Felix’s voice came out weak, barely audible.

"Agatha... What are you doing here?"

The middle-aged woman tilted her head slightly, her face showing nothing.

"What are YOU doing here, dear husband?"

Felix fell silent, his mouth opening and closing without words.

Agatha lifted her walking stick, pointing toward the hallway outside.

"Leave this room... I don’t want to hear a single word from you."

Felix’s mouth opened again, but Agatha’s eyes met his and whatever he saw there made him stumble toward the door without another word.

As he passed by her, she leaned close, her whisper cutting through the silence.

"We will have a talk about this when you wake up tomorrow morning."

Felix left, his footsteps unsteady as he disappeared down the corridor.

"..."

Agatha stood motionless for several heartbeats, then began walking toward Damian.

Tap Tap Tap

Her walking stick tapped against the floor with each step, the sound echoing in the quiet room.

Time seemed to slow down as she approached.

Damian looked away, his eyes fixing on the photographs on the wall, on the empty bottle on the desk, on anything except the woman moving closer.

By now, after hearing the story about the Onyx family and knowing about what this woman had gone through, after seeing Felix’s reaction toward him, Damian already expected her to treat him the same way.

’She lost all her children except one... And that one daughter is in danger because of me.’

His hands clenched on his knees, the cuts from the broken glass still stinging despite the blood having mostly dried.

’I’m so tired.’

The exhaustion pressed down on him from every direction, mental and physical and something deeper that had no clean name.

’Tired of being something that puts everyone around me in danger just by existing.’

His awareness kept slipping, alcohol making his thoughts scattered.

’She’s probably going to tell me to leave... Or that I need to sever ties with mother and Luna for their safety.’

He heard Agatha stop in front of him, and felt her presence looming over where he sat.

’Here it comes–’

He braced himself for the words that would come, the rejection that made perfect sense and for another person telling him his life wasn’t worth the cost.

Instead, a hand touched his head.

And gentle fingers ran through his crimson hair, ruffling it with care.

’Huh?’

Damian’s eyes snapped up, confusion flooding through him.

Agatha stood there, smiling sadly down at him.

"You have suffered a lot, haven’t you, child?"

Her voice was soft, carrying something he couldn’t quite identify.

Then warmth spread from her hand into his scalp, flowing down through his entire body.

His broken bones finished healing, the fractures sealing completely. The cuts on his palm from the shattered glass closed, skin knitting back together without scars. The internal bleeding stopped, bruises fading as blood vessels repaired themselves.

Damian stared at her, his mind struggling to process what was happening.

Agatha waved her other hand.

Water materialized around Damian, flowing across his skin and clothes like living liquid.

The dried blood washed away, the gore that had covered him dissolving under the gentle current.

Whoosh

Then wind swirled around him, warm and careful, drying every drop of moisture until his skin and hair were completely clean.

Lastly, a robe appeared in Agatha’s hands, simple but well-made.

And she draped it over his shoulders with the kind of care someone might use with a small child.

Damian’s eyes never left the woman throughout all of this, watching every motion with something like disbelief.

’Why is she–’

The thought cut off as reality crashed back in.

He snapped out of whatever daze had taken hold, his voice coming out in a whisper.

"Not at all, Madam Onyx. The Vice Director hasn’t done anything to harm–"

Agatha’s eyes went dim at the address, something flickering across her face.

She interrupted him before he could finish.

"I’m not talking about my drunk husband."

She paused, meeting his gaze directly.

"And child, you should address me as Grandma."

Damian didn’t say anything, his eyes tracking away to look at the wall.

Agatha’s hand reached out, cupping his face gently and turning it back toward her.

"Although I don’t know much about you, and this is our first time meeting..."

Her thumb brushed across his cheek.

"Have you heard of an elvish saying? They say if you want to know a person, just look at the type of mental domain they awaken. It reveals their deepest truth, the core of who they are beneath everything else."

She tilted her head slightly.

"And for you to awaken a Domain of Despair..." Her voice became softer. "How much have you been through in your life, my child?"

The question hit him like a physical blow.

Only now did Damian understand what Agatha was trying to say from the start.

Complex emotions flooded through him, crashing over each other in ways he couldn’t untangle.

No one had ever asked him this question before.

Everyone only looked at the power of the domain, at what it could do, at how useful or dangerous it might be.

Nobody had looked at what it meant that despair was carved so deeply into his soul that reality itself acknowledged it.

He opened his mouth, trying to find words.

"I–"

SNAP

But before he could say anything, reality shifted.

The room dissolved around them, walls and floor and ceiling melting away like they’d never existed.

Damian found himself standing in a domain, but one completely different from his own.

’What is this?’

A beautiful sun hung in a clear sky, warm and gentle, casting golden light across everything.

Flowers spread throughout the space in every direction, colors so vibrant they almost hurt to look at.

’I’ve never seen a domain like this before.’

His crimson eyes tracked across the landscape.

Every domain he’d encountered had been built for combat or control, designed to give advantage in battle or suppress enemies.

But this...

’This wasn’t made for fighting...’

And at the center, just beside where they stood, grew a tree unlike anything Damian had ever seen.

Its trunk was massive, bark shimmering with colors that shifted as he watched. Its branches spread wide, covered in leaves that caught the sunlight and reflected it in rainbow patterns. Fruits hung among the foliage, each one a different color, each one more beautiful than the last.

’Beautiful.’

The word felt inadequate, too small to capture what he was looking at.

The moment the domain fully materialized, Damian felt something change inside him.

The exhaustion pressing down on his consciousness lifted slightly. The scattered anxiety, the constant tension that lived in his chest, the cold calculation he’d learned to wrap around himself like armor, all of it loosened.

He felt calm and relieved of all worries, at peace in a way that reminded him of–

"Mother’s embrace." Agatha’s whisper came from beside him. "This is my domain."

’Is this who you are?’

Damian looked at her, really looked at her for the first time since she’d entered the room.

’How?’

He couldn’t understand how someone could lose almost everything and still create something like this.

Agatha gestured toward the base of the tree.

"Come and sit with me."

They settled onto the grass beneath the branches, looking out at the sun hanging in the perfect sky.

Silence stretched between them for several minutes, comfortable rather than oppressive.

Then Agatha began speaking, her voice quiet.

"As I kept losing one child after another, being a mother was the only thing that mattered to me. The only thing I understood when everything else stopped making sense."

Her hands rested in her lap, fingers interlaced.

"All I ever wanted was to embrace my children. To hold them close and keep them safe from a world that kept taking them away from me."

She paused, looking up at the tree.

"And this domain manifested from that desire. A place where I could protect them, where nothing could hurt them, where they could rest and be at peace."

Her voice cracked slightly.

"Even after I lost them all except Lyandra, even after my arms became empty and my house became silent, this domain never changed... It remained exactly what it was, a place for comfort and safety and unconditional love."

She looked at Damian, her expression showing something complex.

"And neither did I... Being a mother is still the only thing I know how to be."