Entering the Blind Spot
When the fifty outcasts finally crossed the threshold of the "Blind Spot," the transition was jarring. Behind them lay the brutal, ice-choked desolation of the Patagonian peaks. In front of them, shielded by the shimmering, invisible dome of the Aegis Array, lay a sanctuary that defied the laws of nature.
Because of the geothermal vents Gunnar had tapped into—essentially plumbing the volcanic veins of the Andes—the valley was a perpetual spring. While the rest of the world was trapped in the slow, agonizing crawl of the early Bronze Age, Aethelgard was being built with the precision of a 21st-century master plan.
Gunnar didn't give them magic; he gave them Sovereign Art: Molecular Firing.
The Three Pillars of Aethelgard
Gunnar became the living furnace of the city. He spent the first decade working alongside the people, not as a god on a throne, but as the ultimate tool of construction.
The Sovereign Glass: Gunnar would stand before walls of raw limestone and granite. Instead of using chisels, he would release a focused, low-frequency pulse from his palms. He was performing Instantaneous Vitrification. By vibrating the molecules of the stone until they reached their melting point and then instantly cooling them with the Antarctic air, he fused them into "Sovereign Glass." It was a material that captured the light of the sun, clear as crystal but with a tensile strength that would make modern steel look like wet cardboard.The Pressure-Veins: He didn't wait for rain. He carved channels deep into the bedrock to catch the Andean snowmelt. Using the waste heat from his own body, he kept the water at a constant temperature, creating a pressurized aqueduct system that hummed with efficiency. It was a marvel of fluid dynamics, functioning five thousand years before the first stone was laid in Rome.The Archive of the Future: In the heart of the mountain, Gunnar began his most important work. He used his fingers to etch text into the glass walls of a central library. He didn't write myths or poems; he wrote Data. Crop rotation, the germ theory of disease, basic calculus, and the principles of the steam engine. He was effectively deleting the "Dark Ages" from the human timeline before they could even begin.
By 4700 BC, Aethelgard was no longer a camp; it was a bustling hidden city. The people didn't worship Gunnar as a deity who demanded blood or gold. They respected him as The Architect—the man who had bridged the gap between their primitive fears and a future they could finally touch.
The Battery Trap
However, every miracle has a price.
Maintaining the Aegis Array was a constant, parasitic drain on Gunnar's life force. He had become the literal battery for an entire civilization. Every night, while the citizens of Aethelgard slept in the warmth of his engineered spring, Gunnar sat at the Nexus. He had to feed his Sovereign energy into the magnetite circuit, his indigo fire bleeding out of him to keep the "Blind Spot" active against the prying eyes of the Celestials.
"This is the trap," he realized one night, his breath coming in ragged, glowing clouds. "I am the infrastructure. As long as I am the only power source, I cannot progress. I am stagnant."
He was trapped in the Second Cycle. To reach the Third Cycle—which he envisioned as the "Cosmic Singularity"—he needed to be free of the city's maintenance. He needed a "Focusing Lens," a way for the city to draw its own power from the vacuum of space.
To build it, he needed a sample of the Eternal's Signature. He needed the "Ordered" energy of the Celestials to act as a polarity anchor. He needed to study the "Wireless" gods he had seen on the beach centuries ago.
The Departure
He had stayed in Patagonia because it was safe, but safety had become a cage. To evolve, he had to go where the action was. He had to face the very beings he had spent centuries hiding from.
He found Sira in the Archive. She was no longer the trembling woman from the Amazon; she was the city's Lead Administrator, her eyes sharp with the knowledge Gunnar had imparted.
"I am going away," Gunnar told her. The air in the Archive hummed as he spoke, his voice vibrating the glass shelves. "I have stabilized the array for three moons. If I am not back by the first snow, tighten the gates. Let no one in, and let no one out. The Aegis will hold on its own for a time, but only if the city remains quiet."
Sira looked at him, her gaze lingering on the indigo veins that pulsed beneath the skin of his forearms. "Where will you go, Architect? The world outside is a graveyard of warring tribes and Deviant shadows."
Gunnar looked North, his vision piercing through the stone walls of the mountain, across the vast distance toward the rising civilization of Mesopotamia.
"To the center of the world," he said, his eyes glowing with a renewed, dangerous light. "To find a woman named Ajak. It's time I stopped hiding and started observing. I need to see how the 'gods' are built if I'm going to take their fire."
He didn't take a horse. He didn't take a ship.
Gunnar stepped off the precipice of the mountain peak. He didn't fall. He manipulated the thermal currents of his own overflowing energy, gliding on the air like a bronze-skinned raptor. The Second Cycle was complete. The "Internal Sun" was stable.
The Sovereign was moving, and for the first time in history, a human was hunting the gods.