The number arrived without fanfare. No trumpet. No divine chorus. No celestial light splitting the clouds. Just a counter ticking over in Zephyr's perception — a threshold crossed at eighty thousand faith points, the way a reservoir fills: gradually, then all at once. Rank 3 met its ceiling. Rank 4 waited on the other side.
It was midnight. Ashenveil was sleeping. The gold flame in the Chapel burned low, fed by the ambient faith of three thousand eight hundred believers spread across seven settlements. Krug knelt at the altar, alone, because the Voice had told him to be there and Krug did not ask why.
Now.
The advancement wasn't a moment. It was a process — like a building expanding from within, every wall stretching, every room deepening, every corridor extending into spaces that hadn't existed a second ago. His divine consciousness — the architecture of awareness that defined what a god could feel, reach, and affect — expanded in every direction simultaneously.
