Chapter 1472: Prisoners of the Progenitors Awakening

Danton and the Lord had left Marcus’s quarters the previous night without believing a word of his performance. To anyone less familiar with him, the scene might have been convincing: Marcus seated beneath lamplight with a book across his lap, clothes immaculate, breathing steady, his aura seemingly unchanged.

Even his irritation had been appropriate, which troubled Danton most.

An innocent Marcus Heavenchild would have demanded to know what entitled them to interrupt his evening. He would have been offended first and cooperative whenever it pleased him.

Instead, every answer, glance and hesitation had fitted neatly into the part he was supposed to play, as though someone had studied him from the outside and supplied instructions.

The worse absurdity was the book.

Heaven and Earth Essence had convulsed across Hell’s Paradise Island. Mana had shifted, Essence currents had bowed around an unidentified will, and World Essence had appeared in quantities neither visitor could explain— the disturbance had changed the island’s spiritual breath and brought both of them rushing to Marcus’s quarters— and apparently, Marcus had considered it a suitable occasion to continue reading a book?

The Lord’s perception had passed through him more than once while Danton’s ancient senses searched from another direction. Neither found anything obvious. They questioned him, allowed him to believe his pretence had survived, and waited until they were well beyond his quarters before discussing what they had seen.

Inside another chamber, with spiritual barriers raised and precautions taken against listeners elsewhere in the Heavenchild estate, they acknowledged the difficulty: Marcus was hiding something, and neither knew what.

Their families could ill afford another hidden scheme; the alliance endured through necessity, with trust preserved chiefly for the benefit of witnesses.

Their losses had consumed people and resources. World Transcendents once counted among their greatest weapons were dead, missing or scattered, and the Coffer remained beyond their reach despite what they allowed the wider world to believe.

The Progenitor Plan had become a necessity rather than an ambitious means of securing supremacy.

Marcus understood that.

Even with only fragments of his ancient memories awakened, he was an Original Progenitor, possessing knowledge older than most ten-hundred-year-old monsters and many realm rulers would slaughter one another to obtain.

Danton doubted Marcus would remain idle while both houses stumbled through disaster and while their promised awakening grew increasingly uncertain.

He might be preparing something against the Maxtons, Danton himself, or both families. Perhaps the World Essence phenomenon had awakened something he intended to keep entirely to himself.

The Lord weighed those possibilities in silence with Danton, still, with ample reason to distrust the snake standing beside him as well.

Danton’s recent failure had cost them dearly, and its consequences still drove their haste.

But the Lord knew where he had failed and what had been lost. He could question Danton’s decisions, despise his explanations and watch his ambitions with an understanding of the creature before him while Marcus himself— the Lord’s very Progenitor had become unreadable.

For now, the Lord trusted Danton more.

They agreed that too many people had learned too much of the Progenitor Plan.

Henceforth, the next plan’s deepest secrets would remain between the two of them.

Marcus would receive enough to be useful, the Maxtons enough to maintain cooperation, and the remaining members of both families only what their assigned tasks required.

Everyone else could continue believing they understood where the alliance was headed.

Danton knew two dependable ways to prevent a third mouth from betraying a secret: never tell it, or ensure it never spoke again.

The first left considerably less blood on expensive carpets.

By the following morning, their agreement settled, Danton returned to the task Marcus’s disturbance had interrupted.

He had two specific individuals to collect to start the first Phase of the Progenitors awakening!

***

Sunlight lay over Hell’s Paradise Island, carrying traces of a transformation almost nobody could perceive.

Within the Heavenchild estate, Paige and Brielle had spent two weeks watching that same view from windows they were thoroughly sick of. After their brief, one-day-and-one-night escape with Phei and other princesses and his women, they had expected to return to their penthouse at Infinity Chaos Hotel.

Instead, servants had informed them that they would be remaining at the family residence for the foreseeable future.

Nobody called it confinement.

They were being asked to stay home for their safety, surrounded by beautiful rooms and expensive furniture.

Paige had almost laughed at the explanation; Brielle had.

Neither found it amusing anymore.

The estate remained immaculate though. Servants maintained gardens so perfect that they might have been threatening the flowers into bloom. Marble corridors gleamed, meals arrived punctually, and security formations hummed unseen beneath walls and courtyards. Yet gloom had settled over all that luxury, most apparent in the restless movements of the people who lived there.

Members of the main Heavenchild vanished into distant wings at strange hours. Maxtons arrived almost daily, sometimes in formal convoys, sometimes by concealed approaches where formations swallowed their vehicles before ordinary servants could identify the occupants. Elders who usually expected the world to wait for them hurried through corridors.

Conversations died within servants’ hearing, and meetings continued deep into the night.

Paige and Brielle were barred from the busiest part of the estate.

Guards intercepted even the staff who had once cleaned those corridors, while entire wings now required bloodline formations and permission from the main family. Heavenchild blood and a childhood accustomed to open doors earned the twins nothing more than polite redirection.

Something had gone badly wrong, and nobody would tell them what.

Their own quarters offered every comfort except freedom.

The room they preferred to share was larger than many city apartments, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking private gardens and the island beyond. Two enormous beds faced each other across a sitting area furnished with deep couches, screens and enough wardrobe space to accommodate lifetimes of questionable shopping decisions.

Each sister had another suite elsewhere if she wanted privacy.

After two weeks, it felt like a prison designed by an interior decorator. They missed Infinity Chaos, restaurants, shopping, pointless drives and nights that ended wherever one of the princesses decided everyone ought to sleep.

Most of all, they wanted to stop watching their new friends enjoy themselves through a screen.

The princesses had welcomed them with a readiness neither twin had expected.

As Immediates, Paige and Brielle were accustomed to distinctions between themselves and princesses or any Main Legacy. Such distinctions governed invitations, marriages and negotiations, however strenuously wealthy families denied maintaining a hierarchy. Their short time with Phei had somehow swept aside generations of social distance with remarkable ease.

The twins privately called it the Phei Effect.

Someone had added them to the group chat, which had been wonderful until it became a running account of everything they were missing. Breakfasts, shopping trips, pools, lounges and late-night gatherings filled their screens. Private conversations escaped as screenshots, embarrassing videos circulated without mercy, and Dragon Lady supplied enough adorable photographs to make their confinement, since Phei came back, feel personally offensive.

Phei’s return had made the chat unbearable.

After two weeks in whatever strange hell had occupied him, the Young Dragon had come back with white hair, amethyst eyes with hidden gold and a body that had somehow become even more offensively perfect. Photographs arrived from every angle, accompanied by complaints that cameras failed to capture the real changes in his presence.

The fact that other girls who could see him whenever they pleased became insufferable.

Paige hated them with considerable affection.

Zara had provided some consolation. She continued insisting that she hated Phei, and perhaps she did; hatred had done very little for her expression when Clara photographed her catching sight of him shirtless.

Clara zoomed in, shared the evidence, and condemned Zara to an hour of merciless roasting.

Denials became threats against Clara, then threats against the entire group.

When somebody reposted the photograph with pink hearts around Zara’s face, she left the chat.

Paige and Brielle had laughed until they cried. Zara eventually returned, and everyone managed to leave the subject alone for nearly six whole hours.

Barely a day or two had passed since Phei’s return, yet his name already dominated the island more than even the approaching Price engagement and the Roth-Fairchild declaration that they struggled for attention. The Roth-Fairchild Legacy family had openly sided with the Young Dragon and broken from the wider coalition, but people seemed equally eager to discuss his hair.