His reign of shadows was over

In the Secret Bunker Beneath the Swiss Alps

In the opulent marble and steel prison beneath the Alps, the thirteen men and women who considered themselves the secret masters of the world watched their multiple holographic screens with a growing sense of helplessness and terror. The precarious calm that had descended upon the surface following Cthulhu's apparent retreat to Hollow Earth was being shattered, not by eruptions of psychic madness, but by a far more classic and, in some ways, more disconcerting sight: a global wave of UFO sightings.

"Report from the Andean Listening Station," a synthetic voice announced from the center console. "Multiple unidentified disc-shaped objects hovering over the Salar de Uyuni, erratic flight pattern, no detectable electromagnetic emissions."

"North Pacific network," another alert added, "triangular formation of unknown origin detected high above the Mariana Trench, heading east. Disappeared from sensors after emitting a pulse of unknown energy."

"London, Moscow, Washington D.C., Beijing..." Lord Ashworth read aloud the headlines from an inside intelligence source, his normally steady voice now tinged with a rare uncertainty. "Sightings confirmed by multiple agencies. Silent craft, impossible lights, objects that defy our best estimates of aerospace propulsion. Public panic is being barely contained with the usual narratives of 'weather balloons' and 'atmospheric phenomena,' but the scale... the scale is unprecedented."

The council members exchanged anxious glances. They had played with cosmic forces, pulled threads that connected them to nightmarish entities, but this... this was different. It was an invasion, or a mass arrival, of a nature they could neither identify nor control.

Baron Von Hess, pale and hollow-eyed, gripped the arms of his chair. "The Eye..." he whispered, his voice barely audible. He recalled Ashworth's confession, the Primordial Entity whose order they had tried to supplant with Cthulhu's madness. "Is it He? Has the All-Seeing Eye returned to reclaim what is His? To punish our arrogance, our transgression in attempting to replace His ancient yoke with that of a horror from the abyss?" Fear of divine, or at least cosmic and orderly, retribution gripped the Elders. They had broken an ancient pact, and now, perhaps, the true Master was returning to settle the score.

Alejandro Herrera, of the younger faction, shook his head, though his own face was tense. "Or is it the Deep Sleeper? Has Cthulhu, seeing his power challenged in the depths by those... Aluxes and the remnants of Nyx, and in space by the Lyran factions, decided to summon more of his kin from other voids? More nameless horrors to demonstrate his absolute power and crush all resistance?" The idea of ​​a new wave of Lovecraftian entities, even more alien and powerful, was equally terrifying.

"We don't know..." admitted Tanaka, the Japanese technocrat, his fingers flying uselessly over his own console. "Our intelligence networks are blind to this. The energy profiles match nothing in our catalogs of known threats—not Netlin, not the major Lyran factions, not even the direct emanations of Cthulhu we've learned to identify. It's... new. Or very, very old and very well hidden until now."

The Council of Thirteen, the supposed puppeteers of the world, suddenly found themselves like frightened children in the dark. They had manipulated governments, economies, even human consciousness and the forgotten gods. But this... this was beyond their comprehension, beyond their ability to influence. Their earthly power, their vast fortunes, their secret armies, all seemed insignificant before the arrival of these silent, enigmatic visitors from the stars.

"We have lost control of the board," Lord Ashworth murmured, the final realization of his helplessness reflected in his pale eyes. "We can only watch... and pray to the gods we have never believed in that they have not come for us."

In their luxury bunker, surrounded by the world's most advanced technology and riches, the thirteen most powerful men and women on the planet were completely terrified, reduced to speculating about the nature of the new horrors or the old masters now descending upon a world already teetering on the brink of apocalypse. Their shadowy reign was over; they were now just another piece in a cosmic game whose rules they didn't understand and whose players were infinitely more powerful.