Chapter 602: Family In Shambles
Charlotte had thought that Mika would forget their fight.
He was always moody back then, prone to saying harsh words in moments of frustration that he never truly meant.
But the anger never lasted. A few hours of solitude, a good meal, a distraction with his books or his research, and the storm would pass.
He would emerge from his room with his usual calm demeanor, and everything would return to normal.
This time was different.
The first morning after their argument, Charlotte woke up determined to make things right.
She dressed carefully in her favorite outfit, the pink dress with the ruffled sleeves that Mika had once said looked nice on her and practiced her apology in the mirror.
She would tell him she was sorry. She would promise to be more careful. She would hug him and everything would be okay.
She found him in the library, as always, hunched over a massive boom that seemed far too large for someone his age.
His brow was furrowed in concentration, his fingers tracing lines of text that Charlotte couldn’t begin to understand.
“Mika?” She kept her voice soft, tentative. “Can I talk to you?”
He didn’t look up.
“Mika? I said I want to talk to you.”
Nothing. Not even a flicker of acknowledgment. His eyes remained fixed on the page, his expression utterly unchanged.
Charlotte felt something cold settle in her stomach.
“Mika, please. I know you’re angry, but—”
He turned a page. Slowly. Deliberately. As if she were nothing more than background noise.
“Mika!” Her voice cracked with frustration. “I’m trying to apologize!”
Finally he looked at her. But his eyes were not the eyes of the Mika she knew.
There was no warmth in them. No fond exasperation. No hint of the boy who had held her hand through countless adventures.
There was only ice.
“I’m busy.” He said. His voice was flat. Empty. “Go play somewhere else.”
And then he returned to his book as if she had already left the room.
Charlotte stood there for a long moment, her apology dying unspoken on her lips.
She didn’t know what to do. She had never been dismissed before—not like this.
She turned and fled before he could see the tears welling in her eyes.
—
At dinner that night, she tried again.
The family had gathered around the massive dining table—all five Battle Angels, all the sisters, and Mika in his usual seat between Fauna and Nadia.
But the atmosphere was already strange.
Normally, dinner was a chaotic affair, with multiple conversations overlapping and laughter ringing off the walls and someone inevitably starting a food fight that the Maiden of Fate would pretend to disapprove of while secretly encouraging.
Tonight, the table was silent.
Charlotte cleared her throat. “Mika, I was wondering if you wanted to—”
“Astrid.” Mika said, turning deliberately away from Charlotte. “You mentioned you were having trouble with your history lessons. I found a book that might help.”
Astrid blinked, glancing between Mika and Charlotte with obvious disfort.
“Um. Yes. History. That’s…that’s something I’m having trouble with.”
“I’ll show you after dinner.”
“That’s…great. Thanks, Mika.”
Charlotte’s hands clenched in her lap. “Mika, I’m trying to talk to you.”
No response. He was asking Anya about some novel she couldn’t follow and didn’t care about.
The room felt suddenly colder.
“Mama?” Charlotte secretly whispered to Yelena, who had been watching the exchange with a troubled expression. “Why is Mika ignoring me?”
Yelena opened her mouth to respond, but no words came out.
She looked almost as confused as Charlotte felt, her brow furrowed with an uncertainty that didn’t belong on the face of a Battle Angel.
“I’m sure he’s just…in one of his moods.” Yelena said finally, but her voice lacked conviction. “Give him some time.”
Charlotte gave him time.
—
But when she found him in the library that afternoon and tried to strike up another conversation, the result was exactly the same.
Mika sat at his desk, his pen moving steadily across a page of notes.
Charlotte talked and talked, filling the silence with chatter about anything she could think of—the weather, her toys, a funny thing she’d seen in the garden.
Mika didn’t respond. Didn’t look up. Didn’t acknowledge her existence at all.
“Mika, you’re being mean!” She finally burst out, her hands balling into fists. “Why won’t you talk to me?”
He turned a page. Kept writing.
“MIKA!”
He looked up then. But the expression on his face made Charlotte’s protests die in her throat.
It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t frustration. It was nothing.
He looked at her as if she were a stranger. As if she were no one.
Charlotte’s lower lip trembled. She took a step back, then another. And then she turned and fled, her eyes burning with tears she refused to let fall.
—
The days that followed were the worst of Charlotte’s life.
She tried everything. She tried to drag Mika away to play, grabbing his hand and pulling with all her strength.
But he simply looked down at her with that same deadpan expression, and her grip loosened.
She couldn’t maintain her usual bratty insistence under that gaze. It was like trying to demand attention from a statue.
She tried to speak to him while he cooked dinner, asking questions she knew he would normally answer.
“Mika, what are you reading about today?”
“Mika, do you want to watch a movie later?”
“Mika, I saved you the last cookie because I know you like them.”
Nothing. He would turn to someone else—Astrid, Anya, anyone—and start a pletely different conversation as if Charlotte hadn’t spoken at all.
She tried to corner him in the hallway, blocking his path with her arms spread wide.
“You can’t ignore me forever! I’m not moving until you talk to me!”
Mika simply stepped around her and continued walking.
He was blatantly ignoring her just like he had said he would. And this time, he wasn’t going to concede so easily.
And it wasn’t only Charlotte. The Battle Angels, too, found themselves on the receiving end of Mika’s cold shoulder.
When Yelena tried to speak with him about his studies, he answered in short words and excused himself at the earliest opportunity.
When Fauna reached out to stroke his hair—a gesture he usually tolerated with shy embarrassment—he pulled away before her fingers could touch him.
When Nadia sat beside him in the garden, hoping to share one of their fortable silences, Mika stood up and walked away without a word.
And just like that the family, which had always been noisy and full of life, fell into a somber, oppressive silence.
This made sense as Mika was the gear that kept them all running.
Not because he dominated conversations or demanded attention—quite the opposite.
He was the quiet center around which everything else revolved.
His steady presence was the anchor that kept them grounded.
His rare smiles were the sunlight that brightened their days.
His approval, quietly given, was the validation they all secretly craved.
And now that anchor was gone.
—
“What is wrong with me?”
Fauna whispered to herself one evening, sitting alone in her room.
“Why didn’t I listen to him? He was only trying to protect her. He was right all along.”
—
Yelena paced her study, replaying the confrontation over and over in her mind.
The boy she had sworn to protect had e to her with genuine fear in his eyes, and she had dismissed him.
How could she have done that? How could she have failed him so pletely?
—
The Maiden of War picked fights with training dummies, working out her frustration in violence because she didn’t know how else to process what she was feeling.
—
And the Maiden of Fate sat in her study for hours, her calculations spinning in endless circles, trying to understand how everything had gone so wrong.
—
And shockingly, Charlotte’s blessing, which had always passively influenced their minds to support her was suddenly meeting resistance!
Not because the blessing had weakened, but because the thought of Mika being angry with them was so unbearable that it overrode even her control.
They found themselves thinking thoughts that Charlotte’s influence should have suppressed—wondering if they had been wrong, questioning their own judgment, remembering all the times Mika had warned them and they had dismissed him.
“Maybe he was right.” Yelena murmured one evening, staring at the empty chair where Mika usually sat. “Maybe we should have listened.”
But even as she said it, she couldn’t bring herself to act on the thought.
Charlotte’s blessing still held sway, still smoothed away the sharp edges of their doubts. They could recognize that something was wrong. But they couldn’t break free.
Nadia had it worse.
—
Everyone else in the family had learned to interpret her subtle cues, but Mika was different. Mika didn’t need cues. He simply knew.
When she was sad, he would sit beside her in silence, his presence a fort that required no words.
When she was frustrated, he would bring her tea and a book he thought she might enjoy.
When she was happy, he would smile at her in a way that made her feel seen. Understood. Loved.
Now, when she entered a room, Mika would find a reason to leave.
It happened again and again.
She would walk into the library, and he would gather his books and excuse himself.
She would sit down at the dinner table, and he would suddenly remember something he needed to do in the kitchen.
She would try to catch his eye across a room, and he would look through her as if she were made of glass.
Each time, it felt like a knife being driven into her heart.
And Nadia, who could not express her pain through tears or words, expressed it through the earth itself.
The first tremor happened three days into Mika’s silence.
A small shake, barely noticeable—a few dishes rattling in the cupboards, a picture frame tilting on the wall. The family dismissed it as nothing.
The second tremor, a day later, cracked a window.
The third tremor, two days after that, sent books tumbling from their shelves and woke the younger children from their sleep.
“Mama?” Her daughter asked, frightened. “What’s happening?”
Nadia couldn’t answer. She was sitting on the floor of her room, her arms wrapped around her knees, her entire body trembling with the force of emotions she couldn’t release.
The ground shook in sympathy with her grief, and she didn’t know how to make it stop.
Because Mika was the only one who had ever known how to make it stop.
And Mika…
Mika wasn’t there anymore…
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