The Sector 2 formation was visible from a kilometer away.
Not the Gate itself, Gate fractures were not normally visible to the naked eye, requiring either mana sensitivity or specific detection equipment. But what was inside the Sector 2 Gate had been feeding on fracture-stress energy for long enough that the barrier had become semi-translucent, and through it, like seeing something through dark glass, the contained divinity within was radiating at a level that human mana-sense could detect even without training.
People had started noticing it two days ago. The Association's public affairs office had issued a statement about "atmospheric refraction phenomena" in Sector 2, which had convinced approximately no one in the immediate vicinity but had delayed organized panic.
The Association had also, Sera's contact confirmed, dispatched an emergency evaluation team that morning. Eight A-rank Hunters in full gear, Association-contracted, with survey equipment and a direct communication link to Director Voss's office.
"They're not going in," she said. "They're assessing perimeter. Voss doesn't have anyone capable of clearing a Class S, and he knows it."
"Does he know about what's inside?"
"He will by this afternoon when the assessment team reports. Then he'll either call for international emergency response, which would take seventy-two hours minimum to deploy, or he'll try to contain the perimeter and wait."
"In seventy-two hours"
"The containment fails," Sera said. "Yes. The God inside has been reinforcing the Gate shell from within, but it's also been consuming the shell. At the current rate, the barrier degrades in approximately sixty hours."
They were in the safe house's analysis space with Herald's masked face in the floor-shadow and Nyx standing still as a statue in the corner, its non-presence somehow filling the room the way a held breath fills a chest.
"We go in today," Liu Yun said.
Sera did not argue.
"What's your plan for the God?" she asked.
"The same as everything else," he said. "Talk first. Extract second. If it doesn't want to talk, skip to extract."
"You're planning to negotiate with a living deity."
"I extracted a Deity Fragment that agreed to join my Register voluntarily. They respond to power and to purpose. If I present both"
"A Fragment is not a God, Liu Yun."
"No," he agreed. "But I have a First General from four thousand years ago and a Fenrir Echo and a Greek chthonic Fragment and two hundred and ninety-eight other shadows in my Register. The God will feel all of them. It will understand what it's dealing with."
Herald spoke from the floor. "I would add that the deity in Sector 2 has been confined in a Gate structure for what is, to a divine entity, an extremely long time. Confinement is not a neutral experience for something that was made for the open world. It may be amenable to terms that offer freedom in a different form than captivity."
Liu Yun nodded. "That's exactly the pitch."
They left the safe house at noon.
The Association evaluation team's perimeter cordon was two blocks from the Gate, marked with the standard orange barrier tape and mobile shielding arrays. Liu Yun and Sera walked through it, not around it, simply presenting their A-rank credentials to the perimeter officer and stating their intent to enter for direct assessment.
The perimeter officer looked at the Gate and back at them.
"That's a Class S formation," he said.
"We're aware," Liu Yun said.
"Association policy requires"
"Association policy," Sera said, in the precise tone of a twelve-year veteran correcting a procedural error, "requires that Hunters with sufficient demonstrated capability be granted access to formations within their operational scope. Our combined assessment output exceeds Class S entry threshold. Log it."
The officer looked like a man being asked to bear responsibility for a decision that someone else was actually making. He logged it.
They walked to the Gate.
Up close it was extraordinary. The semi-translucent barrier shimmered like disturbed water, its surface patterns moving in slow rotational waves. Through it the contained divine presence was a pressure against the skin, a weight in the air, a sense of something very large and very old paying very close attention to what was happening at its door.
Liu Yun activated Shadow Domain.
The violet-edged darkness settled around them in its two-hundred-meter radius, and through it, through the Domain, through his Void Sight, through the barrier, he felt the God inside pause and tilt its attention toward him with the full force of something that had not expected to sense what it was now sensing.
He pressed his hand against the semi-translucent surface.
"I'm coming in," he said. "I'd like to talk first."
A long moment of divine assessment. Then the barrier parted, not torn or broken but opened, folded back like a curtain, and the Sector 2 Gate showed them what lived inside.