# Chapter Two
David Griffin gathered his lecture notes with the same methodical precision he'd employed for fifteen years, but his attention wasn't on the yellowed papers. It was on the third-row seat where Miss Ashworth had been fidgeting like a caged bird for the better part of an hour.
The divine energy around her was becoming impossible to ignore.
He'd first noticed it six months ago—a faint shimmer in the ethereal spectrum, barely perceptible unless one knew how to look. Which, unfortunately, he did. Immortality came with certain occupational hazards, including the ability to perceive things that most beings were mercifully blind to.
At first, he'd assumed it was simple magical resonance. Bright students sometimes developed stronger connections to thaumic fields as they progressed in their studies. But this was different. Older. More... deliberate.
The gods were choosing her for something, and they were being remarkably heavy-handed about it.
David slipped his notes into his worn leather satchel and allowed himself a moment of genuine annoyance. Divine intervention was exactly the sort of complication he'd spent decades carefully avoiding. His comfortable routine at the Royal Institute depended on maintaining absolute mundanity—no dramatic incidents, no mysterious circumstances, nothing that might draw the attention of beings with the power to peer too deeply into his past.
And now the Heavenly Hierarchies were apparently grooming one of his students for some cosmic purpose, filling his classroom with enough celestial energy to make his skin crawl.
Miss Ashworth was still seated, staring at her notebook with the expression of someone trying to solve an equation with half the variables missing. The divine pressure around her had spiked during his lecture—he'd felt it like a change in atmospheric pressure, sudden and sharp enough to make his teeth ache.
Worse, she was starting to *notice*. The restless fidgeting, the unfocused attention, the growing sense of constraint—all classic symptoms of someone beginning to perceive divine attention. Soon she'd start having dreams, or seeing things that weren't quite there, or finding herself in improbable coincidences that led to exactly where the gods wanted her to be.
David had seen it before, in the aftermath of his own downfall. Heroes being forged in the cosmic anvil by the newly ascendant pantheon, shaped by forces they couldn't understand for purposes they hadn't chosen.
It never ended well for anyone involved.
He adjusted his wire-rimmed spectacles and made his way toward the door, moving with the same unremarkable gait he'd perfected over years of deliberate mediocrity. Students filed past him without a second glance, discussing lunch plans and afternoon practicals with the blessed obliviousness of youth.
Miss Ashworth finally stood, gathering her things with unusual slowness. As she passed his desk, David caught the full force of the divine resonance clinging to her like invisible flames. His carefully maintained human facade wavered for just a moment—not from the power itself, but from the *familiarity* of it.
He knew this particular flavor of celestial energy. Had felt it before, when the current pantheon was still establishing their authority over the world he'd left behind. He'd watched from the shadows as they learned to choose their champions, refining their techniques over decades of trial and error.
The gods weren't just choosing Miss Ashworth at random. They were preparing her for something specific. Something that required exactly her particular combination of methodical thinking, natural ward-work talent, and stubborn academic curiosity.
Something that felt disturbingly reminiscent of bindings designed to hold entities that shouldn't exist.
David waited until the lecture hall was empty before allowing his expression to shift from bland academic disinterest to something considerably more calculating. He'd spent three centuries building a perfect life of comfortable mediocrity, and he had no intention of letting some divine intervention disrupt it.
But if the gods were preparing for the sort of threat that required a mortal champion with binding expertise, then perhaps it was time to take a more... active interest in Miss Ashworth's education.
After all, it would be terribly inconvenient if whatever they were preparing her to face managed to destroy his cozy retirement before he'd had a chance to properly enjoy it.
He made a mental note to review the restricted texts on Precursor binding techniques. Just in case. One could never be too prepared for the return of ancient horrors, especially when one had been personally responsible for their initial banishment.
David Griffin, Professor of Magical History, gathered his things and left the lecture hall with the same unhurried pace he always employed. But beneath the grey wool and wire-rimmed spectacles, older instincts were beginning to stir—instincts that remembered what it was like to face entities that treated reality as a canvas for their artistic vision.
If the gods were waking Miss Ashworth to her purpose, then something was stirring in the deep places of the world. Something that remembered him just as clearly as he remembered it.
How fascinating. And how thoroughly inconvenient.