What happened in the next few minutes shattered the atmosphere like a cracked mirror.
Cassandra began to speak—and not just speak. She poured. Her voice a river, her visions spilling out like the dam of divine restraint had finally burst. Every word was soaked in prophecy. Raw. Bleeding. Drenched in truths too heavy for normal mouths to carry.
Cassandra's voice spilled out, a flood of shattered visions crashing into the room like a tidal wave breaking through dam walls long cracked by fate. Her words weren't just sounds—they were things, dripping with ancient power and raw emotion, pressing into the air until it felt thick, suffocating, and impossibly heavy.
Parker sat frozen, the weight of every revelation twisting his gut like a razor coil. His eyes, vast galaxies themselves, shimred with unshed tears—brilliant stars on the verge of collapse. His breath hitched, catching in his chest like a trapped starling desperate to escape a cage of grief and awe.
Zhang Ruoyun, seated beside him, felt her heart seize—a brutal twist that nearly crushed her ribs. Her fingers tightened into fists at her sides as joy, terror, and icy vertigo clawed at her all at once. The news was a storm she hadn't seen coming. Four unborn lives, not two. Four futures growing in shadows, tangled in threads of fate she couldn't yet touch.
Around them, the world seed to hold its breath.
Even the walls of the room—the very fabric of reality—vibrated faintly, humming with the tension of truths too vast to bear quietly.
In the void between dinsions, Annabelle leaned forward, teeth clenched so tight her jaw throbbed. Her nails dug crescent moons into her palms, skin flashing red beneath the pressure. Robert's gaze was distant, tired, but sharp—his mind already racing through what this ant for tilines, destinies, and family.
Ere, wrapped in shadowy silence, looked away, lips pressed thin, as if she could shut the whole damn revelation out if she simply stared hard enough at the void's endless black.
Even Levi—Parker's usually sardonic internal voice—was quiet. Silent. Alard.
The air pulsed with dread.
Then Parker's voice cut through the tension—raw, ragged, as if every word tore at the fragile armor around his heart.
Shit was going down.Not right this second—thank the gods for small rcies—but the storm was gathering, lightning flickering in the distance, impossible to ignore.
"I have four unborn children? Not just the twins?" Parker's voice cracked like a thunderclap, thick with emotions he couldn't na—grief, disbelief, fury, and sothing deeper, rawer. His eyes shimred, wet with tears that weighed like galaxies on his lashes. Actual tears. From a man who could unmake entire worlds with a thought.
His throat worked hard to swallow the catch of emotion. His gaze dropped, tears spilling free, shimring like liquid stars sliding down a god's cheek.
"Four…"
Zhang Ruoyun reached out, placing a steady hand on his arm, grounding him as his whole world trembled beneath the weight of that number.
Her stomach twisted, heart thudding against her ribs like it wanted out. Her mind spun. Four? She hadn't even finished wrapping her soul around the idea of two.
Now there were four.
Sowhere between joy and terror, she was floating—grasping at protectiveness, trying not to drown in the vertigo of motherhood, prophecy, and tiline doom.
Cassandra nodded, but her expression was grave. "But you cannot engage with the other two children. Not now. Things might change in ways none of us want if you interfere with the natural flow."
But Parker? How could he possibly agree to that?
Because of what? Fate? Destiny?
Zhang Ruoyun felt his emotions spiraling toward sothing dangerous and caught his hand, making him turn to face her. Her own hands frad his face with infinite gentleness.
Parker's fists clenched so tightly his knuckles blazed white-hot beneath his skin. His mind churned like a storm at sea.
For months—months—children had been growing inside mothers he barely knew. Mothers he hadn't protected. Mothers alone, vulnerable.
And now?
He was told to step back. To watch. To wait. To do nothing.
The word nothing scread in his head like a blaring alarm.
"Fuck that," he whispered, voice low and fierce, raw as molten lava spilling across ice. "I will never—"
His aura flared, dark shadows twisting and writhing like living smoke, threatening to tear apart the fragile calm.
Before the storm could break free—
Zhang Ruoyun's hands caught his tighter. Soft, steady, unyielding.
She forced him to et her gaze.
Her eyes—calm galaxies in the chaos—held him anchored.
"Relax," she breathed, thumbs tracing gentle circles against his rough skin. "Everything will be alright."
But the weight wasn't gone.
It settled heavier than before.
In the quiet, his mind echoed the nas like prayers or curses:Claire... Alina...
Two won. Chosen. Alone. Unprotected.
Out there in the vast wilds of existence.
And he was supposed to just stand down?
Just watch?
His breath hitched again, the desperate, aching kind that no god or mortal should ever have to swallow.
"Parker, there's more," Cassandra said softly.
He turned toward her, his entire presence tense, barely holding together. His eyes had gone red—not from tears, but from the unbearable pressure of power and pain colliding behind them. His gaze cracked through the room like stormlight breaking through glass.
"What—?" His voice was hoarse. Wary.
Cassandra inhaled, shoulders trembling under the burden of truth.
"The children. Two of your three daughters have the sa na. Eliana!"
Understanding dawned on Zhang Ruoyun like sunrise breaking over a cosmic horizon. "You ntioned that the na ca on its own in your head, right? Eliana, aning Hope in the ancient Nyxlith tongue, right?"
To her question, he nodded numbly.
"The sa thing happened to Claire," Cassandra whispered, her seer's eyes distant as she watched the threads of fate weave their pattern. "I saw the scene when she chose the na Eliana for her daughter, despite not knowing its aning in your family's language. The na ca to her the sa way it ca to you— you got it minutes after it ca to Claire."
Parker was understanding everything now. The three heartbeats he'd sensed were his three daughters. Two of them bore the sa na, chosen by mothers who'd never t, guided by forces beyond their comprehension. The only confusion was why he didn't feel the forth heartbeat. Either that his son was even more dangerous or weaker than those three.
"The only way to stand a chance against what's coming was to not change their nas," Zhang Ruoyun said, her voice carrying the weight of cosmic revelation. "The pattern had to be preserved."
Cassandra nodded gravely. "Exactly."
"Trying to trick Fate, huh?" Parker chuckled, but there was no humor in it—only the kind of desperate amusent that ca from staring into the abyss and deciding to laugh instead of scream. "Big Sister's minions aren't the easiest to deceive, but... it would be fun!"
The Princess—his sister—had created her servants the way he'd created The Six and his other creations.
But unlike his Six, his Big Sister's minions were nearly impossible to beat. Karma? You'd never escape that completely. Only the Whole Mother seed capable of outrunning Karma, and even then not entirely. She could beat Fate, but that was the extent of it. Even Parker sotis had to fall prey to Fate's claws most tis than often. I an... look at him and Tessa. Look at this coming ordeal. Look at how the vampire that gave him hell when he was a mortal turned out to be his own creation.
"Wait!" Cassandra asked, confusion clear in her voice. "What do you an Fate is a minion?"
Isis and the others also looked at him with expressions ranging from shock to cosmic vertigo. Fate was known as the driving force of all existence, but now he was suggesting...
"That's not a topic for you lots!" Maya entered with a chuckle that could have frozen stars. "Not now, or you'll have to die right here, right now!"
Parker nodded in agreent, his expression deadly serious.
"What do you an?" Cleopatra asked. "Are you bluffing just to keep information from us?"
"Unfortunately, as much as I would love to tell you all this just to watch your ass get turned into cosmic ash, Cleopatra, my husband doesn't share that decision. So no, I'm not bluffing."
Parker and Maya looked at each other, and in that exchange, a terrible understanding passed between them. Now they knew—their daughter hadn't co back to them just out of love. She was being dragged back by the strings of Fate itself. And beneath that was the other being, she'd returned to play a ga from inside their very family.
[I think you're going to...]
"Yes, Levi. I can't. I can't start looking at and treating my own blood like that. She's my daughter, and I will make sure my love for her gets her back to us! She won't go down that path. Not on my watch. Not when I have the chance to change her mind!"
"My Prince..." Zhang Ruoyun called out, her voice carrying the weight of cosmic necessity. "I think we need Judgnt and the others now."
Knowing the path he was choosing to take, Zhang Ruoyun understood exactly what kind of help they would need.
[Trouble in Paradise!] Levi observed with grim satisfaction. She knew exactly what was coming.
And in the spaces between heartbeats, between words, between the very atoms of reality itself, the ga board was being set for a conflict that would determine the fate of existence itself.
The pieces were in motion.
And there was no going back.
It was ti to wake the Beasts!
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