The grand hall buzzed with anticipation, a million voices weaving a tapestry of whispered alliances and quiet schemes. Gods and pantheon elites gathered beneath the cold blue lights, their power crackling in the air like an impending storm.

  At the heart of it all, she watched.

  The feline goddess, her ebony fur shimmering with a deep violet hue, strolled through the crowd with effortless grace. Bowed heads greeted her passage, reverent but never truly loyal. She knew better than to trust this nest of opportunists—parasites drawn to power, ready to latch onto the next rising force.

  She smirked. Let them plot. It made the game more entertaining.

  But tonight wasn’t about them. No, something much more important was about to happen.

  Her gaze lifted to the massive floating screen at the center of the hall. The Integration List was being finalized. 256 pre-system races, newly integrated into the grand design of the universe.

  At first, nothing caught her interest.

  Elves. Beastfolk. Dwarves. Demons. Orcs and ogres. Fae and fauns. A few boutique subraces tossed in for flavour. All very traditional. All very predictable. Then the list flickered.

  Then the list flickered.

  An error message pulsed for the briefest moment—a glitch, a hesitation. The screen distorted, flickering between languages long forgotten and scripts belonging to lost civilizations. The System recalculated. For the first time in its existence, the System had faltered—struggling to classify a race it had never accounted for.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Then, the final line appeared.

  New Race Found: [Human]

  A sharp inhale shattered the stillness.

  The blue-skinned humanoid beside her—a god whose very flesh bore the history of the cosmos, runes and glyphs carved into his skin pulsing with a faint golden glow—went rigid. His golden eyes flickered with frantic energy as his luminous veins pulsed in rhythm with the knowledge he sought. His fingers traced rapidly across the pages of his ancient tome, flipping through lines of text that blurred beneath his trembling hands.

  “No records…” he whispered, voice shaking. “Not a single mention.”

  The feline goddess’s tail flicked. Interesting.

  A heavy thud announced the arrival of another figure—a towering, battle-worn deity with piercing green eyes and a burn-scar in the shape of a handprint on his cheek. His lips curled into a smirk as he read the screen.

  “A new race, huh?” His deep voice carried amusement, but there was an edge to it. “Didn’t think the System could still surprise us.”

  The blue god ignored him, still lost in his book. His golden eyes flickered as he traced the ancient glyphs, searching for something—anything. But the pages yielded no answers. His voice dropped to a near whisper, almost as if speaking to himself. "A race without records is a race without destiny… or one that was meant to be forgotten."”

  A chill spread through the hall.

  Even gods feared the unknown.

  The feline goddess let out a low purr, her golden eyes gleaming with intrigue. "Oh, this is going to be fun." She slid her arm over the scarred man's shoulder "Let’s see how these new gods handle a wildcard."

  The screen flickered once more.

  Integration Commencing…

  Far beyond the divine halls, in a world unaware of its fate, a different kind of countdown was reaching its end…

  A massive digital clock blinked on every screen on Earth.

  00:00:03

  A lone man stood before a monitor, fingers clenched into fists, his breath shallow.

  00:00:02

  In the last six months, no one had been able to explain it. No scientist, no government, no machine.

  00:00:01

  Richter Scott swallowed. His world was about to end.

  00:00:00

  Everything went dark.