The map table was gone. Athena had spent days rebuilding it from memory, from fragments, from the silver light that still clung to her fingertips. But the cracks kept spreading. The mortal world kept pulsing beneath them like a second heartbeat. And the reports from Earth kept getting stranger.
Priya's hands still glowed. Kenji still wouldn't go near the water. Gabriel's drawing of the lightning man had been joined by others—the cracked sky, the falling souls, a face that might have been a god or might have been a dream.
The news called it mass hysteria.
The people who saw the lights knew better.
---
In Texas, a preacher named Everett Cole stood in front of his congregation and declared the end times had arrived.
