CHAPTER 148: CHAPTER 148: UNDERWHELMING

White ether burned like a small sun above the marble dais. The chanting of priests rattled the pillars, reverent and exultant, drowning the hall in sound. At its center, Theobald stood drenched in it, blond hair blazing, blue eyes open now and shining with something new and terrible. His arms were raised, power spilling from his palms in arcs of light.

He was still smiling when the space behind him cracked open, a seam of red-black light like a tear in reality. Heat gushed out, scattering the incense smoke.

Victor stepped through it.

A man in a deep navy shirt, cuffs rolled, black-stone ring gleaming on his hand, crimson eyes burning with quiet amusement. He might have been arriving at a board meeting, except for the way the ether bent around him, rippling like fabric trying not to tear.

"Theobald," Victor said, voice low, even polite, as he walked across the sigils without so much as a flicker. "Congratulations."

The newly ascended god turned toward him, white power coiling off his skin. "You’re too late," he said, smiling smugly, voice ringing with the echo of priestly chants. "I’ve already stepped beyond you."

Victor’s head tilted, a faint glint of teeth at the corner of his mouth. "Beyond me?"

Theobald’s smile faltered the instant Victor moved.

It wasn’t a human move, but the space between one heartbeat and the next simply... inverted, and where Victor had been standing there was now only an outline of crimson light.

The air bowed.

The chants stumbled.

And then the outline filled, a figure rising like a memory of empires burned into the bones of the world. Victor’s robe was a mantle of living crimson stitched through with veins of molten gold that pulsed like arteries. Every fold carried the weight of an emperor’s procession and the hush of a battlefield before the charge. When he shifted, the edges dissolved into cinders of ether and fell like red snow.

His hands emerged from the sleeves, pale and long, fingers jointed like carved bone, not dead but too perfect to be human. Power coiled around them in slow, deliberate rings, a predator’s patience made visible. Where his face had been was a skull, bone-white from centuries of worship, every plane catching the light of Theobald’s white ether and twisting it crimson. In the eye sockets burned two suns of steady fire.

Above it all rested a crown of six faintly translucent skulls, each one a story of a god who had tried and failed. They floated a hair’s breadth above the circlet itself, orbiting in slow, impossible balance, whispering power like distant thunder.

The ether in the temple recoiled. Columns of white light bent inward, the symbols under Theobald’s feet flickering as though a wind had passed through them. The priests’ voices dropped to ragged murmurs, some falling silent altogether.

And Theobald, newborn god, white ether still streaming from his skin, felt it hit him with instinct, the way prey recognizes a predator in the dark. His heart lurched, and his throat closed. He didn’t need anyone to tell him the name.

God of Destruction, the people called him. But what Theobald saw was older: the Death of Gods.

The thing standing before him was the reason no pantheon had ever lasted long enough to grow old.

Victor’s skull tilted a fraction, the fire in his sockets narrowing. When he spoke, his voice was still velvet-dark but carried an undertone like mountains breaking.

"Congratulations on your godhood."

The word rolled out at once from nowhere and everywhere, vibrating through the marble like a second heartbeat. "There is One above us both, older than your priests’ chants, older than my crown. Respect its laws and you may enjoy your time as a god."

He took one slow step forward, the crown of skulls whispering against the white ether until it flickered like a candle in a sudden wind.

"Break them..." the pause was as heavy as falling stone. "... or even try to bend them, and you will meet me again on less friendly terms."

The fire in his sockets burned brighter. "I am the executioner."

For a heartbeat, Theobald forgot to breathe or if he needed to anymore.

The white ether that had been rising from his skin faltered, shuddered, and spilled back toward the marble as if it, too, recognized something older. The chants around the dais staggered; one of the priests dropped to his knees without knowing why.

The newborn god stared at the figure before him, the skull crowned in the relics of six fallen deities, the robes that moved like veins of molten gold, the eyes that burned steady as suns, and the smug smile he’d worn cracked at the edges.

This was the one they whispered about in fragments, the one who didn’t need temples or prayers, whose name had been erased and yet still endured.

Theobald’s pulse hammered hard enough to make his newly forged power slip. In a flash of instinct older than language, he understood: Victor didn’t need worshippers, didn’t need a cult, and didn’t need the weight of a name carved into stone. He was a god whether anyone bowed or not. Hide his name, burn his likeness, and he would still be there, inevitable, executioner, death of gods.

The white ether wavered above him, guttering like a candle in a draught. His voice came out quieter than he meant, stripped of the echo the priests had wrapped around it.

"You... you don’t need them," Theobald said, more a breath than a statement. "You’re a god by yourself."

Victor’s skull tilted a little further, the fire in his sockets narrowing to slits of molten red.

"Correct," he said softly, a velvet blade. "I was before their prayers. I will be after their temples."

The crown of skulls flickered once, the whisper of six dead gods curling off it like smoke, and then, with a ripple of crimson light, the monstrous form folded back in on itself. The skeletal hands blurred into long, pale fingers; the robe of living crimson became the deep navy of his shirt; the skull dissolved into the familiar, sharp-cut features of the man who ran NumenCorp. His hair was only slightly mussed from the shift, his cuffs still rolled with corporate precision, the black-stone ring on his hand catching the temple’s pallid glow.

He looked up at Theobald with an expression almost bored, like an executive who’d just finished a meeting rather than the executioner of pantheons.

"Be a good boy and leave my mate alone, Theobald..." Victor’s tone was smooth and unhurried, but it carried the same pressure that had made the ether buckle. His mouth curved in a faint, dismissive smile. "Or should I call you God of the Nation? Quite... underwhelming, honestly."

The white ether above the dais faltered again, shivering under the weight of his words. Theobald felt his own power recoil as if warned. He opened his mouth, but whatever protest or threat he’d meant to make turned to silence when Victor’s eyes glinted molten once more

Crimson light licked up from the sigils at Victor’s feet. With a soundless pulse, the space behind him cracked open again, red-black and searing, and in the next breath he was gone, the seam snapping shut as if it had never been.

The priests sagged, some falling to their knees outright, their chants swallowed by the hush that followed. Only Theobald remained standing in the center of the circle, power still coiling off his skin but his palms clammy, his heartbeat hammering a warning into his ribs. Alone, with his new godhood and the echo of a presence that had made it feel small.