The gods arrived not with thunder and lightning, but with a quiet, insidious subtlety. They were beings of pure narrative force, the old patrons of the Arena, and their weapons were the tools of a bad author.
The first sign was a series of improbable coincidences. The star-crossed lovers' bakery, which had become the heart of the village, suddenly burned down in a tragic, yet narratively convenient, fire. The talking fox, in a moment of uncharacteristic clumsiness, fell into the river and lost his voice for a week.
"It's forced drama," Nox said to Serian, as they stood before the smoking ruins of the bakery. "They're injecting conflict into our story."
The forgotten characters, the echoes from a thousand finished tales, were the most vulnerable. Their stories were already written, their endings known. The gods began to… edit them.
