The number arrived at midnight, and Zephyr didn't notice for three hours.
This was, in retrospect, the problem.
He'd been allocating domain energy — routine work, the kind that had once required his full strategic attention and now ran on a decision tree he'd built sixty years ago and hadn't needed to revise. War-domain blessings for the Morreth garrison (rotational batch, quarterly cycle). Knowledge-domain support for the Mechanist Academy's expanded research wing. Forge-domain allocation for Tikk Copperwire's new Institute, which was burning through divine crafting energy at a rate that would have alarmed Zephyr if the output hadn't been proportionally impressive. Life-domain maintenance for the agricultural belt. Storm-domain weather stabilization for the coastal shipping lanes.
