CHAPTER 497: I KNEW ALL YOUR LIES

Circe bit down hard on her thumb, feeling the sharp sting break skin. Warm blood welled instantly, sliding down her wrist before dripping onto the half finished magic circle carved into the wooden floor. The oak under her knees burned her scraped skin, but she ignored it, she ignored the pain, and ignored the growing rawness of her hands. Her focus was absolute.

She dragged her bleeding thumb across the final line, completing the intricate sigil in a single, unwavering stroke.

In front of her, the others watched— though only one seemed fully engaged. Atlas stood closest, brow furrowed as he flipped page after page of an ancient, crumbling tome. His eyes darted rapidly across each line, his lips pulled into a tight frown.

"Demons cannot be neutralized," he muttered.

Circe froze. Then something snapped.

She shot to her feet so abruptly the blood on her hand splattered onto the floor. The book she’d been reading was in her hand before she realized it, and she hurled it across the room with a furious scream. It struck the mirror with a violent crack, the glass splintering outward like frost spiderwebbing on ice.

She raked her fingers through her hair roughly, almost going insane from the headache that kept stinging her head to her eyelids. Her chest rising and falling with ragged breaths when she looked at the nearby wall where she had crossed numbers for the days passed ever since Arabella was taken and how she was beginning to lose herself far behind the promised time.

"We don’t have much time," she sighed, clicking her tongue sharply. "The foundation of the spell still works, but without a magic strong enough to shut down Morpheus’s demonic power, we’re only delaying the inevitable."

Atlas paced, rubbing his chin with a distracted intensity, his boots scuffing a trail across the stone floor.

"What if..." he mumbled, moving back and forth so quickly the candlelight flickered in his wake. "What if we merge the magics? Everything we’ve discovered— combine them into a larger system of suppression? There must be something. Is there truly no other way, Circe? Not even a forbidden path?"

Circe let out a hollow laugh, humorless and edged with exhaustion from days of not sleeping.

"I am using forbidden magic," she snapped. "But forbidden magic only teaches you how to steal power from the lower realms— to borrow a piece of Hell’s strength for yourself." She lifted her bleeding hand, letting the drops fall into the circle. "None of it teaches us how to stop Hell’s power once it’s already taken root."

"How about..." Atlas suddenly stopped pacing, planting himself firmly in the middle of the room. "Circe— half of Morpheus is still human, isn’t he? Why are we fixated on his demonic half when it would be much easier to simply kill the human one?"

Circe froze.

Slowly, she lifted her gaze toward him. Her expression sharpened. "Go on," she urged, voice low, intrigued.

Atlas wasn’t well versed in magic— not by technicality —but where everyone else had narrow paths carved by rules and doctrine, Atlas had imagination. The kind that wandered into places where logic and taboo collided. The kind Circe had always relied on without ever admitting it aloud.

People called her an unstoppable witch, a genius, a creator of countless spells. But none of them knew her truth.

Circe didn’t create. She simply translated Atlas’s ideas.

Not even Morpheus knew that every breakthrough she’d had started as one of Atlas’s strange, brilliant questions. And that was why she let him handle her magic books, volumes no one else dared touch. If there was one person who could see a solution without understanding the mechanics, it was him.

Atlas continued, "You told me that killing Morpheus now would only make him stronger, because we had be destroying his vessel, but not separating his human soul from his demonic one."

"Unfortunately," she interrupted, sensing where his logic was bending incorrectly, "his soul is already mixed. It’s a human soul... partially corroded by demon power."

"So like... a pretty box covered with swirling black water?" Atlas asked.

She blinked. "...Similar, yes."

"Then maybe that’s the issue," he pressed, stepping closer to the circle. "When you kill him now, you aren’t just targeting the human soul. You’re scratching the demon part too, but not killing it. So the demonic power goes wild, because you’ve damaged it without destroying it all at once."

Circe didn’t answer.

She just stared at the floor.

And that was when she noticed it— a drop of blood that didn’t belong anywhere near the magic circle.

Her brows knit sharply. She crouched and wiped it with her sleeve, only for another drop to fall, and another. The wood drank the red spots like thirsty sand.

She sucked a breath— and then felt the warm push of a hand over her face.

Atlas’s palm cupped beneath her nose, tilting her head slightly back.His other hand hovered near her cheek, steadying her gently.

When she looked up at him, his lips were pulled into a worried pout, his eyebrows pinched together in annoyance.

"Circe," he muttered, his tone halfway between scolding and concern. "You’re bleeding again."

Only then did she feel the hot trickle from her nose, sliding onto his fingers as he tried to stop it.

"I didn’t notice," she sighed, wiping the sting beneath her nose with the back of her wrist. "But it’s alright. I should be good for a couple more days. I don’t want to trouble the boy when I’m inside his body, but apparently a lack of sleep bothers vampires too."

Her attempt at humor fell flat.

Atlas’s frown deepened, casting a shadow over his whole face. "If you’re trying to make light of this, it’s not working, Circe. You need to rest."

"I can’t." Circe pushed his hand away, but only halfway, her strength was fading. "The more I dawdle, the more that girl inches toward death. And Morpheus—" her jaw clenched, "—Morpheus is going to overturn the world. He might even open Hell itself. And who knows what will crawl out first? Creatures, if we’re lucky. Demons if we’re not. And the ones waiting on the other side..." she shuddered, "they’ve been starving for Earth."

Atlas continued wiping the streaks of red from her upper lip, thinking aloud with a soft snort."You know... why is it that we always have to worry about Hell and the things crawling out of it, when there’s supposed to be Heaven? I mean, I haven’t died."

He chuckled lightly, trying to ease the tension as he steadied her chin. "But you have. So tell me— if Morpheus accidentally cracks the gates of Hell open, is Heaven really just going to sit there doing nothing?"

Circe stopped.

For the first time since the chaos began, she looked genuinely tired, exhaustion settling into her bones, not her magic.

A slow, humorless smile pulled at the corner of her mouth.

"Oh, Atlas..." she murmured, voice low and bitter. "Heaven will intervene but only when they have decided it was far too gone. They have the most power to do everything and the most power always have limits. If those living in Heaven are as willy nilly as those in Hell who would share their power all to their likings then the boundaries of this world will break. Basically," she saw him confused and simplify her words instantly, "If Heaven help humans because of their own action and consequence far too often, it will disrupt the world’s law and instead harm everyone in it."

"I see," Atlas didn’t fully understand it but at the same time he felt that he does. He could only frown and sigh as it seems that the option to take care of Morpheus and stop the world from being covered with demons had truly fallen to their hands.

"But about your earlier idea," Circe continued, "It sounds completely right. Maybe all this time we have been far too focused in trying to strip Morpheus off his power when we could try and prevent from triggering him into using his demonic blood for good."

"You’re right," Atlas smiled proudly, "Maybe we simply killed his body, the human vessel, trigger his demonic power from unleashing when perhaps what we should do is truly kill him. Truly. Kill him. That’s why... instead of a magic to neutralize..."

"I have to create a magic that would kill him and his soul for good."

And Atlas nodded.

"It’s going to be a deadly magic," Circe’s bad habit appeared again when she bit her thumb while she thinks, chewing it as though it was candies, "Usually killing magic always have such big repayments in returns... I have a few magic that I have held off from creating but... perhaps this is finally the time."

"I’ll help you," Atlas smiled while looking at her and when she saw that resigned smile, she frowned.

"You’re not going to partake in the war, Atlas. Isn’t it enough that you spend your youth in battlefield? You are not. Not going to enter that place again and fight your life away."

"Why not? Haven’t you done the same?" Atlas then leaned towards her, pressing his forehead as he spoke, "I did manage to survive dying but I’m here now in a place that felt so different and foreign to me. Is it really necessary to survive in a place where no one else recognize me and where I don’t feel home? I’m thankful for what you have done, for helping me to survive, but I also think that there’s only so much a human could do to escape death and I, for one, would like it if we both could have eternal rest."

"We are not doing this tonight-"

"But we have to," Atlas cut off, tightening his arms around Circe’s shoulders, "Circe. Stop it. Stop letting yourself stay in the past. You can’t rest while I’m still alive. But I am a human and dying... death in inescapable dear. I want you to rest, not for you to be summoned again and again... It’s time for us to move on and let our descendants to take care of everything."