They watched.
From beyond the stars. Beyond time, and beyond the fragile laws of the mortal world. Silent, vast, and cruelly patient.
For millennia, they had watched humanity ruin its cradle. The seas poisoned. The skies blackened. The earth choked.
And so, the judgment came.
Not with flame or flood—but with exile.
Their solution had been simple: take the willing. The ones who sought escape. The ones already numbing their minds inside the constructed world humanity called a "game."
Let them believe it.
Let them trap themselves.
Two years. That had been the plan. A slow migration, controlled, structured. Only those deemed worthy by the Quiet Accord would be drawn in.
Until he found the Temple.
Now they watched the boy. The horned one. The Sovereign.
The gods had no faces, no forms. But their minds stirred. Thoughts rippled like stone dropped into still water.
A fragment awakened.
The protocol was not authorized.
The vessel was chosen without consent.
Accelerate.
Accelerate.
The decision rippled, cold and absolute.
The world—their world—would not wait two years.
The exile would begin now.
Because the boy was awake.
And the old blood burned once more.