CHAPTER 245: CHAPTER 245: TRAP (2)

The tremor began softly, just enough to make the surface of Elias’ coffee quiver, warning anyone sensitive to ether that something was wrong.

The hum in the air thickened, heavy with resonance that made every molecule remember what fear felt like.

Jonathan moved.

The illusion of flesh cracked, and the truth began to seep through, his body unraveling into a mist of fractured ether, pale and luminous but wrong. Where divine energy was meant to pulse in rhythm, Jonathan’s bled in reverse, consuming instead of giving.

"You shouldn’t have come here," Elias said quietly, his hand flattening over his abdomen.

"And you shouldn’t have brought her into this world," Jonathan replied. His voice carried two echoes now, one still his own, the other something hollow, divine, and monstrous all at once. "A child born from human and god. Do you have any idea what she could be?"

Elias’s heart thudded, but his face remained calm. "She’s not yours."

Jonathan smiled, but it was all teeth and no warmth. The ether around him flared, expanding outward in a pulse that warped the light itself. "Everything that carries my blood is mine. You were mine once too, Elias. My creation. My legacy."

"You lost that right the moment you chose power over family."

Jonathan tilted his head, his form flickering between solid and translucent, between man and something far older. "Family is power. I only refined it."

He lifted his hand and the sea answered. The water darkened, veins of black ether streaking through it like oil. The waves surged upward in unnatural rhythm, drawn to him like obedient beasts. People on the pier began screaming, but the sound seemed distant and muffled, as Elias had already locked the café in a containment field.

"You think Poseidon can hold me?" Jonathan said, the air crackling around his form. "You think Victor can kill me? I made them. I mapped their limits. I am not a god, Elias... I am the flaw in their creation. The rot that remembers how to grow."

Elias didn’t rise from his chair. He only shifted his stance slightly, one hand moving toward the silver band at his wrist. The faint glimmer of Victor’s mark pulsed once, then steadied.

"You are delusional. Both gods are older than you by centuries." Elias didn’t bother to sugarcoat his words; he knew that Jonathan wouldn’t really give up on his power. But he also knew how to annoy him so that he would make a mistake. One that would give Victor the right to intervene as the executioner.

Victor would have never been on board with his plans if Elias had been sincere about it, but he could deal with his fury later... he hoped.

Jonathan’s ether darkened.

The shimmer that had once made him look alive now turned violent, streaks of corrupted light twisting around his form like veins of smoke. His expression, which remained perfectly human, was the final lie he told before the god beneath it bared his teeth.

"Delusional?" Jonathan repeated softly, his tone almost tender. "No, Elias. I’m divine."

The words hit the air like a curse. The wind recoiled. The sea behind him stilled bracing, as though the entire coast held its breath.

Elias stayed seated. He didn’t flinch when Jonathan’s hand lifted, the air around it shimmering with raw ether. The veins of corruption pulsed brighter, and every instinct in Elias screamed to move, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. He needed Jonathan to cross the line first.

"Do it," Elias murmured under his breath, his gaze steady. "Lose control."

Jonathan smiled, the way only gods could when they believed themselves inevitable.

And then he struck.

The world exploded into light. A spear of ether, black-edged in gold, shot forward, aimed straight at Elias’s chest. It was fast, too fast for mortal eyes, but not faster than the God coming for those that tried to hurt what was his.

A red, blinding pulse tore through the sky.

The air shattered like glass as Victor descended, his presence splitting the ether of the world itself. The sea recoiled in a violent wave, the earth cracked beneath the café, and every ounce of corrupted power Jonathan had summoned turned inward, caught in the gravitational pull of something older, stronger, and infinitely more furious.

The spear never touched Elias. It disintegrated midair, collapsing into a rain of sparks that hissed against the ground.

Victor stood between them, coat torn open by wind, his eyes burning with molten red light that didn’t belong to a man at all. His aura was destruction itself, total erasure made form, vibrating through every atom that dared exist too close to him.

"Enough."

The word was spoken with such calmness that Elias’ hair stood up. It carried through ether, earth, and sea, resonating in the bones of everything alive. The café’s glass windows shattered just to obey the sound.

Jonathan staggered back a step, his own ether crackling against the force pressing down on him. "You..."

"You dared aim at him," Victor said. The calm in his voice was worse than rage. His ether coiled outward, forming a halo of crimson and gold fire that swallowed the horizon. "You dared touch what’s mine."

Elias finally rose from his chair, moving behind Victor with intentional slowness. His voice was quiet but carried easily over the storm. "You were supposed to wait until he attacked."

Victor turned his head slightly, and the look he gave Elias could have burned gods to ash. "You planned this."

Elias’s lips twitched. "Calculated. There’s a difference."

"You baited him with yourself," Victor said, every syllable laced with disbelief and fury. "And with our child inside you."

Jonathan’s laughter broke through then, thin and mad. "Oh, how touching. The executioner scolds his lover while standing in the ruins of his pride." His ether surged again, black tendrils shooting forward like blades.

Victor didn’t move. The attacks dissolved inches from him, consumed by the field of his power. The air screamed under the strain as Victor’s hand rose, and with it, the sky darkened. Clouds boiled into existence, and the sea began to tremble.

"You wanted a god’s attention," Victor said, his voice almost a whisper now. "Now you have mine."