Maya and Tessa exchanged a glance across the hall, eyes flicking from Parker to Nyxavere like they were watching gravity shift in real time. Even they—used to Parker's moods, his quiet storms, his ruthless calm—could feel something was off. It wasn't rage. It wasn't power. It was... confusion, thick in the air like smoke that couldn't find an exit.
Seraphina, ever the youngest, ever the brightest in her own dreamy way, stood awkwardly behind them, her silver hair catching the flickering light. She tilted her head, picking up on the shift but not the source. Her eyes kept scanning the others like she was trying to find the script everyone else had already read.
"Why's it so gloomy all of a sudden…?" she whispered to herself, but no one answered.
Seraphina, lingered near one of the shattered pillars, her silver hair catching fragments of broken light. She didn't speak. Didn't know how. The tension was thick enough to drown in, but no one had told her why.
She just knew something had changed-something heavy and adult and sharp-and she didn't yet have the language to name it.
Meanwhile, Nyxavere drifted closer to her father, soft like the shadows respected her steps. She didn't say anything at first. Just stood beside the throne, looking up at him with those starlit violet eyes. Then, after a moment, she leaned her head slightly toward his arm and asked, her voice barely a whisper:
"Daddy... are you okay? Are you ready to proceed?"
Low. Wry. The sound of a man who'd just had his internal script flipped by the universe and was still pretending like he had control of the next act.
"What the hell am I even supposed to do now?" he muttered, mostly to himself. "I was gearing up to drag Robert across this damn platform. Full execution-mode. And now I find out the guy's been living in a mental prison for seventeen years? While I've been scheduling his execution in my head like a fucking calendar notification?"
A few minutes ago, he was ready to break Robert down piece by piece-publicly, in front of the whole fucking council, in front of his kids. Justice, humiliation, pain-that whole grand finale he'd spent seventeen years imagining.
He rubbed his jaw, more tired than he looked.
Then he glanced at her.
"You think Daddy's getting soft, Nyxa?"
Nyxavere giggled, warm and innocent—until you remembered she could probably erase history with a yawn.
"Feeling sympathy is inevitable. Being stuck in what to do next is human... or at least mortal-ish. Doesn't that mean you shouldn't just go ahead and do what you do best?"
Parker stared at her for a second, then snorted and shook his head.
He raised an eyebrow at her, a smirk barely twitching onto his face. "You're really bad at this, you know that?" he muttered. "That's gotta be the most half-baked pep talk I've ever heard from someone a half-step away from full-blown Omniscience."
But somehow... that helped.
Because even gods need someone to tell them it's okay to hesitate.
Parker rolled his eyes but couldn't hide the snort. "You're terrible at this."
Nyx laughed harder, hand over her mouth. "I'm twelve, not a therapist! Perhaps, next time don't ask your literal daughter how to deal with feelings. Ask your assistant. Or your cat."
He laughed again-this time louder. But under it all, he still wasn't sure what he was going to do. Because there was one thing worse than having a perfect plan—
Having it broken by truth.
Nyxavere shrugged, brushing an invisible speck off her sleeve entire moment wasn't the fallout of generational trauma and cosmic infiltration. "By the way, I wasn't being supportive," she said, voice light as starlight, "Nor was I trying to be funny."
Then she pointed—subtle but direct—toward Robert, still kneeling with his kids, his shoulders squared but hollow, like a man holding himself together through sheer habit. "But if you look at him," she added, "you'll see it. He's sorry. Genuinely. Not the performative, ceremonial type. Like—real sorry. And he's not even trying to defend himself. No excuses. Just quiet... like he blames himself more than anyone else ever could."
Parker snorted, eyes flicking to Robert like he was barely worth the energy. "That's his own damn fault," he muttered, jaw tight. "He was weak. Weak enough to be hijacked by whatever the hell that thing was. And that weakness nearly got me killed—not once, but three times."
His fingers flexed against the armrest, slow and deliberate. "That doesn't exempt him from the punishment he's owed."
Nyx chuckled, the kind of laugh that came from someone who knew better than to argue but enjoyed poking the bear anyway. "There's my daddy."
Then her hand opened.
The soul fragment she'd captured—black, twitching, pulsing with remnants of stolen identity—rose from her palm like a cursed ember. It quivered in the air, small and mean, as if it knew it had been caught and hated being seen.
"But," she continued, her tone dipping slightly into something more serious, "Robert shouldn't carry it alone. We've got a piece of the real culprit. It's small, yeah. Barely a shard. But it's real. It's enough."
Parker didn't reply. He just stared at it, eyes cold, calculating. The kind of look that didn't just see a soul—it measured how fast it could break it.
Across the hall, Robert heard every word.
Not with peace. Not even with relief. Just that dry, bitter curve of lips from a man who knew what was coming and wouldn't fight it. Because Parker was right. It was his fault. He'd been weak. He'd let himself be taken, let his body be used as a weapon against the one person who should've never had to look over his shoulder in that estate.
Almost killed the Prince.
That wasn't something you escaped.
Not even with innocence.
Parker rose from the blackwood throne like inevitability itself. No grand gesture. No need. Just that slow, decisive motion, like time itself had been waiting for him to stand. His eyes locked on the three figures before him — Robert, Julian, and Annabelle — still kneeling, bodies taut with dread, faces pale as ash under the weight of what they already knew was coming.