CHAPTER 208: CHAPTER 208: THE END OF A GOD

He exhaled, a laugh that wasn’t one, bitter and cold. "So let’s see what burns."

With a flick of his hand, the air shifted. The faint hum of divinity reawakened beneath his feet, the same pulse Adler had tried to control, only now it answered to Uno. Gold threads of ether rose from the cracks in the marble, crawling up like roots, weaving symbols he hadn’t used in centuries.

Anna’s body was gone, but her echo remained, a resonance of pain, faith, and failure. Uno traced a hand through it, watching the threads coil around his fingers like smoke. The energy was raw, volatile, and half-born.

"Look at you," he murmured. "A tragedy with potential."

He could make it work. He could finish what Adler started, strip the concept of fate entirely and force it into a new form, something untethered from both creation and consequence.

It would hurt, yes. It would cost him more than time or worship. But what was that compared to the silence Connor had left him in?

He crouched, pressing a hand to the ground. The marble sang under his palm, a soft, eerie note like glass stretched too thin. The air filled with the scent of copper and ozone again.

He could have bent time. He could have erased Connor’s memory and rewritten him into compliance, into love. He could have made the world kneel.

But where was the point in a puppet’s affection?

That was why he’d abandoned the first world, the first creation, to watch it grow without his hand at its throat. To see what they became when left alone. And now here he was, doing the same thing again: watching something beautiful ruin itself and calling it research to make the guilt bearable.

He smiled, faint and crooked, staring down at the flickering sigils. "Maybe Victor was right," he murmured. "Maybe I don’t know how to care."

The runes shuddered in response, as if the world itself disagreed.

He stood, straightened his shirt, and opened his hands. Ether flooded the chamber, turning the air gold, devouring shadow. His voice was quiet, almost gentle:

"Then let’s finish it properly."

The marble cracked. Light split through the floor, rising like a sun trapped beneath the earth. The sigils came alive again, but this time they didn’t answer Adler’s hunger but their maker’s design.

The light rose higher, curling through the air like molten glass, reshaping the broken geometry of the sanctum. Uno’s eyes glowed faintly, a mirror of that gold, but sharper. The air tasted of metal and salt, heavy with something half-divine, half-desperate.

And then the hum shifted.

Uno’s fingers froze mid-motion. He’d been working with creation long enough to recognize when something didn’t belong. The ether was bending wrong without thought or control.

A ripple passed through the light, followed by a sound that wasn’t quite human, half gasp, half laugh.

Uno turned.

Theobald Adler stood a few feet away.

Or what was left of him.

He wasn’t glowing anymore; the gold had turned to ash. His skin was cracked like burned porcelain, every vein glowing faintly with unstable power. His eyes, once fever-bright, were hollow now, deep wells filled with reflected light, and when he spoke, his voice scraped like broken stone.

"You shouldn’t have come back."

Uno tilted his head slightly, almost curious. "Neither should you."

Adler’s mouth curved into something that was supposed to be a smile but failed halfway through. "You left me to burn."

"I left you to ascend," Uno corrected softly. "You just weren’t built for it."

Adler took a step forward, his movements stiff but purposeful, like a marionette forcing its strings. "You did this," he hissed. "You whispered it into my mind. The formula. The vision. The way to unmake fate. You gave it to me."

Uno didn’t flinch; his blonde hair was moved by the storm’s wind. "You asked."

"You didn’t tell me it would kill her."

Uno laughed, the storm’s thunder synchronizing with his sick cadence. "Kill her? Theobald, dear, you knew it would happen and didn’t care. You sacrificed your wife and son, and... let me guess... you tried to kill Jonathan Clarke, too?"

Adler froze. The golden light pulsing beneath his cracked skin faltered for half a heartbeat, then roared back, wild and ugly. "You don’t know what you’re talking about."

Uno smiled, a slow, cruel curve that never reached his eyes. "Don’t you?" He took a step forward, bare feet splashing through the thin layer of water pooling over the marble. The storm outside growled in rhythm, each rumble like a pulse under his voice. "I wrote your ambition into existence, Theobald. Every thought you’ve had since the moment you touched divinity was one I placed there. You’re a melody I composed out of your own greed."

Adler staggered, his fingers twitching as flickers of golden ether tried to spark back into coherence. "Jonathan was irrelevant," he spat. "He was a human. A fool who refused to evolve."

Uno’s laughter cut through the air like a blade. "You mean he refused you." He tilted his head, studying Adler like an artist examining a painting he’d grown bored of. "He saw what you were becoming, another god drunk on power, too blind to see the rot setting in. Ironic really... when he is as rotten as you."

The divine shell around Adler’s face cracked wider, a line of molten light splitting across his cheek. "He was weak. If he wouldn’t let Elias leave the family..."

The moment the name left his lips, the storm shuddered, reacting to Uno’s sudden, lethal stillness.

"Careful," Uno murmured, voice lowering to something quiet, dangerous. "You’re not allowed to speak his name in my presence. Not after what you did."

Adler blinked, confusion warring with the pain. "He wasn’t even your concern. You never..."

"I created the laws that govern him," Uno snapped, the calm gone in a flash of fury that made the air itself scream. "Every thread of fate that binds his bloodline begins with me. And you thought you could unmake them for your own hunger."

He stepped closer again, the storm pressing against the broken walls as if the world itself wanted to retreat. "You killed your wife. You killed your child. You tried to consume what you couldn’t understand. But Jonathan Clarke... ah, that was personal, wasn’t it? You couldn’t stand that he saw through you before anyone else did."

Adler’s jaw locked, his breath ragged. The light bleeding from his body flickered violently. "He betrayed me."

Uno smiled again, but there was no warmth, no humor this time. "No. He escaped you."

The words struck like a blow. The runes underfoot rippled, responding to the spike of divine rage in Adler’s unstable form. He lifted a trembling hand, trying to summon what remained of his power, but Uno was already there, right in front of him, so close their auras clashed like colliding suns.

"You wanted to be free of fate," Uno whispered. "Congratulations. You are."

Adler’s voice broke into a hoarse scream as Uno’s hand pressed flat against his chest. The golden veins flared, pulsed, and then shattered, bursting outward in a cascade of burning light. His body convulsed once, then folded in on itself, dissolving into pure ether that the storm carried away.

When the silence fell again, Uno stood alone amid the ruins, eyes half-lidded, the echo of thunder curling low in his throat like laughter that had forgotten how to sound human.

"...Jonathan Clarke," he murmured to the empty air. "So that’s where the thread leads next."

He looked down at his hand, at the faint residue of gold clinging to his skin, and smiled faintly. "Let’s see what he’s made of, then."

And with that, the light folded, and Uno vanished, leaving only the scent of ozone and the sound of rain devouring the last traces of divinity from the air.