ATLAS POV
The ley line junction was not something he could see, exactly. It was something he could feel a place where the world's natural energy currents converged, creating a subtle depth in the fabric of the planet that his divine awareness registered as warmth.
He did not drain it. Instead he established a connection careful, light, more observation than extraction. A tether that would allow him to draw from it over time without disrupting the underlying structure.
Compound returns. The satisfaction of a well-structured system.
Then the shallow sea. The microbial life there was genuinely extraordinary not in any individual organism, but in the density of variation. An enormous number of genetic experiments running in parallel.
He had six days before the exceptional plasticity faded.
What he directed into the shallow sea was not force. It was more like suggestion. A very gentle pressure toward multicellularity, toward complexity, toward the development of cellular structures that would eventually, over enormous spans of time, become nervous systems.
He also stored a fraction of his divine energy in the western mountain deposit — in the natural resonance around the crystallized ore, using the magnification field it created. Like placing money in a very patient investment account.
Patience, he reminded himself. This is measured in eons of mortal time.
He spent the equivalent of two days designing his species.
Not humans. Something that could become the ancestors of his intended civilization developing through natural pressure over multiple generations, arriving at intelligence through earned necessity rather than divine shortcut.
Roughly human-shaped. Bipedal, free-handed, with vocal architecture for language that would develop as social complexity demanded it. Slightly longer-lived perhaps thirty percent. Long enough that elders would accumulate meaningful knowledge before dying.
One divergence from human baseline: a mild sensitivity to the world's magical field. Not power. Just awareness. They would feel ley lines the way some animals feel magnetic north. Better at finding good land. Capable of instinctive fear responses in the right places. Capable, eventually, of recognizing when something divine was present.
Faith. They needed to be able to believe in something beyond themselves.
He directed the design into the eastern continent, near the inland sea, in a sheltered river valley where the climate was mild and the food resources were rich enough that a new species wouldn't starve before it figured out how to feed itself.
The divine energy cost was significant. His pool dropped to a level that made him genuinely uncomfortable.
Careful now. No major expenditures until the ley line tether has recharged the reserve.
He waited. And then, choosing to watch in real time because he wanted to see it
*MORTAL POV*
The river valley was quiet when the first of them opened her eyes.
She did not understand the concept of first. Her mind was new and enormous and completely empty of language. What she had instead was sensation the weight of her own body against cool earth, the smell of water nearby, the light filtering through the canopy above her in broken patterns that her new eyes tracked with instinctive attention.
She was afraid.
Not of anything in particular. Of everything in general. Of the size of the world and her own smallness within it.
She sat up.
Around her, others like her were stirring eight in total. One of them broader in the shoulders, with eyes the color of deep river water made a sound.
Not a word. Not yet. Something between a question and a statement.
She answered it. A different sound, but with the same shape underneath. I am here. I am afraid. Are you afraid too?
He made a sound that said: Yes.
And something between them settled into the kind of tentative quiet that precedes trust.
ATLAS POV
Eight.
He watched them with an attention that felt almost unbearably careful, the way you watch something fragile you've carried a long way.
They were alive.
Eight. Small founding population. Genetic diversity will be a concern eventually. But natural pressure will address it.
He watched the broader male and the first-awakened female sitting near each other in the filtered light, making sounds at each other that were not yet language, and he felt something he did not immediately categorize.
Not pride. He hadn't done the hard part yet. They had.
Something more like investment.
Don't let anything eat them for a while. Let them get their feet.
End of Chapter 2