#the divine gate

I think they are scared of something, and hiding that fear behind the appearance of benevolence. I don’t just mean the fear that other mortals like the Matron may usurp them, but the fear of other mortals like Aeor. I wonder if in the events of Downfall the secret of Aeor’s weapon to destroy the gods will get out, and as a result they create the gate to prevent any more of their siblings being destroyed, Betrayer or not.

I think Predathos plays a part in it as well, especially since the cage around Ruidus is made of similar magic as the Gate (and perhaps Aeor’s weapon is similarly connected but that’s a theory for another post). What I’m interested in is not the weapon itself, but what the gods do about the knowledge of it.

We know from Ludinus’s claims—as nasty as he is, he’s also smart— that a blow is going to be struck against the morally superior image of the gods when he shows Downfall to BH. He wants to prove mortals are being manipulated by the gods, that the truth of history has been manipulated by them as well. I’m inclined to believe he’ll succeed, even with his vastly different worldview. Much of BH either hates or is questioning the gods already, it’s not actually hard to convince them of it, but he does need to convince them they gods are worth killing. He says, "When the divine threatens your families, your children, the very future of life as you know it, they reveal themselves as the enemy."

We know the gods teamed up with the betrayers and struck Aeor from the sky— a genocide against an entire city, to stop the weapon they had. We know they left Exandria and mortals had to forge their own paths to survival at the end of the Calamity, distanced from divinity. But neither of these two facts have been damning enough to turn most mortals against divinity, especially in the face of the greater threat of the Betrayers. But did the gods leverage the threat of the Betrayers to mask their reasons for creating the gate? To take attention off the knowledge of Aeor— wherever it may be?