"Before what?" she asked, tilting her head with the innocent curiosity of a child who'd just discovered how to burn ants with a magnifying glass.
"Before she found you."
Above them, Nyxavere's laughter rolled across the dying cosmos like thunder. She sat on her throne of twisted and floating in space-ti, watching her masterpiece unfold. Every chain that bound her daddy, every star that died, every scream that rose from the infinity Earths below—it all fed her dark amusent.
Her throne wasn't made of any earthly material. It seed to be carved from the fabric of reality itself, constantly shifting and warping as if space and ti were re clay in her hands. The armrests pulsed with the dying light of consud galaxies, and the backrest towered impossibly high, disappearing into dinsions that hurt to perceive directly.
"You see how easily love becos leash?" she called down, her voice carrying impossibly far through the vacuum of space. "How quickly protector becos prisoner? This is what you chose, Dad. This is what your precious daughters have beco. The ends of the Existence."
Her words echoed with the weight of eons, each syllable carrying the bitter satisfaction of a plan millennia in the making. She had orchestrated this mont, cultivated it like a gardener tending to poisonous flowers. The corruption of love into chains, the transformation of hope into despair—it was her greatest masterpiece.
Eliana's head snapped up toward the dark goddess, and for a mont, her expression flickered. Sothing almost like doubt crossed her features—a ghost of the girl she had once been, before power or perhaps disappointnt had consud her soul.
Parker saw it. Despite his pain, despite the chains draining his very essence like vampiric tendrils, he saw that flicker of his little girl. The child who had once laughed at his terrible jokes, who had fallen asleep in his arms while he read her bedti stories, who had looked at him like he hung the very stars in the sky.
"Fight her," he whispered, his voice barely audible over the cosmic destruction. The words ca out as a prayer, desperate and raw. "Fight her, Eliana. Fight her influence. You're stronger than this. You're stronger than her."
But Nyxavere was already moving.
She descended from her throne like a falling shadow, her form shifting between woman and void, between beauty and nightmare. Her feet didn't touch the crystalline ground—she simply existed wherever she chose to be, reality bending around her will like water around a stone. When she touched Eliana's shoulder, the girl's mont of doubt vanished like smoke in a hurricane.
The touch was gentle, almost maternal, but it carried with it the weight of absolute dominion. Nyxavere's fingers, pale and elegant, seed to absorb the last traces of humanity from Eliana's being. Where she touched, the girl's skin grew colder, more translucent, until she looked like a statue carved from dying starlight.
"Finish it, dear Little Sister" Nyxavere commanded, her voice silk wrapped around steel. "Show daddy what happens to those who dare to take what belongs to us... our freedom."
The possessive tone in her voice was unmistakable. Eliana wasn't just a weapon to her—she was a prize, a trophy stolen from the man who had dared to believe love for his three daughters could conquer all. The ultimate victory wasn't just Parker's death, but the complete corruption of everything he held dear.
Eliana's eyes hardened back to star-death coldness. She raised her hand, and the chains around Parker began to glow with malevolent energy. The light they cast was wrong—not the warm glow of life, but the cold radiance of entropy itself.
"I loved you, Nyxvare" he said, his voice breaking as the chains started to tear at his very existence. Each word was a struggle, forced out through agony that transcended physical pain. "I loved you so much I gave you everything. Even this. Even two little sisters but look at what you're doing to her."
His love had been complete, unconditional. He had given the power, his protection, his very soul—and in doing so, had unknowingly forged the weapons that would destroy him. The chains that bound him now were made from his own blood and fresh, his own devotion twisted into instrunts of tornt.
"Then you were a fool," Eliana and Nyxvare replied at once, but their voices cracked on the last word.
For just an instant, the mask slipped off Eliana to Nyxvare. The cosmic destroyer flickered, and in her place stood a broken girl, lost and afraid and desperate for the father she was about to kill. But the mont passed like a dying breath, and the monster returned.
She clenched her fist, and the chains pulled.
Parker didn't just scream—he unraveled. His light scattered like dandelion seeds on a cosmic wind. His wings crumbled to ash, each feather dissolving into motes of fading luminescence. His very essence was torn apart and fed into the growing apocalypse around them.
The process was horrifically beautiful. His energy, accumulated over eons of existence, dispersed in ribbons of gold and silver that danced through the void before being absorbed by the hungry darkness. Each fragnt of his being that was torn away took with it mories, experiences, monts of joy and sorrow that had defined him.
But even as he died, even as he was unmade, he smiled.
"I nad you after hope," he whispered with his last breath. "And hope... hope never truly dies."
The words hit Eliana like a physical blow. She staggered, her power flickering for just an instant. In that mont of weakness, the chains vanished. Parker's scattered light began to coalesce, trying to reform like rcury seeking wholeness.
But it was too late. The damage was done.
Nyxavere's laughter filled the void as the Earths finally ceased to exist disappearing their molten dusts spreading across the cosmos like spilled blood. The earths that had been humanity's cradle beca its grave, splitting along fault lines that had been carved by the sheer force of Eliana's unleashed power.
The last of humanity's screams faded into silence. The stars themselves began to wink out, one by one, until only darkness remained.
Each dying star was a funeral pyre for billions of stories that would never be told, love that would never be shared, dreams that would never be realized. The universe was unwinding itself, following the threads of destruction that Eliana had pulled with her cosmic tantrum.
And in that darkness, Eliana stood alone, her power absolute, her victory complete.
Empty.
The silence was deafening. In destroying everything, she had destroyed herself—not her body, but her soul. Victory had beco the cruelest defeat of all.
Elia tore herself from sleep with a scream that shattered the peaceful night.
Her bed was a battlefield—sheets twisted and soaked with sweat, blankets thrown to the floor like discarded armor. Her fingernails had gouged deep scratches in the wall beside her bed, and blood dotted her palm where she'd clawed at invisible chains.
But it was her other hand that made her blood run cold. It was glowing. Just faintly, like starlight trapped under skin, but undeniably glowing.
The bedroom door burst open, spilling harsh light into the darkness. Her mother rushed in, eyes wide with panic.
"Elia! What happened? Are you hurt?"
But Elia couldn't answer. She stared at her glowing hand, at the blood on her fingers, at the scratches on the wall that spelled out patterns in a language she'd never learned but sohow understood.
"The battle," she whispered, her voice barely audible. "They fought. He tried to save her, but she..."
Her mother moved closer, reaching out tentatively. "Who did, sweetheart? It was just a dream—"
"No." Elia's voice cracked like breaking glass. She looked up at her mother with eyes that had seen the end of everything. "It wasn't a dream. It was a war. And the wrong side won."
She pressed her palms against her temples, trying to hold the vision together even as it threatened to slip away like smoke. The glow in her hand pulsed once, twice, then faded.
"She's real," Elia whispered, and the words felt like prophecy. "She's really coming. And when she gets here..."
She couldn't finish the sentence. Didn't need to.
Outside, the wind had stopped arguing with the dog. Even the fan had gone silent, as though the house itself was holding its breath.
In the distance, so faint it might have been imagination, thunder rolled across a cloudless sky.
And sowhere, in the space between dreams and waking, Nyxavere smiled.
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