CHAPTER 9: GODS????!
The call came in the middle of the robbery, vibrating like an insect trapped beneath the skin of Juno's coat.
He did not flinch.
The vault chamber of the Meridian Exchange hummed with quiet alarms and nervous electricity, a cathedral of steel and glass buried beneath three stories of marble and reputation. Light panels ran along the ceiling in immaculate lines, reflecting off gold-sealed crates stacked like offerings. The air smelled faintly of ozone, money, and fear.
Across the room, two guards lay unconscious, neatly arranged where they had fallen. Another leaned against the wall, eyes glassy, mouth slightly open, breathing slow and deep alive, unharmed.
Juno had promised that much.
He was standing before the vault itself, one gloved hand pressed flat against the circular door. Runes etched into the alloy pulsed faintly, reacting to his presence with reluctant recognition.
The vibration came again.
Juno exhaled through his nose and withdrew his hand. He reached into his coat and answered the call without looking at the name.
"Yes," he said quietly.
On the other end, the line crackled not with static, but with pressure, as though the air itself had weight.
"You're on schedule," said the voice.
Juno turned slightly, surveying the room out of habit. Every angle covered. Every variable measured. "I am," he replied. "The Exchange will take another four minutes to realize they're already compromised."
"Good. Then you won't mind an addition to your assignment."
Juno's jaw tightened by a fraction. "An addition," he repeated.
"Yes. Immediate priority."
Silence stretched between them. Somewhere above, the city continued its ignorant breathing traffic, footsteps, laughter. The world unaware it was holding its breath.
"Proceed," Juno said.
"There is an artifact in the vault," the voice continued. "Third tier. Black-gold casing. No registry. You are not to deliver it to our usual channels."
Juno frowned slightly. "Then to whom?"
A pause. A deliberate one.
"To the world," said his boss.
The words settled, heavy and wrong.
Juno lowered his voice further. "Clarify."
"You will open the casing. You will activate what is inside. You will do so exactly where you stand."
Juno closed his eyes for a brief moment. He had done impossible things before. He had broken cities without breaking bones. He had ended wars without firing a shot. But this
"You're asking me to detonate something in the heart of a financial district," he said.
"No," the voice corrected calmly. "I am asking you to ring a bell."
Juno's eyes opened. "A bell."
"Yes. One that has not been heard in a very long time."
The vault door pulsed again, brighter now, as if impatient.
"And the consequences?" Juno asked.
Another pause. Longer.
"Universal," said his boss.
Juno laughed once, softly. "You should have led with that."
"You are uniquely qualified," the voice replied. "And uniquely positioned."
"Am I allowed to know why?"
"No."
The line went dead.
Juno stared at the device in his hand for a second before slipping it back into his coat. He turned to the vault again, resting his palm against the cold metal. The runes flared, then dimmed, then unraveled like threads pulled from a tapestry.
The door opened.
Inside, the vault was smaller than expected. No piles of currency. No relics glowing with theatrical menace. Just a single pedestal, and upon it, a black gold case the size of a briefcase, unmarked except for a symbol etched so faintly it seemed to exist only when not directly observed.
Juno stepped inside and lifted the case. It was warm.
That alone was enough to make his heart rate increase.
He placed it on the floor, knelt, and undid the latches.
The casing opened without resistance.
Inside was not a weapon, nor a crystal, nor anything that fit neatly into the taxonomy of dangerous things Juno had learned over years of work.
It was light.
Not illumination, but presence. A density of being so complete it bent perception around it. The moment the case opened, Juno felt it an awareness brushing against his own, vast and ancient and utterly unconcerned with him as an individual.
His breath caught.
"So that's it," he murmured.
The artifact had no shape, yet implied all of them. It was potential given patience. A silence so deep it could only belong to something that had once spoken and decided never to again.
Juno swallowed. "Alright," he said, to himself or to it. "Let's ring the bell."
He placed both hands into the case.
The world stopped.
Not figuratively. Not emotionally.
Stopped.
Every process that relied on continuity motion, sound, cause and effect paused as though caught in amber. Juno alone could move, could think, could exist in the thin slice of reality that remained unfrozen.
The artifact responded to his touch, unfolding not outward, but inward through him.
His vision filled with sky.
Not the sky above the city, but the sky above everything. Layers upon layers of existence peeled back like pages in a book written in gravity and time. He felt small, not in the way of fear, but in the way a mountain feels small next to a planet.
Then he felt it let go.
The bell rang.
There was no sound.
The aura spread anyway.
It did not explode. It did not rush. It expanded with the inevitability of dawn, washing outward from the Meridian Exchange, through the city, through the continent, through the curvature of the world itself.
Those sensitive to power felt it first.
In a monastery carved into the red cliffs of the southern deserts, an old woman paused mid-breath, her eyes snapping open as the incense in her chamber extinguished itself.
"Impossible," she whispered.
High above the clouds, aboard a floating citadel held aloft by equations and willpower, a council of arcanists staggered as one. Their wards screamed, then fell silent, as if cowed.
"This signature...." one began.
".....predates classification," finished another, pale.
In the depths of the ocean, something vast stirred, chains older than continents rattling as awareness returned to a mind that had been sleeping since the world was young.
Across the world, in cities and forests and forgotten places, those who stood at the peak of power felt something they had not felt in centuries.
Recognition.
Fear.
And curiosity.
Back in the vault, time resumed.
The alarms screamed.
Glass shattered somewhere above as the shockwave gentle, paradoxically reasserted physics. Juno was thrown backward, skidding across the floor until he hit the wall hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs.
He coughed, gasped, and laughed despite himself.
"Well," he said hoarsely. "That's new."
The artifact was gone.
Not destroyed. Not vanished.
Gone in the way a decision is gone once made.
Juno staggered to his feet, straightened his coat, and walked out of the vault as emergency lights painted the corridor red.
Behind him, the world reeled.
They gathered where they always did when the universe misbehaved.
Some came in person. Others projected themselves through avatars of light, shadow, or thought. A few did not bother with form at all, manifesting as distortions in space where presence alone was enough.
The Hall of Accord had been built to contain them or at least to give the illusion that containment was possible.
"This is not an anomaly," said the man made of flame.
"Anomalies spike and fade. This persists."
A woman seated on a throne of bone nodded slowly. "It is an announcement."
"By whom?" demanded a third, armored in symbols of conquest long fallen out of fashion.
Silence followed.
Then, from the far end of the hall, a voice like shifting stone spoke.
"By a god," it said.
Several presences reacted instantly. Wards flared. Weapons half-formed. Old instincts surfaced.
"That is not possible," someone snapped. "The gods are gone."
"Gone is a matter of perspective," the stone voice replied.
"Sleeping. Dead. Ascended. Bound. Names change. Power does not."
The flame-man leaned forward. "Then this aura..."
"...is divine," finished the stone.
"And uncontrolled," added the woman of bone. "Which makes it dangerous."
A ripple of agreement passed through the hall.
"Find the source," said the armored figure. "If a god walks again, we must decide the terms."
"And if it was summoned?" asked another.
The hall fell quiet once more.
Somewhere very far away, Juno boarded a train under a false name, the city still shaking behind him. He leaned his head against the window and watched the skyline recede, unaware of how many eyes mortal and otherwise had begun to turn in his direction.
The bell had been rung.
And the world would never be quiet again.