Enki gasped, his hands trembling in the mud. The seed before him felt impossibly fragile. Gilgamesh saw his panic. "What is it?"
"We have been… given a new rule," Enki whispered, the taste of cosmic ice in his mouth. "We must never be known for what we are. Or a worse fire will fall from the sky."
Gilgamesh, the grandfathered flaw, the only mortal in on the secret, understood. His own legend would have to be a lie.
In Egypt, Isabelle returned to herself, the Ikannuna's presence receding like a tide, leaving her colder, more certain.
In his nascent kingdom by the Yellow River, Julian, The Lawgiver, returned to his work. The new cosmic statute was now the supreme law above all laws. It was, he decided, perfectly logical.
In Greece, Marcus felt a profound relief. The pressure to lead, to be a king, was gone. He could simply be a silent influence, a ghost in the machine of architecture. His Sloth was now a cosmic mandate.
And in Anatolia, Kur's Pride curdled into a cold, furious resolve. He would build an empire so powerful, so ingrained, that even from the shadows, its mark on history would be deeper than any god's. He would make the world remember the name of the Hittites, even if it never knew his face.
The seven survivors were now bound by a terrible, silent law. The board was set: the Garden of Uruk, the Machine of Egypt, the Law of the Yellow River, the Structure of Greece, and the Pride of Anatolia.
The age of myth and legend would begin, but the truth behind those myths would be a secret history, written in shadow and enforced by the threat of a cosmic scythe. The true battle for humanity's soul would be fought in the dark, by gardeners, architects, and kings who dared not let the world know they held the trowel.