CHAPTER 273: CHAPTER 273: DESPERATION

Andreas’s throat tightened; he knew that the soft image Victor put on for the public appearances and his fiancee was nothing more than another mask. The God of Destruction wasn’t someone that would lose, and he knew that now Victor was manipulating the Clarke heir.

"Well..." He started, searching for the right words. "I want something from you and no, I’m not stupid enough to come here without a plan."

"Now do you?" Victor asked, tilting his head, his hair falling softly from his perfect styling.

"Yes, we need the God back. The one that listened to prayers and took care of its subjects and followers." Andreas said, his voice now steadier.

"And if I’m not interested, what would be your plan?"

"Elias Clarke."

The temperature in the mirrored room dropped by degrees. The obsidian walls pulsed once in a rhythm that echoed like a heartbeat. And Victor, the God of Destruction, slowly raised his gaze until it locked with Andreas’s, his red irises bright and ancient and very unamused.

"You speak his name," Victor said, voice quiet and razor-thin, "as if it belongs to you."

"Well, he was part of your following, and Jonathan made sure to include him as an offering to the temples. He is the order’s propriety, even broken or recessive."

Victor didn’t move. However, the mirrored obsidian around them warped and sharpened, much like glass under pressure. The reflections didn’t show Andreas anymore. They showed bones. Blood. The crushed remnants of what happened when someone touched what was Victor’s.

And the silence that followed weighed like a storm held in the lungs of a god.

And then, Victor smiled. It was not meant for public appearances or confused fiancés or the fragile scaffolding of mortal diplomacy.

This was the smile of the God of Destruction.

"I see," he said softly, fingers flexing once at his side. "You came to trade with what’s already mine."

Andreas’s throat worked. "He’s still legally registered under..."

CRACK!

The air itself shattered while Andreas hit the wall before he realized Victor had moved. His back slammed into the obsidian so hard that the wall dented. His knees buckled under the force of it, ribs creaking, something in his shoulder tearing as he slid down, coughing wetly.

"I’m not interested in your legalities," Victor said, still standing perfectly upright, perfectly composed, save for the way the red in his eyes bled wider, brighter, until his pupils disappeared entirely. "Or in the titles your filthy order stamped onto broken children to keep them in line."

Andreas gasped, blood in his mouth. "Why don’t you want us back..."

The mirrored room groaned. The obsidian walls bowed inward as if dragged by gravity that obeyed no law but Victor’s will. The air coiled around Andreas’s ribs like cold iron, pulling breath from his lungs, collapsing every inch of defiance he had left.

"You think this is about rejection?" Victor’s voice sliced through the rising static, calm and absolute. "You want to be taken back. As if betrayal can be walked off. As if Elias can be unbroken. As if I’m something you get to need only when you’ve run out of other gods to gut."

Andreas struggled to push himself upright, fingers scrabbling against the slick, burning floor. His voice cracked, desperate now. "We were loyal..."

"You were loyal," Victor echoed, tone mocking, "until the leash slipped. Until you realized I would not be tamed and that you could control a newborn god."

Victor crossed the room with slow steps, each one echoing in the empty room. "Now you want to use Elias as bait for me to take you back? C’mon... I thought you were more creative than this."

Victor stopped just in front of him.

His shoes were immaculate. Polished like something sacred. A contrast so sharp against the blood now pooling beneath Andreas that it bordered on cruel.

"Elias is not bait," Victor said, his voice so quiet it was nearly intimate. "He’s not a vessel. He’s not your ticket back into grace. And he is certainly not yours."

He crouched again, not to meet Andreas’s gaze, but to force him to look up. To make him remember that gods did not kneel. Only the broken did.

"You sold him," Victor whispered. "Wrapped him in temple silk and handed him over like a gift. Watched as he was drugged, rewritten, and starved of memory. And now you want him to bring me back?"

A smile touched his lips, thin and lethal.

"You didn’t bring me here, Andreas."

His fingers brushed the floor. The obsidian rippled at his touch.

"He is the only thing that kept me from destroying you and your cult just for fun."

And then, with no warning, Andreas’s body spasmed from the force of memories being coaxed to resurface.

Victor didn’t raise a hand. He unlocked something. Something buried. Something Andreas had willingly forgotten.

Images flooded him, his own commands. His signature at the bottom of the document authorizing Elias’s dosage increase. The internal report about the regression of sexual function. The priest who was denied entry because Elias was "too delicate" that week. The reprimand he gave a handler for letting Elias keep a sketchbook.

"I... I didn’t touch him," Andreas croaked. "I never..."

Victor stood slowly, cutting him off with silence.

"Sure... You, Jonathan, did, and then Adler did. Matteo Weller was your first victim, corrupted by a being anything even I know. You played gods with the souls of innocent children." Victor rose and shook his coat to decrease it even if it was impeccable.

"Red ether is mine only and you decided to play with it. There are others, I know, but believe me, none of you would get alive or dead, no. Even death would be a merciful punishment. I will absorb every one of you."

Victor smiled brightly. "You should be happy," Victor said, voice almost cheerful. "You can meet your beloved goddess again."

Andreas’ spine arched in a violent, involuntary jolt as red ether, pure, unfiltered divinity, passed through him like molten wire. Not tearing flesh. Tearing through memory. Pulling out everything he had ever buried, every lie he had ever lacquered onto the truth until he could stand to look in a mirror.

His breath hitched on a strangled noise, more exhale than scream.

"Victor..." he choked, hands grasping blindly at the obsidian for purchase, as if the room could save him. "P-Please..."

"Please?" Victor stepped closer, the soft click of his shoes echoing like a countdown. "Now you beg?"

The air around Andreas shimmered red. Ether too old or too vast to be used by mortal hands. It moved like smoke and light and something alive.

"Adler prayed with stolen ether," Victor said conversationally. "Jonathan used it to rewrite omegas into blank canvases. Matteo was twisted into a weapon by something desperate to break me."

His voice lowered.

"You, all of you, fed divinity into machines you didn’t understand. And then you fed children to them."

Andreas’s body convulsed, a horrible jerk, as the memories continued to rip free. He tasted blood. Metal. Something hot and humiliating.

"Victor... I didn’t know..."

"You knew enough," Victor replied.