The thing with Mom was she knew thing.
She had always known ever since I was small enough to hide my face between her ribs like a secret the universe had not yet earned the right to witness, she had kept on knowing—through every uniform I shrugged into, every empire I quietly annexed, everything I became.
Whenever the entire weight of creation decided to rest its bloated carcass across my shoulders, Mom registered it without me hunching, dragging my feet and without a single tell leaking past the flawless architecture I had erected across my features long before divinity deigned to notice me.
There was no defence engineered in this sphere or any other that worked on the woman who had raised me.
I was the Dark Lord who wore stacks of impossible things no human was capable of like tailored sin, and still she saw straight through every layer of me like they were tissue paper soaked in arrogance.
