The simulation began by lying.
A simulation should have been clean.
Rules. Objectives. Score. Failure states.
Instead, it opened like a rumor with architecture. Each faction received a different truth and enough panic to mistake partial knowledge for certainty.
Fairness would have been simpler.
Cruelty was more educational.
The first lie mattered.
It was not the district. Not the civilians. Not the projected blood, broken stone, or shouting echoing from corridors that had never existed before the crystal built them.
The lie was fairness.
Everyone entered the same simulation and received different truths. Gold Hall saw order collapse. Piety saw moral contamination. Obsidian saw route danger. Seraphina saw patients. Ren saw witnesses. I saw every arrow trying to turn me into the center despite the rule forbidding one.
Fairness would have been kinder.
Useful.
That was polite of it.
Most systems lied later.
