Chapter 154: What did you do?!
Edgar Valentine was destroying his own office.
Not symbolically.
Literally.
Old drawers had been ripped from the desk and hurled against the wall. Sealed documents, some more than centuries old, flew through the air like useless leaves. An entire cabinet had been opened with such force that one of its doors had split from the hinges. Sealed chests, relic boxes, and hidden compartments were scattered across the dark marble floor, all opened, overturned, or partially broken.
And in the center of that chaos, Edgar searched.
Far too quickly.
His hands moved at an alarming speed, opening compartments, breaking seals, tearing enchanted cloths, and shoving smaller artifacts aside without any care. Rings, vials of ancient blood, medallions, bones inscribed with runes, and storage stones fell to the floor like trash, but he did not look at any of them for more than a fraction of a second.
None of it mattered.
He needed one specific thing.
Only one.
"Damned stupid brat," Edgar growled, opening another old chest with a sharp strike of his hand. "Idiot. Imbecile. Arrogant little worm without a shred of political instinct."
The lid of the chest flew away.
He shoved his hands inside, pushing aside layers of black cloth and sealed objects.
"It was never enough to win. Never enough to show up. No. The great Jake Valentine needed to make a bet with Rakshasa."
Her name left his mouth like a curse.
Edgar pulled a smaller box from inside the chest, broke the seal with his fingers, and dumped the contents onto the floor. Small red crystals scattered across the marble, some cracking on impact. He did not care.
"Rakshasa, of all people. That damned, possessive, vindictive demoness, completely incapable of accepting insults like a rational creature."
He stopped for half a second, breathing with difficulty.
Then he kicked the empty chest.
The ancient wood exploded against the wall.
"But no. Of course not. My brilliant nephew decided to involve the entire family because of that woman. Decided it would be a good idea to go see her when everyone tells him to STAY AWAY FROM HER. As if the woman would not rip his organs out through his throat if anything went wrong."
Edgar opened another secret compartment behind a bookcase.
The stones in the wall shifted, revealing a narrow cavity filled with carefully organized objects. Or at least they had been organized before he shoved his hand inside and began throwing everything out.
He already knew.
Jake would not be able to handle Victor.
Not now.
Maybe before. Maybe a few weeks ago. Maybe before that little Valentine monster awakened whatever it was he had awakened. But now, after seeing what Victor was doing inside the Ritual, after feeling that grotesque change in the flow of energy, after realizing that assassins prepared to eliminate high-ranking heirs had failed to even slow him down in any meaningful way...
No.
Jake would not win.
Worse.
Jake would not merely lose.
He would be crushed.
And if Jake lost that way, after having made a bet with Rakshasa, after all the political movements, after everything Edgar had silently organized, the situation would spiral completely out of control.
"Stupid," Edgar hissed. "Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. You walking piece of arrogance. You muscular failure. You spoiled animal with less judgment than a rabid dog."
He opened a hidden drawer beneath the floor.
Empty.
Edgar went still for half a second.
Then his eyes widened.
"No."
He dropped to his knees and shoved his entire arm into the compartment, searching along the sides, the joints, the small grooves used to hide smaller artifacts.
Nothing.
His face lost color.
"No, no, no, no..."
This could not be happening.
The artifact needed to be there.
The displacement pearl was ancient. Unstable. Rare. Dangerous. But it was one of the few things capable of opening a forced passage inside complex dimensional barriers like those used in the Ascension Ritual. It would not allow a clean escape. Not without cost. But it would be enough to get Jake out before Victor killed him or before Rakshasa realized what was really happening.
Edgar overturned another compartment.
Then another.
Then the chest beneath the desk.
Nothing.
His breathing began to turn uneven.
The office was sealed. No one should have been able to enter without him noticing. No one should have been able to touch that artifact without triggering at least seven defensive curses, three blood traps, and a permanent tracking mark.
Then a voice came from the window.
"Looking for this, sweetheart?"
Edgar froze.
His entire body stopped.
Slowly, very slowly, he turned his face.
Rakshasa was sitting on the windowsill as if she had been there all afternoon, one leg crossed over the other, her elbow resting on her knee and her face lazily supported by her hand. The night wind moved her hair with a softness far too gentle for the expression on her face.
She was smiling.
In her other hand, she held a pearl the size of her palm.
White.
Smooth.
Ancient.
Edgar felt his blood freeze.
"Give that back."
Rakshasa tilted her head.
"This?"
She raised the pearl slightly, letting it shine under the weak light of the destroyed office.
Edgar took a step forward.
"Rakshasa, I am not joking."
"Oh, I noticed," she said, smiling wider. "You are sweating. I had never seen that before. It is almost cute."
"Return the artifact."
"Artifact?" she repeated, feigning surprise. "How strange. I thought it was a pretty little ball forgotten inside a very suspicious hiding place."
Edgar’s aura began to rise.
The air in the office became heavy.
Runes on the walls lit up in dark red, reacting to the hostility of the room’s owner. The floor vibrated beneath his feet, and threads of blood began forming around his fingers.
"I will say this one last time," Edgar said, his voice low and dangerous. "Give it back."
Rakshasa looked at the energy around him.
Then looked back at his face.
"Are you going to attack me?"
Edgar did not answer.
She smiled, showing her teeth.
"Are you going to create a portal to run away from me?"
The silence that followed was worse than any answer.
Edgar felt something cold pass through his spine.
Rakshasa spun the pearl between her fingers.
"That was it, wasn’t it? You wanted to clear a path to get your precious nephew out of there before my future husband broke every bone in his body."
"You do not understand what you are doing."
"That phrase is always used by frightened men when a woman takes something they wanted to hide."
"Rakshasa."
This time, his voice faltered slightly.
She noticed.
Her smile became calmer.
Much more dangerous.
"Do not even think about it."
Her hand closed.
The pearl exploded.
There was no great light.
No thunderous explosion.
The artifact simply broke inside her palm like a shell too fragile to contain what it carried. White fragments turned to dust, slipping between Rakshasa’s fingers in a small glittering rain. The sound was soft. Almost delicate.
To Edgar, it sounded like the end of the world.
He turned pale.
Completely pale.
"No..."
Rakshasa opened her hand, letting the last fragments fall.
"There."
Edgar took a staggering step.
"You should not have done that."
She raised an eyebrow.
"What? Was the little ball expensive?"
"You do not understand," he stammered. "You do not understand what that was. You should not have done that. It should not have broken. It should not have been destroyed inside a sealed space. It should not have—"
Then everyone felt it.
The first wave came without sound.
A crushing pressure fell over the palace.
Not only over the office.
Over everything.
The walls groaned.
The window glass cracked instantly.
The protection runes lit around the room went out like candles crushed by a storm. The marble floor split in long lines, opening fissures that crossed the office from end to end. Artifacts scattered across the ground trembled, some exploding for no apparent reason.
Edgar fell to his knees.
Not by choice.
His body simply could not withstand it.
The aura was so ancient, so vast, and so crushing that even he, a high-ranking adult Valentine, felt his own blood recoil inside his veins. It was not merely power. It was presence. Something far too large for that space, something that should not have been touched, awakened, or even remembered.
Rakshasa lost her smile.
She slowly set her feet on the floor, still on the windowsill, but now her expression had changed.
"What the fuck is this?"
Edgar tried to breathe.
He could not do it properly.
He was trembling.
His wide eyes were fixed on the white dust scattered at Rakshasa’s feet.
"It was an artifact from the ancient times," he said, his voice broken by a mixture of panic and hysteria. "You damned idiot, you destroyed an artifact from the ancient times!"
Rakshasa narrowed her eyes.
"So?"
"So?" Edgar repeated, his voice climbing into frenzy. "So it was not just a displacement tool! It was a seal! An anchor! A containment piece! That thing did not open portals because it bent space like ordinary magic. It did so because it was connected to something on the other side!"
Rakshasa went still.
Edgar began to laugh.
Not a funny laugh.
A broken laugh.
Mad.
"You did not break a pearl, Rakshasa. You broke a lock. You broke a damned lock that had existed since before most current clans even had names."
The pressure vanished.
All at once.
The silence that followed was almost worse.
Edgar stopped laughing.
Rakshasa did not move either.
For three seconds, nothing happened.
Then the aura returned.
But now it was different.
It was no longer that ancient, crushing, impersonal presence.
It was something known.
Dark.
Cold.
Hungry.
And absurdly familiar.
Rakshasa slowly turned her face toward the window, her eyes widening for the first time.
"Victor?"
Comments