The Hittite Empire was Uruk's inverse: an anvil, not a garden. Where Uruk's walls had curved with the land, these were terrifyingly straight, cutting across hills as if geography were a triviality. Where the air in Sumer had hummed with the chatter of markets and the songs of farmers, here it vibrated with the rhythmic clash of drill and the bark of orders. This was not a society; it was a machine, and its people were the moving parts.
Enki, disguised as a Syrian scribe trading in Anatolian tin, felt the ghost of Kur's will in every perfectly laid brick, in every uniformed soldier whose eyes held no light, only duty. He had come to see the King's argument, and it was written in iron and discipline.
In the archives of Hattusa, the capital, he found it. Not just in the annals of conquest, but in a sealed clay tablet, part of a foundation deposit. It was a chronicle from the ark itself, written in Kur's own stark, efficient cuneiform:
"The Hand That Shapes the Mountain does not drown. He simply chooses a new mountain. The old clay was flawed, soft. The flood has provided a clean slate, a stronger foundation. The weak have been washed away. What remains is the core. The design will be perfected here."
It wasn't survival. It was a calculated evolution. Kur had let his people in Uruk perish to save his design. He had performed a cosmic triage, sacrificing the body to save the blueprint.
An old architect, his back bent but his eyes burning with a fanatical fire, found Enki studying the tablet. The man was one of Lagnun's original apprentices, saved from the flood.
"The Master Builder saw the truth," the old man whispered, his voice cracking with pride. "The old world was inefficient. Sentimental. The flood washed away the weak. What emerged was the strong core. The perfect foundation for the King's design. We are not survivors. We are the purified material."
Enki left Hattusa, the cold certainty of it all settling in his gut like a stone. The King's argument was a society built on bones, a monument to order at any cost. It was flawless, brutal, and utterly convincing to a mind that valued only the final, perfect product.
He had his evidence. But he needed a rebuttal. He needed to find the one Pioneer who might have rejected this, the one who built for beauty, not for control. He turned his eyes south and east, towards the rumored mountains where stone was cut like cheese. He had to find Marcus.