*KRA-THUD!*
Mirai Altair collapsed onto the imperial marble. His world-shattering declaration tore through the Emperor and his newest bride.
Imperial mechanoids immediately swarmed his broken chassis. They hoisted his bleeding form and rushed him toward the palace's medical wards.
*CLAAAAANG!*
The heavy blast doors of the Imperial war room slammed shut. The Emperor and his harem took their seats around the massive circular table in a display of terrifying symmetry.
Newly established Imperial meeting protocols were instantly enforced.
The Emperor anchored the head of the table. He crossed one leg over the other, glaring at his Wives with a heart boiling with volcanic rage over the revelations.
To his immediate right sat Veronica, the First Wife. Her spine remained perfectly straight as she methodically sorted and categorized every scrap of intel extracted so far.
To his immediate left sat Oria, the Ninth and final Wife. She cradled her belly, her heart hammering wildly against her ribs from the suffocating tension.
The seating arrangement continued in strict symmetrical order.
Eve occupied the second seat on the right. The glare of the overhead lights reflected off her clinical eyewear as she analyzed the DNA and Aether samples extracted from Mirai Altair.
Directly opposite her on the left, Roxy bared her fangs. She slammed her fist against the table, vibrating with savage fury.
In the third row, Layla casually sipped coffee laced with floral toxins. Opposite her, Kaori stoically sharpened her blade, entirely indifferent to anything but the prospect of slaughter.
In the fourth row, Camille stared dreamily at the ceiling, her mind drifting galaxies away. Opposite her, Isabella frantically swiped through holographic projections, tracking the empire's broadcast ratings from the past week.
And in the final seat... directly across from the Emperor... Celine was submerged in a deep, peaceful slumber.
As usual.
"Nyaaa... Nyaaa..."
Nixia pranced down the dead center of the table. She swaggered past each Wife, intentionally antagonizing them. She completely ignored the murderous tension choking the room.
"My Lord, what possesses us to entertain this fictional garbage?"
Isabella shattered the silence. Instead of sitting, she stood up, planting her manicured hands firmly on the black marble, shrieking at the top of her lungs.
Layla set her poisoned coffee aside. She leaned gracefully toward the Emperor, resting her cheek against her right hand.
"Ara, ara, my beloved husband. I calculated you were far too intelligent to swallow such pathetic fabrications. Are you doubting our own flesh and blood? I truly hope your honeymoon with our little bride has not routed your blood flow to your trousers."
Layla scattered her toxic venom over the Emperor and her co-wives, deliberately dialing the room's tension up to the breaking point.
Eve raised the diagnostic report. A clinical white glare flashed across her glasses.
"The sole empirical evidence supporting the narrative of this 'Mirai Altair' is right here. It remains insufficient. Even if he possesses a 100% DNA and Aether match with Our Lord and Oria, that does not eliminate a high-probability variable. This could easily be a highly advanced simulation or a deepfake engineered by our surviving enemies following the erasure of Planet Xyroth."
Layla replied, a wicked smile spreading across her lips as she hid half her face behind her hand.
"Rephrase that in a dialect the two idiots on the left can comprehend."
Eve glanced at Roxy and Kaori.
"Functionally, what I am calculating is... that..."
"You are saying it's some kind of Paradox!!!!"
Both women shot up from their seats. Roxy roared the deduction at the top of her lungs, while Kaori stated it with archaic stillness, their voices overlapping perfectly.
"Ah... functionally, yes. You can process it that way," Eve replied calmly, successfully escaping hours of draining simplification.
Camille slumped onto the floor. She yawned widely, maintaining her vacant, dreamy stare.
"Ah... how utterly dreadful if this is just a sterile Paradox. Imagine the magnificent drama if our sons truly slaughtered one another and waged a bloody war for the throne... I feel profoundly inspired to paint a canvas of Caesar's severed head held aloft by my daughter or one of his brothers."
Veronica snapped upward. A boiling vein pulsed on her forehead.
"Keep your diseased delusions entirely away from my son, Camille," she stated with freezing, absolute order.
*Meow!*
Before Camille could respond, Nixia leaped nimbly onto the table.
With calculated precision, the cat dropped directly onto the sleeping Celine's head, trampling her green hair with tiny claws.
"Ouch..."
Celine rubbed her eyes with extreme lethargy. She yawned adorably and sat up straight as Nixia retreated, curling up comfortably in her lap.
"Ummm... you are all so loud... Even the plant roots in the garden are weeping from this noise..."
Then, Celine slowly turned her head toward the blast doors where Mirai Altair had been transported.
Suddenly, all drowsiness evaporated from her eyes. It was replaced by a profound, agonizing sorrow.
"Eve, my dear..."
Celine spoke with her extremely soft, soothing voice.
"Machines and illusions do not possess bleeding souls."
Eve's eyes widened slightly behind her lenses. Celine continued, gently stroking Nixia's back.
"That man... his soul is brutally shredded. The Akasha energy within him weeps with absolute sincerity. He harbors the exact same 'Akasha' resonance as the fetus currently resting in Oria's womb... He is no illusion. He is entirely real."
Silence suffocated the war room.
If Celine's Resonance confirmed it... then the apocalyptic future was absolute reality.
Their own sons were deranged tyrants destined to turn their blades against the Emperor and their mothers!
*SLAM!*
Isabella punched the table again. She released a biting, arrogant laugh dripping with denial.
"How incredibly cheap! Do you expect me to buy into the narrative that our sons mutated into murderers, while the son of *her*..."
Isabella pointed a manicured, condescending finger directly at Oria.
"...while *her* son is the sole 'hero' who survived to deliver this convenient tale?"
Layla added maliciously, smiling behind her fan.
"Precisely. An exceptionally dramatic script... one that conveniently positions her offspring as the sole legitimate heir, while condemning all of ours. Quite the cunning strategy for a naive little bride, wouldn't you agree?"
*Enough... enough!!*
Oria could no longer endure this. Her pregnancy hormones, her agonizing terror for this temporal guest she recognized as her child, and the raw energy of "Pure Anomaly" boiling in her veins... everything coalesced, pushing her to detonate.
*BAAAAAAM!!*
Oria shot up from her chair. She slammed both hands against the table with an explosive force she had never previously exhibited.
Her eyes flared with a blinding blue and emerald light.
"He is my son!!"
Oria shrieked, unleashing an aggressive fury and shedding tears none of them had ever witnessed.
"I do not care about your denials, nor your toxic mockery... That man originated from my womb! And I believe him!"
Kaori's hand drifted toward the hilt of her blade, ready to draw steel in response to Oria's uncharacteristic defiance.
The war room teetered on the absolute brink of detonating into a bloody civil war among the Wives.
"Enough."
A single, earth-shattering roar of absolute authority terminated everything.
The shrieking voices died instantly. Every single eye snapped toward the source of that commanding frequency.
The Emperor himself slammed his fist down, violently shattering a massive chunk of the black marble table.
The crushing gravity of the Axiom of Submission flooded the entire chamber, physically suffocating everyone present before the Emperor even finished his decree.
"Enough... I believe him."