Xavier felt his breath catch as the tactical brilliance of Calypso's attack unfolded before him. She wasn't operating as a goddess now—she was wielding the memory of the stolen child like a perfectly forged weapon, aimed with devastating accuracy at her father's most vulnerable point. The emotional brutality was surgical, divine intelligence channeled through mortal anguish and delivered with the kind of ruthless understanding that came only from intimate knowledge of human frailty.
The impact on Torval was immediate and catastrophic. The High Burner reeled backward as though struck by an invisible hammer, his hands clutching at his chest as if trying to physically hold the pieces of his breaking heart together. His face—already gaunt from years of guilt and sleepless vigils—seemed to implode, decades of carefully constructed justifications collapsing like ancient stonework under an earthquake's relentless assault.
