The catastrophe did not announce itself with a warning. It happened in the silence of a god's averted gaze.
Zephyr was processing a macro-data feed when the anomaly hit his interface. It wasn't a subtle shift in industrial output or a localized military movement. It was a sudden, massive, vertical drop in a localized population count.
He snapped his divine attention to the coordinates.
It was Province Seven. Specifically, the industrial center of Oakhaven. The exact province he had designated as an [INTENTIONAL BLIND SPOT] decades ago to save cognitive bandwidth.
When his perception slammed into the city, he saw the destruction.
A synthetic replication core in the primary metallurgical factory complex had catastrophically malfunctioned. The resulting aetheric explosion had been devastating, completely leveling three heavily populated city blocks in a fraction of a second and shattering windows for miles in every direction.
