The call went out at mid-day, when work could pause without panic and before fatigue turned patience thin.
People came slowly at first, then in clusters. Families left half-finished tasks. Someone tied off a bundle of herbs and didn't bother coming back for it. A pair of guards were relieved early, their replacements waved off with murmured thanks. Children were gathered and hushed more firmly. Everyone realized that this meeting was more important than usual, sensing—without understanding—that this was not a practical meeting, it was not about walls or food or winter drills.
This was about something heavier.
They filled the shelter hall in uneven rings, sitting on crates, stone benches, the ground itself. No banners were raised. No symbols displayed. Even the central space was left bare, as if instinctively no one wanted to mark it yet. Talia stood at the front with the sentinels arrayed behind her. Junia stood slightly to one side, hands folded, eyes steady, watching the crowd more than the speakers.
There was no formal call to order. The murmur faded on its own, thinning as people realised this wasn't a meeting that would tolerate chatter.
Talia spoke, she didn't dramatise it. She told them where they had been, what they had seen. That this world was called Vaeterra, and that it was not a blank slate waiting for human logic to overwrite it. That Beastkin clans survived not through chance, but through systems older than memory—systems built on land, hierarchy, and something Earth had taught many of them to distrust.
Faith.
She kept her voice level as she explained the most important points. Deities were real here, not ideas or metaphors. They are entities that shaped territory, climate and survival. That clans without them struggled, fractured, or vanished and that deities were not saviours—but responders. Finally, that belief mattered, but blind belief killed as surely as disbelief.
A low ripple passed through the hall.
Someone near the back whispered, "That sounds like extortion."
Another voice answered, tense, "Or reality."
A woman with crossed arms shook her head. "We already lost everything once because people believed too hard."
"And we lost everything because we didn't believe in anything at all," someone else shot back.
Junia took over smoothly, stepping half a pace forward—not to claim authority, but to anchor the conversation before it spiralled.
"Faith here isn't worship," she said. Her voice carried without force. "It's a relationship. It's alignment. Deities draw strength from belief—but belief without understanding is dangerous. Choosing poorly doesn't just affect the believer. It affects everyone tied to that territory."
She let her gaze move slowly across the room."This isn't about kneeling. It's about consent, awareness and responsibility."
The room reacted immediately.
Fear rippled first.
"What if no god is safer?" someone asked, the words tight with hope rather than defiance.
"But Talia said that having no god is dangerous." a woman replied shakily.
"Then choose the strongest one," another said bluntly. "That's just survival."
A scoff cut through the air. "That's how cult leaders talk."
"And that's how people stay alive in places like this," came the retort.
Old scars surfaced fast, Earth scars. The kind that didn't fade just because the sky had changed. Someone muttered about manipulation, another about control.
A man near the edge laughed once, sharp and humourless. "So we escaped one world ending because of belief, just to pick a god like it's a ration card?"
Auntie Junia didn't shut it down, she let it flow. Being forced into a decision like this was always going to be contentious, so this free discussion was necessary.
Then a name surfaced. Not shouted or proclaimed just quietly spoken.
"Gaia saved us."
The words came from the back, quiet but steady. A woman Talia recognised from the early days—mud-streaked, shaking, clutching a child when the world had ended. She hadn't moved from the back wall since the first week and hadn't spoken in public at all.
"She's our home," someone else said, almost to themselves. "She always was."
A man swallowed hard, hands clenched in his knees. "She was alive. I know she was real, I felt her hug before we left."
Another voice, brittle with emotion: "I can still hear her goodbye."
That did something to the room. Everyone fell into memory. People shifted, not toward a decision but toward shared experience. Toward the memory they all carried—the earth breaking, the impossible kindness in it, the sense of being held even as everything ended.
Gaia wasn't introduced, she was remembered.
"She represents life," someone said carefully. "Nature, growth, fertility. That… fits, doesn't it?"
"And we already know her," another murmured. "That has to matter."
A younger man frowned. "But does that make her here? Or are we just clinging to ghosts?"
Junia's mouth softened, but she didn't answer.
No one pushed or corrected. Even the sentinels stayed quiet now.
Talia listened.
When the noise rose—not to chaos, but to expectation—toward her—she lifted a hand."
I will not recommend a deity," she said plainly.
The words landed harder than any argument.
"If I choose for you," she continued, "then it isn't faith, it's compliance and belief built on rejection will fracture us faster than Vaelterra ever could."
She looked at them all, not as a Lord but as someone standing in the same uncertainty.
"I know some of you want guidance and others want nothing to do with this at all, both are understandable." Her jaw set slightly. "But this choice has to be ours—together—or it means nothing."
Silence followed, uneasy and also necessary.
A child shifted, someone exhaled slowly, a few people nodded—not in agreement, but in acceptance of the weight being placed in their hands.
At last, she gave them structure.
"In two days, we will hold a clan vote to choose a main deity. Between now and then, talk, argue, remember, and question. There is no pressure to agree. Only to be honest."Her voice softened, just slightly when delivering the second directive. "Once we have our Deity, we will design rituals as a clan. These are not commands. They are practices. What we value. What we offer and what we ask."
Auntie Junia spoke again, "Rituals don't bind gods. They bind us."
After the vote, they would begin building that relationship—carefully.
The meeting ended without applause.
People left quieter than they had arrived, conversations hushed, thoughts heavy. Small groups formed and dissolved. Old arguments resurfaced, gentler now. Memories were shared in fragments, like offerings laid down without expectation.
Faith had not been framed as a safety net.
But as a responsibility.
And that unsettled them more than any god ever could.