Secret Bunker Beneath the Swiss Alps
A week of intermittent but intense interrogations had passed since Isabel and Ricardo, the mages of the White Brotherhood, had made their bold demand. For the Thirteen Families, it had been a week of devastating revelations that had rewritten their understanding of power and their own place in the cosmos. The knowledge the two imprisoned mages had shared, in exchange for the promise of their freedom and that of the Elder Eleonora, was as terrifying as it was enlightening.
In the war room, the air was no longer charged with the arrogance of earthly power, but with a cold and calculating dread. The internal disputes between the Elders and the "Young Turks" had subsided, replaced by the unified understanding that they had made an error of galactic proportions.
"So... it is so," Lord Ashworth murmured, staring at the holographic screen which now displayed complex diagrams of psychic energy flows on a planetary scale, based on the information provided by the mages. "The 'All-Seeing Eye,' the ordering entity our lineage served for millennia, was the Anunnaki Enlil. And he, in turn, whether by coercion, an affinity in his own darkness, or as a mere vassal in a hierarchy we never fully understood, served a much vaster hunger..."
"...Cthulhu," Kenjiro Tanaka completed, the word now spoken not as a myth, but as the name of a majority shareholder in the enterprise of their own doom. "The Primeval One. The thirteen families now know who the true reaper of low energies is. All the chaos we have fostered over the centuries... the wars, the economic crises, the controlled plagues, the constant sowing of fear, despair, guilt... we believed they were sophisticated tools for our control. But we were just... fattening the beast. Preparing the feast for a god of the Void."
A profound bitterness resonated in the Japanese technocrat's voice. They realized they had not been the masters of the game, but the foremen of a soul farm, working diligently for an owner they didn't even fully know. Their act of awakening Cthulhu had not been a masterstroke to reassert their power, but simply the act of an inept servant who, in trying to change masters, had invited the owner of the estate to come for dinner.
The metallic voice of The Director cut through the air, devoid of any emotion save for a frigid and pragmatic urgency. "Lamentation is a luxury we do not possess. The situation is what it is. Cthulhu and its 'brother' Netlin, Amitiel, now seek to impose their own terrible Order. The Lyra factions are volatile and desperate wild cards. The forces of Terra, that strange and unexpected alliance of mages, supernatural beings, and ancestral shamans, have proven to be... irritatingly resilient. And we," he paused, "are at the center, exposed, vulnerable on all possible fronts."
A new kind of energy coursed through the room. The paralysis of fear was beginning to be replaced by the survival instinct of cornered predators. Now they prepare, for they know that sooner or later they will have to face a reckoning.
"Activate Protocol Aegis," The Director ordered. "Immediately transfer all critical assets, recovered technology, and genetic banks to the deepest subterranean citadels, those protected not only against nuclear attack, but also against psionic and dimensional incursions. Reinforce the shields."
"We must accelerate the research of every artifact we have confiscated over the centuries," added Von Hess, his eyes gleaming with a new, feverish intensity. "Any weapon, any forgotten technology, any ritual of power that our ancestors deemed too dangerous... must be re-examined in the light of this new and desperate reality. Open the forbidden vaults."
Ashworth nodded. "Keep channels open, discreetly, with all factions. With the Lireans, with Enki's faction, even with Enlil's if anything is left of it. Neutrality is no longer a viable option; our survival will depend on choosing the victor at the opportune moment... or ensuring, by any means necessary, that there is no single victor left to claim the final prize."
They knew the day of judgment would arrive. Sooner or later, they will have to answer for their actions. Be it to Cthulhu, for being inefficient servants who caused a premature and chaotic awakening. Be it to the Netlin, for being an earthly power that seeks its own autonomy and now knows their secrets. Or, in the most ironic of possibilities, be it to the defenders of Terra themselves, to that strange alliance led by Merlín and Aria, if they ever discover the role the Thirteen Families played in the advent of this apocalypse.
"We must prepare," The Director concluded, his voice resonating with a chilling finality, "for every one of those contingencies. For every possible judge, jury, and executioner."
The secret masters of the world, who had played at being gods, now prepared to face the judgment of the true monsters and the unexpected heroes that their own arrogance had helped to create. Their reign of shadows had ended; now began their desperate struggle for survival in the darkness they themselves had invoked.