The angel's full authorization didn't arrive as a strike.
It arrived as a state change.
The Eastern Island's spiritual plane — which had been still since the angel landed in the northern mountains, the entire ecosystem silent like when a very large predator enters a territory — stopped being still.
And began to respond to the repressor.
Not as an ally — as conquered terrain. The Eastern Island's spiritual plane, with its eons of history, with the Silent Threshold in the mountains and the previous cycle's creatures and the thirty‑meter trees that had been accumulating active spiritual signature for centuries — all of it being accessed by the channel between the repressor and the Gods that was now fully open.
The Gods had built the current cycle.
The current cycle's spiritual plane was their territory.
And through the repressor's channel, the Gods could use that territory.
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Kira felt it first.
