Parker was halfway down the hallway, his conversation with Diana and Isabella still echoing in his mind, when the universe hiccupped.
It wasn't dramatic—no thunderclaps or flashing lights. Just a subtle wrongness that made his skin crawl and his teeth ache. The kind of feeling you get when someone's watching you from the shadows, except the shadows were reality itself.
He stopped mid-stride, his hand instinctively reaching for the wall to steady himself. "What the hell?"
The shift rippled through existence like a stone dropped in still water, and Parker felt it in his bones, in his blood, in the very core of what made him the Prince of Existence. Something had changed.
Something fundamental.
But before he could process what—
Badump! Badump! Badump!
The heartbeats hit him like a freight train to the soul.
