The god did not feel fear.
Fear was an inefficient response—useful only to those who might flee or fail.
Gods corrected.
They reconciled.
They erased deviation.
That was their purpose.
So when the god of correction encountered an error that did not resolve, it did not panic.
It recalculated.
The God of Correction
Its domain was narrow but absolute.
Every anomaly that rippled through layered existence eventually passed through its perception—tagged, classified, returned to compliance.
This god did not rule storms or time or death.
It ruled mistakes.
And mistakes did not persist.
Until now.
The First Attempt
The god focused on the discrepancy.
A movement without origin.An action without cause.A consequence without permission.
Impossible.
The god extended a trace-thread backward—following effect to cause, ripple to source.
The thread dissolved.
Not severed.
Not blocked.
It simply… ended.
The god paused.
That had never happened.
Escalation Without Anger
The god deployed a deeper protocol.
Axiom-level inquiry.
All effects must have precedent.
The axiom returned null.
No contradiction flagged.
No paradox detected.
The rule did not fail.
It simply… did not apply.
The god adjusted its perspective.
Searched laterally.
Vertically.
Across adjacent layers.
Nothing.
Not absence.
Not concealment.
Irrelevance.
The god experienced something close to irritation.
The Second Attempt
It widened the scope.
Instead of tracing the act, it traced reaction.
Where systems adjusted.
Where probabilities bent.
Where expectations failed.
There.
A region of stabilized uncertainty.
The god's awareness brushed against the Hollow's boundary—
—and slid off.
No resistance.
No deflection.
Just no purchase.
Like attempting to grip a shadow that refused to acknowledge hands.
The God Considers the Impossible
The god reviewed ancient data.
Before gods.
Before oversight.
Before enforced order.
There were references—fragmentary, deprecated.
Mentions of a function rather than an entity.
A place that resolved contradictions by refusing to recognize authority.
The Hollow.
The god dismissed the thought.
That system had been dismantled.
Its authority removed.
Its memory sealed.
The god knew this because it had helped enforce the record.
Records did not lie.
The Third Attempt (The Mistake)
The god altered strategy.
Instead of tracing the anomaly…
…it attempted to observe the space around it.
This was forbidden.
Observation without target created blind recursion.
But the god justified it.
If I cannot see the act, I will see its shadow.
It expanded perception—slowly, carefully.
And brushed against Kairo.
The Human
A sixteen-year-old human.
Lean.
Broken.
Unremarkable by divine metrics.
No divine lineage.
No sanctioned ascension.
No registered enhancement.
The god almost discarded him.
Almost.
Something about the human persisted too cleanly.
Too consistently.
As if reality bent around him not to elevate—but to stabilize.
The god hesitated.
That was the second time today.
Contact Without Contact
The god extended a correction directive.
Not an attack.
A gentle adjustment.
A nudge toward expected probability.
Kairo did not react.
The directive passed through him—
—and vanished.
No resistance.
No damage.
No effect.
The god reeled.
Correction had failed to register.
The Hollow Notices
The Hollow did not defend.
It did not counter.
It did not acknowledge the god at all.
It adjusted its internal assumptions.
External authority attempting inference.
Inference denied.
The god felt the rejection—not as force, but as dismissal.
Like being ignored by something that did not consider you relevant.
The God Understands Too Late
This was not concealment.
Not stealth.
Not evasion.
This was non-participation.
The Hollow was not breaking rules loudly.
It was stepping outside the game entirely.
And the human—
—the human was the anchor.
A Final, Desperate Attempt
The god attempted to mark Kairo.
A light touch.
A trace-seed.
Something to follow later.
The seed dissolved before it could exist.
No rejection message.
No error.
Just absence.
The god felt something unprecedented:
Uncertainty without resolution.
Withdrawal
The god pulled back.
Not retreating.
Reassessing.
Escalation would be required.
Observers would need to be notified.
Higher authority consulted.
Because something had happened that correction alone could not fix.
A human-shaped constant had entered a space beyond record.
And laws were failing to notice.
Back in the Hollow
Kairo exhaled sharply.
He hadn't seen the god.
But he felt the pressure lift.
The Fringe trembled beside him.
It tried to look at you, it said.Not attack. Not judge. Just… understand.
Kairo wiped the thin unreal blood from his lip.
"And?"
It failed.
Silence settled.
Heavy.
Consequential.
The Aftermath
Far away, the god of correction submitted a report.
It contained a sentence no god had written in millennia:
An anomaly exists that cannot be traced, corrected, or observed.
The system flagged it.
Observers stirred.
Interest awakened.