CHAPTER 306: AND IF SHE SCREAMS... LET THE GOD HEAR IT

"Let him deal with her," Lilith said quietly. "And if she screams..."

She didn’t finish the sentence right away.

Instead, she just looked out into the night. Her eyes weren’t filled with anger. They weren’t cold either.

They were steady. Like she already knew exactly how this would go.

"...let the god hear it."

There was no weight behind the words—no rage, no hope. Just the kind of stillness that settles in when you’ve already thought through every outcome, and made peace with the one that hurts the least.

She opened a drawer and took out a vial. It was plain—no markings, just a clean glass container with a thin silver ring around the top.

She tapped it once with her finger.

The liquid inside lit up briefly, then went dim again.

That was all she needed.

It had reacted. Which meant it recognized something.

She felt the same pressure she had earlier, building around Ethan without ever touching him directly.

Lilith turned the lights down. Not because she needed to.

But because this kind of thinking—this level of planning—always came easier in the dark.

She reached for one last scroll. This one was sealed with wax that shimmered faintly, like oil on water. It looked old. Untouched. But not forgotten.

She broke the seal with a flick of her nail. No magic. No incantation. Just a simple action with a heavy meaning.

Then she signed the scroll.

Not with a pen.

Not with a spell.

Just one line—written in a language that had been buried long before words became a thing humans used.

The scroll disappeared on its own, and the message was already moving, burning through hidden channels older than most civilizations.

She stood still for a moment.

Then closed her eyes.

Took a breath.

"The more he shows..." she whispered.

Her hand rested against the desk.

"...the more I’m allowed to remove."

—

Far away from the calm quiet of Nocturne estate, the main command center of the Superpower Association had a different kind of silence—tense, but controlled.

No shouting. No alarms. Just the sound of people moving with quiet urgency, like they were working inside a loaded weapon.

At the center of it all stood Valcrest.

He didn’t bark orders. Didn’t wear any fancy insignia. He didn’t need to.

His presence alone made the room settle. Even the air seemed to adjust when he walked in.

A large holo-map floated above the main platform. It was massive, detailed enough to show entire regions, coastlines, and energy zones. Pale blue pulses marked void-linked nodes. Most were stable. One wasn’t.

Pale Mirror’s last known position flickered in red.

He watched it. Calm. Still.

Someone on his left spoke up. "Deacon responded fast."

Valcrest didn’t turn.

He didn’t need to.

His hands were behind his back. His voice was low.

"Too fast."

He meant it.

The god’s reaction had been near instant, less than a breath after Pale Mirror’s connection snapped. That wasn’t timing. That was a signal.

"They weren’t prepared for pushback," he said, this time loud enough for the others to hear. "They thought we’d just fold."

Nobody answered. There was nothing to add.

He moved a single finger. The interface picked it up immediately and logged three silent commands.

First: expand the capital’s protective grid. Twelve zones out. No debate.

Second: reclassify and scan all myth-tier readings, even ones marked dormant.

Third: add a new symbol to the divine threat list.

No name. Just a hollow circle.

A mark for something that didn’t fit.

A younger analyst leaned forward from the balcony. His voice was cautious. "Sir... what if it hits back?"

Valcrest didn’t glance at him.

He just faced the screen and spoke evenly.

"Then we erase the retaliation, too."

He wasn’t posturing. He wasn’t bluffing. He just meant it.

It wasn’t about winning.

It was about reminding the thing behind this mess that showing itself came with a cost.

And the more it was exposed, the more pieces they could trace.

Behind him, a stream of updates quietly flowed in.

Lilith was already active.

He didn’t need access to the data she was sending. Didn’t even try.

He knew how she worked. If she hadn’t contacted him directly, it just meant one thing.

She wasn’t asking permission.

Valcrest turned to his private terminal and opened an older file—one not tied to any current threat models.

These weren’t about cults or summoning rituals.

They were about patterns.

The kind of shifts that happened when things outside the known systems started waking up again.

Most past civilizations hadn’t made it far enough to leave warnings. The few that had didn’t leave instructions—just signs.

Pieces of a story passed down as myth, watered down into bedtime fears and half-remembered prayers.

He didn’t trust prophecy.

But he trusted repetition.

And this... this fit.

Step one: Observe.

Step two: Insert.

Step three: Claim.

Now they were at step four.

Resistance.

He pulled up the footage from Deacon’s last known engagement. The godform’s signature was faint, choppy, not fully stable—but it was there.

And it wasn’t acting like a being entering from outside.

It was responding.

Which meant someone somewhere had already made a path for it.

Pale Mirror had just been the first crack.

That’s what pushed Deacon to act. Not the cult. Not Ethan.

The mirror had been the god’s eye into this world. When it broke... the thing flinched.

Valcrest narrowed his eyes slightly.

That meant it could feel.

That meant it could be startled.

And that meant it could bleed.

He scrolled through his comm list. Only one name was lit up.

Lilith’s.

He didn’t press it.

She was handling her side.

He had his.

More data kept pouring in—strange wind patterns in places with no weather history, people forgetting things they shouldn’t be able to forget, espers reporting shifts in time and space like static bleeding through a cracked screen.

The god wasn’t moving in lines.

It was spreading.

Like something soaking through the layers of reality instead of tearing them.

He tapped into a new log and started typing:

Event Designation: Shattered Eye. Phase 2.

The system blinked once, asking for confirmation.

He approved it.

And with that, the first red-level advisory in nearly two decades went out.