In one of Elyndor's inner universes, a man was dying.
He was not important. He had not shaped empires or altered the course of history. He was a quiet scholar in a coastal city whose name would fade within generations. But his life had been measured, and Elyndor measured all things.
Lyra stood beside her father within a veil of unseen observation. Mortal eyes could not perceive them. Mortal time did not register their presence. This was not intervention. It was instruction.
The scholar's breathing slowed. His final thought was not of fear, but of unfinished work. Then his heart ceased.
Lyra felt it immediately. A shift in resonance. A thread separating from flesh. Consciousness loosening from matter. The system responded as it always did.
Light unfolded above the scholar's body. Heaven aligned. A luminous current descended through layered existence, precise and ordered. The scholar's soul rose gently, faint at first, then stabilizing as dimensional cohesion formed around it.
"This one was balanced," Lyra said quietly.
Aethon inclined his head. "His resonance is stable. He will enter the lower courts."
The soul drifted upward toward the descending current. For a moment, the ascension was seamless.
Then it faltered.
Not a fall. Not deviation. A hesitation.
The current flickered almost imperceptibly, and the soul tilted by a fraction so small that no mortal mind could ever detect it.
"That angle was not part of the pathway," Lyra said.
Aethon extended his awareness into the ascension stream and isolated the irregularity. It was not Abyssal influence. It was not corruption. It was a thinning in alignment, a minute inconsistency in precision.
The system corrected itself. The soul rose cleanly and passed into Heaven. The light folded shut.
Below them, the mortal world continued.
"That was the third irregularity this cycle," Lyra said.
"Yes."
"Across separate universes."
"Yes."
Lyra turned toward him. "If the deviation is increasing, we should adjust the alignment thresholds."
"And widen the pathway's tolerance?" Aethon asked.
"It would prevent loss."
"It would conceal the instability," he replied calmly. "Preservation without precision becomes erosion."
Lyra did not answer immediately. "If that angle had widened, the soul would not have risen."
"That is correct."
"And if one does not rise?"
"Then we intervene."
She studied him, sensing something unspoken.
Aethon extended his perception across Elyndor. The pathways of Heaven shimmered. The thresholds of the Abyss remained stable. Time flowed. Entropy responded. The structure appeared intact.
Yet the memory of resistance remained.
Then a new signal touched his awareness. Not from a mortal plane. Not from within a universe.
Higher.
A structured transmission formed before him.
From the Ninth Dimension.
From the High Adjudicators who governed the flow between Heaven and Abyss.
Lyra felt it as well. "That is not routine."
"No," Aethon said quietly.
The message stabilized. Ascension irregularities had increased. Seventeen within the current cycle. Across separate multiversal sectors. Several required manual correction. Two had nearly failed entirely.
The Ninth Circle requested direct guidance.
Lyra's expression shifted. "They have never escalated fluctuations to you."
"No."
The system was still functioning.
But it was no longer flawless.
"Will you go to them?" Lyra asked.
"Yes."
She did not hesitate. "Then I am coming."
"You will observe," Aethon said.
"I will learn," she replied.
Just as thise words fell, Aetheon snapped his finger and both him and his daughter were transported to the realm of Ninth Circle where the message came from.
For the first time since the anomalies began, Aethon felt something heavier than deviation.
A pattern has emerged with these anomalies.