Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System!

The feeling started slowly—like the first crack of dawn after the longest night in existence.

Their world, which had been fracturing at the edges ever since Nyxavere disappeared, began to piece itself back together. Not with the violent snap of broken bones healing, but with the gentle whisper of flowers deciding to bloom again after winter.

Parker's carefully constructed walls—the ones he'd built around his grief, his fear, his desperate need to appear in control while his daughter was God-knew-where—started to crumble. Not collapse. Dissolve. Like ice meeting spring water.

Maya's breath came easier for the first time in months. The constant ache in her chest, the one that felt like someone had carved out her heart with a rusty spoon and left the wound to fester, began to heal in real time.

Even Levi, sharp-tongued and suspicious Levi who questioned everything Parker did with the persistence of a cosmic auditor, didn't dare interrupt this moment. She knew. Somehow, she knew that although Parker had built a strong wall around himself and played it cool about his daughter's disappearance, the truth was far from anything she could fathom.

The relief, the joy, the sheer overwhelming gratitude—it was too raw, too honest to be questioned right now.

So she held her suspicions and her questions, tucked them away like weapons she might need later, and let this family have their moment of grace.

Nyxavere giggled as she wrapped her arms around both her parents from behind, her beautiful small hands—hands that could probably unmake galaxies if she wanted to—pressing against their backs with the kind of desperate affection that said she'd missed them just as much as they'd missed her.

If she'd been a normal child, the force of their hug might've suffocated her. But she wasn't normal, had never been normal, and her cosmic strength was tempered by love so pure it made the air around them shimmer with something that felt like liquid starlight.

"We were so worried," Maya whispered, her voice breaking like glass trying to hold back an ocean. She turned in her daughter's arms, cupping that precious face with hands that shook just slightly. "So scared. We didn't know where you were, if you were hurt, if you were—"

"I'm okay, Mom," Nyxavere said, and her voice was gentle as morning rain. "I'm here. I'm safe."

Parker's composure cracked completely. The mask he'd worn for months—the one that said he was fine, in control, handling everything—shattered into a thousand pieces that glittered like broken stars as they fell.

"Don't ever do that again," he said, pulling her closer, his voice rough with emotions he'd refused to acknowledge until now. "Don't ever disappear like that. I don't care what entity or cosmic force or abstract concept decides they want to play games with our family—you don't go anywhere without telling us. Promise me."

Nyxavere looked up at him with those eyes that held galaxies, and for a moment she looked exactly like the child she was instead of the cosmic being she'd become.

"I promise, Daddy," she said simply.

They led her to the bed like she was made of spun glass and crystallized hope, never letting go, hands always touching—Maya's fingers in her hair, Parker's arm around her shoulders, Tessa hovering close like a protective sister already.

They formed a protective circle around her, like they could shield her from the entire universe through proximity alone.

"You have no idea what you put us through," Maya continued, but she was smiling through her tears, stroking Nyxavere's cheek with infinite tenderness. "The nightmarish thoughts I had. The scenarios I imagined. Every terrible possibility my mind could conjure."

Parker nodded, running his fingers through her hair like he used to when she was small. "I scoured seventeen different dimensions with my senses looking for traces of you. I may have accidentally terrified several minor deities in the process."

"You could gave terrified major deities too," Tessa chimed in with a grin. "I was waiting to hear about Zeus having panic attacks knowing something was coming for him."

Nyxavere giggled at their worry and love, the sound like silver bells wrapped in pure joy. "You guys are so dramatic. I was fine. I was safe. I was just... processing some things."

"Processing?" Maya's voice went up an octave. "PROCESSING?"

"Mom, you're getting the scary voice," Nyxavere observed with the kind of calm that only came from being omniscient and slightly amused by mortal concerns.

Tessa couldn't help but laugh. "Oh, you haven't seen scary voice yet. Wait until she finds out you're not on her side in the Empress race; she won't give you dinner for months."

"I don't eat regular food anymore," Nyxavere said matter-of-factly. "I sustain myself on cosmic energy and the tears of my enemies."

There was a beat of horrified silence.

Then she grinned. "Kidding. I found some really good interdimensional pizza; I will go for that."

The relief-laughter that followed could have powered small galaxies.

Tessa flopped down beside her on the bed, bumping their shoulders together. "Okay, I like you already. We're going to get along great."

"I know," Nyxavere said with the confidence of someone who'd probably already seen their entire friendship play out across probability threads. "You're going to teach me how to be properly sarcastic, and I'm going to teach you how to bend reality with your thoughts."

"Deal," Tessa said without hesitation.

Maya shook her head, but she was beaming. "I can't believe how easily you two are clicking. It's like you've known each other for years."

"We have, in a way," Nyxavere said cryptically. "Time works differently when you can see all the possible futures. In half of them, Tessa's already like my favorite aunt."

"Only half?" Tessa pretended to look offended.

"The other half, you're my favorite Big sister," Nyxavere clarified with a grin that could have lit up dead stars.

But throughout all of this—all the laughter and tears and desperate affection, all the rebuilding of a family that had thought itself broken—Zhang Ruoyun kept her distance.

She sat like a beautiful statue made of controlled flame, watching but not participating. Smiling when appropriate but never quite letting her guard down.

And that was what made her scales itch with wrongness.

She was the fucking Phoenix of Balance. She could sense the emotional resonance of beings across dimensions. She could feel the weight of souls, the texture of thoughts, the very essence of what made someone who they were.

No matter how strong Parker's omniscient daughter was, no matter how perfect her control over her own presence, there was no way—NO FUCKING WAY—that Zhang couldn't sense her when she was this close to them.

But she couldn't.

Nyxavere felt like... nothing. Not empty, not void, not hidden.

Just nothing.

Like trying to sense the emotional weight of a reflection in a mirror.

And that terrified her more than any cosmic threat ever could.