The next morning, the Kagu Ancestral Estate was a hive of activity. The immediate, explosive relief of my return had given way to the grim, necessary logistics of a post-war reality. The Red Chalice Cult, though leaderless, was not entirely gone. Lyra's brother, now rescued, required debriefing and care. The 7 Demon Lords, now unchecked, were a looming, existential threat that Tiamat and Luna were already beginning to analyze with new urgency.

I sat through the initial strategic meetings, my new divine presence a heavy, anchoring weight in the room. I gave my report. I listened as Cecilia, Alastor, and Ren formulated the initial containment and intel-gathering plans. I felt the weight of their stares, the new, subtle distance my transformation had created. They were my family, my partners, but I was also, now, something… other.

After hours of this, Alice met my gaze from across the table. She saw the exhaustion beneath the divinity, the need to reconnect with the reason I fought, not just the methods. She gave a single, subtle nod. "Go," she said, her voice quiet but carrying, silencing the room. "Be with your daughter. We can handle this for today."

I didn't need to be told twice. I gave her a look of profound gratitude, nodded to the others, and without a word, tore a clean Grey seam through the air.

The cold, high-altitude air of the Kagu estate vanished, replaced instantly by the familiar, comforting quiet of my Avalon penthouse. Sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, illuminating the comfortable, lived-in space that felt more like home than anywhere else. The faint, sharp scent of ozone and solder hung in the air, a sign that my daughter was, as always, hard at work.

I found her in her workshop, the room now a sprawling testament to her genius, overflowing with components, holographic schematics, and half-assembled prototypes. She was fifteen now, taller, leaner, her dark hair pulled back in a messy, practical ponytail, wearing an oil-stained jumpsuit. She was hunched over an intricate assembly, goggles pushed up onto her forehead, the tip of her tongue sticking out in concentration.

She hadn't seen me during the brief, chaotic return at the Kagu estate. She had been secured elsewhere, as planned. This was our first moment.

I leaned against the doorframe, just watching her for a long moment, letting the simple, grounding act of observing her work, her focus, begin to unravel the tight, cold knot of divinity and grief still coiled in my chest. The memory of our last meeting, the "farewell" before the battle, felt like a lifetime ago. I had made her a promise, and I had returned.

She must have sensed me, some subtle shift in the air, or perhaps my new divine presence was a hum she couldn't ignore. She didn't startle, but simply finished the delicate connection she was soldering with a surgeon's steady hand. She powered down the iron, set it carefully in its cradle, and slowly, almost hesitantly, swiveled on her stool to face me.

Her eyes, so much like my own, scanned me. They took in the lingering traces of the battle, the torn clothes, the profound exhaustion. But they also saw what the others had seen: the change. The new, settled weight. The stillness. The fundamental shift in my being. Her gaze was sharp, analytical, but beneath it, I saw a question, a fragile hope.

"Daddy?" she whispered, the word small, uncertain.

"I'm home, little star," I said, my voice rougher than I'd intended.

That was all it took. The composure of the fifteen-year-old genius shattered. Her face crumpled, and a raw, relieved sob tore from her throat. She launched herself off the stool and ran, crashing into my chest with a force that, for the first time, almost felt like it could move me.

I wrapped my arms around her, lifting her off the ground, burying my face in her hair, holding onto her as if she were the single, solid point in a universe of chaos. She was. My anchor.

"You're okay," she sobbed into my shoulder, her small body trembling with the release of two years of suppressed fear, culminating in the terror of the last few days. "You're okay, you're here, you came back."

"I'm here, Stell," I whispered, holding her tight, letting her familiar, real presence chase away the last, cold echoes of the sanctum, the lingering ghost of Emma. "It's over. She's gone. I promised, didn't I?"

We spent the rest of the day together, a necessary, grounding return to normalcy. I consciously, deliberately, set aside the new, vast power thrumming within me. I set aside the complex understanding of Ten-Circle Magic, the weight of Sword Sovereignty, the looming threat of the Demon Lords. Today, I was not Divine. I was just Dad.

We didn't talk about the fight. We didn't talk about Alyssara. I simply sat cross-legged on the floor of her workshop, a silent, attentive audience of one, while she, buzzing with a renewed, vibrant energy now that her fear was gone, explained her latest breakthrough.

"See?" she said, her hands flying, pointing to a complex holographic schematic. "The problem with the kinetic driver wasn't the substrate, it was the harmonic resonance cascade. But my friends at Slatemark Academy," she mentioned them with a familiar, fond exasperation, "they kept trying to solve it with rune-based dampeners. So I built a non-magical conceptual buffer, using layered, phase-shifting alloys..."

I just listened. I let her brilliant, logical, real world wash over me, cleansing the psychic residue of the battle. I handed her tools. I held components steady. I grounded myself in the tangible, objective physics of her universe, a universe where rules were constant, where fantasy couldn't rewrite the laws of thermodynamics.

At some point, Reika appeared silently in the doorway, a tray in her hands. She didn't speak, just gave me a small, soft smile of understanding before setting down two plates of food and two glasses of water, then vanished as quietly as she'd come.

Stella and I ate on the floor, surrounded by her projects, arguing about the questionable plot twists in her favorite holo-series. She was fifteen, a burgeoning genius, a minor celebrity in the circles that mattered, and completely unfazed by the fact her father had just returned from killing a god. She was just... Stella.

As evening fell, casting long, peaceful shadows into the cluttered workshop, her energy finally flagged. A massive, jaw-cracking yawn caught her mid-sentence.

"Come on," I said, my voice finally feeling like my own again. "Break time."

We migrated to the living room sofa. I collapsed into the cushions, the sheer, profound weight of the last two years, culminating in the battle and my own transformation, finally settling into my bones. Stella grabbed a blanket, climbed onto the sofa next to me, and curled up, her head resting on my shoulder. A simple, comfortable holo-comedy played on the wall, its soundtrack a meaningless, soothing noise.

I looked down at her head, at the dark hair, the fierce intelligence now dormant in sleep. This was it. The reason. The purpose, distilled to its purest form. Not abstract concepts of duty or heroism, but this specific, brilliant, stubborn girl, and the future she deserved to build in a world free from the shadows that haunted us.

The war wasn't over. I knew that. The 7 Demon Lords were still out there. The Overlord was a looming, final threat. But for today... for today, this one battle was won.

I let my eyes close, the crushing, alien weight of my new Divinity finally settling, becoming not a weapon to be wielded, but a quiet, steady shield to protect this. For the first time since this nightmare began, I allowed myself to truly, completely rest.

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