CHAPTER 207: CHAPTER 207: CONNOR

The silence stretched until the city lights dimmed beneath the rain. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rolled, distant and half-hearted, like it had learned not to interrupt what gods had started.

Connor turned back toward his desk, the gesture calm, almost mechanical. The glow of the screen washed over his face, a pale reflection against glass and stormlight. "You should go," he said quietly. "Before you ruin something else."

Uno’s head lifted slightly. "Connor..."

But Connor didn’t look at him. "Don’t," he said, the single word sharp enough to cut through divinity itself. "I’ve had enough of explanations that sound like scripture."

The words shouldn’t have hurt him. He was the Creator for fuck’s sake. But they did. They hit in the hollow behind his ribs, where pride used to sit comfortably, where certainty always lived. And now... nothing. Just the echo of disbelief that someone so small, so mortal, could turn away from him without fear.

Uno’s fingers flexed on the couch arm, the faint pulse of ether beneath his skin flickering and dying out. The lamplight painted soft gold along the edge of his face, and for the first time in eternity, he looked like he didn’t know what to do with his hands.

Victor had known. The bastard had known that Uno would talk himself into exposure, that Connor would see through every defense he had left, and that truth would do what even godfire couldn’t... humiliate.

Victor’s grin earlier hadn’t been just arrogance but certainty. The certainty of someone who understood that revenge didn’t need blood when disappointment could do the same job.

Uno swallowed hard, staring at the empty space where Victor had stood. "He planned this," he murmured, voice too quiet, too human.

Connor didn’t turn. "Of course he did." His tone was flat and tired. "That’s what he does."

Uno let out a dry laugh that sounded too much like grief. "Because I touched his mate."

Connor’s hands froze on the keyboard, his reflection flickering in the dark screen. "Because you hurt someone he loves," he corrected softly. "And that’s the one thing he doesn’t forgive."

"And you, Connor? What are you able to forgive?"

Connor’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, the question landing with a weight that made the air hum. He didn’t turn right away. For a moment, the only sound was the faint ticking of the clock on the far wall, the kind of small, human noise that made gods feel out of place.

He breathed out slowly, almost inaudibly. "You’re asking the wrong person," he said. "Forgiveness isn’t the point. It’s trust. And you killed that."

Uno’s jaw tightened, blue eyes shadowed under the lamplight. "I didn’t lie to you."

"You lied by omission," Connor snapped, finally turning to face him. "You withheld everything that mattered. You built an entire equation around your curiosity and me and called it companionship." His voice cracked once, but he didn’t stop. "You don’t get to call that honesty just because you never said the words out loud."

Uno looked down at his hands. He could still feel the faint vibration of ether under his skin, the way the room recoiled from him now that Connor’s warmth had gone cold. "You think Victor’s any different?" he asked quietly. "He manipulates too. He breaks things to see how far they bend."

Connor’s expression didn’t soften. "Maybe. But he doesn’t pretend it’s benevolence."

That landed deeper than Uno wanted to admit. For the first time since the world began, he didn’t have an argument ready. No retort. No elegant rephrasing of morality into paradox. Only the dull ache of being seen without the armor of divinity to hide behind.

Connor turned back to his desk, shoulders rigid. "Go, Uno. Just... go before I start hating you."

For a heartbeat, Uno didn’t move. He’d been worshiped, cursed, adored, and feared... but never dismissed. The silence around him felt final, sharp as Victor’s grin before he left.

When he finally stood, the movement stirred the air, a quiet distortion that barely rippled the room. "He wanted this," Uno murmured, almost to himself. "He knew what you’d say. He knew exactly how this would end."

"Yeah," Connor said, eyes still on the screen. "That’s why he’s the executioner."

Uno lingered a second longer, searching for something, anger maybe, defiance, anything to drown out the ache. But nothing came. Only the strange, fragile realization that Victor had won without lifting a hand.

He vanished without light or thunder, the air folding shut behind him. The only trace left was the faint smell of ozone and something heartbreakingly human... regret.

Connor sat back, pressing the heel of his hand against his eyes. "You’re still leaking divinity into the drywall," he muttered under his breath, though the apartment was already empty.

And miles away, Victor Numen smiled faintly at the storm still crawling across the horizon, his reflection sharp in the window glass. Revenge didn’t always need blood. Sometimes it just needed truth.

—

The void between places welcomed him the way an open wound welcomes salt.

Uno moved through it without sound, the air folding and refolding around him, his steps falling on nothing. The divine plane rippled, light and geometry bending under his will. He could have gone anywhere: past, future, or the empty stillness between, but his path was already written in anger.

When he emerged, the storm had burned itself out. The Adler estate was little more than fractured marble and smoldering ether, the air thick with the metallic scent of spent power. The sigils Victor had left unbroken still glowed faintly beneath the ruin, dying heartbeats of a god gone mad.

Uno stood at the edge of it, barefoot in the debris, his borrowed shirt plastered to his skin by the rain. The silence that met him wasn’t peace; it was aftermath.

He could have bent time backward, rewound the collapse, and stitched together what Victor had let rot. He could have stopped the birth, stopped the death, stopped everything.

But he didn’t.

Because Connor’s voice still echoed in his head.

"You’re a child with matches pretending to study combustion."