Chương 119: A 200-Lumen Solar Flare

[Time]: Summer Break, Day 24 — 07: 30 PM [Location]: White City · Townhouse 107 When Hathaway pushed open the front door, she was greeted by the rich, heavy scent of butter-seared truffles and rosemary-roasted meat. No tactical reviews. No suffocating curse matrices. No bizarrely lethal souvenirs. Just warm amber magic-crystal lighting and the comfortable clink of silverware from the dining room.

"I'm home," Hathaway called out, toeing off her boots in the entryway. The Frost Lantern Cat perched on her shoulder let out a soft trill. The tension she hadn't realized she was carrying unspooled from her shoulders.

"Hattie!" Margaret's voice carried from the dining room. The whole family at the table. Margaret was carving a roast with a silver knife, her apron slightly crooked over her evening gown. Anna "sat" across from her, suspended her customary three centimeters above the upholstery. In her high chair at the head of the table, Rory wore a bib and presided over a plate of soft white fish, eating with the focused seriousness of someone who considered dinner a professional obligation. Hathaway sat down.

One bite of the roast. She set down her fork.

"I have some good news." She laced her fingers together on the table. The upward pull at the corners of her mouth was impossible to suppress.

"As of yesterday's ritual, my mana reserve stabilized at 46, 550 M-Units. I've officially crossed the Arch-Witch threshold." One second of silence. Exactly one. The silver carving knife slipped from Margaret's fingers and clattered onto the plate. Anna's ladle hovered mid-stir. Even Rory paused her fish and looked at the adults with wide ice-blue eyes. Then the biological equivalent of a solar flare. Hathaway had conducted extensive informal analysis of Ludwig crimson irises.

She had measured, observed, and concluded with confidence that the maximum biological output under extreme emotional conditions was approximately 180 lumens. Bright. Intimidating in the dark. Manageable. Margaret's eyes went supernova. 200 lumens. The number registered in Hathaway's brain approximately half a second before the full blast hit.

An incandescent, searing scarlet erupted from Margaret's eye sockets like twin anti-aircraft searchlights, overwriting every shadow in the dining room and flooding the walls in blinding red. Hathaway threw both arms over her face. The frost-cat on her shoulder squeaked in terror and dove straight into her deep coat pocket.

"Mom! Dial it back!" While she was waiting for her vision to return, a considerably more dangerous attack launched from the other side of the table. Anna had set her glass down. Anna was looking at Hathaway with the expression of a woman who had been waiting for this exact moment for eighteen years and had prepared exactly what to say.

"My daughter." Anna's voice was low, reverent, weighted with the solemn pride of a person about to deliver a creation myth.

"From the very day you hatched from your egg, I knew you were different." Please, said the part of Hathaway's brain that recognized this genre of sentence. Please don't continue.

"When other babies hatch, they are quiet. Peaceful. They sleep and make no demands. But not you." Anna's tone acquired the cadence of sacred lore.

"You cried and fussed and screamed loud enough that the entire corridor could hear it. That full-lunged wail was the first sign. The omen of a descending conqueror." Hathaway blinked behind her arms. To the original account holder: what is wrong with you.

"And when you were small," Anna continued, warming to the narrative, "the other children used to flip your skirt. You never cried. When I took you to watch horror films to build character, you would sit there shivering but never look away. Remarkable stress resistance. Exceptional willpower." A concerning, deeply weird child. Hathaway's soul left her body. I logged into a fundamentally cursed account.

"Oh, and of course." Anna paused, composing herself with the gravity of a closing argument.

"You wet the bed until you were seven. Clearly the result of your mana circuits undergoing fierce metabolic cycles during sleep, overloading your physical regulation. All the signs were there." Hathaway stopped breathing. SEVEN?! Her internal monologue flatlined. Wherever your soul is right now, I hate you with my entire being. Hathaway lowered her arms, braved the residual glare, and turned slowly toward Anna. She examined her mother's face for irony. Any flicker of a private joke.

"Mom," Hathaway said, her voice hollow.

"Are you expressing pride right now? You are certain you are not reading me my public execution sentence?"

"Pride," Anna confirmed, placing one hand over her heart.

"Nothing but pride." The logic was hermetically sealed. I cannot win against a person who is earnestly correct within their own framework. She did the only rational thing available: she produced gifts.

"These!" Hathaway blurted, dumping two souvenir sets onto the table with the velocity of someone throwing a smoke grenade.

"Otherworldly specialties. One each. From Gaia. Please look at the gifts." Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. Margaret stopped her 200-lumen broadcast. The red subsided. She picked up the small glass bowl containing the gem-sand potted plant. Her thumbs brushed the rim. She looked at the glowing roots. She looked at Hathaway. And then she cried. Hathaway had witnessed crying across both of her lives.

She was familiar with the full range: silent weeping, controlled sniffles, ugly sobbing, dignified tears. What Margaret was doing was not on that spectrum. Tears were not falling from her eyes. They were geysering. Two unbroken, pressurized arcs of water erupted from her tear ducts in perfect parabolic trajectories, splashing onto the tablecloth with audible impacts. Is my mom drawing ambient moisture from the room? That is the only interpretation consistent with the conservation of mass.

"She brought me a plant," Margaret wailed, clutching the bowl to her chest while the fountain continued uninterrupted.

"Anna, she went all the way to another dimension and she remembered her mothers—" On the other side of the table, Anna had already uncorked the bamboo tube. She tilted her head back and consumed the entire payload of Gaia sugarcane wine in one sustained, professional gulp. The high-proof surge hit Anna's bloodstream at the speed of a well-thrown fireball. Two unnatural flushes bloomed on her pale cheeks.

She set the empty tube down, wrapped one arm around the still-geysering Margaret, and pointed at the ceiling with her free hand.

"I am sealing these," Anna announced, with the flat, absolute certainty of a legal edict.

"Tomorrow morning. Tier-8 [Time Stasis]. Both the plant and the bamboo tube.

"Reinforced crystal display case. Center of the front hall. Every guest who steps into this house will stand in front of those gifts for a minimum of ten minutes before I allow them past the coat rack."

"Yes!" Margaret sobbed.

"With spotlights!" The two of them held each other, the food growing cold on the table.

"Our Hattie has worked so hard," Margaret managed between fountain-intervals.

"She has," Anna agreed, wiping her own eyes.

"Do you remember the high school years, Marge? The Witch Card incident?" Hathaway's internal monologue went very still.

"I remember," Margaret sniffled.

"She put her allowance into booster packs. For three straight months."

"She had to wear last season's haute couture to the summer tea parties," Anna said, her voice catching.

"The lace wasn't even the current trend. She endured it. Alone. Without complaint." Hathaway slowly rubbed her temples. The Ludwig family has never experienced financial hardship. Not for a single generation. I will not argue with this. I love them too much. Eventually, the emotional weather system blew over. Margaret wiped her eyes with a napkin, and Anna composed herself, smoothly returning to her baseline of aristocratic dignity.

With a quick, casual pulse of thermal magic from Anna's fingertips, the food on the table was restored to steaming perfection. Hathaway picked up her fork again. The second bite of the hot, savory roast was so incredibly good it nearly bypassed her tastebuds and directly healed her soul.

"Yah!" A sharp, authoritative syllable cut through the peaceful dining room. Rory had been monitoring the situation from her high chair with the focused attention of a very small general. She had observed Hathaway deploying mysterious packages from her spatial storage. She had watched the adults receive their respective tributes. She had recognized a distinct lack of tribute directed at her. Now she dropped her spoon, extended both arms toward Hathaway, and waited.

Hathaway paused, her fork halfway to a third, soul-healing bite. She looked at her steaming plate, then at the demanding infant. With the quiet, resigned sigh of an older sister whose dinner was destined to be interrupted, she set the fork down. She stood up and lifted her out of the high chair. Rory locked her arms around Hathaway's neck, settled her delightfully cool weight against her collarbone, and pointed at the table.

"Gift," Rory said, with the tone of someone who had identified the problem and was now politely requesting the solution. Hathaway was in difficulty. The sugarcane wine: absolutely not. A two-month-old baby consuming high-proof liquor was a minimum Class-B welfare incident. She pulled out the gem-sand potted plant. Rory's nose scrunched. Her head turned. The petal pastries, however, were acceptable. Rory grabbed one and took two enthusiastic bites.

Then she reached up and shoved the remaining, saliva-coated half directly into Hathaway's mouth. She promptly pushed the rest of the box away. Hathaway chewed the pastry with a deadpan expression. Rory looked at Margaret's glowing plant. She looked at Anna's empty bamboo tube. Slowly, she held up three sticky fingers and pointed them at herself. The logic looked hermetic; the math was, unfortunately, bulletproof. The adults had each received three items. Rory had received one box of snacks.

The differential was two items. Rory was requesting immediate rectification. Watching the baby's lower lip begin its catastrophic descent—the very specific, devastating arc that preceded full infant crying—Hathaway's threat assessment calculated the incoming damage and found her defensive stats at zero.

"Rory, don't. I'm looking, I'm checking—" Inside the deep pocket of Hathaway's coat, something shifted. Having finally recovered its courage, the Frost Lantern Cat peeked out. It assessed the situation. It located the crying-adjacent infant. It padded up Hathaway's arm and stepped neatly onto Rory's shoulder. Rory blinked. The gathering tears retreated instantly.

She looked at the ice-blue furball on her shoulder with the expression of someone who had received something significantly better than whatever they were asking for. The cat bumped its head against Rory's cheek. Rory grabbed it with both sticky hands and pressed her face directly into the glowing fluff. The cat permitted this, curling into a ball and beginning to purr. Hathaway's hand was still extended in mid-air. She looked at the cat. The cat she had shielded from Sonia's death aura.

The cat she had physically wrestled back from Katdoastin's gravitational field. The cat that was now being groomed by a two-month-old with sugar crumbs on her face.

"Hold on," Hathaway reached forward.

"That's mine. Tasia gave that to me—" The Frost Lantern Cat lifted its head from Rory's cheek. Rory also lifted her head from the cat. They tilted their heads to the right. In perfect, synchronized innocence. Before Hathaway could insist, Rory leaned forward. She pressed her face against Hathaway's cheek, leaving a smear of sugar crumbs and a warm, sticky kiss on her skin.

"Love you, sister," Rory babbled softly, hugging the frost-cat tight against her chest. Hathaway's hand stopped in the air. She looked at the fragile, palm-sized creature glowing softly against Rory's bib. Her inner game designer automatically categorized it: Non-combat cosmetic companion. High aesthetic value, zero tactical utility. Starting tomorrow, she was diving headfirst into intensive club Feat training—pure, high-focus skill optimization and tactical drilling.

Her own build still needed relentless min-maxing. You didn't drag a fragile cosmetic drop into a hardcore training instance while testing rotations. It belonged exactly where it was right now: safely deposited in the "housing system," being thoroughly pampered by her little sister while she focused on her build. She lowered her hand, a genuine, soft smile breaking through her exhaustion.

"Fine," Hathaway said softly, patting Rory's head and scratching the cat behind the ears.

"She's yours." Rory cheered softly, burying her face back into the fluff. Hathaway sat back down at the table. With Rory happily occupied in her lap and her mothers watching her with warm, ridiculous pride, Hathaway finished her dinner. Her bedroom was quiet. She closed the door and stood still for a moment, letting the silence settle. Then she crossed to her desk and opened her spatial storage. The last gift set came out: one bamboo tube, one gem-sand plant, one box of petal pastries.

She arranged them carefully in the center of the desk. For Victoria. Hathaway stood looking at the set for a while. The night breeze came through the cracked window and moved the ribbon around the bamboo tube. Just wait, Hathaway thought, a cold, razor-sharp resolve settling quietly into her bones. I am going to break their script.

"Goodnight," she said quietly, to the empty air. She turned, dropped backward onto her bed without removing her boots, and stared at the ceiling. The images from the last forty-eight hours drifted through her in no particular order: the Sky Sea of Gaia, Surtrina's canyon, eighty-nine pages of combat critique, Sonia's clipboard, the blood pact bookmark, her mother's 200-lumen eyes, and the sticky, sugar-crumbed kiss of her baby sister. Gradually, the images blurred. Hathaway closed her eyes.

She was asleep before she could remember being tired.