Long after her roommates had fallen asleep, Laia sat cross-legged on her dorm bed, eyes closed and breath steady. The shard of sanctum isle she had absorbed had left more than buried ore and rule-fragments behind. It had granted her one extra divine descent—one free journey down to her kingdom, no crystal cost, no cooldown timer.
Perfect, she thought. She had plans.
Lighting her divine spark was the obvious next step. It would grant her a permanent authority, a thread of rule-force she could call her own. More than that, its glow would seep into every corner of her realm, bolstering every subject, every crop, every stone wall. Authorities like Fertility—endless harvests, abundant game. Weather Weaving—control over rain and storm and sun. Endurance—less waste, longer supplies, harder, tougher people. They would jump at it. She was sure of it.
She drew one slow breath, and let her awareness sink down into her kingdom.
Down in the twin realms, life had kept right on moving without her. The three new clans from the lost realm had been sorted out, with a minimum of grumbling. The six original clans had not been thrilled at first—more mouths to feed, more resources to split. But more hands meant more work got done, more meat got processed, more walls got built. So they had accepted them, grudgingly.
The frost wraiths had been parceled out to the dark soul kin, who knew better than anyone how to live in shadow and silence. The stonehide saurians had gone to the dragon clan, put to work quarrying stone and reinforcing the valley walls. The silverback apes had been handed over to the elves, set to clearing new farmland and tending the deeper groves. The demon holds had been too hot and harsh for most of them. The humans and dwarves had declined politely—they had enough labor of their own.
It had been barely three days since the merge. The new arrivals were still dizzy, still trying to make sense of their strange new home and their even stranger new neighbors, when the sky roared.
Light exploded over the central altar plateau. A great column of golden light slammed down from the heavens, bright enough to outshine the sun. The six original clan leaders looked up, unsurprised, and started walking. The three new chieftains froze, their eyes wide with awe and terror. A god. A real god, descending in glory. This was what it was supposed to be like. This was divine majesty.
The light faded.
Laia stood there for exactly one heartbeat, triumphant.
Then her foot caught on a loose altar stone.
She pitched forward, face-first, and hit the dirt with a very ungodly thud.
Silence.
The new chieftains stared, horrified.
Before anyone could move, the ground beneath the old altar rumbled. The floodwaters from the last tide had eaten away at the foundations. The whole stone structure groaned, cracked, and collapsed in a great cloud of dust, taking half the plateau with it.
When the dust cleared, Laia was sitting in the middle of a pile of rubble, her hair full of stone dust, her expression murderous.
King Theron turned slowly to Vorath, who stood beside him, perfectly unruffled.
"You never thought to fix this thing?" he said, dry as dust.
Vorath huffed, flicking a fleck of stone off his claw. "We don't have hands. Not like you do. How are we supposed to lay mortar?"
Theron opened his mouth. Closed it again. Fair point.
There was a sharp, angry crack from the rubble. The shattered stone turned to fine powder, blown outward by a burst of golden divine power. Laia rose to her feet, glowing faintly with suppressed rage, her eyes locked straight on Vorath.
The three new chieftains cowered. Oh no. They had arrived just in time to witness the almighty's most embarrassing moment. They were all going to be smitten. Wiped out. Turned to ash.
"Vorath," Laia said, her voice low and dangerous. "You have exactly ten seconds to explain to me why my altar is a pile of rocks. I have put up with a lot from you lot. A lot. But this?"
She gestured wildly at the dust and broken stone.
Vorath cleared his throat, doing a very poor job of hiding his amusement.
"Now, it's not quite what it looks like," he rumbled. "The altar situation is… complicated. To address it properly, we'd need to first assess the underlying structural concerns, and to assess those we'd need to analyze the root cause of the degradation, and to analyze that—"
"Stop," Laia said. "Just stop. I don't care what you get up to when I'm gone. Fight void beasts. Eat your weight in meat. Argue with the dwarves about alloy ratios. Fine. But you couldn't be bothered to prop up one lousy altar? Do you have any idea how hard I work up there? Scrounging for every last crystal. Fighting just to keep this whole place running. And you can't even show me the common decency of not letting my only altar fall apart? Have you no shame?"
The six original clan leaders all looked away at the exact same time, suddenly very interested in the clouds, the rocks, their own feet.
Laia huffed, then turned her glare on the three trembling new chieftains.
"What are you staring at?" she said, sharper than she meant to be. "Go. Sort out every last one of your people with any kind of special trait. Separate them from the rest. Now."
They scrambled away so fast they nearly tripped over each other.
Laia turned back to her six stubborn, unflappable clan heads, and took a deep, calming breath. She was going to give herself a divine stroke. If gods could have strokes.
"Fine," she said, at last. "I didn't come here to argue about altars. I came because I'm ready to light my divine spark. It will take a formal sacrifice to fuel the ignition. Once it's lit, you all benefit. My authorities will blanket the whole kingdom. Fertility. Weather control. Greater endurance. Better harvests, stronger bodies, less waste."
She braced herself for the haggling. For the demands, the conditions, the endless back and forth.
Instead, Vorath shrugged.
"Sure," he said.
Theron nodded. "Makes sense."
Elowen added a quiet, "It's about time."
Laia blinked.
That was it?
"You… you agree?"
"We felt the rules shift when you hit peak Third Rank," Vorath rumbled. "Knew it was coming. No point putting it off. Food's decent right now. We can spare the offerings. Get it over with."
Laia hesitated, thrown off balance.
"Will it… will it be hard on any of you? The ignition backlash?"
Vorath actually snorted.
"Please. A little divine resonance? We've weathered worse than a spark-lighting. Don't worry about us."
Laia stared at them for a long moment, then nodded, still slightly bewildered.
"Fine. Then get the altar rebuilt. Properly. I'll be back in a few days for the ritual."
She turned and started walking toward the new lost-realm territory, already mentally going over what she needed to say to the new chieftains.
She made it about a hundred paces before she froze.
Wait a minute.
Who was in charge here?
She was the god. They were the subjects. She was supposed to command them. They were supposed to beg her for blessings. Instead they were agreeing to her requests like she was asking for a favor, and telling her not to worry about them.
She groaned, dropping her face into her hands. She had done this to herself. If she had had the crystals for proper life-seeds, she would have had nice, obedient, reverent subjects. If she had been able to afford real oracle cards, her people would have never wanted for anything. She had scraped them into existence out of desperation, out of poverty, because she had needed every scrap of faith she could get just to survive.
A faint, guilty twist settled in her chest.
She had never really thought of herself as a proper god. Not the way they taught in the academy. She did not command reverence. She did not demand sacrifice. She bargained. She taught. She nagged. She worried about them, more than she would ever admit.
Most gods would have called it weakness. Most gods would have said she was doing it wrong.
But somewhere, deep down, she thought that maybe—just maybe—that was why they stayed. That was why they fought so hard. That was why, even when they argued and complained and called her a nuisance and let her altar fall apart, they still showed up. They still built. They still survived.
She lifted her head and kept walking toward the new settlement.
It wasn't much. It wasn't proper.
But it was hers.