hubris and Predictable Catastrophes

I wake before the house does.

Not out of discipline. Not out of virtue. Simply because silence is the only time the world feels remotely tolerable.

The manor breathes around me—old wood, old stone, old money and nouveau riche from both sides of our families. The kind of place that makes outsiders whisper “haunted” with a mix of fear and envy. They’re wrong, of course.

We’re not haunted.

We’re just better at minding our own business.

I sit up in bed, already wearing my gloves. I never take them off. The mask follows shortly after—elastic loops settling into place like a familiar promise. Safe. Filtered. Controlled.

Beside me, Diana stirs.

“Already retreating from the mortal plane, my prince?” she murmurs, voice laced with sleep and amusement.

“I never re-entered it,” I reply.

A pause. Then a soft chuckle.

She reaches for me anyway.

I allow it.

Her fingers brush my sleeve first—always testing, always teasing—before she hooks a finger under the edge of my mask and tugs just enough to make me freeze.

“I can see you,” she says, like she always does.

“You can’t.”

“I can.”

She leans in, pressing a kiss against the fabric.

It shouldn’t count.

It does.

By the time I make it downstairs, the twins are already awake.

Of course they are.

Persephone sits at the dining table, sketching something that appears to involve a gravestone, a crow, and what I sincerely hope is not one of her teachers. Hades is beside her, reading a grammar guide with the kind of focus most people reserve for religious texts.

“Father,” they say in unison.

“Children.”

I prepare my tea—herbal, carefully measured, temperature controlled. Diana insists it helps my blood pressure. Diana is usually correct. It’s one of her more annoying traits.

“Observation,” Hades says without looking up. “The internet continues to deteriorate linguistically.”

Persephone nods. “It’s fascinating. Like watching a civilization rot in real time.”

“Don’t stare too long,” I mutter. “It might be contagious.”

They both smirk.

Good. Healthy development.

Diana enters like a storm wrapped in silk and authority—already dressed for work, already composed, already several moves ahead of everyone else alive.

“Report,” she says, pouring her coffee.

“Society remains disappointing,” I say.

“Expected.”

“The internet is collapsing.”

“Accelerated entropy.”

“The children are documenting it.”

“Excellent.”

She sips her coffee, then glances at Persephone’s drawing.

“…Is that Mrs. Halberd?”

“Yes,” Persephone says calmly.

“She assigned a group project,” Hades adds.

Diana smiles.

Not warmly.

“Ah,” she says. “A self-correcting problem.”

By noon, I’m working.

Freelance design. Clean. Predictable. No people unless absolutely necessary.

A client emails me.

Three messages, actually.

Each worse than the last.

“Hey can you just make it pop more???”
“Also my cousin says it needs vibes”
“Why is it taking so long???”

I stare at the screen.

Then I reply:

“Define ‘pop.’ Define ‘vibes.’ Define your budget.”

They do not respond.

They never do.

Instead, they attempt to redesign it themselves.

They send me their version an hour later.

It is catastrophic.

Fonts are fighting each other. Colors are committing crimes. Alignment has been executed publicly.

I fix it in twelve minutes.

They thank me profusely and call me a genius.

I bill them extra.

Human hubris remains the most reliable income stream I have.

By late afternoon, Diana returns.

She smells like lavender, nightshade, and academic disappointment.

“How many fell today?” I ask.

“Three,” she says, removing her blazer. “One attempted to argue symbolism without reading the text. Another tried to plagiarize from a source that cited itself incorrectly. The third—”

She pauses, smiling faintly.

“—attempted to correct my grammar.”

I close my eyes.

“Survivors?”

“None.”

“Efficient.”

She walks over, hooks a finger into my scarf, and pulls me just slightly closer.

“You would have enjoyed it,” she says.

“I always do. Secondhand.”

Dinner is quiet.

Not tense. Not awkward.

Just… ours.

The cat watches from the shadows. The crow taps at the window like it’s judging us. The raven is probably plotting something.

Persephone critiques a menu typo she found online.

Hades drafts a correction email he has no intention of sending.

Diana rests her head briefly against my shoulder—just long enough to count, not long enough to overwhelm.

I let her.

Of course I do.

Later that night, as the house settles again, I step onto the balcony.

The world beyond the gates continues its endless, noisy unraveling.

People chasing attention.

Validation.

Relevance.

And failing spectacularly at all three.

Inside, my family laughs softly at something only they understand.

No chaos.

No drama.

No need.

Just us.

Perfectly content.

Perfectly untouched.

And somewhere out there, someone is making a very avoidable mistake.

They always do.

I take a sip of my tea.

And wait.