Deep beneath the Korthane Hegemony, in a massive subterranean trench naturally insulated against aetheric scanning, the water was boiling.
It wasn't heat that brought the water to a boil, but sheer, overwhelming kinetic displacement. The massive, organic sac that had been gestating in the trench for over forty years was finally tearing open.
The Arbiter observed the birth not with eyes, but through the perfect, crystalline matrix of his divine perception. He was a Rank 9 deity, an entity of absolute law and structure. He did not build with the chaotic, emotional fervor of Zephyr. He built with terrifying, careful patience.
For four decades, he had fed raw, highly concentrated aether into the gestating sac, carefully calibrating the genetic architecture of the creature inside. He had watched Zephyr's Sea Serpent break the Kesseth blockade. He had recorded the serpent's speed, its mass, its scale density, and its kinetic output.
He had taken that data, and he had optimized it.
