Welcome to Rit — a world alive with fantastic creatures, ancient fortresses, and cultures shaped by magic. But darkness stirs. Warlocks hunt the gifted. Demons strain against the walls of their prison. And across the land, kingdoms plot and fracture as the long-absent Gods remain silent.

In their absence, heroes and outcasts must rise — for the fate of Rit will be decided not by the Gods who left it, but by those still struggling to survive within it.

In a world without Gods, even truth can be a lie.

Synopsis. Book 1 – Even Gods Lie, Sometimes

Centuries ago, the Gods of Rit attempted to banish Demons from the mortal realm with a final, desperate ritual. They failed. The Demons were sealed behind a magical barrier but their touch remains on the world. The Gods vanished, leaving the mortal world broken and civilization in collapse. In the chaos that followed, the Church of Peace rose to power in the country of The Arrangement of Peace, preaching order and harmony while enforcing a rigid theocracy. Children born with magic are given a single choice: serve the Church as priests and instruments of control, or die.

Rishmond has no idea he is one of these children. Homeless and starving in the brutal capital city of Mott in the Arrangement of Peace, he hides a strange birthmark on his back—what the Church claims is a mark of demonic corruption. But the truth is far older and far more dangerous: the mark comes not from a Demon, but from the magic of Rit itself. Rishmond’s jzirittiah—the life-force that connects mortals to magic—is unusually strong, allowing him to access lotrar, the deep and ancient magic bound to Rit’s very core.

When a Warlock attack reveals his power, Rishmond comes under the protection of the Kingdom of Malminar where he becomes friends with Tybour Insuritor, the First Mage of the realm. Tybour, once an orphan like Rishmond, sees potential in the boy and begins to train him.

As Rishmond begins to heal and grow, he forms powerful bonds with two companions: Cantor, a fierce and clever girl with unshakable loyalty, and Illiar, a brilliant fox-type beastwoman just two turns older than he is. The three share danger, secrets, and a fragile but deepening love that defies easy definition. Their affection strengthens even as the world around them fractures further.

When the group embarks on a mission to find the banished Gods and return them to the mortal world to confront the rising Demon threat, they become targets of political, divine, and infernal interest. Everyone—Warlocks, kings, prophets, and even the Gods themselves—seeks to use them. And when they finally reach the divine, the cost is devastating: Rishmond is struck down before his friends' very eyes, disintegrated in a blast of holy light. Or is he?

Because even Gods lie, sometimes.

Over the course of the series, the truth is revealed: Gods and Demons are not divine at all, but remnants of a technologically advanced human race that fled a dying Earth. In a final act of desperation, they created Rit—a habitable world forged from the bones of Jupiter’s moons and stitched together through terraforming. But in doing so, they accidentally awoke something far older than themselves. Magic. A living planet. A new force beyond their control. What began as a scientific refuge became a crucible of divine power—and the war that followed tore them into factions: creators and corruptors, Gods and Demons, all still clinging to the myth of their own importance. Both using mortals for their own ends.

Now, their lies are unraveling.

And the boy marked by Rit may be the one to end the cycle they began.

Even Gods Lie, Sometimes will appeal to fans of Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan, and R.F. Kuang—readers who crave richly imagined worlds, morally tangled heroes, and stories where ancient powers demand brutal choices. With its blend of magical realism, political corruption, and emotional depth, it straddles the line between adult epic fantasy and high-stakes coming-of-age drama.