They stepped out of the portal and onto the street outside the hotel, and the city did not stop for them.
For approximately four seconds.
Then it did.
It happened in waves, the way awareness spread through a crowd — one person slowing, their eyes catching something their instincts flagged before their mind named it, and then the person beside them noticing that first person's pause, and then the ripple moving outward until half the street had reorganized itself around the simple fact of their arrival.
Four deities and a goddess, standing outside a seafront hotel like they had simply decided to exist there, and the world adjusting accordingly.
