Novel Full Chapter 1035: The Edge of the World
Chapter 1035: The Edge of the World
Much as I wanted to bend Catherine and Dominique over that desk and fuck them into another three hours — hell, another three days — they were just as eager about the Ghost Mansion as everyone else.
After cleaning themselves and changing into fresh dresses which they’d apparently only worn the ruined ones to welcome me in the first place, like the thoughtful little offerings, we boarded the van and were off again.
Catherine’s fresh dress was simpler—black, fitted, understated in a way that let her new haircut do the talking. Dominique chose deep burgundy, her gold choker still proudly at her throat, the only survivor from the previous outfit.
They both settled into the van with the quiet satisfaction. Their sisters received them without comment — a few knowing looks, a smirk from Madison who could smell fresh sex the way dogs smell fear, and Amanda’s single raised eyebrow that communicated everything a full interrogation would have.
I didn’t mind not having them in the office. Not one bit. I knew for damn sure the Ghost Mansion night wasn’t going to end without an orgy or two anyway — probably more like four or five, knowing my women.
The anticipation would just make it sweeter. After all, what’s the point of being a god if you can’t make your women beg for round two?
The van took off through the LA night, carrying thirty-plus women toward something most of them had only heard about in whispered conversations and secondhand stories from Soo-Jin and Madison.
The two who had actually been there once and come back different in ways they couldn’t quite explain but couldn’t stop talking about either.
Mortals and their little legends.
The city thinned outside the windows. Suburbs gave way to stretches of dark. Streetlights grew sparse.
The ambient noise of LA — sirens, traffic, the low-frequency hum of ten million people existing simultaneously — faded until the only sound was the van’s engine and the soft murmur of thirty women talking, laughing, dozing against each other’s shoulders.
Margaret was asleep in her massage chair, looking far too peaceful for a woman carrying my child. Patricia sat beside her, reading something on her Quantum Watch, one hand resting protectively on her and Margaret’s belly.
Mom was in the row behind me now, talking quietly with Maria about hospital schedules and patient loads — two women who knew each other for so long and now found each other here, on common ground while I sat here pretending I wasn’t already planning how to ruin them both later.
Genevieve and Eziel had Maya between them, the three sharing headphones and watching something on a tablet that was making Maya laugh so hard her glasses kept sliding off.
Isabella had migrated to Anastasia’s corner and was asking questions about biotech research that Anastasia answered with the focused enthusiasm of a genius who’d finally found someone willing to engage with protein folding at midnight.
How adorable.
My harem, playing house while being ferried toward something far older and darker than any of them could truly comprehend.
My women. In transit. Between one world and the next. How quaint.
Soon we reached the Chasm.
The gap between the world they knew and the world they were about to enter — the one I allowed them to glimpse.
The van pulled to a stop on the cliff where the known world simply... ended.
Where pavement gave way to nothing, where city lights faded into an expanse of darkness so complete it felt like looking into the space between stars.
The Chasm stretched out ahead of us — a void that had no business existing forty minutes outside a city, a place where geography became suggestion and reality bent around something that predated maps, gods, and my own considerably impressive ego.
The signs we’d passed on the way up were still there.
DEAD END. ROAD ENDS AHEAD. NO OUTLET.
PRIVATE PROPERTY—TURN BACK.
DANGER—CLIFF AHEAD. LAST WARNING.
Each one more desperate than the last, left by some poor fool who knew what waited at the end and wanted to spare others the discovery. How touching. How utterly pointless.
I stepped out first and my women followed, gathering at the edge in a cluster of evening gowns and travel clothes and confused little murmurs, staring out into the dark like lost lambs.
The wind came up from below — cold, old, carrying a scent that didn’t belong to any geography I’d studied.
Salt and stone and something deeper, something mineral and ancient that coated the inside of your nostrils and settled into your lungs like it intended to stay. The void below wasn’t just dark. It was active. Aware.
The same hungry emptiness that had once whispered jump to Soo-Jin the first time she stood here, the same pressure against the skull that felt less like vertigo and more like something vast taking notice of your insignificant presence.
A world I didn’t know much about but was sure as hell contained something beyond that empty space — something the mansion was built to guard or hide or keep from wandering into places it didn’t belong.
My best guess? The mansion and the Chasm itself were gatekeepers — sentries standing watch over whatever lay beyond the edge of the world I understood.
It was generous of reality to roll out the red carpet for me.
What struck me wasn’t the Chasm itself, though. It was my women’s reactions.
Or rather, their complete lack of them.
They weren’t surprised. Not like Soo-Jin and Madison had been when she they saw it — that wide-eyed, stumbling-backward, what-the-fuck-is-that shock of someone whose understanding of reality had just been grabbed by the throat and violently shaken.
Not like ARIA’s first encounter, where even a divine intelligence had needed several seconds to process that she was looking at something that shouldn’t exist according to every law of physics she’d mastered.
My women looked out at the impossible darkness, and they just... nodded. Like they’d been expecting it. Like someone had already told them what they’d find here. How precious. My clever women, acting like they weren’t staring into the maw of something that could swallow them whole if I allowed it.
Soo-Jin stood apart from the group, arms crossed, watching the others with a faint smile. She remembered her first time. She’d come back since then often with ARIA for whatever reasons — understood it now, respected it, treated the Chasm like a guard dog that had learned her scent.
But she was watching the other women process it with the quiet amusement of someone who’d already survived the exam and was now observing the freshmen take it.
Cute.
None of them swayed or much of a stumbled—
Madison stood beside me, arms crossed, studying the Chasm with the same expression she wore when reviewing quarterly reports that met her expectations.
She’d told them something. All of them. Prepared them for this moment so that when they reached the edge of the world and stared into the void, they wouldn’t lose their minds or their composure or their ability to function.
She’s thoughtful.
My queen, playing den mother to my harem while I watched like the benevolent god I am.
I looked at her. She felt my gaze. Turned. One eyebrow up.
"What?" she said.
"You briefed them."
"Of course I briefed them. You think I was going to let thirty women walk up to a hole in reality without a heads-up? Half of them would’ve fainted. Anastasia would’ve tried to take a sample. Reyna would’ve thrown a bottle into it to see if it came back."
"Would it?"
"It didn’t."
"You threw a bottle into the Chasm? When?"
"With ARIA... I threw three. For science." She turned back to the void. "None of them came back."
I loved this woman. Truly. In my own slightly terrifying way.
The Chasm seemed to look back to me. Patient. Eternal. Whatever lay beyond it humming with a frequency I could feel in my bones but couldn’t name.
And somewhere across that impossible distance, the Ghost Mansion was waiting for us too. The warm stone. The mirrored walls. The fountain that flowed upward. The gardens that moved when you looked away.
The face carved into the tower that tracked your movement with window-eyes.
The beach below the cliff where waves broke in patterns too perfect to be natural.
All of it waiting. The way it always waited. Like it had been built for this specific night, this specific group, this specific moment when thirty women and a goddess and a boy from Lincoln Heights would cross the threshold together — because even ancient voids know better than to keep a Dark Lord waiting.
"Alright," I said, voice low but carrying on the wind. "Let’s go to our new home."