The question hung heavily in the air like a sword suspended by threads, its implications too vast and terrible to be fully grasped by minds still constrained by conventional understanding of hierarchies!
If these threats had been eliminated recently, it suggested capabilities that operated beyond their ability to measure. If they had been dealt with long ago, it implied planning and foresight that rendered all their careful preparations meaningless.
But perhaps most terrifying of all was the possibility that they represented merely the opening moves in a game whose scope they couldn't even perceive.
Silence was the only response their gathering could offer, because silence was the only honest answer to questions that challenged the fundamental nature of existence itself.
They could calculate power levels, analyze energy signatures, measure the output of stellar hearts…but how did one quantify the ability to rewrite destiny itself?
