The throbbing agony in my feet had become a part of my existence, a hellish metronome counting the seconds of my degradation. My bleeding brow stung with every shift of my gaze. The monitors played their cruel symphony of my failure. I was a prisoner not only of the alloy but of my own broken body.

The Architect watched me, his head tilted. “The foundation is laid. The crown is removed. Now, we go deeper. To the core of the myth.” He gestured to the clamps on my feet, and with an audible whir, the pressure intensified. A fresh wave of white-hot agony surged up my legs, making my vision swim and a low moan tear from my lips. My arches felt as if they were being ground into dust. He wanted me distracted, overwhelmed by the pain in my extremities, so the next blow would land with surgical precision.

He moved to my waist. His gloved hands went to the great golden buckle of my belt, the Eagle of Zeus that my mother had fastened for me herself. It was not just a belt; in some tales, it was the very anchor of my Amazonian strength, a gift from Gaea herself. His fingers, slow and deliberate, worked the intricate clasp. It was a heavy, solid thing, a symbol of my unbreakable will. I felt it give way with a solid thunk.

He didn’t pull it off. He slowly, deliberately, unlaced it from the loops of my battle skirt, his knuckles brushing against my skin. The humiliation was a cold fire in my gut. This man was undressing me like a doll, dismantling me piece by piece. Finally, he pulled the heavy golden belt free and laid it next to my tiara. Another piece of my soul placed on display.

Hanging from the belt was the coiled form of my lasso. The Golden Perfect. The Lasso of Hestia. It glowed with a soft, internal luminescence, a light that no darkness had ever been able to extinguish. It was a part of me, a conduit for the truth that I championed. He picked it up. The light seemed to recoil from his touch, but he held it firm.

“The final symbol,” he whispered, his voice full of reverence and contempt. “An instrument that compels truth. What truth will it tell now, I wonder?”

He uncoiled it with a flick of his wrist. The golden rope, which had bound gods and monsters, slithered through the air. He didn’t use it to restrain me further; the alloy was more than sufficient. Instead, he did something far worse. He wrapped the glowing cord gently around my bare forearm. The moment it touched my skin, I felt its familiar, warm magic. But now it felt like a violation. It was being used against me.

“The Lasso compels you to speak only the truth,” he said, his face close to mine. “So, tell me. Tell the world… what do you feel, Diana of Themyscira?”

My mouth opened, but I fought to keep it shut. The lasso tightened, its magic flooding me, forcing the words out. They came out as a choked, broken whisper. “I feel… pain. Humiliation. I feel… weak.” Speaking the truth of my own degradation, forced by my most sacred tool, was a new, profound level of violation. A tear I couldn’t stop slid down my cheek.

“Ah, but which world?” he asked, a cruel smile touching his lips. He turned to the monitors. The images of my broken form vanished, replaced by a dizzying mosaic of screens from across the globe. Times Square. A pub in London. A crowded plaza in Tokyo. Living rooms in Metropolis. Phone screens in Gotham. I saw my own face, bloody and weeping, reflected in thousands of places at once. A counter at the bottom of the screen was ticking upwards at a horrifying rate: 850 million viewers. 900 million.

“Your ordeal is not a private one, Princess,” the Architect explained. “It is the single greatest media event in human history. I have shown them your power failing. I have shown them your body breaking. Now, I offer them a choice.”

On every screen in the world, and on the monitors before me, a poll appeared. The question was simple, stark, and utterly monstrous.

THE FATE OF WONDER WOMAN IS IN YOUR HANDS.

The options: [ FREE THE HERO ] or [ SHOW US THE TRUTH ]

His twisted euphemism for my continued dismantling hung in the air. This was his masterstroke. My life, my dignity, was now subject to a global vote. For a moment, a desperate, insane flicker of hope ignited in my chest. I had saved them. I had bled for them, fought for them, loved them. They would remember. They would choose mercy.

The results began to pour in.

My hope turned to ice in my veins. The bar for “[ SHOW US THE TRUTH ]” shot up. 70%. 80%. It settled at a staggering, unbelievable 92%. The other bar, “[ FREE THE HERO ]”, was a pathetic sliver.

I stared at the numbers, my mind refusing to process what my eyes were seeing. 92 percent. Billions of people. The child I’d saved from a fire, the city I’d protected from invasion, the soldiers I’d fought beside—had they all voted to see me suffer? Did they truly hate me? Or worse, did they simply not care? Was I nothing more than a spectacle? A diversion? A bloody show to entertain them on a Wednesday evening?

The pain in my feet, the sting on my brow, the shame of my nakedness—it all vanished, replaced by a cold, hollow emptiness that was more terrifying than any physical torment. My entire life, my purpose, my love for the world of men—it was all a lie. A fool’s errand. I had offered them truth, and they had chosen this. I had offered them love, and they had chosen cruelty.

Something inside me didn’t just break. It disintegrated. It turned to dust and blew away on a cold, cosmic wind. The warrior, the princess, the hero—she died in that moment, there on that cold, white platform. My vision blurred, the monitors and the room dissolving into a meaningless smear of light and color. A silent scream echoed in the hollowed-out cavern of my mind, a scream for a faith that was now dead, for a love that had been betrayed. The Architect watched, his expression serene. He had proven his thesis. He had not just dismantled my body and my symbols. He had dismantled my soul. And the worst part, the only truth that now mattered, was that the world had helped him do it.