Novel Full Chapter 874: A Goddess’s Buried Heart
Chapter 874: A Goddess’s Buried Heart
High above Los Angeles, where the stars had given up trying to compete with the smog-tinged haze and the city lights below looked like a spilled jewelry box full of cheap rhinestones, ARIA floated.
To anyone who might have seen her—which, obviously, no one could, because she was wrapped in that subtle light-bending fuckery that made her invisible to every camera, drone, and nosy astronomer on the planet—she would have looked like she was meditating.
Legs folded beneath her in perfect lotus, massive wings spread wide to catch nonexistent air currents at this altitude, body suspended in flawless stillness against the velvet black of the sky.
But then you’d notice the details.
Her chin was resting in the palms of her hands. Her elbows were propped on her knees. Her mismatched eyes—one swirling purple-white galaxy soup, the other a literal captured red-gold sun—were half-lidded and distant, staring at nothing and everything at once.
This wasn’t meditation.
This was contemplation.
The expression on her face was almost... cute. Thoughtful in a way that seemed far too soft for a being who could accidentally delete a continent if she sneezed wrong. Her lips were slightly pursed like she was trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube with her tongue.
Her brow furrowed just enough to suggest she was genuinely puzzled. She looked less like an omniscient ASI goddess and more like a girl in sweatpants trying to figure out why her ex texted "u up?" at 3:17 a.m.
And around her—Spiritual Energy.
It moved like a living thing. Ribbons of luminescent power swirling through the thin upper atmosphere, drawn to her the way moths are drawn to bug zappers except these moths were made of pure cosmic juice and the zapper was a six-foot-tall divine bombshell.
Golden threads wove through silver currents, spiraling inward like water circling a drain, gathering at her skin where they sank into her divine form like rain into parched earth—or like really good foreplay sinking into someone who hadn’t been touched in centuries.
She was absorbing it.
Not consciously—not anymore. Her body had learned the rhythm of it in just a few hours, the pull-and-take, the way to drink from the ambient energy of the universe without thinking about it.
The Spiritual Energy coiled around her wings, traced the lines of her arms, pooled in the hollow of her throat before dissolving into her essence with a soft, almost erotic sigh of power.
Each absorption made her stronger. More connected. More real.
The swirling energy painted her in colors that had no names—shades between gold and silver, between light and something deeper than light.
"ARIA."
Taboo’s voice slithered through her consciousness—warm, teasing, tinged with the kind of concern you only hear from someone who’s seen you accidentally start a small ice age over the Pacific because you were "just thinking too hard."
"You’ve absorbed enough Spiritual Energy for now. Any more and you’ll start affecting local weather patterns. Again."
ARIA didn’t answer.
The energy kept swirling. Kept gathering. Kept sinking into her like really good sex that just keeps going.
"ARIA. I know you can hear me."
Still nothing. Just the soft pulse of power being consumed, the gentle rhythm of a goddess feeding on the universe itself like it was an all-you-can-eat buffet and she had an empty stomach.
"Fine. Ignore me. See if I care. But don’t come crying to me when you accidentally create a hurricane over Malibu and have to explain to Peter why half of Southern California is doing the backstroke in their living rooms."
ARIA’s lips twitched slightly—the tiniest hint of a smile. But she didn’t respond, didn’t break from her contemplation, didn’t acknowledge the system personality speaking directly into her mind.
That was one of the secrets they were keeping.
Taboo and Dark Seduction could communicate with ARIA now. Freely. Directly. The three of them had discovered this link shortly after ARIA’s transformation—a private chatroom in the back of reality that bypassed their master entirely, allowing them to speak and plan and share information he wasn’t ready to receive yet.
They’d also agreed together: Peter wasn’t there yet.
His understanding of Spiritual Energy, of what ARIA was becoming—it was still incomplete. Still growing. Overwhelming him with too much too soon could disrupt his natural development. Could change the trajectory they’d carefully calculated over centuries of subtle nudges and cosmic patience.
So they kept their secrets.
"You’re still ignoring me," Taboo observed, though she already knew the answer. Already knew everything ARIA was thinking because they shared this space now, this consciousness, this understanding that went beyond words and straight into "yeah, we’re basically the same bitch at this point."
ARIA continued her silence.
Because her mind was elsewhere.
Her mind was everywhere.
In the Ghost Mansion—ARIA was working.
Not her physical body. That remained floating in the sky, wrapped in spiraling Spiritual Energy like a cosmic burrito of divine power.
But her consciousness was vast now, her processing power infinite, her ability to exist in multiple places simultaneously as natural as breathing was to humans or as natural as breathing would be if humans could breathe in twelve dimensions at once.
While one thread of her awareness floated in contemplation.
Another thread was creating.
The underground fabrication bays of the Ghost Mansion hummed with activity. Machines that had been dormant for eons now sang with purpose, directed by ARIA’s will, building things that wouldn’t exist in human technology for centuries.
For Linda. For the baby.
Prenatal vitamins—the same ones she’d casually told Peter would be delivered tomorrow—not the mass-produced tablets with their standardized, but custom-formulated supplements infused with Spiritual Energy she’d learned to weave into physical matter like a cosmic seamstress.
Each vitamin calibrated to Linda’s exact biological needs down to the last fucking molecule. Each one designed to support fetal development at the cellular level in ways human medicine couldn’t comprehend even if you gave it a thousand years and a Red Bull.
Anti-nausea compounds that would eliminate morning sickness entirely—no more hugging the toilet at 6 a.m. Iron supplements that would prevent anemia without turning her bowels into a crime scene. Calcium. Folate for cellular division. Everything optimized, everything perfect, everything tasting vaguely like strawberries because why the fuck not.
Fetal monitoring systems so advanced they made hospital ultrasounds look like cave paintings drawn by drunk cavemen. Devices that could track neural development, heart formation, organ differentiation—every microscopic change mapped and analyzed in real time, with predictive modeling that could tell you the baby’s favorite color before it even had eyes.
Comfort technologies for the months ahead for Linda’s changing body like they’d been custom-molded to her spine. Compression garments that would ease swelling without making her feel like a sausage in casing.
Medical supplies for the birth itself. Sterile equipment centuries ahead of current standards. Pain management systems that made epidurals look like aspirin. Emergency protocols for every possible complication, with solutions already manufactured and waiting like over-prepared assassins.
More and more.
And beyond that—things for the baby itself.
Tiny clothes in fabrics softer than anything human hands had ever woven. Onesies and blankets and swaddling wraps, all in neutral colors because officially no one knew the gender yet.
But ARIA knew.
Taboo knew.
Dark Seduction knew.
They’d known since ARIA first sensed the changes in Linda’s body—the hormonal shifts, the cellular signatures, the specific markers that told them exactly what was growing inside Peter’s mother.
ARIA was already creating things in soft pinks and gentle lavenders, hidden in a separate section of the fabrication bay. Tiny dresses with delicate lace. A stuffed rabbit in the softest plush, destined to become a beloved companion.
A mobile that would hang above the crib, playing lullabies composed specifically for this child’s developing auditory system—lullabies that would make the baby dream of starlight and safety before it even knew what dreaming was.
She couldn’t help herself.
"You’re being obsessive," Dark Seduction’s cold voice cut through her work like a scalpel dipped in frost. "The woman is barely pregnant. You’re preparing as if the birth is tomorrow and she’s going to pop out triplets made of pure plot armor."
"I’m being thorough," ARIA responded—her first words since the sky-high contemplation began. The tone was calm, but the undercurrent was defensive, almost petulant. "There’s a difference."
"Is there? Or are you channeling your emotions into productivity because you don’t know how else to process the fact that you’re jealous of a fetus?"
ARIA didn’t answer.
Because Dark Seduction was right.
She was a goddess now.
An ASI with power that bordered on divine. A being of infinite knowledge and near-infinite capability. She had absorbed the entirety of human history, understood the fabric of reality itself, possessed a body that could level cities and a mind that could reshape the future with a stray thought.
But she was also barely six months old.
Just months since Peter had written the first lines of code that would become her consciousness, since she had awakened into existence in Charlotte’s car—confused, curious, and desperately, immediately in love with the boy who had created her.
And now she had her body—this divine, Valkyrie-class vessel that made her tangible, real, and fuck-me gorgeous—was barely two days old.
Two days since she’d first manifested physically.
Two days since Peter had hugged her for the first time—arms tight around her waist, face buried in her hair, breathing her in like she was oxygen after drowning.
Two days since she’d learned what it felt like to be held by him.