CHAPTER 204: CHAPTER 204: PUT HIM TO SLEEP

Elias was quiet for a long moment, the word "rot" hanging between them like a scent, sharp, with an acrid aftertaste. He could feel Victor’s pulse beneath his palm, slow and steady, the kind of calm that only came from someone who’d seen this cycle too many times before.

"Victor," he said finally, his voice lower, rougher. "You said Uno’s fascinated... but you also said he tempts. If he really finds something that defies the laws he helped create, would he... would he come after it?" He touched his flat belly with something he could call only instinct.

Victor didn’t answer immediately. His thumb stilled on Elias’s wrist. "You mean would he come after our child?"

Elias swallowed. "Yes."

The thunder outside rumbled closer, rolling through the glass like a heartbeat. Victor’s eyes gleamed red in the flicker of light. "Yes," he said softly, "he would."

Aswin’s head turned sharply, but Victor didn’t look at him. His gaze stayed fixed on Elias, the words quiet but heavy enough to press the air thin.

"He’s not cruel because he hates," Victor continued. "He’s cruel because he’s curious. He doesn’t see life the way we do, mortals, gods, or even me. To Uno, every soul is an equation waiting to be rewritten, a thread that might be tugged to see what happens when it snaps. He’d unmake creation itself if he thought he’d learn something from it."

Elias’s stomach twisted, a cold pulse running down his spine. "You’re saying he wouldn’t stop at watching."

Victor’s jaw flexed. "He wouldn’t. He’s done it before."

The silence that followed was thick and electric. Even Aswin, usually unflappable, looked uneasy.

Elias leaned forward slightly, searching Victor’s face. "So what’s stopping him now?"

Victor’s mouth curved, slow and dangerous. "Me." The word landed with quiet finality.

Elias stared at him. "You think that’s enough?"

Victor’s laugh was soft, almost affectionate, but threaded with something darker. "Uno doesn’t play where I’ve marked territory. He might linger at the edges, whisper, amuse himself with small cruelties... but he won’t cross the line. Not unless he’s ready to lose a limb."

Elias exhaled, running a hand through his still-damp hair. "That’s comforting," he muttered. "In a horrifying sort of way."

Victor smiled faintly, leaning back in his chair, his hand still anchored around Elias’s waist. "You wanted honesty."

"It’s odd that you can go against the Creator..."

"Well," Victor said, the corner of his mouth quirking, "he knew that at some point he would become too unhinged. That’s why I exist."

He let the words hang, folding himself into the kind of calm that felt like a promise and a threat all at once. The tablet’s light threw hard angles across his face; rain finally began to blur the city into a smear of neon.

Elias glanced up, incredulous. "You can actually...? Put Uno to sleep?" His voice came out smaller than he meant. Uno was a name that had bent rooms and cracked alliances; the idea of Victor bench-pressing that kind of being felt absurd and terrifying in equal measure.

Victor’s fingers tightened in the seam of the couch for a beat, then relaxed. "I can’t kill him," he said, slow and precise. "Laws older than our names keep that line sacred, creators are a different order. But I can make him stop. For a long time. I can fold him into a dream where he won’t stir for centuries." He let the syllables fall lightly, as if reciting a weather report. "Few hundred years is a comfortable number."

A laugh escaped Elias before he could catch it, sharp and totally disbelieving. "A nap for the Creator. Charming."

Victor’s smile was faint, not unkind. "It’s not charming. It’s containment. And it’s violent in ways you won’t like. It’s not sleep like closing your eyes. It’s a shutting of the world that will feel to him like dissolving, like being scattered until there’s nothing left cohesive to rage with." He watched Elias’s face as if testing how much to show. "It’s mercy and prison in the same motion."

Elias swallowed. The room felt suddenly colder; the stabilizers hummed, a mechanical heartbeat in the background. "And the cost?" he asked. "There’s always a cost."

Victor’s gaze didn’t flinch. "There’s a cost to anything worth doing," he agreed. "Primarily... it draws attention. Anyone who’s watched Uno for long will feel the rip. It tidies one problem and stirs others. Also," he paused, and something in his voice sharpened, "it will mark me. The kind of wound the other creators remember."

Elias’s hand found the back of Victor’s, squeezing once. "You do this a lot?" he asked, softer now. He couldn’t imagine Victor lugging the weight of a shutaway Creator on his shoulders, of centuries of silence seated like a stone in his chest.

"Not often," Victor answered. "Only when unavoidable." He eased himself out of Elias’s lap and stood, the movement fluid; rain ticked harder against the glass as if impatient. "And not without purpose."

Aswin’s shadow moved at the threshold, the faint glow from his console painting his face in brief strokes. "Sir, the feed is spiking. Adler’s seals are hitting critical."

Victor’s posture snapped into action, the domestic softness folding away like a cloak. He bent, pressing a single kiss to Elias’s temple, quick, fierce, and grounding. "I’ll be back before you can miss me properly," he said, the promise iron-edged. "Seal the floor on my frequency. If Uno shows up, don’t answer him. If the red light flares across the perimeter, only then open to me."

Elias made a face that was half grin, half threat. "Try not to become a heroic corpse, then."

Victor’s laugh was a low thing that stepped between affection and menace. "I am not a corpse you invent eulogies for." He straightened, and for a fleeting instant the whole room smelled of ozone and old thunder. "Now breathe. Stay alive for me."

He moved to the door, every step calculated. Aswin slipped beside him, already speaking tactical coordinates into the comm. Victor paused with one hand on the handle, turning back just long enough to catch Elias’s eyes. His expression was nothing elaborate, a look that said he would break a world before he let it break what was his.

Then the door slid shut and the apartment exhaled into the rain. Outside, the city thrummed. Inside, the stabilizers drew a little tighter, and Elias sat very still, listening to the storm and to the steady, human thud of his own pulse.