Over the years he'd watched many systems, and studied routines. One of them being Maintenance Bay 14-Gamma. Every seventeen days, the god-automaton assigned to it underwent diagnostic rebalancing. Security protocols reduced to minimum baselines while technicians recalibrated Soul Core integration and weapon-array harmonics. The Gnomes prioritized efficiency. Maintenance windows ran lean, defenses scaled back to prevent interference with delicate Glyphos adjustments. After all, why waste power on anti-Scar emitters inside a heavily fortified citadel?

  The Tharnell siege had been grinding for weeks. Outer rings breached, defensive sectors collapsed, casualty reports flooding command channels faster than Theater-Conductor could process them. The citadel's infrastructure operated at ninety-four percent capacity, with diagnostic systems deferring non-critical alerts, and with engineering teams focused on combat repairs, the monitoring algorithms had been set to ignore minor anomalies.

  The Gnomes were competent, but they were drowning. Fighting a war on their doorstep while maintaining a city-sized prison complex.

  Amon had waited for exactly this moment.

  The Gnomes, for all their brilliance, had never considered a threat might already be in their network.

  Amon had rewritten the activation sequences three hours before manifesting, subtle inversions in the god-automaton's command Glyphoses, invisible to diagnostic sweeps but catastrophic when triggered. He knew exactly which nodes to target. Bay 14-Gamma's maintenance protocols followed Pattern Theta-7, the same configuration he'd observed in forty-three other facilities over two years. The Gnomes were efficient, predictably so. They reused successful architectures across installations.

  That predictability was their weakness.

  He'd mapped the bay's defensive grid during his time in the central node forge. Anti-Scar emitters positioned in hexagonal arrays. A standard Gnome doctrine for Tier-6 asset protection. Reality-anchor pylons at cardinal points, automated Cleanser deployment alcoves in the walls. All of it documented in the maintenance logs he'd accessed through corrupted comm-channels.

  More importantly, he'd learned how they thought. Which systems they prioritized, and failures they'd dismiss as equipment stress from the Tharnell siege. The citadel was already strained by constant bombardment and emergency repairs. Diagnostic algorithms were set to ignore anything below critical thresholds.

  Amon had threaded his sabotage through those gaps. The anti-Scar emitters registered as active in monitoring systems, their Glyphoses intact, power feeds nominal. But the targeting runes—the geometric chains that defined what to burn—those he'd corrupted. Three inverted nodes, buried deep in sub-routines the Gnomes checked quarterly, not daily.

  When the emitters activated, they'd target each other instead of Preserverant.

  Years of patient observation, paying off in a single perfect strike.

  Now.

  Through the Link with Belugmah, Amon pushed. His Core flooded the connection with Death Mana, converting it to Preserverant at rates that made his essence strain. Tar erupted from the network conduits he'd been corrupting for hours, black sludge pouring into the god-automaton's command center.

  The machine's systems registered contamination. Alarms shrieked. The anti-Scar emitters that should have incinerated the tar on contact, remained dark, their targeting runes executing his corrupted instructions with mechanical precision.

  By the time the emitters realized their mistake, it was too late. They swiveled toward each other, concentrated radiance beams crossing in midair, overheating housings, burning out power feeds. One unit exploded in a shower of crystal fragments. Another simply went dark, its control Glyphoses melted to slag.

  The maintenance engineers didn't have time to react.

  Four Gnomes—technicians in small repair mecha attached to harnesses, their hands still gripping diagnostic tools—stared at the erupting tar. One reached for an alarm rune. Another scrambled toward the emergency exit. The third managed half a shout before Mist and Tar took them.

  It poured from ventilation ducts like drowning water, thick and gray, swallowing their panicked movements. The fog was gentle, almost tender as it muted sounds, messed with comm units, allowed Tar to move unseen as it wrapped around their limbs, seep through their breathing filters, and found gaps in their protective gear.

  One by one, they collapsed and welcomed into the dream. Their Souls flickered in Amon's perception, four small lights pulled into the Garden's embrace. Tier 2 engineers, skilled workers whose knowledge of god-automaton systems would prove useful.

  The Garden claimed them carefully. Preserved them. Added their Mana output to the growing reservoir.

  The god-automaton's shell offered no resistance. Tar flooded its systems, wrapping around control interfaces, seeping into targeting matrices, coating the throne-like seat where Gnome operators would normally sit. Mist continued billowing from ventilation ducts, thick, gray, and swallowing emergency lighting.

  Amon manifested.

  His consciousness slammed into the god-automaton's systems like a fist through rotted wood. The machine was cathedral-scale, four hundred feet of geometric precision and concentrated divinity, designed to channel power that could level cities. Weapon arrays bristled from armored shoulders. Targeting lenses glowed amber along the cranium. Power conduits thick as ancient oaks ran through the frame, feeding capacitor banks that hummed with barely-contained energy.

  It was beautiful. Terrible. His.

  The Preserverant moved with purpose.

  Amon felt it through the Link, not just substance flowing through conduits, but intelligence spreading through the citadel's infrastructure. The Tar and Mist more than mere tools. They carried fragments of his will, semi-sentient extensions that could think, adapt, improvise.

  Through corrupted sensors, he watched tar tendrils probe a sealed bulkhead. The black substance tested the locking Glyphoses, reading their geometric structure the way Amon had learned to read Gnome systems. Then it wrote.

  New runes formed in the tar itself, crude but functional. Inversions of the locking pattern, shaped from Preserverant and Death Mana, pressed against the existing Glyphoses like keys made from wax impressions. The bulkhead shuddered, groaned, and then released.

  Mist flowed through the gap, seeking. It found what Amon needed, the automaton storage yards. Hundreds of inactive machines sitting in geometric rows. Maintenance spiders with their manipulator arms folded. Cargo lifters with empty grasping claws. Repair drones waiting for deployment orders.

  All offline. All vulnerable.

  Tar poured through ventilation grilles, dripping onto dormant chassis. It seeped into joint housings, filled actuator cylinders, coated the crystal receptacles that powered each machine. The automatons had no imprisoned consciousness to protect them, just simple animating matrices, basic instruction sets that made them move and work.

  The Preserverant overwrote those instructions.

  Amon watched through the god-automaton's sensors as the first maintenance spider twitched. Tar-coated limbs flexed experimentally. The machine's optics glowed faint violet instead of standard amber. Preserverant animating dead equipment, puppeting it with his purpose.

  Another spider activated. Then a cargo lifter. Then a dozen repair drones simultaneously, their magnetic clamps opening and closing in synchronized rhythm.

  The Gnomes monitoring systems registered the activations, flagged them as automated response to maintenance alerts. The citadel was damaged after all. Emergency protocols were triggering equipment deployments across multiple sectors. Nothing unusual.

  Except these machines weren't responding to Gnome commands anymore.

  Amon directed them with wordless intention. The corrupted automatons moved toward Sector 14-Delta, the nearest forge-cluster. Not combat units, but they didn't need to be. Maintenance spiders could access forge-chamber hatches. Cargo lifters could manipulate Soul-containment spheres. Repair drones could cut through secondary barriers.

  The Tar didn't just spread, it thought, learned, and adapted Gnome techniques, turning them against their creators.

  ‘This is what Belugmah's gift truly is,’ Amon thought, relieved to have Preserverant at his command again. ‘Not just power, but an army that thinks for itself.’

  The corrupted machines reached the forge-cluster. Hatches opened under tar-coated manipulators. Soul-containment fields collapsed as Preserverant seeped through hairline gaps the Gnomes had never designed their systems to defend.

  Thousands of imprisoned Cores flickered in Amon's perception. All waiting, all vulnerable.

  All his.

  The forge-cluster held Tier 1-2 bulk storage souls, low-value prisoners the Gnomes hadn't prioritized defending. Emergency evacuation protocols had already pulled high-tier assets to secured vaults deeper in the citadel. What remained were the dregs. Thousands of them, conscripts, laborers, menial workers whose Cores barely produced enough output to justify heavy security.

  The Gnomes had abandoned them.

  Amon claimed them all. An additional four thousand Souls, their flickering lights pulled into the Garden's embrace. Each one collapsed into dream-sleep as years of exploitation caught up in a heartbeat. Bodies they no longer possessed ceased to matter. Pain they'd endured, bled away.

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  Not the elite warriors he'd eventually need. Not the Tier 5 demigods locked in the citadel's deepest vaults. But fuel nonetheless, quantity over quality, building the reservoir that would sustain the Garden's spread.

  The Gnomes had triaged. Sacrificed low-value assets to buy time securing what truly mattered to them.

  ‘Their mistake,’ Amon thought coldly. ‘Every Soul feeds the Garden. Every prisoner saved is one less fueling their war.’

  Four thousand Souls flooded into the Garden. The relief was immediate.

  His Core had been straining, pouring Death Mana through the Link at crushing rates, burning output meant for weeks of steady growth in minutes. But the moment the Souls entered the Garden's embrace, their ambient Mana began flowing into the reservoir.

  Four thousand Cores, even weak Tier 1-2 prisoners, produced a steady stream. The Garden drank it greedily, converting their output into fuel for expansion. The strain on Amon's Core eased, enough had been acquired that he no longer carried the buckle of the burden. The claimed Souls sustained their own containment, their Mana feeding the Preserverant that kept them safe.

  Parasitic growth, but symbiotic too. The Garden protected them, and they empowered its spread.

  And there was more. Through the corrupted systems, Amon felt the Preserverant tapping into something deeper. Power conduits that fed this sector, Mana-crystal banks that supplied the god-automaton's capacitors, energy flows the Gnomes routed through their infrastructure without a second thought.

  The Tar was learning to siphon. Subtly, carefully, drawing fractional percentages from feeds too large for the Gnomes to notice individual drains. Death Mana from forge operations, ambient energy from reality-anchor pylons, even the waste heat from Cleanser weapon discharge, all of it convertible, all of it Garden sustenance.

  The citadel's own systems, feeding the infection spreading through it.

  Alarms shriek across the maintenance sector. Amon feels the citadel's defensive systems pivot, ancient infrastructure responding to contamination with mechanical precision. Bulkheads slammed down across adjoining corridors, three-arm-thick adamantine reinforced with containment Glyphoses. Cleansing-light emitters that he hadn't corrupted activated in cascading sequences, concentrated radiance flooding adjacent chambers.

  The response was professional. Practiced. Doctrine refined over millions of realms and ages of warfare against Celestial Scars.

  But it was slow.

  Through corrupted comm-channels, Amon intercepted command traffic.

  "Breach confirmed, Sector 14-Gamma. Scar manifestation, origin unknown." The report carried stress markers, given the command staff were already managing other crises. "Priority classification?"

  A pause. Then, clipped and cold: "Tier-3 threat. Maintenance sector, low-value assets. Deploy standard containment. Cleanser phalanx, hunter-teams, reality-anchor grid. But keep primary forces on the Tharnell breach. We can't afford to pull reserves for internal cleanup while the outer walls are collapsing."

  Amon absorbed that, the Gnomes weren't ignoring him. They were choosing to contain rather than crush, because their forces were already overextended.

  ‘Good. Let them divide their attention. Every squad they send here is one less defending the sectors I'll hit next.’

  The unprecedented had happened, a Scar manifesting deep inside a supposedly secure citadel, emerging from their own infrastructure. The Gnomes had contingencies for external threats, but internal manifestation from a hijacked god-forge? That scenario existed in theoretical emergency protocols, not operational doctrine.

  They were adapting, however, adaptation took time.

  And time was what Amon needed.

  Corrupted network channels flared with fresh priority signals. Through hijacked sensors, Amon watched Cleanser phalanxes deploying from barracks districts two kilometers away, their anti-Scar weapons glowing with concentrated radiance, and hunter-teams forming up around heavy weapon platforms.

  The Gnomes estimated eight minutes until hunter-teams reached his position from core garrison.

  Holographic countdown appeared in his tactical display, overlaying the citadel maps with projected enemy arrival times, optimal retreat vectors, chokepoints he could corrupt before withdrawal.

  ‘Good. Let them come. I need to know what they'll commit.’

  Not a battle he intended to win today, instead a reconnaissance sortie. Gathering intelligence on Gnome response doctrine, measuring their force allocation, identifying which sectors they'd defend and which they'd sacrifice.

  Currently, the Garden didn't need victory, it needed information. Every data point he gathered now would shape campaigns months ahead.

  Amon—a massive figure of harden Tar—stood in the god-automaton's cockpit, awareness spreading through cathedral-scale mechanisms. The machine responded to his will with increasing fluidity, servo-muscles adjusting to his commands, targeting matrices syncing with his perception.

  He accessed the tactical displays. Holographic projections erupted around him, painting the citadel's architecture in layers of geometric precision. The display a three-dimensional map of the concentric rings, hundreds of levels, millions of data points cataloging everything from power distribution to soul-containment densities.

  He marked his position, Maintenance Bay 14-Gamma. Outer ring, third sublevel. Close to perimeter, vulnerable to Tharnell breaches, but also easier to escape if he needed to withdraw into corrupted infrastructure.

  The forge-cluster he'd just claimed sat one sector over 14-Delta. Low-value storage. The maps showed sixty more clusters like it, scattered through the outer rings like seeds in furrows.

  But deeper—toward the central core—those were the prizes. Vault-complexes. High-security repositories glowing amber in the tactical overlay. Thousands of elite and Demigod Souls, all imprisoned in reality-anchor matrices.

  Miles away, through Cleanser-patrolled corridors and overlapping defensive grids that the Gnome command staff would defend with overwhelming force.

  He marked them anyway. Future targets. Pressure points where a single corrupted system might cascade into infrastructure-wide failures.

  Not conquest, erosion.

  Sector 22-Kappa glowed faint violet in his perception. Vashkrel, eighteen sectors away. Sector 23-Alpha pulsed with deep-earth resonance. Khaldrek, trapped in foundation-level forges.

  ‘I'm coming,’ he thought, the wordless promise settling like stone. ‘Hold on.’

  Six minutes until hunter-teams arrived. Amon extended his awareness through the god-automaton's systems, feeling the weight of the machine, the density of its armor, the power thrumming through capacitor banks.

  Four hundred feet tall. Weapon arrays capable of leveling city blocks. Targeting systems that could track projectiles across kilometers. All of it responding to his will with increasing precision.

  He took a step. The maintenance bay shuddered under the god-automaton's weight. Deck plating groaned, and support structures flexed. The machine moved with surprising grace for something so massive, servo-joints compensating for momentum, gyroscopic stabilizers maintaining balance.

  Tar and Mist billowed in his wake, flooding through corridors the corrupted automatons had opened. The Preserverant spread with purposeful intelligence, seeking forge-clusters, wrapping around containment systems, pulling imprisoned Souls into the Garden's embrace.

  The hunter-teams were four minutes out now. Amon could feel them through the network, concentrated knots of anti-Scar weaponry converging on his position with professional coordination.

  As to be expected from a race that had built a city to harvest souls. Millions of them.

  Amon surveyed the tactical displays. The Gnomes would defend every sector with overwhelming force. Reality-anchor grids, Cleanser armies, God-automatons that dwarfed the one he'd seized.

  He couldn't take them all. Not today. Maybe not for years.

  But every Soul he claimed was one less empowering his enemies. Every system he corrupted cost them time, resources, attention. The Gnomes thought they'd built an impregnable fortress.

  ‘I'll teach them it's a battlefield. And I have eternity to fight.’

  Not conquest, attrition, the patient math of stones worn smooth by water.

  The commander's calculation he’d been forced to learn. Make it too expensive to hold. Force them to choose which sectors to defend, which prisoners to evacuate, which infrastructure to sacrifice.

  He marked the nearest sectors on his display. Not targets, but pressure points. The opening moves of a campaign measured in years, decades, centuries, not hours.

  The hunter-teams were three minutes out. Time to withdraw, let the corrupted automatons cover his retreat, let the Tar seal corridors behind him while the Gnomes committed forces to retaking emptied sectors.

  They'd think they'd contained him. Driven him back. Won.

  And while they celebrated that small victory, the Garden would spread deeper, go into maintenance shafts they'd ignore. Claim power conduits they'd assumed secure, and travel along data-channels too trivial to monitor.

  Millions of souls. An ocean of imprisoned consciousness stretching through miles of infrastructure.

  He couldn't save them all.

  But he'd start.

  Amon moved the god-automaton toward the prepared withdrawal route. Corrupted maintenance spiders sealed bulkheads behind him, their tar-coated manipulators working with eerie precision. Cargo lifters positioned debris to create chokepoints. Repair drones severed power feeds to sections he was abandoning, plunging corridors into darkness.

  The Garden retreated, but it retreated strategically. Every sealed door hid dormant Preserverant. Every darkened corridor concealed tar-veins waiting to spread. Every abandoned sector became infected ground the Gnomes would have to cleanse or cede.

  Two minutes. The hunter-teams energy signatures blazed in his perception, concentrated anti-Scar radiance approaching like small suns.

  Amon pulled the god-automaton into a maintenance shaft, the machine's bulk barely fitting through the massive passage. Tar flowed ahead, mapping routes, identifying structural weaknesses, preparing the infrastructure for future expansion.

  One minute.

  He sent final commands to the corrupted automatons. Hold position, delay pursuit, sacrifice yourselves to buy time.

  The maintenance spiders and cargo lifters obeyed without hesitation. They had no consciousness to fear death, no self-preservation instinct. Just his will, executed with mechanical precision.

  Thirty seconds.

  The hunter-teams burst into Sector 14-Gamma. Through hijacked sensors, Amon watched them deploy. Cleanser phalanxes forming defensive perimeters, heavy weapon platforms establishing fire lanes, reality-anchor emitters carving zones of absolute order where Preserverant couldn't exist.

  Professional. Overwhelming. Exactly the response doctrine he needed to document.

  He severed his connection to the maintenance bay sensors. Let them think they'd driven him back. Let them count their containment as victory.

  The god-automaton descended deeper into the citadel's infrastructure. Maintenance shafts became smuggling routes. Power conduits became highways for spreading Preserverant. Data channels became eyes watching everything the Gnomes thought secure.

  Behind him, thousands of Souls slept peacefully in the Garden's embrace. Ahead, millions more waited in prisons he couldn't yet reach.

  Amon settled into the god-automaton's systems, feeling the machine respond to his will with increasing synchronization. The long campaign had begun. Not the desperate strikes of a prisoner hoping for escape, but the methodical expansion of a Guardian reclaiming what the Gnomes had stolen.

  They'd taught him their systems. Given him years to study their infrastructure. Shown him exactly how their prison worked.

  Now he'd use that knowledge against them. One sector at a time. One corrupted system at a time. One saved Soul at a time.

  The Garden would grow. And the Gnomes, drowning in their siege, managing multiple crises simultaneously, would realize too late that their greatest threat wasn't the army at their gates.

  It was the prisoner they'd kept in their very heart, learning, watching, waiting for exactly this moment.

  The long campaign had begun.