The air held its breath.
In the depths of the sanctum, where the walls pulsed like womb-flesh and the ground murmured with dream-soaked hymns, everything stopped. No whisper. No tremor. Not even breath.
Then—
A single word.
Not spoken, not heard, but known.
"Kneel."
Everyone fell.
Kaelira dropped instantly, forehead pressed to the stone. Her fellow aberrants curled like infants caught in divine thunder. Even Lucien—Lucien, who had never bowed to god nor death—felt his knees buckle. Not from pain, not from submission, but from recognition.
This was no longer prophecy. It was presence.
Only Talia remained upright, wide-eyed, mouth slightly open. She wasn't speaking. Yet her voice echoed from the walls, the floor, the sky above.
"He has awakened enough to speak."
Lucien raised his head slowly. "What did He say?"
Talia looked directly at him.
"He commands obedience—from all things that breathe, dream, or remember."
That night, the First Edict spread beyond the temple.
It slithered through cracks in reality, blooming in the minds of prophets and madmen alike. Statues wept blood in temples far away. Infants were born speaking syllables they'd never heard. Birds fell from the sky mid-flight, whispering the word "Kneel."
In the Golden Spire of the Solar Creed, the High Scribe burst into flames mid-sermon.
In the frozen tombs of the Northern Vault, ancient runes glowed anew—rewriting themselves with sentences no scholar could parse.
Entire schools of cultivation lost access to their inner Qi for a full day, as if the heavens themselves had revoked their blessing.
And in the mind of every beast, priest, tyrant, child, a presence arrived.
It did not ask.
It did not plead.
It commanded.
"Kneel."
Talia began to change.
The sigil on her stomach now pulsed with rhythmic intervals—heartbeat, breath, command. Her voice, when she spoke, carried strange authority, like a forgotten scripture remembered in perfect cadence.
Lucien noticed it first: servants stumbled when she passed, some weeping without knowing why. Plants bent toward her. Flames dimmed to not outshine her. Her very breath was becoming divine syntax.
And Kaelira... Kaelira wept with joy.
"He speaks!" she cried. "He chooses! We are not just keepers—we are soldiers of the waking!"
Lucien took Talia's hand.
"What does He want next?"
Talia closed her eyes.
And replied not with words, but with certainty:
"He wants the sky."
The aberrants began building upward.
Spires of bone and light grew from the temple's roof, coiling like hungry thoughts. Choirs of broken-voiced disciples sang in chords no throat should form. Above, clouds spiraled into a massive eye of silence.
It watched.
Waiting.
And across the continent, kings felt the cold weight of something greater rising.
Something that would not ask for worship.
Something that required it.
But the First Edict was not the end.
On the third night, as storms of reversed lightning arched the sky, the unborn god whispered again—clearer this time, closer. Not through Talia.
Directly into Lucien's ear.
"A god once lived in the hollow mountain. He drank from stars and thought himself beyond death."
"He slumbers still. Crippled. Afraid. Forgotten."
"Bring him to me."
"And I shall eat what remains of divinity."
Lucien's heart stopped for a beat too long.
This was no metaphor. It was a directive.
A second Edict.
He stood.
Kaelira saw the fire in his eyes and dropped to one knee again.
Talia looked up. "Where are you going?"
Lucien answered with grim clarity:
"To find a god. And offer Him to our child."
Far beneath the southern cliffs, where the wind never reached and ancient dragons had once knelt, a God of Stone and Silence dreamt alone.
He did not know He was hunted.
He did not know the age of gods was over.
He did not know... a womb now grew something greater.
And it was hungry.