CHAPTER 205: CHAPTER 205: HE TALKED TO ME

The rain hadn’t stopped, but by the time Victor rose from his chair, the storm no longer mattered. He wasn’t walking through it; he was the one calling it when it should be winter.

The air folded around him, thunder humming low, the scent of ozone curling through the room. The lights flickered once, and Elias felt his chest tighten just before it happened, the soft, impossible shift in pressure that meant Victor was no longer there.

The sound wasn’t a crack or a flare, but silence collapsing inward. The next heartbeat dropped Victor into the center of a storm.

Rain whipped sideways through the air, but none of it touched him. His presence forced it away; droplets hung suspended for a moment before sliding down invisible walls of power. The Adler estate, or the former Clarke’s estate, rose before him like a beacon of arrogance: white marble, wet glass, and golden ether veins crawling through the walls.

He could smell the corruption from here: sour, burnt, and sweet with decay.

He’s feeding already, Victor thought.

He didn’t bother with doors. He stepped once, and the world folded open, spitting him out in the center of the mansion’s main sanctum.

The change in ether was immediate. It hit him like heat, blinding and unstable, the smell of blood and divine residue thick in the air. Sigils glowed across the floor, lines of gold that pulsed like veins.

And in the middle stood Theobald Adler.

He looked nothing like the man who had once smiled in political portraits. His skin shimmered faintly from the inside, light bleeding through every pore; his eyes were hollow, feverish, and gold. Around him, Anna’s body floated in a containment field, hair spread like threads of dark silk. Her abdomen glowed faintly, the unborn within her pulsing with white light.

Victor’s arrival broke the rhythm of the room. The ether itself seemed to pause, like a creature caught mid-breath.

Adler’s head lifted. He smiled, a thing cracked and bright. "I was wondering when you’d come," he said. His voice was smooth, wrong, and layered with something that wasn’t human anymore. "You can smell it, can’t you? The purity of it. The potential."

Victor’s eyes flared red. "You’ve lost your mind."

"No," Adler hissed, spreading his arms as the seals around him burned brighter. "I’ve found clarity. Creation thrives on consumption. You, of all beings, should understand that."

Victor’s power rippled through the air, dimming the light of every rune in the room. "You mistake gluttony for evolution. You always have."

Adler laughed; the sound cracked like glass. "And you mistake fear for wisdom. You, the executioner, can’t do anything about this. This is their fate." Adler gestured vaguely with a hand toward Anna’s floating body. "I didn’t break any rules; even more, Uno never told me to stop."

Victor sighed, exasperated that he had to be there babysitting a god with the age of a baby, not even a year from when Adler ascended and he thought that Uno gave a crap about his existence. He was another value in the creator’s equation. He would never talk with someone like Adler.

Victor’s expression didn’t so much as twitch. "Uno doesn’t tell anyone to stop," he said, voice calm, even indulgent. "He lets them hang themselves with the rope they begged him for."

Adler’s grin widened, teeth flashing gold in the glow of the sigils. "Then let him watch. Let him see what becomes of his little rules when I undo them."

Victor stepped closer. Each movement bent the air, the storm pressing against the mansion’s glass like an animal trying to break in. The light around Adler wavered, reacting to Victor’s presence like heat retreating from a greater flame.

"You think Uno’s watching?" Victor asked, his tone turning razor-thin. "He isn’t. He already lost interest the moment you turned into another statistic, just one more fool who mistook permission for relevance."

Adler’s fingers twitched, golden ether sparking between them. "You lie. He... he gave me the formula, the method to unmake fate. I heard his voice!"

Victor’s laughter was soft, terrifyingly quiet. "Oh, you heard him, all right. The same way a flame hears the wind that’s about to snuff it out."

Adler flinched, and for a fraction of a second the confidence wavered. Then he screamed something wordless and hurled his power forward.

The world erupted.

Light exploded across the sanctum, golden lines spiderwebbing over the marble, cracking, and twisting into impossible geometries. The walls shook, glass splintering. The containment field flickered, Anna’s body jerking once in midair.

Victor didn’t move. The light hit him, folded around him, and simply ceased to exist. Every rune that touched his ether burned out like a moth flying into the sun.

"You don’t even understand what you’ve built," Victor said, his voice now layered, resonating in every surface. "You’re bleeding your divinity into a circuit that can’t hold it. You’re eating yourself alive."

Adler’s knees hit the marble, blood, golden and luminous, streaming from his mouth. "No... I’ll ascend higher... beyond you... beyond Uno..."

Victor’s hand froze midair. The power gathering at his fingertips dimmed, not fading... just waiting.

A single droplet of gold blood hit the marble between them, steaming where it landed.

Adler wheezed, clutching his chest, divine light leaking between his fingers. "Do it," he spat, defiant even on his knees. "Prove you’re no different. Prove you’re still his hound."

Victor’s eyes narrowed, and the storm outside answered him. The windows rattled, thunder splitting through the skyline. "You think I serve him?" he asked, almost softly. "You think I would still kneel to the one who made you possible?"

Adler tried to rise, but his body was half-unraveling already. The smell of ozone and decay filled the air. "Then what stops you?" he demanded, voice cracking under the pressure building between them. "End it, executioner!"

Victor studied him in silence. The ruined sanctum around them glowed faintly in broken circles, runes twitching like dying nerves. He could see the shape of the pattern, the fault lines in the sigil, the perfect sequence that would collapse this entire estate into nothing but scorched glass.

And he could destroy it. He should destroy it.

But then the thought came, sharp and cold:

’Why should I clean up Uno’s mess?’

He lowered his hand, eyes gleaming with something unreadable.

Adler froze, disbelief flickering through his fevered expression. "What are you doing?"

"Letting you finish what you started," Victor said quietly. "Every parasite deserves to taste the end it worships." He turned slightly, the hem of his shirt brushing against a glowing seal that sputtered out instantly. "When this falls apart, and it will, you’ll drag half your own worshippers into the void with you. The Creator will feel that."

He paused, tilting his head as if listening to something distant, the hum of divine circuitry deep beneath the marble. His voice dropped lower, almost gentle. "And when he does, he’ll remember the last time I let one of his toys destroy itself."

Adler stared, trembling. "You’re..."

Victor smiled, slow and cruel. "I’m giving you what you asked for, Theobald. Freedom."

He took one step back, and the storm outside answered, thunder vibrating through the walls like a living pulse. "Ascend higher. Break yourself. Write your name in the ruin if you can." His gaze turned razor-sharp. "But know this... you’ll never reach us. Not me. Not Elias. Not what belongs to me."

Adler tried to speak, but his voice faltered under the weight of the ether devouring the room. His seals pulsed faster, cracks splitting across the marble floor. The mansion itself began to hum, rising to an unstable pitch like the heartbeat of something dying too slowly.

Victor exhaled, watching the chaos with the calm of a god who had seen worlds burn. He turned away.

"Sleep well in your delusion," he murmured. "You’ll need it."

And with that, the world folded again, sound collapsing inward, the smell of rain and ozone vanishing in a single heartbeat.

The sanctum exploded behind him as he disappeared, light swallowing itself in a cascade of gold and white.