CHAPTER 272: CHAPTER 272: OLD WOUNDS

The mirrored room wasn’t made of mirrors. The walls were slabs of polished blackstone and reflective obsidian, enchanted to respond to divine ether and memory. Reflections didn’t show what stood before them but what the person in the room carried in their mind and soul. It was useful when Victor or the others didn’t have the patience to deal with someones lies and today, the God of Destruction had little patience for intruders and even less for wasting his time. Even if he had more than enough to spare... that was for Elias.

Victor stepped inside without hesitation.

The doors sealed shut behind him with a whisper of sound and a pulse of heat.

He walked to the center of the room, each footstep echoing against the geometric marbling of the floor. His reflection flickered in every surface, tall, immaculately dressed, every inch of him tailored to power and predatory calm.

But the figure already waiting didn’t rise.

They sat at the far end of the room, hood lowered, body half-turned toward one of the obsidian walls. As Victor entered, the walls behind the figure began to shimmer with bloodline charts, flickering estate fragments, and ghost-thin images of Elias at different ages, each reflected like water.

Victor’s eyes narrowed.

"You’re using memory permission without my consent," he said evenly.

The figure didn’t flinch. "I had it encoded years ago. Before the override was locked."

"Then you’re either a ghost," Victor said, "or an idiot."

The figure stood slowly.

Tall. Male. Mid-forties by appearance. Dark hair streaked with white, cut just short enough to be mistaken for piety. His robes were plain now, almost civilian, but Victor could still see it, the way he carried himself, the false stillness of someone who once preached with bloody hands and sanctified venom.

There was no ether signature on the surface.

But the pull beneath it... oh, Victor felt that. Felt it like old scars. Like temples collapsing. Like betrayal.

A thread of silence coiled between them, then Victor smiled, tilting his head mockingly.

"Oh my, oh my," he said, voice dipping into something almost delighted. "The sinner comes back to ask for forgiveness?"

The obsidian glowed faintly crimson behind him, as if it too remembered the last time this room had hosted a traitor.

Andreas lowered his hood the rest of the way. "I never asked for your forgiveness, my lord."

Victor let out a low, amused sound. "Of course not. That would imply guilt. You’ve always been fond of absolution without consequence."

He took another step forward, and the floor beneath his feet shimmered, ether curling up in elegant sigils that didn’t touch the man across from him.

"Imagine my disappointment," Victor continued, circling slowly now, "when my most articulate high priest disappeared without a body, without a prayer, and without even leaving behind his cowardice in writing."

Andreas didn’t move. "You were descending. It was the first time you’d touched mortal ground after ascending. I thought..."

"That you could kill me?" Victor offered. "Take my power? Split the godhead like it was something hollow and crumbling?"

He stopped directly across from Andreas, the shadows around him bending just slightly, the walls beginning to respond, mirrors flickering not with Elias now, but Andreas. A memory of a younger man cloaked in ceremonial red, kneeling before Victor’s old altar. Holding a sacrificial blade like a pen. Smiling.

Victor’s voice turned quiet. That kind of quiet gods use before they unmake something.

"You took my favor, my temples and then you tried to erase me."

"I failed," Andreas said, unflinching. "Clearly."

Victor didn’t blink. "You failed magnificently."

He tilted his head again. "So tell me, High Priest Lowe. Why crawl back now? Why walk into my mirrored room, full of old blood and full truths, when you knew exactly what I left behind to watch for you?"

Andreas lifted his chin. "Because the Clarke boy is yours now."

Victor’s expression didn’t change.

And yet something in the walls pulsed once, like the room itself had inhaled.

"I know the look of celestial imprint," Andreas said. "And the stench of destruction dressed in affection. You’ve claimed him."

Victor’s voice remained calm. "I marked what belongs to me. You speak of stench, yet you stank of divinity for decades while preaching rot beneath golden domes."

"I came to offer a trade."

Victor smiled, and this time it wasn’t amused. It carved sharper instead, like something honed in ancient fire.

"You came," he said again, slower this time, voice cruel enough to silence kingdoms, "to beg."

Andreas took a step forward despite himself. His voice cracked.

"You killed her! You killed Amarath, Goddess of Continuum..."

Victor’s eyes flickered with irritation; he really didn’t want to lose his time with the traitors while he had a pregnant mate waiting for him.

Golden sigils flared at his collarbones like sunfire bound in skin, divine ether flickering in a heartbeat, and the entire room seemed to inhale. The obsidian walls rippled with the essence of Amarath’s sigil, half-fused and half-consumed, twisted into Victor’s own.

He tilted his head slightly.

"She broke the rules," Victor said, almost lightly. "And I warned her. She wanted to preserve time through manipulation. She lied to her pantheon. To her priests. To me."

And then, softer, as if he were sharing a secret rather than pronouncing judgment:

"Besides. You shouldn’t grieve her."

His red eyes darkened.

"She’s not gone."

Andreas stiffened.

Victor took a slow step forward. The shadows followed.

"She’s part of me now."

The words echoed through the room, behind him, one of the obsidian walls shimmered again with the echo of Amarath’s eyes, her voice whispering just below audible range, tangled and devoured within Victor’s essence.

"Her domain was fragile," Victor went on, as if commenting on architecture. "Continuum? Time bent over love? Soft. Weak. She faltered when confronted with inevitability."

Andreas’s hands curled into fists. "She trusted you."

"She trusted the idea of mercy," Victor corrected, like he was talking with a stubborn child. "But I am not that kind of god."

He stepped even closer now. Andreas was trembling. Rage? Grief? Regret? It didn’t matter.

Victor’s voice dropped to something colder.

"You served her," he said, "and when she died, you served the next power you could find. You fed Clarke’s rot because you hoped for revenge. So, tell me what brings you here now?"