Adam stood alone in the high chamber he had carved out of the Celestial Realm's core years ago. No windows. No decorations. Just clean stone and the quiet hum of power waiting to be used. He had spent the last few nights finishing what he needed. Now the larger fracture on the realm's edge was growing, and the time for waiting was over.
He raised one hand.
A network of invisible threads unfurled from his fingers, spreading outward through the fabric of the realm. Each thread carried a precise instruction—seals designed to choke multiversal connections, anchors that would hold local reality steady even if the Elder Gods tried to pull harder, and a series of layered counters that would answer their next move without revealing the full depth of what he could create.
Joshua entered without knocking. He stopped a few steps inside, watching the faint golden light that now pulsed under the stone floor.
