The single, flickering digit of positive value in Star System K-73's ledger did not go unnoticed. In the absolute silence of the void between realms, it rang out like a clarion call. And in the highest echelons of cosmic power, where the air was thick with the scent of old debt and older privilege, it was heard as a declaration of war.
My brother, reviewing the celestial markets from his post in the Bureau, saw it first. A subtle, coordinated sell-off of "Karmic Stability Bonds" tied to the sectors adjacent to K-73. It was a quiet, sophisticated bet against his sister's success—a prediction that her "cultivation" would fail and its instability would spread.
"They're testing her," he murmured, his fingers tracing the data streams. "They want to see if her first bloom was a fluke."
He did not intervene. To do so would be to show his hand, to reveal the depth of his involvement. Instead, he sent a single, encrypted packet of data to Mo Heng—a list of the primary entities initiating the sell-off, their financial linkages, and their historical risk tolerance. It was not a weapon; it was a map of the battlefield.
In her pavilion, the new Goddess received the data from her brother via Mo Heng. She felt a cold knot form in her stomach. This was not a challenge of faith or power; it was a financial siege.
"They are attempting to devalue your credibility by devaluing your assets," Mo Heng explained, his voice devoid of alarm. "If they succeed, the cost of borrowing causal energy for your future projects will become prohibitive. You will be starved of capital before you truly begin."
She looked from the cold numbers of the short-sell to the warm, burgeoning light of K-73, where the first elemental spirits were now dancing in the reforged asteroid belts.
"Then we must prove their bet is wrong," she said, her voice gaining a steely edge she hadn't possessed before. "Not with a miracle, but with a better business model."
Her counter-attack was not celestial, but economic. She issued the first "Sovereign Development Bond" under her new reign, backed not by the tired collateral of old temples, but by the future revenue stream of K-73's unique "Empathetic Resonance." It was an entirely new asset class. A few curious, risk-tolerant minor deities and forward-thinking ancestral spirits invested.
The short-sellers doubled down, flooding the market with bearish derivatives.
A wave of doubt, manufactured in the ledgers of her enemies, began to ripple through the celestial bureaucracy. Whispers of "recklessness" and "idealism" followed her.
It was then that she unveiled her true weapon, the one my brother had gambled on, the one I, as the silent architect of this system, had hoped for.
She went to K-73, not to command, but to give. She poured her own divine essence, her hope and her resolve, into the "Seed of Empathy" she had planted. She did not demand value; she invested her very being.
In response, the nascent world did not just grow; it bloomed. The Empathetic Resonance, once a theoretical asset, flared into a tangible, radiant field. It began to stabilize the frayed causal links of the entire sector, reducing the ambient "karmic friction" that all gods had accepted as a cost of doing business.
The stabilization of the sector caused the "Karmic Stability Bonds" that the short-sellers had bet against to suddenly, sharply, rise in value.
In the strategic chamber, my brother watched the inevitable unfold. A wave of automated buy-orders, triggered by the rising stability metrics, surged through the market. The short-sellers were caught. They were forced to buy back the bonds at a catastrophic loss to cover their positions.
The first financial assault on the new regime had ended not with a divine thunderclap, but with the sound of a thousand cosmic accounts being liquidated.
The new Goddess stood on the soil of her first success, feeling the vibrant, grateful pulse of the world she had saved. She had won. But as she looked up at the cold, infinite ledger of the heavens, she knew this was only the first margin call in a war for the very soul of existence.
The short-sellers had been burned. But the true power behind them, the entities who saw a universe in debt as a universe they could control, had just been served notice.
Their asset was fighting back.