The first sign was not dramatic enough to matter.
In a Myrr observatory far from any border, a senior diviner paused mid-calculation. The spell circle beneath her hands remained intact, glyphs rotating smoothly, power stable. By every metric, it was functioning.
Yet the future she sought refused to finish forming.
It did not collapse.
It did not resist.
It simply… did not arrive.
She waited. Adjusted the array. Recast with greater precision. The result remained unchanged—an outcome suspended in an unspoken "later."
Unease crept in, thin and cold. She recorded the anomaly as atmospheric distortion and moved on.
The world did not correct her.
In Ironreach, a Kaelvar quartermaster stopped in the middle of an inventory audit.
The sword before him was flawless—balanced, sharpened, forged to exacting lineage standards. But when he lifted it, the weight felt wrong. Not heavier. Not lighter.
Indeterminate.
He tested another blade. Then another.
Only one refused to settle.
The slate he used to record armory details accepted every entry except that one. The mark faded each time he inscribed it, leaving the space clean, as though the sword had never been present at all.
He locked the armory without explanation.
Beyond the western scar, a demon lord recoiled from a contract he had sealed moments earlier. The blood still steamed where it had fallen. The oath still echoed in the air.
But one promise—clearly spoken, clearly agreed upon—had slipped free.
Not broken.
Unattached.
The demon withdrew without rage, without threat. It did not understand what had happened.
It only knew the terms were no longer trustworthy.
By nightfall, the world adjusted.
Not loudly.
Not visibly.
Pressure redistributed. Probability shifted by fractions too small for mortals to name. Events that should have cascaded instead stalled. Consequences hesitated, waiting for something to anchor them.
Deep beneath stone and seal, beneath hell and the ruins of old divinities, an ancient presence resumed its attention.
It did not awaken.
It had never slept.
It observed the world as one might observe a structure—load-bearing points, stress fractures, excess weight. Its concern was not morality or intent.
Only continuity.
And something new had entered the equation.
Tareth felt the change as drag.
Each movement carried a faint resistance, as if reality required an extra moment to decide whether to accommodate him. The sensation was not painful—just persistent, like walking against a current that did not flow in any single direction.
Iscer noticed.
"You're slowing the world," they said quietly.
"No," Tareth replied. "It's slowing itself around me."
They stopped walking.
The resistance intensified for a breath—then wavered, uncertain, like a hand hovering just short of contact.
"That confirms it," Iscer muttered. "You're not being tracked. You're being… assessed."
Tareth nodded. "They're trying to understand what I cost."
"And?"
"They don't know yet."
Behind them, in the village they had passed through earlier, a woman dropped a ceramic bowl.
It struck the ground.
It did not break.
The sound it made was wrong—not the clean ring of survival, not the dull thud of failure. The bowl simply… endured, intact, as though the moment had been revised.
No one remarked on it.
But the imbalance spread.
Small mercies occurred where none were due. Delays interrupted disasters before they could commit. Elsewhere, unrelated tensions sharpened without cause.
Balance was being redistributed blindly.
That could not continue.
The presence beneath the world extended its awareness—not toward Tareth directly, but outward, along the disturbances he left behind. Villages, crossroads, half-written futures.
It traced the anomaly not as a person, but as influence.
Every path bent around the same absence.
A man who refused to settle into expectation.
At the ridge overlooking the valley, Tareth stopped.
The clouds above were aligning again—not into perfect order, not into chaos. A temporary shape. A compromise that would not last.
Iscer swallowed. "This isn't sustainable."
"I know," Tareth said.
"What happens when it decides?"
Tareth rested his hand on the sword. The steel did not hum. It did not resist.
It waited.
"Then," he said, "we'll learn whether the world prefers collapse… or adaptation."
Far below thought, far above intention, the ancient presence reached its first conclusion.
Not judgment.
Not correction.
Allowance.
For now.
The world did not relax.
It braced.
Because delay was not mercy.
It was time sharpened into inevitability.
And someone—eventually—would have to choose where it fell.