Chapter 47 – My Dad Thinks I’m a Cult Leader and I Just Want Toast

I made it home around nine PM.

The house looked exactly how I’d left it that morning, a disaster zone of laundry and takeout containers. The normalcy was almost comforting after the day I’d had.

I dropped my keys on the counter. They skidded across the laminate and knocked over an empty soda can.

Behind me, Thalia and Loki filed in silently. No fighting, no bickering, just quiet obedience that felt deeply wrong coming from two cosmic entities who’d tried to destroy a city block six hours ago.

“Make yourselves comfortable. I’m getting food.”

“I can prepare something for you, darling.”

Thalia’s offer came soft and eager, like she was desperate to be useful.

“You’ve never cooked a day in your eternal existence.”

“I could learn. For you.”

I opened the fridge. Three-day-old pizza, half a gallon of milk that might be expired, and something in Tupperware I didn’t remember putting there.

Loki appeared at my elbow, her hair back to its normal pink but subdued somehow.

“I could manifest food, Kai. Whatever you want, Kai. Perfect food, Kai.”

“I want leftover pizza and silence.”

“I can do silence, Kai.”

She mimed zipping her lips, then locking them, then throwing away the key. The key materialized as a real object and clattered into the sink.

I grabbed the pizza box and a plate. Walked to the microwave. Put two slices on the plate and hit the timer for ninety seconds.

Both goddesses watched me like I was performing surgery.

“You don’t have to stare.”

“We’re admiring you.”

Thalia moved closer, not touching but hovering in my space.

“The way you move with such purpose, such confidence, even in mundane tasks—”

“I’m reheating pizza.”

“You’re existing. That’s enough.”

The microwave beeped. I grabbed the plate, burning my fingers slightly on the ceramic. Walked to the couch and sat down heavily.

My body ached in places I didn’t know could ache. Using the Warden Voice always left me feeling like I’d run a marathon, every muscle wrung out.

I took a bite of pizza. Room temperature cheese and pepperoni, slightly rubbery, absolutely perfect.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

I ignored it.

It buzzed again. And again. A continuous vibration that meant someone was calling repeatedly or I was getting bombarded with notifications.

I pulled it out with my free hand.

Forty-seven missed calls. Three hundred and twelve text messages. Every social media app icon had a red notification bubble with numbers in the triple digits.

“Oh no.”

I opened Twitter. Or X. Whatever we were calling it this week.

The trending topics hit me like a truck.

#DivineCommand

#GodKingKai

#HaremWar

#AstoriaApocalypse

I scrolled through the feed with growing horror.

Grainy cell phone videos of the fight, shot from dozens of angles. The diner exploding. The black hole forming. Reality tearing apart. And then me, walking through it all, completely untouched, coffee mug in hand like I was taking a Sunday stroll.

One video had fifteen million views. The caption read: “GOD WALKS AMONG US – DOWNTOWN DESTROYED BUT THIS GUY DOESN’T EVEN SPILL HIS COFFEE.”

Another showed the moment I’d shouted “ENOUGH.” The camera had glitched when I spoke, the video distorting into static before clearing. You could see Thalia and Loki collapse, could see the black hole vanish, could see reality snap back into place.

The caption: “Did he just turn off the apocalypse with one word???”

The comments were worse.

“He’s literally built different.”

“The way those goddesses looked at him after omg I need that energy.”

“Sir that’s my HUSBAND.”

“This man grabbed two reality-warping entities by the wrist and dragged them to his car like misbehaving children I’m DECEASED.”

I kept scrolling, unable to look away from the trainwreck.

Someone had already made fan art. Lots of fan art. Some of it was actually pretty good, showing me standing in the ruins with Thalia and Loki kneeling at my feet.

Some of it was extremely not safe for work.

“Why is there already fanfiction.”

I clicked on a link before my brain could stop me. The title was “The Warden’s Discipline: A Thalia/Kai/Loki Romance.”

I closed the app before I could read more than the first paragraph. Too late, the damage was done. My eyes would need bleach.

“Darling? What’s wrong?”

Thalia sat down beside me, close enough that our thighs pressed together. Her hand rested on my knee, those cold fingers tracing gentle circles.

“The internet knows what happened.”

“Of course they do. You performed a miracle in public.”

“I stopped a fight.”

“You commanded the cosmos to obey. That tends to attract attention.”

Loki plopped down on my other side, completing the Kai sandwich again. She leaned her head on my shoulder, her hair tickling my neck.

“You were so cool, Kai. So strong, Kai.”

“I was tired and annoyed.”

“You looked like you were deciding which universe to delete!”

That voice came from the kitchen.

I looked up and saw Dad standing by the fridge, eating my pizza directly from the box. He hadn’t been there three seconds ago, but that was Dad for you. Teleporting into my house to steal my food.

“How long have you been here?”

“Long enough to watch you have an existential crisis over your Twitter mentions. Also, you’re out of milk.”

He pulled out the carton, sniffed it, made a face, and put it back.

“That’s expired.”

“Everything in this fridge is expired. You need groceries, kiddo. And maybe a cleaning service. This place is a disaster.”

“Dad.”

“What? I’m being helpful! Also, speaking of helpful, we should talk about your new fan club.”

He gestured to the window. I followed his gaze and felt my stomach drop.

There were people outside my house. Not a few people, dozens of them. They’d set up what looked like a prayer circle in my front yard, all of them wearing those white robes the cult favored.

Elizabeth stood at the center, holding a banner that read “THE WARDEN’S BLESSED DWELLING.”

“How did they find my address?”

“Kiddo, you’re a government employee. Your address is public record. Also, one of them used to work for the DMV.”

“That’s a privacy violation.”

“Take it up with Human Resources. In the meantime, you’ve got a bunch of religious zealots who think this house is sacred ground.”

Dad bit into a pizza slice, chewing thoughtfully.

“You know what the best part is? They’re not wrong. Technically.”

“What?”

“Well, you do have two goddesses living here now.”

“They’re not living here!”

Thalia’s hand tightened on my knee.

“I could live here. I would be very quiet. You wouldn’t even notice me.”

“That’s a lie. You’d redecorate everything to look like a void cathedral.”

“Only the bedroom.”

“No.”

Loki bounced in her seat, raising her hand like a student.

“I volunteer too, Kai! I’d be super helpful, Kai! I could do your laundry and cook and—”

“You’d turn my laundry into sentient beings and my food into abstract concepts.”

“Only sometimes, Kai.”

Dad laughed so hard he had to lean against the counter.

“Oh man, this is gold. You’ve got them domesticated. The yandere void goddess and the chaos incarnate, fighting over who gets to do your dishes.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“It’s hilarious. You looked tired, right? That’s what you think you looked like?”

He pulled out his phone, tapped a few times, then turned it to show me a screenshot from one of the videos.

It was me, standing in the ruins, face completely neutral, holding my coffee mug. The lighting was dramatic, smoke and debris framing me like some kind of action movie poster. My eyes looked different in the photo, harder somehow, older.

I looked like someone who could end the world and wouldn’t lose sleep over it.

“That’s not what I looked like.”

“That’s exactly what you looked like, son. You think you were just yelling? You were radiating enough authority to make reality itself sit down and behave. Look at their faces.”

He swiped to another image. Thalia and Loki, both on their knees, both staring at me with expressions that mixed terror and awe and something that looked dangerously close to worship.

“You dominated two of the most powerful entities in existence. With one word. That’s not normal tired dad energy, that’s God-King energy.”

“I don’t want to be a God-King.”

“Too late, kiddo. The internet has decided. Look, you’re already getting the merch treatment.”

He pulled up another tab. Someone had already designed t-shirts with my face on them. The slogan read: “ENOUGH – The Warden Has Spoken.”

“Someone shoot me.”

“Can’t, you’re immune to everything, remember?”

Thalia shifted closer, her lips near my ear.

“I think you look magnificent in those photos, darling. So powerful, so commanding.”

Loki nodded enthusiastically against my shoulder.

“The way you grabbed our wrists, Kai. So rough, so decisive, Kai. It was—”

“I was preventing property damage.”

“You were claiming us.”

Thalia’s voice dropped to that purr again.

“You marked us as yours in front of the entire city. You showed everyone that we belong to you, that we obey you.”

“That’s not what happened.”

“That’s exactly what happened.”

Dad closed his pizza box and set it on the counter.

“Face it, son. You’re running a harem whether you like it or not. And you’re doing it with style. The way you just walked through that apocalypse like you were on your way to get the mail? Chef’s kiss. Perfect indifference. Really sells the ‘I’m too powerful to care’ vibe.”

“I just wanted pancakes.”

“And the world gave you godhood instead. That’s life, kiddo.”

I finished my pizza slice and stood up, walking to the kitchen to throw away my paper plate. Dad grabbed my wrist before I could toss it in the trash.

“Don’t.”

“What?”

“You throw that away here, someone’s gonna dig through your garbage. That plate touched your lips, that makes it a relic. You want your cult digging through your trash?”

I looked at the paper plate. Greasy, stained with pizza sauce, completely ordinary.

“This is insane.”

“This is your life now. Everything you touch is potentially sacred. That coffee mug from this morning? If you left it behind, someone’s building a shrine around it. Your car? Probably already has pilgrims taking photos with it.”

He was right. I knew he was right. The thought made me want to crawl into bed and sleep for a week.

“I need to fix this. I need to tell them I’m just a guy.”

“Good luck with that, God-King.”

Dad clapped me on the shoulder, his hand warm and solid and completely human despite what he was.

“But seriously, kiddo, you should probably say something before they start building temples. Or making you their tax-exempt religious leader. The IRS gets weird about that stuff.”

He vanished in a shimmer of light, taking the pizza box with him. Theft and fatherly advice, his two specialties.

I walked to the window and looked out at the cultists in my yard. They were chanting something, candles flickering in the growing darkness. Elizabeth was leading them in what looked like a prayer, her hands raised to the sky.

Then I saw it.

Past the cultists, down the street, a flatbed truck was parked at the intersection. On the back of the truck was a statue, massive and made of some kind of white stone.

A statue of me.

Twenty feet tall at least, arms crossed, face set in that neutral expression from the photos. And behind my head, someone had carved rays of light, like a sunburst or a—

“Is that a halo?”

Thalia appeared beside me, looking out the window.

“It’s a Divine Corona. A representation of your absolute authority over reality.”

“It looks like a halo.”

“Because that’s what it is, darling. They’re depicting you as you truly are. A god among mortals.”

“I’m a prison guard.”

“You’re so much more.”

The statue was being positioned in what looked like a permanent installation. They’d already poured a concrete base. This wasn’t temporary, this was happening.

I pressed my forehead against the cool glass.

“I have to stop them.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not a god.”

“You commanded reality itself today.”

“I stopped a fight.”

“You created a miracle.”

I turned away from the window, exhaustion hitting me like a physical weight. Thalia and Loki both watched me with those intense expressions, eager and devoted and completely overwhelming.

“I’m going to bed.”

“Shall we join you, darling?”

“Absolutely not.”

“We could just watch over you while you sleep, Kai. Keep you safe, Kai.”

“I’m immune to everything. I don’t need protection.”

“Everyone needs someone, Kai.”

I walked to my bedroom, closing the door firmly behind me. Locked it for good measure, even though I knew locks meant nothing to beings who could warp reality.

I fell onto my bed fully clothed, not bothering to change or brush my teeth or do any of the normal human maintenance activities.

Through the wall, I could hear Dad’s voice, still somehow present even though he’d teleported away.

“Sleep well, God-King! Tomorrow’s gonna be a fun day!”

I pulled a pillow over my head and groaned.

Outside, the cultists began singing. Some hymn they’d probably written themselves, all about the Warden’s glory and divine judgment.

Tomorrow I’d deal with the statue. Tomorrow I’d explain to Elizabeth that I wasn’t a deity. Tomorrow I’d figure out how to fix this massive misunderstanding before it got even more out of control.

Tonight, I just wanted to pretend I was a normal guy in a normal house having a normal Monday.

Even if the universe had other plans.