, hollow ache blooming in his chest.
"Blessings and prayers," he muttered, the emerald light in his eyes fading into a dull, exhausted hazel. "I'd settle for a glass of water and a world that stopped spinning."
Loki didn't make it five steps into the cooling tunnel before the "Director" persona was violently dismantled by a thirty-pound projectile.
"LOKI!"
A chaotic blur of pink fabric and yellow ribbons collided with his knees. Lyra clung to his leg with the terrifying grip of a professional wrestler, her face buried in the blue fabric of his UA gym trousers.
"You did it! You did the heavy card trick!" she squealed, muffled by his leg. she looked up, her eyes wide and sparkling with the kind of pure, unadulterated worship that Loki felt he deserved least in that moment. "The vine lady went squish! I saw it on the big, big screen!"
Loki's hand, still trembling from the neural strain of the match, found its way to her head. He ruffled her hair with a clumsy, weary affection. "Careful, Lyra. I'm currently held together by spite and expensive cravat silk. If you squeeze harder, I might actually vanish."
"You won't!" she declared, squeezing harder anyway. "You're the Grand Magician! You're the Best!"
"That's enough, Lyra. Let your brother breathe. He looks like he's forgotten how."
Arthur Hargreaves stepped out from the side of the corridor, emerging from the shadows of the VIP guest entrance. He looked like exactly what he was—a hardworking businessman who spent more time in boardrooms than battlefields. His face was a map of conflicting emotions: the immense, glowing pride of a father, and the bone-deep terror of a man who had just watched his son manipulate the mind of a girl who could have easily crushed him.
"Dad," Loki breathed. The mask didn't just slip; it dissolved. He leaned heavily against the cool concrete wall, his legs feeling like they were made of overcooked noodles.
"You look like you've been through a centrifuge, son," Arthur said, reaching out to steady Loki's shoulder. His hands were warm and grounded—the only thing in the stadium that didn't feel like part of a script. He didn't ask about mana capacity or the technicality of the 'Weight' move. He checked the bridge of Loki's nose for pressure marks and looked into his eyes for signs of a concussion.
"It was... a calculated performance," Loki managed, his voice a ghost of its usual baritone.
"It was a heart attack for me," Arthur chuckled, though his eyes remained serious. "The house was screaming. I think the neighbors in the estate called the police during your match with Kirishima. They thought I was being murdered, but I was just trying to explain to the television that you weren't actually going to get squashed."
Loki managed a tired smirk. "And the public? I assume they're still calling for my head on a silver platter?"
"The crowd is fickle, Loki. They want blood and thunder, and you're giving them shadows and whispers," Arthur said, his expression turning slightly more formal. He checked his phone, a small, subtle glint of something significant in his eyes. "But there are people watching who appreciate the 'whispers' much more than the 'thunder'."
Loki straightened up, sensing the shift in tone. "What do you mean?"
"I just received a messages," Arthur said, leaning in so Lyra wouldn't hear. "Your aunts called."
Loki's heart, which had just begun to slow down, gave a sharp, painful kick. He didn't have many relatives, but the ones he did have were... formidable. "Aunts? From London?"
Loki felt a cold shiver crawl up his spine. His aunts weren't just relatives; they were legends in the European hero scene.
"Yes," Arthur said, his expression turning solemn. "They saw the match with the Saint. They sent word that your 'Presence' was... acceptable. They were impressed by how you managed the 'Veneer' under such high pressure. They sent their wishes for the next act."
"Why?" Loki whispered, his voice cracking. "I haven't heard from them since... since the funeral. I can't even remember their faces clearly anymore, Dad. Just the smell of rain and the black veils. Why are they praising me now?"
"Because for the first time, you aren't just a boy playing with cards," Arthur said gently. "You're showing the world—and them—that the Hargreaves 'Lie' is a force to be reckoned with. They see the potential for a masterpiece, Loki.
Loki felt a wave of nausea. He remembered the funeral of his mother, a blur of grey rain and silent, imposing figures in black. The aunts had been shadows in the mist, distant and cold, their power radiating off them like a physical weight. To have them acknowledge him now, after years of silence, felt less like a blessing and more like a summons.
Loki retreated to the high observation deck. He needed to see this. He needed to witness the two "Titans" of Class 1-A destroy each other before he had to step into the wreckage.
Below him, the arena was a vision of Hell and Winter.
As the match began, the sheer scale of the conflict made Loki's stomach churn. Todoroki didn't lead with a jab or a strategy; he led with a glacier. A mountain of jagged, translucent ice erupted from the floor, rushing toward Midoriya with the sound of a thousand glass windows shattering at once.
That's not a quirk, Loki thought, his eyes wide. That's a force of nature. How do you 'Edit' a mountain? How do you convince your brain that a mile of ice isn't cold?
Then, the shockwave hit.
BOOM!
Midoriya didn't dodge. He flicked a single finger, and the air pressure itself became a hammer. The ice didn't just break; it atomized into a fine mist that coated the entire stadium in a layer of frost.
Loki watched, mesmerized and horrified. Midoriya was breaking his own body—his fingers were purple, mangled, and useless—just to earn a second of breathing room. It was the most "Truthful" fight Loki had ever seen. There were no masks here. No stagecraft. Just raw, bleeding will.
"COME AT ME WITH EVERYTHING YOU'VE GOT!" Midoriya's scream tore through the stadium, raw and desperate.
Loki leaned over the railing, his breath catching in his throat. You fool, Midoriya. You're trying to save him. You're trying to write a script for a boy who only knows how to be a weapon.
Then, the world turned orange.
The temperature in the stadium skyrocketed in a heartbeat. The frost on the railings evaporated instantly, turning into a scalding steam that hissed against Loki's skin. Todoroki's left side had erupted.
It wasn't a flame; it was a pillar of solar fire, a roaring, incandescent declaration of war against his own past.
There it is, Loki thought, shielding his eyes from the brilliance. The 'Truth' of the Todoroki bloodline. It's beautiful. It's terrifying. And it's completely immune to a lie.
The final collision was a white-out. Two absolute, contradictory truths—the Unstoppable Force of Midoriya's smash and the Immovable Heat of Todoroki's fire—slammed into each other. The arena vanished in a gargantuan explosion of pressure and steam that sent the concrete floor flying into the air like paper.
When the mist finally cleared, and the results were called, Loki remained frozen on the balcony.
Todoroki won, he realized. But he didn't win because he was faster or smarter. He won because he decided to stop lying to himself. He accepted his fire.
The roar of the crowd had evolved. It was no longer a simple cheer; it was a primal, collective scream that vibrated in the very marrow of Loki's bones.
Below, the arena was a vision of the apocalypse. The concrete had been pulverized into grey dust, and the air was a thick, choking soup of white steam and scorching heat.
Loki watched from the shadows of the mezzanine as the medical robots scurried onto the field to retrieve the broken, yet smiling, form of Midoriya Izuku.
Beside the crater, Todoroki Shoto stood like a silent monolith. His left side was still venting plumes of orange flame, and his right was frosted over, his breath coming in ragged, visible hitches.
It was the most honest thing Loki had ever seen. There were no tricks there. No "Veneer." Just the raw, terrifying "Truth" of two boys tearing their souls open for the world to see.
"The script has been burned," Loki whispered, his fingers tracing the cold metal of the railing. "The protagonist just set the theater on fire."
The massive monitors overhead, cracked from the pressure of the previous match's shockwaves, flickered and hissed before displaying the updated tournament tree. The stadium fell into a hushed, expectant silence as the names aligned.
Semi-Final Match 1: Loki Hargreaves vs. Bakugo Katsuki
Semi-Final Match 2: Iida Tenya vs. Todoroki Shoto
The crowd erupted again. It was the match everyone had been whispering about in the hallways. The "Gilded Fraud" against the "Dynamite King." To the public, this was the moment the curtain would finally be ripped down. They wanted to see if Loki's cards could withstand a rampage of blast.
"FIFTEEN MINUTES!" Present Mic's voice cracked with the strain of the day. "FIFTEEN MINUTES UNTIL THE FIRST SEMI-FINAL! GET YOUR POPCORN AND YOUR FIRE EXTINGUISHERS READY, FOLKS!"
Loki looked down at his own hands, still clutching his gold-rimmed cards. In fifteen minutes, he would have to face The Dynamite. He would have to face a boy who had just burned away his own mask.
"Practically speaking," Loki whispered into the dying steam, "a magician's greatest nightmare isn't a smarter opponent. It's an audience that refuses to blink, even when they're on fire."
He turned away from the railing, his cape fluttering in the hot wind. He had fifteen minutes to find a way to lie to a Lunatic—and with his aunts watching from across the ocean, the cost of failing the performance had just become unbearable.
Loki found Todoroki in the narrow hallway leading back to the prep rooms. The air around the dual-quirk user was still shimmering with heat, the smell of burnt fabric and ozone clinging to him.
Todoroki stopped. He looked at Loki, his gaze distant, his mind clearly still trapped in the flames of his fight with Midoriya.
"Hargreaves," Todoroki said, his voice raspy.
"A spectacular pyre, Shoto," Loki said, his voice regaining its sharp, aristocratic edge. He didn't show the fear crawling up his spine. He adjusted his cravat, looking at the scorched sleeve of Todoroki's uniform. "You've finally decided to use the whole stage, I see."
Todoroki looked at his left hand, the embers still dancing on his fingertips. "Midoriya... he broke something. I don't know if I can go back to how I was."
"Good," Loki said, stepping closer. The heat radiating from Todoroki was oppressive, but Loki didn't flinch.
Todoroki didn't respond. He simply walked past, the heat trailing behind him like a warning.
Loki waited until he was alone before he let his breath out. He leaned against the wall, his hand trembling as he reached for a fresh deck of cards.
[End of Chapter 23]
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