Chapter 1312: Blissful Days of Shattered Families

A week and three days passed over Hell’s Paradise Island beneath skies far too beautiful for the mood festering inside several of its oldest families.

That morning arrived bright and almost offensively pleasant:

Sunlight spilled over the mountains with the easy tenderness as its rays and light wandered across the Endless Forest pouring gold over an ocean of ancient green until the treetops shimmered without visible end to Hell’s Paradise Lake and scattered across its impossible breadth in millions of trembling sparks.

The lake stretched so far beneath the cloudless blue heaven that distance eventually surrendered, water and sky seeming to meet somewhere beyond sight, while the great river feeding from it wound through like a bright silver ribbon with no hurry to reach anywhere at all.

Farther beyond, the mountains stood quiet beneath the morning, their immense ridges softened by pale mist, while sunlight slipped between the towers of Paradise and caught upon glass, marble and polished stone until the city seemed freshly washed by a world far too ancient, beautiful and blissfully unaware to suspect anything ugly could be happening beneath its own perfect morning.

Gardens opened themselves to the warmth as though greeting an old friend; their flowers unfolded along shaded paths, birds settled upon carved balustrades, fountains murmured through courtyards older than the countries beyond the island, and terraces slowly filled with breakfasts, sleepy conversations and people complaining about coffee while the morning remained beautifully, almost sweetly unaware of everything gathering beneath it.

The island indeed, no matter how much happened in it, what I witnessed, happened inside it and what it hid in its ancient beauty still greeted each dawn with the same innocent loveliness.

People seemed equally content to play along.

Families laughed over breakfast, servants carried trays through sunlit halls and ordinary residents wandered beneath flowering trees with nowhere particularly urgent to be, never imagining that behind the walls of several Legacy estates, tempers cultivated across centuries were beginning to wear thin.

Some families still watched the disorder with the detached curiosity of ancient creatures observing rain beyond a window. Others had quietly begun calculating how far the Heavenchilds might fall before standing beside them became less profitable than stepping away.

A few seemed almost charmingly unconcerned, secure enough in their own foundations to regard the entire catastrophe happening silently as someone else’s spectacularly expensive headache. Above them all, Paradise Island simply glittered beneath the morning sun, ancient, beautiful and blissfully oblivious, while several of its oldest families edged a little closer to tearing one another apart.

The Heavenchilds and Maxtons had no such luxury.

Ten days had passed since Danton left to get the Coffer but never came back!

Inside the Heavenchild estate, Marcus sat near one of the immense windows overlooking gardens glowing beneath the morning sun, slowly turning a glass between his fingers while breakfast cooled untouched on the table. Across from him, Elliot had already gone through the some report twice and was now reading several sections for a third time, though the faint tightening around his eyes suggested repetition had failed to improve its contents.

The Price Family had purchased another collection of Heavenchild holdings before dawn.

Marcus watched his father’s thumb stop against the edge of the page. "Another one?"

Elliot lowered the report enough to look at him. "Three."

Marcus gave a quiet whistle. "They’re becoming enthusiastic."

"They are becoming insolent."

"Same thing, depending on whether you’re the one losing money."

Elliot’s gaze sharpened, but Marcus only took a small drink and looked outside again.

The financial damage that followed Phei’s interview had refused to remain a temporary embarrassment. Confidence surrounding the Heavenchild name had weakened, relationships among these rich giants cultivated over decades were becoming cautious and pieces of their worldly holdings continued disappearing whenever the Ashfords or any other family discovered an opening.

The Ashfords had been merciless about it.

Now the Prices were joining them.

That development bothered Elliot considerably more than the money involved because everyone understood what the Price Family’s growing boldness represented:

The Ashfords had already walked away from the Legacy Families alliance after centuries beneath Heavenchild leadership, defying an order most families had been raised to believe was too powerful to abandon safely.

The punishment everyone expected to befall the Ashford had never come. The Ashfords remained standing, wealthy and increasingly free to do whatever they pleased and after that interview they became the most wealthy family in the entire Earth overtaking the Heavenchilds acquiring what they could while behind the scene a certain family/entity was acquiring what the Heavenchilds used to own.

Now another family was testing how much of that freedom could be copied.

The Prices had not formally severed every old tie, but they no longer bothered hiding their distance. They purchased Heavenchild interests beside the Ashfords, rejected compromises they once might have accepted and had begun speaking during Legacy meetings with the confidence of people who no longer feared that disagreement would bring ruin upon their entire line.

Other families had noticed too:

The alliance had endured for centuries because breaking from it had always appeared more dangerous than remaining inside. The Ashfords had damaged that belief simply by surviving for decades by defying and never bowing to the Heavenchilds no more. If the Prices followed and suffered no meaningful consequence, then the next family considering independence would no longer be stepping into complete uncertainty.

What the Heavenchilds refused to consider was that perhaps it wasn’t; just the Ashfords but Phei; what if the Price Family had seen how Phei humiliated the so called most powerful family and their prince and walked away scratch-free, adding to the damage the Ashford had already done.

Just a body had done that, sure he had a powerful family or whatever but still a body and he’d done so without that family helping him and the Price were proud legacies, fine they could understand why the Ashfords walked was still untouched but a boy?

No way they weren’t going to follow on to the same dance to defy the Heavenchilds!

Elliot placed the report down.

"The Prices should have been dealt with the moment they began moving."

Marcus leaned farther into his chair. "By whom?"

His father’s expression darkened.

Marcus raised his glass slightly. "That is the question everyone else is asking too."

It was mostly this fool’s mistake but hey, he was their Progenitor.

The Lord’s avatar stood several meters away near the far end of the room, his six seraphic wings folded behind him while the golden-white brilliance surrounding his figure remained unusually subdued. He had said very little since entering, yet the faint displeasure in his face made the air around him heavier than any argument between father and son.

Marcus glanced toward him before continuing more carefully. "The Ashfords walked away. Nothing happened. The Prices started following. Nothing happened. Several of the others are beginning to wonder whether they have spent centuries obeying us because they had to or simply because nobody wanted to be the first idiot through the door."

"Mind your tongue, Marcus." Elliot said.

Marcus smiled faintly. "I’d rather mind the families leaving."

The Lord’s eyes shifted toward him.

The old blood agreements had made the growing uncertainty even more unpleasant. Several Legacy Families had already accepted the bargain for the Destined Day, pledging the bodies and souls of their own daughters for the reincarnation of their respective Progenitors. Those families had accepted an appalling price because awakening the beings who stood at the pinnacle of beginning of their race had been presented as worth everything demanded in return.

Yet from their perspective, very little about that arrangement seemed to be happening.

Yes, there was still time before the Destined Day, enough that nobody had openly challenged the agreements or threatened to withdraw. Ancient families knew how to wait when waiting served them.

The trouble was that patience had started coming with questions, and those questions increasingly found their way to Elliot.

Where were the preparations they had been promised? Why did the Heavenchilds and Maxtons appear more occupied with losing to Phei’s allies than leading toward the day for which everyone had sacrificed so much?

Elliot could answer all of those questions.

What he could not answer was the one currently sitting in this room with them.

Marcus glanced toward the empty place farther down the long table where Danton had once sprawled, usually with some insufferable expression suggesting everyone else had arrived several centuries late to whatever conclusion he had already reached.

The chair had been empty for ten days.

Marcus’s mouth twisted. "Still nothing?"

Elliot did not need to ask what he meant. "Nothing."

"No message?"

"No."

"Signal?"

Elliot’s eyes hardened. "If there had been one, Marcus, I would have told you."

Marcus tapped one finger against the glass and fell quiet.

The whole process should have taken an hour, maybe a day, two would have been understandable if something unexpected happened in Anarctica. Even three days could have been explained afterward if Danton returned with enough useful information to justify the delay.

Ten days could no longer be called a delay with a straight face.

Danton had vanished with the collective treasury of the Legacy Families and eleven World Transcendents.

Nobody from the escort had returned and no communication had reached either family.

Considering Danton’s personality, the silence itself had become one of the strangest parts. The bastard possessed enough vanity to make certain someone knew whenever one of his plans succeeded, preferably before everyone else had finished realizing they had been involved in one.

Marcus had therefore started entertaining explanations:

Danton being dead was still too pleasant to take seriously.

He had survived too much, and now with that kind of power, Danton had too many abilities and had accumulated enough tricks that Marcus considered his death less a reasonable theory and more a reward from heaven he had done nothing to deserve.

Failure, on the other hand, remained wonderfully possible.