Lord of the Mysteries: I'm Not Evil God

Chapter 16: The One True Lie

Perspective: Eiren

He stood in a city that didn't exist.

The people had faces made of cloth and voices made of scripture.

They greeted him as the Witness.

They called him the One Who Watches.

They told him he was becoming what he was always meant to be.

But every time they spoke—

It felt like remembering a lie he told himself as a child.

A fragment of mirror appeared before him.

This time, there was no image. Only text, scrolling backward:

"LYRA = EIREN = THE ANGEL = THE HERETIC = THE CHILD = THE MASK = VELKARIS"

He staggered.

"No… no, I'm not—"

But the memories flooded in.

Lyra's prayers. His own dreams. The cultist's whispers.

Her throne. His thread.

The kindness. The grief. The illusion. The vow.

All shared the same tone, the same heartbeat, the same origin.

He had not been resisting Velkaris.

He had been Velkaris, resisting himself.

"You created the Witness," the voice said.

"To test yourself. To lie to yourself. To see if you could still feel."

"You scattered your faces across thousands of years and lives. Some forgot. Some loved. Some lied."

"But all of them were you."

Eiren collapsed.

His name cracked apart in his mind.

"Then what's real?"

A second voice answered.

Gentle. Frayed. Familiar.

"The truth... is what you remember and still love after you know it was false."

It was Lyra.

Not as a god. Not as an angel.

Just as a feeling that refused to vanish.

"You want to feel real?" she said.

"Then bind yourself to someone again. Risk being seen. Risk being forgotten."

"The Witness is not a throne. It is a thread."

"It must connect."

And in that moment, Eiren understood:

He couldn't defeat Velkaris by denying the lie.

He had to hold the lie—but not be consumed by it.

He had to become the Witness of both deception and truth.

He had to remember the falsehood, and still feel.

To do that, he needed what Velkaris no longer possessed.

The Heartbound Pathway.

Eiren stood.

He reached out with trembling hands.

He touched the memory of Lyra—not her divinity, not her power—just her presence.

And then—

He called for Velkaris

But still smiling not because of fear.

But to teach him what it meant to feel.

End of Chapter 16