The Breakers of Divine Boundaries

A Glitch in the Rat Race

The morning sun started roasting the Jakarta asphalt, which still had some puddles left from last night's rain. Hanan strolled through the crowd of people rushing to work. In his eyes, they all looked like worker ants following some invisible pheromone trail stuck in their routines, piled-up bills, and scared of what tomorrow brings.

He stopped at a busy intersection. Above a building, a massive digital billboard was blasting the emergency morning news. Hanan's face, from an old photo before the accident, filled the screen. The news was reporting the mystery disappearance of a paralyzed guy from the tenth floor of his apartment, complete with a clip of Sarah sobbing her eyes out for the cameras, playing the role of the heartbroken wife perfectly.

Hanan just stared at the screen. No anger. No satisfaction. That cheap drama on the screen felt like some TV show from another planet that had nothing to do with him anymore.

"This world is seriously good at lying to itself," Hanan whispered, his voice getting swallowed by the roar of traffic.

"And you're just starting to figure it out," The ancient voice in his head echoed back. This time, it didn't sound as condescending as the night before. There was this heavy vibe of anticipation. "That old jerk from last night was right, Hanan. You're not the only creature who broke the chains in this world. You're finally out of the sheep pen."

Hanan looked away from the billboard. The hunger that woke up in the park last night—that spark of new ambition replacing his empty emotions was now thumping harder in his chest. It beat in sync with the cracks in his Limiter, which kept pumping hot energy through his veins.

"Who are they? And why didn't you tell me from the start?" Hanan asked in his head.

"Because before this, you were just a baby crawling out of the cosmic womb," the voice mocked him. "You were way too busy crying over your lost emotions and playing around with some low-level revenge on mortals. If I told you yesterday, you would've just run away scared. But now... you've got a will. You've got the instinct to survive in a whole new food chain."

Hanan closed his eyes, ignoring the car horns and the noise all around him. If this world was some giant system with algorithm codes he could read whenever he wanted, then he just needed to tweak his search filter. He stopped wasting energy reading heartbeats, the lies of beggars, or the odds of the regular people on these streets.

He took a deep breath, then forced his consciousness to dive deeper. Right through the layers of this boring physical reality.

Suddenly, everything around him flipped. The city colors faded into a thick grey, leaving behind bright gold energy webs tied to every person walking by. Those were their Limiters—metaphysical chains designed by the universe to keep humans mortal, weak, controlled, and safe.

Hanan dialed up his perception radius. One kilometer. Five kilometers. Ten kilometers. His brain, which was now working better than the most high-tech supercomputer, processed billions of data points in a split second.

Look for the gap. Find another crack.

And then, he caught something.

About seven kilometers south, right in the heart of the capital's business district packed with glass skyscrapers, Hanan spotted an anomaly. In a sea of uniform, neat gold threads, there was a spot where reality looked totally distorted.

A dark purple energy glow with savage neon flashes throbbed like a second heart. The gold threads around that glitch were snapped, twisting all over the place, getting sucked into that energy vortex like a tiny black hole.

Someone over there wasn't tied down. Someone in that elite area had a crack just like him.

"Found you," Hanan muttered. He opened his eyes, which were now glowing with a cold, deadly gold light.

"Watch out what you're chasing, Limit Breaker," the ancient voice warned. "The ones who broke their Limiters before you might have sacrificed way more of their humanity. In their eyes, you—who is still clinging to bits of this 'boredom' are just fresh prey. You can actually die, Hanan. And this time, your death will wipe your soul right out of existence."

Hanan gave a thin smirk, a smile that had zero warmth in it. "In that case, let's see who's gonna be the prey today."

Hanan took one step forward. Space and time around him warped a bit. In a blink, his body flickered and vanished from that crowded intersection. He moved way past the speed of sound, leaving nothing but a blast of wind that swept up street dust and made a few pedestrians stumble around, totally confused.

The void in his soul wasn't completely gone yet. But at least this morning, Hanan had a new game to play. A bloody game where the stakes weren't just about getting back at some cheating wife, but keeping himself alive among these messed-up, self-made gods.