Then it leaned forward.
Asia saw it leaning west. Europe saw it leaning west. Africa saw it leaning west. The Americas saw it coming.
Clouds over the United States flattened beneath the pressure of its attention, stretched thin across the continent as the titan lowered itself through a direction the human mind had no name for.
Above the city where Kaiden Grey stood, the sky became an eye.
It opened without eyelids, without flesh, without any mercy of anatomy, a wound of black-gold pressure so wide the people outside the Association headquarters stopped screaming for Kaiden and started screaming at the heavens instead.
Inside the testing room, concrete, wards, reinforced steel, and twelve layers of Association security meant nothing. Everyone looked up anyway. They could not see the sky from where they stood, yet their bodies knew where the eye had settled.
Directly above them.
Directly above him.
Kaiden looked back through the opening in the orb with a crooked grin.
