The realm of gods had no mornings.
There were no horizons to approach, no distance to cross. Light existed everywhere at once, without source or direction, leaving nothing to cast a shadow and nothing to hide within. Sound did not travel there, because there was nowhere for it to go.
Form was optional.
A god could appear as a figure, a storm of thought, a constellation of drifting will or maybe not appear at all. Identity was not anchored to shape, and shape carried no consequence. Nothing could be taken. Nothing could be lost. Nothing could be ended.
At first, the gods called this perfection.
They had never known hunger. Never known fatigue. Never known the quiet panic of wondering whether something precious could disappear. They did not age. They did not bleed. They did not decay. Eternity held them in a single, unbroken moment that did not bruise.
Everything simply continued.
But immortality has its own famine.
Power was abundant and meaningless. Every god could shape reality within the realm, but no shaping lasted. Creation collapsed back into sameness the moment attention drifted. There was no resistance to refine intention, no consequence to make effort matter.
And so the gods learned a truth no mortal ever envies:
An existence without loss cannot produce meaning.
Some gods endured the sameness by folding inward, dissolving into contemplation so deep it bordered on sleep. Others distracted themselves with endless experiments, making and unmaking, and weaving vast designs that vanished as easily as breath.
But a few began to look outward.
They discovered other universes beyond their realm. Not reflections, not echoes, but places where existence pressed back. Places where stars burned out and did not return. Where worlds formed imperfectly. Where time moved forward instead of lying flat.
They watched long enough to recognize something unfamiliar.
Urgency.
Earth drew their attention not because it was orderly, but because it was alive in a way their realm could not imitate. A world where extinction had already happened more than once. Where dominance shifted without warning. Where survival was earned through risk, not granted by nature.
They watched creatures rise knowing they would fall.
They watched humans who's small, breakable, and stubborn just cling to life through cooperation rather than might. Humans did not rule their world. They negotiated with it, failed against it, adapted to it, and tried again.
Yet it was not survival that held the gods' gaze.
It was excess.
Humans carried something within them that their world did not require. An energy that did not sharpen teeth, harden skin, or lengthen life. It was not used to hunt, to flee, or to endure cold.
It lay dormant.
Unused.
Unnecessary.
Unexplained.
The gods felt it from afar.
Not because it was loud, but because it was familiar.
It resonated with the same frequency as divinity, yet it did not belong to the gods. It gathered quietly inside human bodies, accumulating without purpose, without release, as though waiting for a shape it had not yet been given.
No animal carried it.
No perfected world among the constellations displayed it in such abundance.
Only humans held it. Something like vessels built with empty chambers the world had not asked for.
The gods argued over what it meant.
Some called it waste: power trapped in fragile flesh, unused and inefficient. Others called it a defect: an unfinished design nature had failed to correct. A few feared it onlybbecause it suggested that divinity could exist where divinity had not been placed.
They needed a name for what they could not explain.
They called it Axiom.
Not because it was understood, but because it felt foundational. Something like a law that existed before proof.
Earth became more than a curiosity.
It became a question.
Discussion sharpened into debate. Gods spoke of probability and pattern, of how many paths Earth might take toward self-destruction or transcendence. They spoke of suffering as inefficiency. They spoke of suffering as purpose.
No one spoke of intervention at first.
But thought moves faster than language, and desire arrives before justification.
One question echoed beneath every argument:
What would we become if we entered a world that could resist us?
They studied the boundary between realms. It's not a gate, not a wall, but a thinning of existence where one universe surrendered to another. Crossing it meant leaving the one place where nothing could be taken from them.
Not death.
But limitation.
Many recoiled when the idea became real.
Others leaned closer.
They spoke of visiting. Of observing. Of learning. They assured one another they would not rule, not shape, not interfere.
We will only watch, they said.
Promises are easy to make in a realm where nothing has ever gone wrong.
The number grew.
Ten gods first.
Then twenty.
Then fifty.
Each believed themselves unchanged.
When the count reached one hundred and fifty, hesitation collapsed into certainty, and certainty hardened into decision.
They gathered at the boundary.
No trumpet sounded.
No voice commanded the moment.
One hundred and fifty gods stepped forward together
—and crossed.