The Gate had been patient across eons, had calculated across infinite timelines, had waited with the certainty of cosmic inevitability for this precise moment. Now, faced with Selena's network of distributed sovereignty a configuration it had never predicted, never observed in any iteration of the cycle it made a choice that entities of its nature rarely made.
It stopped calculating.
The vast presence that had been forcing its way through the tear in reality suddenly surged forward with unprecedented speed, no longer trying to understand or predict but simply acting with the accumulated force of millennia of constraint finally released. The mathematical certainty that defined its nature gave way to something more primal raw will asserting itself against opposition it could not fully comprehend.
