The air was chilly.
A biting wind swept through the space, but it wasn't the cold that sent shivers down Riley's spine-it was the weight of the mont, the suffocating tension that hung heavy in the air.
Everyone's thoughts seed to converge on a single word.
"Mama?"
"Mama...."
"M-Mama?"
Three distinct voices, three very different reactions. Yet the sa word spilled from their lips.
Seo's soft tone carried innocent confusion, her red eyes wide as she tilted her head ever so slightly.
Snow's trembling voice was filled with heartaching confirmation, her hands balling into fists at her sides as if bracing herself for sothing unbearable.
Alice's voice, on the other hand, quivered with thinly-veiled denial, like her mind refused to process the implications of what she had just heard.
Eventually, two pairs of eyes turned toward him.
Snow and Alice.
Their gazes burned into him like searing flas, full of questions that carried a weight far heavier than words could express.
"Riley..."
Snow's voice was sharp, her normally calm deanor slipping as her piercing gaze demanded
answers.
"Junior..."
Alice's tone was less formal, but the dark undertone in her voice carried a dangerous edge, a cold fury barely held at bay.
Riley felt the pressure intensify. The combined stares of the two girls were suffocating.
He gulped involuntarily, his throat dry, his mind racing for so semblance of an explanation, so way to untangle this impossible situation.
But as he t their eyes-Snow's icy, calculating gaze and Alice's fiery, almost wild intensity -sothing in their expressions struck him.
It was a look he recognized.
A mory he thought he had buried deep resurfaced, unbidden.
He recalled a girl from his childhood, her face twisted in a crazed, unrelenting obsession that had haunted him for years.
Now, that sa look was mirrored in the eyes of both Snow and Alice.
Fear gripped him.
His heart raced as he tried to suppress the rising panic.
He'd faced monsters, disasters, and countless impossible situations before-but this? This was sothing else entirely.
A slew of options flashed through Riley's mind, none of them particularly appealing.
The first option was telling the truth-flatly denying his dear daughter's proclamation and labeling it as so elaborate prank.
But that ca with its own risks.
While it might stop this strange situation from spiraling further, it would open the door to an even more dangerous conversation:
"If she's lying, then who is the mother?"
The second option was to play along, using the opportunity Laura's sudden declaration had created to escape the mont unscathed.
Yet this route ca with an equally troubling consequence.
Agreeing with Laura, even tacitly, would cause great misunderstandings-and Riley could already feel the sting of future accusations brewing in Snow and Alice's sharp gazes. His choices were painfully limited.
And the more he thought about it, the more he realized just how precarious his position was.
Riley's gaze flickered briefly to Snow, her calm exterior barely hiding the inner storm brewing beneath.
And then to Alice, her fiery eyes burning with suppressed frustration, her mind clearly racing to make sense of the unfolding chaos.
He swallowed hard, recalling a very specific individual from his past.
The dragon hiding behind an innocent façade.
Liyana.
No.
He couldn't let their attention shift to her.
The re thought made his stomach tighten with anxiety.
Getting Snow and Alice involved in anything related to Liyana was too dangerous.
Because as far as Riley knew, his fiancée was every bit as unpredictable as Rose when it ca to certain actions.
And unlike Rose—whose dangerous whims were often wrapped in calculated grace-Liyana's unpredictability ca with an untad intensity Riley was far too familiar with.
After all, he'd spent most of his childhood navigating the minefield that was Liyana's peculiar
logic.
Riley clenched his fists subtly, his mind solidifying around one absolute truth:
He couldn't let Liyana beco the center of attention.
'She probably ca to the conclusion that I couldn't let them know about Liyana...'
Riley mused, analyzing Laura's sudden actions.
Her motives remained a mystery, but he didn't let the thought linger too long.
His focus shifted to the present, and more importantly, to the opportunity Laura had just handed him.
If his dear daughter was crafting so elaborate, double-edged prank to give him a ans of escape, he couldn't afford not to take the bait.
Taking a deep breath, Riley turned his attention to Laura and summoned the inner actor that had gotten him out of trouble so many tis before.
His expression softened into one of pure, innocent confusion, masking the rising tension in
his chest.
"Laura..." he began, his voice steady but laced with just the right amount of disbelief. "Seo is
your mother?"
The room froze.
Laura's lips curved into a sly smile, amusent practically radiating from her face as if to say,
"Good move, Papa."
Snow and Alice, on the other hand, had entirely different reactions.
Their eyes widened in synchronized shock, and the sa question imdiately ford in
both their minds.
"What do you-"
Before they could finish, the swirling energy in the air surged with a deafening hum.
The tension snapped as reality around them shattered like glass, filling their vision with an
overwhelming flash of blank white.
The oppressive weight of the domain lifted in an instant.
When the light faded, Riley found himself standing back in his room, the familiar surroundings a stark contrast to the chaotic scene monts earlier.
His eyes darted to the others, quickly assessing their state.
Snow and Alice appeared disoriented, blinking in confusion as they tried to process the
sudden shift.
Seo, anwhile, stood rooted in place, her face frozen in a mixture of disbelief and embarrassnt, clearly still reeling from what she had just heard.
...
'We're back...'
The words echoed faintly in my mind as the reality of the room settled in.
Alice's confused face was the first thing I noticed, her golden eyes darting around as if
scanning for residual mana.
Her focus seed to be entirely on the abrupt destruction of Wonderland, her expression tinged with confusion and curiosity.
Snow, anwhile, was quiet but visibly perplexed, her gaze sweeping over the room before locking onto with an unspoken demand for answers.
Seo, still in a hugging position, tilted her head, her crimson eyes flickering with innocent
confusion.
It seed to dawn on her that the person she had been holding monts ago had vanished from her arms, leaving her questioning reality itself.
As for , mana was slowly stabilizing within my body after the chaotic whirlwind of the domain collapse. Yet my mind wasn't afforded even a mont of peace.
Laura's whimsical smile flashed in my mory, a clear reminder of how she had effortlessly
cornered with her antics.
"Hehehe~ Papa! Try cranking that thing up!"
"Oh yeah, Papa! Mama was looking for you-she looked really angry~!"
"Ah~ Papa, look! I made this for you-why don't you drink it!"
A parade of mories ca rushing back, each one featuring Laura's playful, mischievous
grin.
Though she was ant to be nothing more than a fragnt of soone I once knew, a person confined to my mories, her presence back then had felt undeniably real. Her deanor, her personality—it was as if nothing had changed.
Despite the trouble she'd caused, her actions had provided with a ans to divert their
attention away from Liyana.
But the reprieve was short-lived.
"Riley... that girl... who was she?"
Seo's innocent, inquisitive voice cut through the tense atmosphere like a blade.
As if on cue, every pair of eyes in the room turned back to , their gazes heavy with
expectation.
Alice's sharp stare held questions she didn't voice, while Snow's cool, analytical eyes
demanded explanations.
Even Seo, though more naïve in her approach, seed genuinely curious, tilting her head
slightly as if that would help her understand.
The weight of their collective scrutiny bore down on .
'Hahaha...'
A nervous chuckle escaped my lips, beads of sweat forming on my temple.
Well, I thought, if I was going to escape unscathed, I'd have to play this carefully.
Feigning innocence seed like the best option for now.
Ti to crank out a great excuse. After all, what better way to sidestep suspicion than with a perfect act of cluelessness?
Clearing my throat, I put on my most confused yet earnest expression and prepared to talk my
way out of this ss.
"Now, about that girl...you might be the mother?"
Now then plan you might be the mother comnce...
Throughout her life as a Shadow Knight, Amana had been trained to expect the unexpected.
From a young age, she had witnessed the world's darkest atrocities, the heinous cris
people could commit, and the strange, unpredictable events that unfolded from even the smallest of actions.
Her experiences, both positive and negative, had shaped her into soone who believed she was unshakable, unflappable, and immune to surprises.
Yet, as she stood cloaked in the shadows, her eyes widened in disbelief.
What on earth is happening here?
She had co to this place under a secret directive, her movents careful and precise to
remain undetected.
But now, the scene before her was far beyond anything she could have imagined.
Three girls.
Three distinct individuals, each with their own fiery personalities, were clinging to the sa
young man-him.
The very sa young man who had inflicted upon her an inescapable trauma less than a week
ago.
Mana gritted her teeth, her emotions in turmoil.
'I ca here as per the emperor's command... but what's going on right now?'
She squinted at the trio, her sharp eyes narrowing as she tried to comprehend the sheer
absurdity of the situation.
"We got married in the future.... and we had a child.."
The first voice rang out with confidence, filled with innocent honesty and certainty.
"Junior said he couldn't figure out who the mother was in his dreams, right? And Junior, you did say Laura loved playing pranks, didn't you?"
The second girl's tone was calm but carried a sharp edge of analytical reasoning, as if she were unraveling a mystery right before their eyes.
"There might be a chance she's ours, Riley," said the third girl, her voice full of cold confidence as her piercing gaze pinned him in place. "After all, I'm supposed to be your first
wife."
Amana blinked, her sharp mind trying to process the implications of the words she had just overheard.
Three girls.
Three wildly different opinions.
And in the center of it all stood him.
Riley.
Amana couldn't help but observe the subtle shifts in his expression as he tried-and failed-
to keep his composure.
He was clearly overwheld, his usually confident deanor cracking under the pressure of
their combined intensity.
'This...' Amana thought, suppressing the urge to scoff, 'is the man who brought to my knees just days ago?'
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