I’m a locksmith, picking locks in the Kingdom of God.
In this world, casting spells is called “theft.”
The Kingdom of God holds a monopoly on magic and makes all unauthorized spellcasting punishable by death.
I’m Regis, the lowest-ranking inspector in the Kingdom of God. Every day, I write pointless reports on trivial magic cases.
No one knows that I can see the “keyholes” in all magic, including the supposedly flawless holy barriers of the temples.
Then the relic known as the “Eye of Stillness” was stolen, and I was transferred to the Inquisition to help with the investigation.
At the crime scene, I saw something I should never have seen: a lock picked in haste, yet with terrifying precision.
And as the thief who left the mark lay dying, they shoved a data crystal into my hand.
It contained the truth the Kingdom of God had hidden for a century:
The so-called “faith network” was draining the lives of everyone.
The so-called “holy healing” was covering up the true cause of the wasting disease.
And “order” meant feeding the living people of an entire city to some indescribable thing beneath the earth.
Now the Inquisition suspects I was the thief’s accomplice.
The red-haired inspector from the Special Operations Division is always smiling at me, but there’s a blade in her eyes.
In the sanatorium, a sick little girl uses her distorted senses to see the “threads” connecting every patient.
And I stand on the edge of the abyss, holding the “key” that can open any lock.
Should I expose this golden age, woven from lies over three hundred years, and welcome the chaos of the unknown;
or close my eyes and become a safe little cog in this bloodsucking machine?
The moment I began picking the first lock, I was destined to break the final seal on Pandora’s box.
