Yaldabaoth?
The Broken God?
The words flashed across the stream like thunderbolts and the chat froze, fingers hovering above keyboards as collective comprehension stalled. These weren't just names. They were tectonic plates shifting beneath reality.
Weren't these two supreme beings implacable enemies?
So why did the Victory Society—the so-called priests orchestrating Valley Harbor's nightmare—sacrifice to both?
---
Kamar-Taj: The Sorcerer's Confusion
The Ancient One stood before her scrying pool, yellow sparks flickering in the dim chamber. Her usually serene face twitched with a quiet bewilderment that bordered on dread.
She had cataloged a thousand pantheons and a thousand worlds. She had bartered with Dormammu, bargained with Time, and stared down fates crueler than death. But Valley Harbor…
This was different.
"I thought it unthinkable that one town could host so many deities—three Supreme Gods, lesser divinities, and now the Lord of Flesh and the Broken God." Her voice was barely a whisper. "At last, clarity, perhaps? No… still mist."
Were the Victory Society charlatans? Or were they—terrifyingly—sincere? If they were Sarkic, they would not venerate the Broken God. If they were mechano-ascetics of the Broken God, they would not serve Yaldabaoth. So what were they?
A third possibility stirred like a storm at sea: They were neither.
---
S.H.I.E.L.D.: Threads of a Pattern
In the Triskelion's dark operations room, monitors poured ash-colored light over tired faces. Agents stared at the stream and then at Nick Fury, waiting for a conclusion he didn't yet have.
Fury's single eye hardened as he pieced through the impossible. The more "Supreme Gods" appeared, the less it felt like devotion—and the more it smelled like design.
"They aren't followers," he muttered. "They're drafters."
"Drafters of what?" Natasha asked, arms crossed, voice clipped.
"A battlefield."
The word hung there, heavy and cold.
"Why make so many gods fight?" she asked, incredulity scraping her throat.
Fury didn't answer. The screen did.
---
The Dead Man's Diary
New entries bled into view—crooked, feverish handwriting.
[August 13. The Voice of Time requires pagan blood. I believe 'pagan' is broadly defined; it is not particular about denominational borders.]
[James refused to give of himself, yet the rite accepted his blood. That confirms my suspicion—he is a liar. He would spare himself 'three' times over, if allowed.]
[Our work is nearly done. I will rest for two days to prepare for what is to come. I will meet death calmly, even if death is not calm.]
[On Monday the world will still stand—and it will thank us.]
Natasha swore under her breath. Fury's gaze narrowed to a blade's edge.
The Victory Society weren't priests locked to a single altar. They were auctioneers hailing every god who would answer the call. Sarkic. Broken. Time. Streetlamps. Deers of darkness. Piercers. Butterflies and doom-cabbages—mad titles masking very real ruptures in the skin of reality.
They didn't care who came.
They only cared that all came.
---
In the Church of Unmaking
James and Lois crossed the threshold with the caution of bomb techs. Their goggles' protection runes crackled to life, filtering memetics, shaving radiation down to survivable levels.
If the streets were flesh, the church was the factory.
Glistening viscera slurped and whispered low dirges. Severed limbs twitched in sacramental rhythm a foot from their bodies. Headless torsos protruded from walls like saints trapped mid-miracle. An empty-cavity cadaver sat upright in the front pew, a folded paper tucked into its ribcage.
The chat split: some viewers recoiled; others stared, horrified but transfixed.
No living anomalies stalked them; only the residue of rites. Space still buckled in places, and logic pooled in corners like oil.
"James, here!" Lois called, voice kept deliberately steady.
They knelt by a collapsed priest in ragged vestments. Lois slid a page from beneath the corpse's arm.
"It reads like a sermon transcript," she said, passing it to James. "Likely recorded by a Victory Society insider."
He read aloud.
[Brothers and sisters, we gather for the last time. It is an honor to fight beside you. We fight to protect humanity's future, and no one—no one—can do better than you together.]
The chat exploded with fury.
"Protect humanity? They butchered a town!"
"First time I've seen a cult beautify a mass sacrifice as 'future-proofing'…"
"Monsters."
Even Natasha, hardened by a thousand uglinesses, tightened her jaw. "Self-deception that polished has to be practiced."
Fury didn't speak. Something in the cadence was… wrong. Not pious. Not ecstatic. Programmatic.
James continued.
[Since the first dawn, terrible impossibilities have swarmed from the spaces between stars. They do not hate life. They are simply indifferent.]
[We are ants to aliens, to mad gods—the word 'god' as the ancients used it. Not the Biblical. Perhaps it appears; perhaps not. The term here means beings born in original Chaos—beings whose might is not the terror, but whose corruption is.]
Lois glanced at James. He didn't look up. The chat stilled, a collective intake of breath.
This sounded less like worship and more like a strategic brief.
[They look upon us as insects. Therefore we must look upon ourselves with greater clarity than they do, that their gaze cannot define us. Every god bends the laws of reality toward its own image, imprinting stars, planets, and people with its twisted existence.]
[What is the answer to such a threat?]
James' voice fell to a whisper.
[These gods must be destroyed. The slate must be wiped clean.]
The church seemed to grow colder. Even the viscera quieted, as if listening.
[We cannot do this. Humans cannot. Ten gods cannot have ten masters.]
[We cannot kill gods. We cannot. Only gods can kill gods.]
---
Revelation: The Plan of the Victory Society
The words hit the world like a meteor. The chat went blank, then burst into a roar.
Only gods can kill gods.
The line repeated in a thousand voices. First in disbelief. Then in dawning horror.
Natasha pressed a fist to her lips. "They're… trying to kill gods with other gods."
Fury finally exhaled—slow, controlled. "They built an arena."
He could see it now, the pattern washing clean all noise: the scattershot invocations, the sacrificial geometries tuned to multiple pantheons, the deliberate interleavings of memetics and physics and prayer—not to enthrone one deity, but to drag them all into one killing floor.
Valley Harbor wasn't a sanctuary. It was bait. A ring. A coliseum for divinity.
Bolded realization: The Victory Society engineered a convergence—summoning rival gods into the same confined reality well, forcing them to clash until only one remained. Humanity, unable to lift a hand against gods, would compel gods to lift hands against each other.
"Through god," Fury said grimly, "kill god."
The horror wasn't merely the plan's cruelty. It was its coherence.
And—God help them—its success.
Multiple gods had already answered. The Trinity of Victors—Fire, Cold, Thunder. The Lord of Flesh. The Broken God. Minor deities crowding the margins: Djrr the streetlamp guide, Yni-Yni the Piercer, Zinn of Lepidoptera, the Voice of Time, a Dark Deer, a two-faced emperor who would undo his empire and be stopped by a prisoner of the Dragon King. Even the absurd—goats spinning to goat-hell—were signals in a ritual lattice far vaster than any one mind.
This town had been measured, cored, and caged—an engineered crucible disguised as catastrophe.
---
The World's Outcry
"Oh my god—they wanted a god-fight!"
"Valley Harbor wasn't a battlefield. It was an arena."
"Only one god leaves. The rest die. Is that… is that what they mean by 'saving' us?"
The chat's fury bled into awe, then back into fury. The idea was a razor you couldn't put down, even as it cut deeper.
Bolded truth: The priests believed the world would thank them on Monday.
---
The Ancient One's Reckoning
She stood motionless, staring through the page, through the pool, through the walls of Kamar-Taj. Sorcery couldn't reach where this plan lived; only will could. Not the will of a species—the will of a cult willing to burn itself down to weld gods into a single killing machine.
"Humans cannot kill gods," she whispered. "But an idea—an idea can."
She clutched her cloak tighter. "Which gods entered the ring? Which god won?"
Her mind raced to the others who might know: Uatu might have watched, but even the Watcher's sight can be occluded by a being like Panglaus, or by the Voice of Time. Memories had been blurred. Something had rubbed the world's eyes.
And yet, the words remained. Proof carved in blood and ink.
---
The Sermon's End
James read on. The priest's voice—filtered through the anonymous scribe—grew calm, almost tender.
[We will bring them here and bind them. We will bind them until rivers of blood run, until only one remains.]
[There is only one God: the Victor. The Victor will return to its origin and consolidate the formation.]
[But Chaos births gods relentlessly. Twisted angels and demons will return, again and again.]
[So we will remain vigilant. We will choose new victors, one by one.]
[We will leave wounds in Creation—and Creation will heal. Always it heals.]
Lois' fury drained, replaced by a numb, reverent terror. "They're not boasting," she said quietly. "They're… committing."
The chat's suspicion collapsed under the weight of conviction pressed into every line. It didn't matter if the theology was nonsense. The method wasn't. The method worked.
Bolded conclusion: Valley Harbor was chosen, built, and offered—an arena where gods would slaughter gods until a single Victor remained, who alone could depart.
James lowered the page. His hands shook despite the anchor stabilizing them.
[Stand firm like our predecessors.]
[Hold on as the ancients held—at Sodom's gate and every gate since. Our task must be finished.]
[Fortune blesses the fearless step. We shall unite with the inanimate, enter the Somnium Aeternum. May we be forgiven.]
The transcript ended.
Silence filled the nave. Somewhere, a sac of flesh popped with a wet sigh. The anchors hummed softly, stubborn sanity in the face of cosmic theater.
Lois swallowed. "They're insane," she whispered, "but… they're consistent."
James didn't reply. He stared at the pulpit where so many throats had uttered so many impossible names, where so many hands had carved geometry into stone and bone alike.
When he finally spoke, it was barely sound.
"Panglaus…"
The name drifted like ash.
---
What the World Now Knew
The Victory Society weren't mere cultists. They were architects of an inter-pantheonic death match.
Their thesis: Humanity cannot kill gods. Only gods can kill gods.
Their method: Sacrifice to as many deities as possible, bind them in one locale, and force a terminal conflict.
Their promise: "On Monday the world will still stand—and it will thank us."
Their cost: A town turned into an autopsy of reality. Rivers of blood. An arena built from people.
Across screens and sanctums and situation rooms, every watcher felt the same terrible click as the last gear slotted home.
Bolded revelation: Valley Harbor was never a random calamity. It was a deliberate, engineered Arena of Gods.
Only one question mattered now:
Which god walked out of the ring?
And, in the hush that followed James' whisper, another:
What price did Panglaus pay to let the world forget?
-----------------------------------------
Visit our Patreon for more:
Get membership in patreon to read more chapters
Extra chapters available in patreon
patreon.com/Dragonscribe31
----------------------------------------------------- .