Babylon, 1750 BC
The city of Babylon was not a place; it was a riot. It was a screaming, heaving organism of mud-brick, lapis lazuli, and the relentless friction of humanity. To Gunnar, who had spent nearly three millennia in the pristine, thin air of the Andes, the sensory assault was physical.
The air here didn't just carry scents; it carried histories. There was the heavy, sweet smell of roasting lamb dripping fat into open fires, the sharp tang of cedar oil, the metallic scent of bronze being hammered, and the underlying, omnipresent stench of open sewers and packed bodies. It was the beating heart of a world trying to organize its own chaos—a place where the gods walked the streets in the guise of advisors, and kings were merely the loudest voices in the room.
Gunnar walked through the Ishtar Gate, his simple linen robes stained with the dust of the road. To the passing guards, he looked like a successful merchant from the Levant—a man of middle years with sun-darkened skin and eyes that had seen too many horizons.
They couldn't see the reality. Beneath the linen, Gunnar's body was a pressurized furnace. He had perfected the Sovereign Art: Internalized Void. It was a technique of extreme bio-energetic suppression. He used the "Iron Vessel" of his musculature to pull his Sovereign energy so deep into his marrow that even the ambient indigo glow was extinguished.
$$\nabla \cdot \mathbf{E} = 0$$
He had essentially created a "Zero-Field" around his own soul. He appeared to the world as nothing more than a healthy human.
Behind him walked two men, Kael and Joran. They were the first of the "Sovereign Citizens" of Aethelgard to leave the valley. They were descendants of the original outcasts, their bodies refined over generations by the Marrow Tempering methods Gunnar had codified. They were twice as strong as any Babylonian laborer, their bones dense as oak, but they moved with a careful, rehearsed clumsiness.
"Remember," Gunnar whispered, his voice barely a vibration above the roar of the market. "We are here to sell. We are ghosts. Do not lift anything with one hand that a normal man would need two for."
The Bait: Sovereign Glass
In the center of the Great Market, beneath the shadow of the Etemenanki—the massive ziggurat dedicated to Marduk that scraped the very belly of the clouds—Gunnar set up a modest stall.
Around them, the market was a theater of desperation. Merchants cried out the virtues of Phoenician dyes that turned fingers purple, and Anatolian tin that promised unbreakable swords. Gunnar remained silent. He simply opened a small wooden crate padded with Andean wool.
He pulled out a single object: a chalice.
It was not gold. It was not silver. It was Sovereign Glass.
In an era where "glass" was opaque, green-tinted, and filled with bubbles—a luxury that shattered if a child sneezed—this object was an impossibility. It was perfectly transparent, clear as a mountain spring, yet it held a faint, inner iridescence. When the sun hit the rim, the light didn't just reflect; it seemed to be swallowed, swirling inside the material in a slow dance of indigo and gold.
Within an hour, the shouting in the northern quadrant of the market died away. A crowd had gathered, forming a silent ring around the stall. Priests of Marduk, their heads shaved and anointed with oil, stared at the chalice with a mixture of greed and terror.
"It is forged in the fires of the Great South," Gunnar told them, his voice calm, melodic, and projecting just enough to reach the back of the crowd. "It cannot be broken by stone. It cannot be melted by the forge. It is as clear as the truth, and twice as hard as a king's resolve."
To prove his point, he turned to a nearby blacksmith who had been watching with a sneer. "Your heaviest dagger, friend. Strike the rim. If it marks, the chalice is yours."
The smith spat on his hands and swung a heavy bronze blade with enough force to kill a bull. The bronze hit the glass with a sound that wasn't a crack—it was a Chime.
The frequency was a long, low note that hung in the air for a full minute. To the humans, it was the most beautiful sound they had ever heard. To Gunnar, it was a Coded Beacon. He had tuned the molecular structure of the glass to resonate with the Aegis Array in Patagonia. It was a "discordant harmonic" designed to ping the sensors of anyone who spoke the language of the stars.
The Arrival of the Prime
Gunnar felt her before he saw her.
The "Command Console" sensation hit him like a physical weight behind his eyes. The crowd didn't just move; they parted as if a silent wave had crashed through them.
Ajak walked with a grace that made the bustling market feel like a hushed temple. She was dressed in deep blues and gold, her expression one of polite, professional curiosity. Beside her walked King Hammurabi's high priest, a man who believed he held the power of life and death, but it was clear to everyone—including the priest—that he was merely a shadow following a sun.
Ajak's eyes landed on the chalice. Then, slowly, they shifted to Gunnar.
She paused. In her five thousand years on Earth, she had overseen the birth of the wheel, the first written laws, and the construction of empires. She had seen every miracle the Celestials had permitted. But she had never seen this.
The glass was too "Ordered." Its molecular structure was too perfect to be the result of human heat, yet it didn't bear the signature of the World-Forge. It was a "pirated" material.
"Merchant," she said. Her voice was like velvet over gravel, ancient and heavy. "Where did you find such a thing?"
Gunnar bowed. It wasn't the deep, subservient prostration of a Babylonian subject. It was the respectful, chin-up nod of a peer.
"From the mountains that touch the ice, Lady. I am but a traveler, sharing the wonders of the far reaches with those who have the eyes to see them."
Ajak reached out. Her fingers, which had touched the very hull of the Domo, brushed the glass. Gunnar felt a jolt of electricity—his suppressed Sovereign Core reacting to her proximity. She was a living antenna, a conduit for the "Wireless" power of the stars. He was a closed, standalone loop.
Ajak's eyes widened by a fraction of a millimeter. She didn't just feel the glass; she felt the faint, pressurized vibration coming from the man holding it. It was like standing next to a mountain that was trying very hard to pretend it was a pebble.
"This was not made by fire alone," she murmured, her gaze locking onto Gunnar's grey eyes. "There is an... intention behind this material. A will."
"The intention to last, Lady," Gunnar replied. "The world is fragile. I believe we should build things that do not break so easily. Don't you?"
The Philosophical Trap
The High Priest, sensing a chance to curry favor, stepped forward. "We will take the entire crate for the temple of Marduk. Name your price in gold, in grain, or in slaves."
Gunnar shook his head, his eyes never leaving Ajak's. "I do not seek gold. Gold is just soft metal. I seek knowledge. I have heard that in the Hanging Gardens, there is a lady who knows the history of the stars themselves. I wish only for an hour of her time. One hour for the secret of the glass."
The Priest bristled, offended by the merchant's audacity, but Ajak raised a hand. She was more than intrigued; she was wary. The Celestials had warned her to look for Deviant mutations—jagged, entropic, and hungry.
But Gunnar was the opposite of a Deviant. He was too stable. He was a masterpiece of biological engineering that she hadn't authorized.
"The Gardens are private," Ajak said, her voice dropping to a tone that brooked no argument. "But the pursuit of knowledge is a sacred thing. Come, Merchant. Bring your wonders. Let us see if they hold up under the shade of the trees."
The Hanging Gardens: Two Sovereigns
An hour later, Gunnar stood amidst the lush, cascading greenery of the Gardens. The air here was ten degrees cooler, cooled by the genius of Babylonian irrigation, but the tension was thick enough to choke.
Ajak stood by a marble balustrade, looking out over the sprawling city of Babylon. She didn't look like a goddess; she looked like a weary administrator.
"You are not a merchant, Gunnar," she said, not turning around. "Your men move with the precision of soldiers, but they carry no weapons. They don't even look at the women in the market. They look only at you. And you... you have no scent of the road upon you. Your pulse is a single strike every few minutes. You are a ghost in a man's skin."
Gunnar set the chalice on a stone table. "And you are not a mere advisor to kings, Ajak. You are the Prime. You are the one who speaks for the ones who planted the seed."
Ajak turned sharply, her hand moving instinctively toward the golden circlet on her brow—her link to Arishem. "How do you know that name? Who are your people? Did the Deviants create you? Are you a fragment of their evolution?"
"My people are the ones who were left behind," Gunnar said. He stopped pretending. He released the Internalized Void.
The effect was instantaneous. The air around him began to hum. The lush plants near his feet wilted slightly as he drew the ambient heat into himself. A faint indigo haze began to swirl around his hands—the visible leakage of the Second Cycle.
Ajak recoiled as if burned. "That energy... it is like ours, but it is wrong. It is silent. It has no Source. It doesn't connect to the Firmament. How do you draw from the vacuum without a Core?"
"I am the Core," Gunnar said, his voice dropping an octave, resonating with the power of a living sun. "I am a Sovereign-Origin. I was born of this Earth, of the mud and the silt you see below us. But I have learned to speak the language of the stars without asking for permission."
He stepped closer, his expression softening. He didn't want to fight her; he needed her. He needed to understand the "Ordered" frequency she carried so he could build the self-sustaining shield for Aethelgard. He needed the "key" to her "wireless" receiver.
"I am not your enemy, Ajak. I am a neighbor who has finally decided to knock on your door. I know about Tiamut. I know about the Emergence."
Ajak's face went pale—a feat for an Eternal. "Arishem did not authorize this... a human cannot know the Design."
"Arishem is a long way away," Gunnar countered. "And he is a cold father. I have a city of people who deserve to live without being noticed by 'Judges.' Help me understand the harmony of your power—the way you filter the cosmic rays—and I will show you that humanity is more than just a harvest. We are a garden that has decided to grow its own gardener."
Ajak looked at him, her five thousand years of programming clashing with the undeniable, breathing reality of the man before her. He was a human who had ascended by his own hand.
"If I help you," she whispered, "I am a traitor to the Source."
"If you don't," Gunnar said, "you are just a witness to a slaughter. Choose, Ajak. Be a machine, or be a Sovereign."