CHAPTER 206: CHAPTER 206: THE REVENGE OF THE EXECUTIONER

The rain still fell, but not here, not in the quiet, lamplit luxury apartment where time seemed to refuse movement.

Connor Woods didn’t look up when reality folded open in the middle of his living room. He’d heard the sound before, an air pressure shift, followed by silence so deep it made the glass tremble. It was the sound of godhood arriving uninvited.

"Close the door," he muttered without glancing away from his screen. "You’re letting divinity leak into the drywall."

Victor ignored him. The air still shimmered faintly where he’d appeared, the faint scent of ozone cutting through coffee and ink. Across the room, sprawled indecently on Connor’s couch, Uno looked entirely pleased with himself, barefoot, wearing someone else’s shirt, one hand holding a glass of something that might’ve been wine if gods ever bothered with fermentation.

"Well," Uno drawled, blue eyes glinting, "look who finally remembered I exist."

Victor didn’t even look his way. "You always make that easy to forget."

Connor’s fingers stilled on the keyboard. That tone, quiet and measured, was the one Victor used when the world had already tilted out of balance. Slowly, he turned in his chair, eyes flicking between the two beings now sharing his living room: the executioner and the creator, order and chaos, both wearing human shapes like borrowed suits.

He exhaled through his nose. "This isn’t good," he said flatly. "You only teleport when something’s gone to hell or Elias is in danger."

Victor’s gaze cut toward Uno, crimson eyes narrowing. "Elias is fine. I’m here because your new companion here decided to promote an idiot."

Uno tilted his head, the faintest smile ghosting over his lips. "’Promote’ is a strong word. Inspire, maybe. A little spark of curiosity never killed anyone."

Victor’s laugh was short and sharp. "Tell that to Anna Adler."

The name hit like a crack in the air. Connor’s chair scraped backward. "Anna?" He blinked once, then twice, like he hadn’t heard right. "As in Elias’s sister?"

Uno swirled his drink, unfazed. "She made her choices. Greed is an old sin and a lovely tool. I didn’t force her hand."

Connor’s expression hardened, something cold and dangerous flickering beneath the civility. "You tempted her."

Uno grinned. "Temptation is free will with better marketing."

Victor’s voice dropped, quiet as a blade sliding home. "You gave her husband a formula to unmake fate. You told him how to wipe his child’s strings."

Uno’s eyes gleamed like deep water. "He wanted transcendence. I provided the possibility."

"And he killed his unborn child," Victor snapped, his voice finally breaking through the calm. "And half a city will die when his divine core collapses under the weight of your ’possibility.’"

The creator sighed, tipping his head back against the couch. "Details, details. You of all beings should understand that creation requires sacrifice. You’ve made a career out of it."

"I don’t build cathedrals from corpses."

"You build fear."

Connor slammed his hands against the desk, the sharp sound slicing through the charged air. The glass on the table rattled, and Uno’s easy smile faltered for the first time.

"Enough," Connor said, his voice low but vibrating with restrained fury. His heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his throat, every beat a reminder that he was the only human in the room. "You..." he jabbed a finger at Uno, "promised me you wouldn’t interfere. You said you were only here to watch. To understand."

Uno’s lips parted, a faint trace of amusement ghosting back into his expression. "Technically—"

"Don’t." Connor’s voice cracked through the word before it could form. "Don’t you dare twist it into semantics. You’re the one who caused this. You lied to me!"

The words hit like a strike. Uno blinked once, the faint glow in his eyes dimming, expression faltering in a way that almost, almost, looked human.

"I didn’t lie," he said finally, his voice softer, almost placating. "I simply didn’t tell you what I planned before meeting you."

Connor gave a low, humorless laugh. "Do you even hear yourself?" He pushed off the desk and took a step forward, anger burning through exhaustion. "That’s not curiosity, Uno. That’s cruelty. You handed a weapon to a man who couldn’t control his own power... and called it an experiment."

Uno’s gaze flicked toward Victor, as if searching for support or even a reaction, but Victor remained utterly still near the window, one hand resting against the sill. Crimson eyes reflected the city’s lights, unreadable. He was listening but not interfering.

"I didn’t make him do anything," Uno said finally. His tone was low, defensive. "I offered him potential. What he did with it..."

"...was predictable!" Connor barked, cutting him off. "You knew he’d go too far. You always know. And you let it happen anyway. Because you wanted to see what would break first... the man, or the world around him."

Uno’s mouth opened, but no words came. The silence that followed felt thick enough to choke on. The only sound was the steady hum of the rain against the glass.

"You think you’re learning something," Connor said finally, quieter but sharper, like a blade sliding home. "But you’re not. You’re just proving Victor right. You’re a child with matches pretending to study combustion."

Victor’s mouth curved faintly at that, a flash of dark amusement, almost invisible, his pettiness visible now, but he said nothing.

Uno’s fingers tightened around the edge of the couch. "You think I don’t care?" he asked, and there was a faint, dangerous tremor beneath the calm. "You think this was meaningless to me?"

Connor’s eyes flashed. "Then why did you do it?"

The Creator hesitated. He glanced toward Victor again, but Victor didn’t move, only tilted his head, his expression unreadable. ’You are on your own, buddy.’ There was something cruel about it, that watchfulness, like a teacher waiting for a student to realize they’d failed the lesson long before it began.

Uno’s throat worked, his usual certainty gone. "I wanted..." He trailed off, voice catching, the word he’d intended to say dying on his tongue.

Connor took a breath, his anger cooling into something colder, sharper. "You know what’s worse?" he said quietly. "I believed you."

Uno’s head jerked slightly, the smallest flinch.

"I believed that you were trying to change," Connor went on. "That maybe all that cosmic arrogance had finally met something it couldn’t control. That you could learn what it meant to care without rewriting the rules every time someone disappointed you."

Uno looked at him then, really looked. The façade of charm and divinity cracked just slightly at the edges, revealing something raw and too close to human.

"You think I don’t care?" Uno asked softly.

"I think you don’t know how," Connor replied. "And that’s exactly what makes you dangerous."

The words lingered like smoke. Uno didn’t answer. He didn’t argue or laugh or try to seduce his way out of the truth this time. He just sat there, staring at the man who had, somehow, in less than a month, managed to make him feel smaller than his own creation while Victor disappeared with the widest grin.