The Great Offering began not with ceremony, but with silence.
Across forty-seven dimensions, every conscious being—from the transcended entities of pure thought to the Children of Memory still drawing their first breaths—felt the weight of the question settling into their awareness like sediment in still water.
What should existence become?
Alexia stood at the nexus of the Academy's consciousness network, her form now more energy than flesh, watching as billions of minds turned inward to contemplate the shape of forever. The Ritual of Succession had been postponed, not by choice, but by necessity. How could power transfer to a collective when the collective itself was being asked to fundamentally redefine its nature?
"The voting has begun," Master Yorick reported, his ledger now a living document that existed simultaneously across multiple realities. "But it's not... what we expected."
