Chapter 139 – Father–Daughter Reunion?
(Erynd)
Nyxa started shaking before any of us could move.
Not with anger.
With relief.
Wet, shuddering, ugly relief.
She pressed her veiled face harder into my chest, fingers bunching in my coat like she was trying to climb inside my ribs.
"I thought you died," she said. The cheerful lilt she'd used a second ago cracked straight down the middle. "I thought— I waited and waited and waited and there was nothing and I thought you abandoned me."
Her voice was older than the way she held on.
Not little-girl whine.
Something that had seen far too much and still decided the correct solution was to cling anyway.
Behind her, nobody moved.
Tamara's knuckles stood out white on her sword hilt.
Lyra's eyes were too wide.
Noelle's lips were parted like she wanted to say "that's impossible" and her theology had quietly climbed out the nearest window.
Julia's face was calm.
Too calm.
Zoe was the only one whose expression didn't change much. Her eyes, though, had gone flat and calculating in a way I'd only seen when she was about to stab a cult leader in the throat.
Melody?
Melody was biting her own hand in my peripheral vision trying not to audibly laugh herself to death.
[ System ]
[ Heroine – Witch of the Elder Roots ]
[ Name: Nyxa ]
Of course.
Of course the System chose right now to confirm the worst possible interpretation.
Heroine.
Witch.
Nyxa.
The glove-child I'd adopted in a dying world.
The woman who, in another branch, had opened my chest and called my heart "interesting."
The thing currently being soft against me in full view of five women who already had reasons to stab each other on a good day.
Perfect.
My life continued to be a farce.
"I didn't abandon you," I said quietly, because for all the chaos orbiting us, that one thing needed to be corrected. "I died. There's a difference."
She let out a hysterical little laugh against my shirt.
"Dying is just long abandonment," she mumbled. "Time doesn't care which word you use."
I put a hand on the back of her head on reflex.
She made a tiny, desperate sound and squeezed tighter.
No one tried to peel her off.
Because she was terrifying.
Because they were shocked.
Because some part of them understood, too, what "almost losing him" tasted like.
"Estate," I said finally, voice rough. "We're not doing this in the middle of a street full of corpses."
"Agreed," Zoe said instantly.
No one argued.
***
Getting back to the Yggdrasil estate should have been straightforward.
Should have.
Except Nyxa refused to let go.
Not "didn't want to."
Refused.
If I tried to shift even a little, she made an unhappy noise I had only ever heard from feral animals whose traps you were removing too slowly.
So we walked like that.
Me in the middle, god-killing spear on my back, Witch glued to my front like a very dangerous child, and five women plus Edward and Yara fanning out around us like a confused honor guard.
Citizens made way.
Not because they knew who we were.
Because we had the look of people who had just killed a god and weren't sure if they were finished yet.
By the time we reached the estate gates, my arms were starting to complain about being stuck in the same awkward half-embrace position, and my shirt was damp where Nyxa's face had been.
The main door was locked.
Of course it was.
Julia insisted on locking everything.
I stared at it.
Stared at my hands.
Both occupied.
Nyxa followed my gaze, clocked the problem, and growled.
The lock clicked.
Not with mana.
With… acquiescence.
Wood, metal, and space all decided simultaneously it would be better for everyone if they just stopped pretending resistance was an option.
The door swung open.
Julia's left eyelid twitched.
I pretended not to see it.
We spilled into the main hall.
"Zoe," I said. "Take everyone else. Food. Wash. Debrief with Julia about casualties. I'll handle… this."
Lyra opened her mouth. Shut it. Opened it again.
"Handle," she repeated, tone thin.
"Talk," I corrected. "I'll talk."
Tamara's eyes flicked from Nyxa to me to Nyxa again.
"You're sure," she said slowly, "you don't need backup?"
"I killed a goddess five minutes ago," I said. "I think I can manage a conversation."
Melody snorted. Nyxa made an affronted noise and burrowed closer like she didn't appreciate being ranked below a recently deceased love deity.
Noelle was just looking between us, lips moving, trying to fit this into any scripture she'd ever read and failing.
"Go," I said, gentler. "I'll explain later."
That was a lie.
I would deflect later.
But they needed to believe there was an "explainable" to be had.
Zoe, predictably, was the one to move first.
She stepped up, met my eyes, looked down at Nyxa, then back up.
Her tail flicked once behind her armor.
"Don't die," she said.
"I just finished not dying," I said. "Give me a few hours before we schedule the next attempt."
She made a quiet, annoyed sound and herded the others away with a jerk of her chin.
Tamara went, stiff and reluctant.
Lyra went, fingers twitching like they wanted to wrap around my coat and drag me away from the Witch.
Noelle went, murmuring a prayer under her breath that sounded more like "please don't let him be stupider than usual."
Edward and Yara went, whispering together, both glancing back over their shoulders like they were leaving a fuse lit.
Julia stayed a heartbeat longer.
Her eyes slid from Nyxa's white-knuckled grip on my coat to my hand on the back of the Witch's head.
"Later," she said. Not a question.
"Yes," I lied again.
She nodded once and walked away.
Melody, naturally, didn't walk anywhere.
She just vibrated.
"Best day ever," she chirped in my head. "I take back every complaint about boredom."
"Shut up," I thought.
"Absolutely not."
***
I ended up in my office.
Not my seventh-sublevel one—too many bad associations.
The smaller one off the main corridor, with two chairs and a couch and a bookshelf Julia had stocked with "things a respectable lord should own," which meant it was mostly history of taxation and appreciative essays about Vastriel.
Nyxa refused to sit anywhere that wasn't on me.
So I sat on the couch.
She sat on me.
Sideways, this time, legs folded up, veil pushed back enough that I could see her face.
Younger than she'd looked in the street.
Older than Nyxa-the-glove had ever really been.
Human, at first glance.
Then your gaze caught the slight wrongness in the way her pupils caught the light, the way her hair fell in too-straight sheets, the way her shadow sometimes didn't line up with her body.
She was crying.
Quietly now.
Tears dried into my shirt.
"I really thought you died," she said again, voice hoarse. "You went into that thing and you didn't come back and then everything went wrong."
"I did die," I said. "Several times, if we're being precise."
She wrinkled her nose.
"Don't make jokes," she muttered. "It makes my chest hurt."
Right.
Eldritch Witch Heroine. Capable of erasing people in a thought.
Also apparently vulnerable to dad jokes.
The universe had range.
"Tell me," I said. "What happened. After the obelisks."
She inhaled.
Held it.
Let it out, slow.
"When the big one came," she began, "the one you couldn't look at? It… noticed me. It saw I was yours. It didn't like that. So it did something. Cut us apart. You went one way, I went another."
Her fingers curled in my coat.
"I woke up in the past," she said. "Not the past. A past. The world felt younger. Rougher. Less… organized. Everyone called it different names. Empire. Kingdom. Dungeon cluster. Whatever."
Of course.
Of course time wasn't linear for her.
"The first person I found who… felt like you was a king," she continued. "They called him Demon King. That's just what they call anyone who doesn't play nice with their gods. But his core—" her hand hovered over my chest, just above my sternum, not quite touching "—tasted like yours. Wrong in the right way. So I thought: ah. There you are. You changed clothes again."
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
"You thought a random tyrant was me."
"He had the same flavor," she said defensively. "Too many threads in one soul. Too much weight for one life. It's not my fault you keep reusing yourself."
That was… not entirely inaccurate.
"And then?" I asked.
She brightened.
"I went to work," she said. "He had this little core thing—" she gestured vaguely around her throat, like a necklace "—that bound his contracts. So I took mine off."
"You what."
"Took it off," she repeated, perfectly matter-of-fact. "You don't let someone hold your leash if you don't trust them, Father. You taught me that. Or you would have. Eventually."
I stared at her.
"You removed the binding your not-me Demon King used to control you, in front of him."
"Not in front of him," she sniffed. "That would be rude. I did it after. In a corridor. Then I went back and smiled and told him I'd serve loyally forever. It was very convincing."
Melody howled with laughter somewhere near the bookshelf.
"Of course you betrayed him," I muttered. "Why wouldn't you."
"He betrayed you first," she said. "By not being you."
I didn't have the energy to untangle that logic.
"Then?"
"Then he died," she said. "Not by me. By a… group. A party. Little cluster of idiots with too much courage and too little context. They kept trying to kill me afterward, so I made a choice."
Her eyes softened.
"I helped them," she said. "A little. Slit a few correct throats. Pointed them at the right obelisks. Told them when the cults were gathering. I liked one of them."
Her mouth wobbled.
"She was a beastkin. Had ears like this." Nyxa made a clumsy gesture above her head. "Laughed too loud. Smelled like wet fur and cheap stew. She kept trying to pet me."
She blinked fast.
"Then she died," she said. "They all died. Dungeon. Bad luck. Bad choices. I burned it down after. It didn't help."
Of course it didn't.
"You kept going," I said.
"What else?" she asked, genuinely puzzled. "There were still things that needed killing. There were still roots to cut. They made up a title later. Witch of the Elder Roots. I liked it. It sounded… old. Important."
She tilted her head.
"And then one day," she went on, voice going soft again, "I was here. In this version. And you were gone. Again. The demon queen cults were waking things they shouldn't. So I killed some of them. Waited. Killed more. Waited."
Her fingers curled tighter.
"It was boring," she said simply. "And lonely. And… wrong. The world felt wrong without you in it. Like it was unbalanced. So when I saw you today, in the street, smelling like dead gods and old snow, I thought, ah. Finally. Fixed."
The simple certainty of that made my chest feel tight.
"You realize," I said, because sarcasm was easier than feelings, "you skipped a few details that might be relevant. Like 'why did you tear my heart out in another branch.'"
She flinched.
"That wasn't you," she whispered. "That was you-but-not. You know. The version that gave up. I was… checking. Which one I got this time."
That was not comforting.
At all.
But the way she said it—small, guilty, like a child admitting to peeking at presents—made it very hard to respond with the full weight of justified anger.
I exhaled slowly.
"Nyxa," I said. "Listen carefully. I am not a Demon King. I am not a god. I am not… finished. I am a very tired man with too many problems and not enough time. If you attach yourself to me, you will be disappointed. Regularly."
She stared at me like I'd just claimed gravity was optional.
"Don't say stupid things," she said. "You are mine. I am yours. That's enough."
Great.
Possessive eldritch witch daughter.
Add it to the list.
***
(Lyra)
Who the fuck is that bitch.
I paced the far end of the hallway until I'd worn a line into the rug.
Tamara had ditched her armor and was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, trying to look calm and failing. The little muscle under her eye kept twitching.
Noelle sat on a bench with her holy symbol in her lap, staring at nothing, lips moving around silent prayers that probably said "please don't let this be as bad as it looks."
"It's not what it looks like," Tamara said finally.
"It looks like a witch came out of nowhere, called him Father and glued herself to his chest," I snapped. "What exactly is your alternative reading? Long-lost cousin? Spiritual advisor? Random street girl with boundary issues?"
Noelle made a wounded little noise.
"Don't call her that," she said. "She… she seemed lonely. Like she'd been waiting a long time."
"She can be lonely over there," I said, stabbing a finger at imaginary distance. "Not on him."
My chest hurt.
Jealousy was stupid. I knew that. I knew how old he really was. I knew he'd had whole lives before ours. People. Lovers. Mistakes. Children—
And that was where my thoughts curled into a ball and started hissing.
"He doesn't have a child," I said out loud, savagely. "He would have told us. He— okay, he might not have told us, he's an idiot, but someone would've noticed. Julia would have noticed."
"Speaking of," Tamara said, nodding down the hall.
***
(Julia)
"How does My Lord have a child?" I asked calmly.
It came out as a hiss anyway.
Zoe blinked at me from where she was half-perched on a windowsill, looking like she'd climb out of it just to avoid this conversation.
"Maybe he doesn't," she said. "Maybe it's… metaphorical."
"Metaphorical," I repeated. "Metaphorical does not cling to his chest. Metaphorical does not call him Father in public. Metaphorical does not laugh like that."
Zoe's tail flicked once.
"Julia," she said. "You're doing the thing."
I straightened my coat.
"What thing," I asked.
"The thing where you go from 'competent administrator' to 'single malfunctioning nerve,'" she said. "Breathe."
I did breathe.
Once.
It didn't help.
"All Shadow agents are to prioritize any and all information on witches," I said. "Coven lore, lineages, sightings. There must be one who knows who she is, where she came from, why she thinks she can just appear and—"
"And hug him?" Zoe supplied.
"Yes," I snapped. Then, quieter: "And take something that should be mine."
Zoe tilted her head.
"Child," she said.
"In this context," I said flatly, "I am not feeling picky about vocabulary."
She watched me for a moment.
Then she hopped down.
"I'll put out feelers," she said. "Quietly. No one moves on her without your order or his. That work?"
My shoulders loosened by a millimeter.
"Yes," I said. "Thank you."
"And Julia?"
"Yes."
"When you go in there later, maybe don't open with 'how dare you procreate without putting it in a ledger.'"
I glared at her.
She grinned.
Melody's laughter echoed faintly down the hall like she'd heard both of us.
***
(Back to Erynd)
Nyxa had stopped crying.
Mostly because she'd run out of tears.
She sat with her head just under my chin, tucked against my chest like some kind of oversized cat, fingers still knotted in my shirt.
Her veil lay in a crumpled heap on the armrest.
"Tell me something," she said suddenly, voice smaller again. "A story. You used to… not used to. You would have. If we'd had time there."
There.
The snow world.
The one where I named her and taught her to walk.
The one where we both almost drowned in Qlippothic noise.
Guilt pricked under my breastbone.
"I didn't tell you stories there because we were trying not to freeze to death," I said.
She huffed.
"Excuses," she said. "Tell me one now. Something… about people. So I remember why you keep trying to save them."
Of course she would ask the hardest possible question in the softest possible way.
"Alright," I said, leaning my head back against the couch. "Story time."
Her eye—eyes—closed, lashes damp on her cheeks.
I thought for a moment.
Not about fairy tales.
Those always lied.
About something uglier and more honest.
"Once," I began, "there was a village near a river. Every spring, the river flooded. Every spring, it destroyed some homes and fed the soil so the crops grew well. The people argued."
Nyxa hummed, barely audible.
"One man said," I continued, "'We should build walls. High ones. Stone and wood. Keep the water out. Protect our houses. Protect our children. No more drowning.'"
Nyxa's fingers twitched.
"And another man said, 'If we wall the river off, the fields won't flood. The soil will starve. We might save a few houses now and kill everyone slowly later.'"
I could feel her listening.
Really listening.
"So they argued," I said. "For years. Build the wall. Don't build the wall. Compassion now. Cruelty later. Cruelty now. Compassion later. Each certain he was right."
"And?" she murmured.
"They did neither," I said. "They argued until the river changed course on its own. Wiped out the fields and the houses. Because the river didn't care about their debate."
Nyxa made a small, disgruntled noise.
"That's a bad story," she mumbled.
"It's a true story," I said. "Most people would rather argue about what to do than actually do something with consequences. They'd rather feel right than be effective."
"…you're saying I should have just eaten the Demon King," she said sleepily.
"I'm saying," I said, "if you want to change something, you have to accept you'll be hated by some for it. There is no path where everyone loves you and the world is fixed. Only trade-offs. Only costs."
She nuzzled my chest, thinking.
"Is that why you made the princess cry?" she asked.
I blinked.
"…yes," I admitted. "Partially."
"Good," she said, satisfied. "She needed it."
Somewhere in the estate, Olivia probably shivered without knowing why.
Nyxa's breathing slowed.
The edges of her form went hazy for a second—like she couldn't decide whether she was shadow, glove, or girl—but then stabilized again, small and warm and wrong in my arms.
Melody leaned in the doorway, entirely too amused.
"You realize," she said softly in my head, "you've acquired a daughter who can erase cults, unsettle gods, and terrify every woman in your life in under ten minutes."
"Of course I have," I thought back. "Why would my life ever be simple."
"You like them broken and sharp," she said. "You always have."
I didn't deny it.
Nyxa made a tiny sound, half-sigh, half-wordless contentment, and burrowed closer.
Exhaustion hit me like a falling building.
My wounds throbbed in time with my heartbeat.
My head felt full of static from overused Spatial Awareness.
Qi was the only thing keeping me upright and even that was running on fumes.
I looked down at the eldritch witch curled against me like I was the safest place she knew.
I thought of the princess I'd just turned into a baby Machiavellian.
I thought of the Queen, the cults, the Old Gods still left, the Emperor's looming death, the Yellow King watching from somewhere I hadn't yet mapped.
"I suppose," I muttered, mostly to myself, "it can't get any worse."
Melody's laughter was quiet and mean.
"Oh, Master," she said. "You should really stop saying that."
I closed my eyes anyway.
Nyxa's grip tightened once, as if to say don't move.
I didn't.
Sleep took me in a painful, graceless drop.
Right?