The Korthane High Command had been assembled in the forward camp for eleven days, and for eleven days the Arbiter had not given the order.
This was not indecision. It was measurement.
The Arbiter stood at the edge of the forward camp's elevated observation platform and watched the Spire's golden lattice across a thousand miles of plains, visible even at this distance as a faint amber glow that had replaced the eastern horizon's natural darkness. For eleven days, he had watched it pulse on its twelve-minute cycle, consistent and unvarying, the way a furnace's fire is consistent when the fuel load is carefully managed.
That was the tell. A furnace managed by a god who was present and attending.
He was waiting for a different quality of light. He had spent two thousand years reading divine signatures, and he knew the difference between a god managing an engine and a god who had surrendered the engine's management to the engine itself.
