Weeks passed, but the air still hummed with static, as if the broadcast had never stopped. The chant—the one shouted through gunfire, the one whispered through blood—still echoed somewhere in the global noise. Demons bleed. Every news cycle tried to bury it; every upload resurrected it. The words had passed through a thousand tongues and come out as scripture.

Screens replayed it in fragments: a boulevard of smoke, silhouettes in masks, gods moving like storms. The feed that had been cut to black now looped endlessly in underground clubs, projected against warehouse walls, played on the cracked displays of back-alley shrines. No one called it terrorism anymore. Not openly.

In the wreckage zones where the Unified Grid had once pulsed, the faithful built altars from debris. Melted rifles, glass turned to amber by plasma fire, walls still marked by the heat-shadow of vanished bodies—each became a relic. At dusk, crowds gathered to chant, their candles forming the same symbol: a circle cracked through the crown. Governments called for calm. Integration programs were quietly shelved. The Firmathan embassies sealed their doors. The world's peace became something people spoke of like a superstition that had failed to materialize.

On the streets, silence replaced courtesy. Monster children walked home in pairs under watchful eyes. News anchors smiled too widely, their voices trembling beneath the teleprompter. In cafes, conversation stopped when anyone unfamiliar entered. Firmathan goods vanished from markets, replaced by human-made goods. No one declared war, but something colder took its place—a collective flinch, a new etiquette of fear.

At night, the repaired grids still glowed erratically over cities. Officials called it residual energy discharge; no one really believed them. The color clung to windows, to water. It wasn't a reflection—it was a reminder, a lingering scar.

They called it the age of disbelief. But disbelief is only faith that's been wounded deeply enough to mutate.

One man's name surfaced through the chaos—Elias Varrin.

Once, he had been a cryptid vlogger, a wanderer who chased myths into forests and filmed shadows in places no one cared about. Now, his old videos resurfaced, played on projectors in basements and churches alike. In them, Elias explored a cavern deep in North America, his light falling across carvings etched by hands older than memory: three colossal figures—a winged being haloed in radiance, a horned titan wreathed in fire, and a coiled dragon binding them both in an unbroken loop.

A crack shot straight through its heart. Below it were words that no scholar had translated cleanly. It wouldn't be revealed until recently that it was words never truly spoken by men.

Back then, it looked like a wonder. Now, it looks like a prophecy.

He returned to public life in the aftermath of the attack.

When he streamed again, his face was older, his eyes brighter with exhaustion and conviction. His first message began with silence, then the soft click of static and his voice—ragged but certain.

"The cities Mythara destroyed were not victims," he said. "They were sacrifices. He struck them to wound the Deceiver, the one they call Lord Cefketa. You call it murder because you cannot see the design."

The broadcast spread like contagion.

He spoke of the Three who had made the world—Angel, Demon, Dragon—and of how their balance had been shattered by the Deceiver. He said Mythara had been born from a man to restore that balance.

"He is the God of Gods," Elias said, "because he was once one of us."

Millions watched. Millions believed.

The journalists came next. They dug through everything with the desperation of people trying to disprove a god and found fragments that made things worse. Encrypted messages revealed a shadowed correspondence between Elias and someone who signed their name as Sage. The sender had fed him translations, coordinates, and funding—breadcrumbs leading to temples buried under sand and ice. The messages spoke of the Three Architects—the Angel, the Demon, the Dragon—keepers of the Circle of All Things. The writer told him the Deceiver had broken that circle and that a mortal god would rise to destroy him.

She told him his discovery was not chance but destiny.

Elias believed every word. He began to travel again—funded, mysteriously, beyond his means. His tone changed from curiosity to conviction, his language from fascination to scripture. He started using the phrase Broken Circle in his messages. His broadcasts grew longer, more confident, more dangerous. And somewhere in the shadows of Firmatha, the sender who called herself Sage smiled. Sage was not a scholar or a prophet. She was one of his gods, whom he so desperately wished to serve. And serve he would. He would be the Deciever's most potent weapon.

Every map she sent, every phrase she translated, every truth she whispered had been chosen precisely to lead him here. Elias wasn't a believer; he was well constructed. His faith was carefully nurtured, cultivated, and tended until it bore fruit.

By the time he realized what he had built, it was already too late. The cult had a name, a symbol, a purpose. The Broken Circle spread faster than any army ever had. Its emblem—the cracked ring bleeding light—appeared in city alleys, on digital banners, carved into human skin. Their slogan evolved as their faith hardened. First, Demons bleed. Then the false god is bound. Finally, Free the God of Gods.

Temples rose in abandoned factories. In every city, someone was whispering their scripture.

"The Three made the world whole," Elias preached. "The Deceiver broke it. The God of Gods rose from flesh to end him. But we, the blind, bound His hands in mercy. We will break those bindings. We will free Him."

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

To the faithful, Mythara was proof made flesh—a human reborn into the mightiest of creatures, even the monsters trembling before him, yet still carrying a human heart. That, they said, made him the God of Gods—divine power tempered by mortal grace. His imprisonment was the last lie of the Deceiver, the chain that kept creation from righting itself.

Cefketa, they claimed, had tricked the gods into mercy. He had bound them with compassion, the cruelest leash of all. Their faith gave that cruelty a purpose.

And then the killings began.

At first, no one claimed them.

A monster-run café in Prague burned to its foundations overnight. A clinic in Nairobi, staffed by Firmathan healers, found its walls marked with a circle split through the crown. A week later, three young monsters were beaten outside a school in Osaka. Their attackers shouted prayers between blows.

The pattern sharpened faster than anyone wanted to see it. Every act struck at something that didn't belong—anything inhuman trying to live among men. Restaurants, clinics, workshops, and orphanages. Places meant to normalize monsters, to make them neighbors.

Each new target was chosen not for strategy, but for symbolism. The Broken Circle wasn't fighting a war; they were cleansing a faith. Their messages came after every attack, hijacking public broadcasts and street screens. And yet strangely, Firmatha Sangaur made no noticeable retaliation. This would serve to embolden the humans of the world. Let them believe they were truly the equals of these monsters, if not superior.

World leaders, even the nation of Heka, could do much to slow the growth of this movement or lock down any key bases of operations.

By the third month, the Broken Circle wasn't a movement anymore—it was a world. Some governments outlawed them, others courted them. Integration programs dissolved into suspicion. The markets survived on fear. Firmatha went silent behind sealed borders.

Inside the Heka embassy, the Persequions met once and spoke briefly. They all knew what this was.

"This is his design," Seren said, watching a thousand protesters scream prayers outside the embassy gates.

"He's made gods of our protectors and demons of our allies. He wins whether they pray or panic."

Selistar stood beside her, eyes hollow from sleepless nights.

After that meeting, the Tiny Tots and the Persequions withdrew entirely. Heka became a fortress. They would leave diplomacy to those who still thought it meant anything; they would prepare for the war that was impossible to stop.

And still, the broadcasts multiplied.

By the fourth month, a new phrase spread across every channel of the Broken Circle: When the circle breaks, creation breathes again.

It would prove literal.

The phrase appeared everywhere—spray-painted on church doors, printed in corporate memos, etched into glass by micro-lasers. Whole cities whispered it like punctuation. Even Firmatha heard it echo through the sealed walls of its embassies.

In a distant chamber, Ume watched the feeds in silence, one hand resting against the glass. Each repetition of the phrase felt like a heartbeat. She smiled—small, knowing, almost sad. The design was working too well. Have humans always been this predictable? This moldable? It made her ashamed of her own origins. She cursed under her breath and turned away, walking into the shadows. It was time to prepare for his return.

Midnight, a procession of masked figures moved through steel corridors slick with condensation. Their flashlights glowed with the cracked-circle emblem. Locks disengaged as they passed, not with alarms, but with acceptance—screens flickering to a single message before going dark. When the circle breaks, creation breathes again.

They walked over dead bodies and were greeted warmly by those who should be guards.

They reached the final chamber. At its center stood Mythara, motionless, eyes closed, light pulsing faintly beneath his skin like buried fire. The cultists fell to their knees before him.

Their leader spoke first. "My Lord. The false god is bound. The war waits for you."

Mythara opened his eyes. The lights danced across his face. He saw their reverence, their trembling certainty, their borrowed purpose. He could almost see the strings hovering over them. Such well-crafted puppets they were. It was all too familiar—Cefketa's touch. Something beyond simple manipulation, something he had already fallen to once before.

He sighed and smiled without warmth.

"This is a little more dramatic than I expected." He mumbled to himself.

He stepped forward. The restraints that held him shivered, then fell to dust, at his will. He lifted his hand, and the doorways crumbled away, revealing their uselessness before him. No alarms blared. No guards came running. Aboveground, the storm finally broke.

The cultists rose and followed him, whispering prayers.

He did not answer. Words would mean nothing now. Faith this deep could no longer hear truth—it would only obey what it believed.

He walked out into the rain, silent, thinking of the one who had orchestrated all of it.

Elsewhere, in a chamber just as preformative, another prisoner waited.

This one did not hold dead bodies. The walls here were immaculate, the air filtered until it smelled like nothing. Lights burned a sterile white. The hallways echoed faintly with the footsteps of men who had run out of choices.

Selistar led the procession, a group of world leaders walking behind him in strained silence. None spoke. The decision had already been made in rooms that pretended to still hold power. Every door they passed required a retinal code. Each opened slower than the last.

They reached the final gate.

Beyond it sat Cefketa, cross-legged on the floor, his head bowed, hands resting loosely on his knees. He looked like a man in meditation.

When he finally looked up, his expression was calm.

"You're early," he said.

Selistar stopped at the threshold. The others lingered back, unwilling to cross it.

"Mythara is free," he said. "The Broken Circle released him. The Seats and the nations have voted. We… need balance. Or a weapon."

Cefketa's smile was gentle, almost kind.

"And so you come to me," he said. "I told you. Didn't I? You humans just can't help yourselves."

Selistar looked down at the access card in his hand. The metal edge bit into his skin. For a long second, the air felt heavy enough to stop time.

The lights shifted from white to gold. Locks disengaged in rhythm, one by one, each sighing open like applause.

Cefketa rose slowly, stretching. The air shimmered faintly around him, bending light.

He smiled—not at the leaders, not at Selistar, but at the inevitability of it all.

"Let's begin," he said.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.