[BL]Hunted by the God of Destruction

The room was silent except for the low whir of the servers and the occasional flicker of a digital alert across the screens. Victor Numen stood by the window, one hand in the pocket of his robe, the other holding a cup of untouched coffee that had long gone cold. Below, the city was asleep. 

Ashwin stepped inside without hesitation, his coat still damp from the night air, his eyes scanning the room like a soldier checking for broken locks. His gaze landed on the wheelchair in the corner.

It hadn't moved.

Victor hadn't sat.

Instead, he stood by the ceiling-high window, tall, barefoot, and beautiful in a way that was neither kind nor accidental. The dark blue robe hung loose around his frame, open just enough to show the line of his collarbone and the faint shimmer of old damage beneath his skin. His hair, thick and black, fell messily against his temple, curling slightly at the ends like it disobeyed him out of spite. His eyes, dark red and low-lidded with fatigue, tracked the street below as though he could see past the buildings. Past the night. Past the entire city.

Ashwin didn't speak right away. He knew better.

Victor's presence filled the room like smoke: slow, quiet, and consuming. It was the kind of stillness that didn't invite comment. The kind that made you forget how to breathe until he allowed it.

"You're not supposed to be on your feet," Ashwin said finally, voice low and clipped.

Victor didn't turn. "You're not supposed to be late."

"You'll burn through the vessel if you keep doing this."

"I already am."

Ashwin's gaze flicked once more to the chair. Then back to the man who refused it. "You were seventeen the last time you walked this long. And that was to save a priest who spat on your name."

"I'm fine; it's not that bad." 

Ashwind hummed but knew better than to comment on Victor's decisions. "We recovered Elias's phone from the dorms… and his things." 

"Keep them; Robert has him in one of the safehouses in town. For now we let him use only what we are sure is safe. Did you recover the voicemail from Ruo?" 

Ashwin nodded, stepping deeper into the room, the soft click of the door closing behind him barely registering over the pulse of cooling fans and machinery. The air inside Victor's server room always felt colder than it should've, like the walls remembered what kind of god lived here.

"We pulled it from the back-end relay. Encrypted. Fragmented. But still intact."

He reached into his coat and handed over a sleek drive. "This is the cleaned version. No embedded trace. We've confirmed it wasn't sent through standard channels. It was meant for you. Not for Elias."

"Let's hear it then." 

Ashwin gave a small nod and moved toward the console. The server monitors blinked softly, cycling through unread alerts, diagnostics, and command queues no outsider would have been allowed to see. He slid the drive into the port, fingers moving with quiet precision. 

Victor turned from the window at last, slow and deliberate.

He didn't limp, limping implied a loss of control. What Victor did was something else entirely. He controlled his movements, each shift in weight a silent negotiation with the vessel that held him. The robe whispered around his ankles, and the silver chain at his throat caught the low light again, flashing once like a second heartbeat.

He approached the console and rested one hand against its edge, fingers long and pale against the brushed steel. His cup, still untouched, sat beside the monitor like a placeholder for something more human.

Ashwin didn't press play until Victor was still.

Then the room filled with her voice.

'If you're hearing this, they've found me. Do not trust Matteo. He's not who you think, he never was. And they're not working alone. They need Elias alive, but only long enough to make him a vessel. You have to choose: tell him, or keep him safe. You can't do both.'

Victor sat in the chair near the console and reached for a crystal glass already filled with amber alcohol. 

"So, they found out." He exhaled. 

"Why do they need Elias? I mean… your vessel is a pure blood alpha and barely containing your power. What use could a recessive omega possibly have?" Ashwin asked while reaching for the jar of ice to serve Victor. 

"Recessive omegas are stabilizers; if I mate him, I can fully control this body through the bond. The dissidents seem like they have someone that wants to raise them as a God." He paused and took a sip. "I did it without an omega or a recessive, but that was only because I killed six other gods." 

Ashwin didn't flinch, but the silence that followed carried weight.

Of course Victor had killed six other gods. Of course it wasn't just exaggerated history.

He dropped two pieces of ice into the glass with a soft clink, then stepped back, folding his arms as he leaned against the edge of the console, eyes fixed on the monitor. The waveform from Ruo's message still pulsed faintly, waiting to be closed, waiting to be acknowledged as prophecy or threat.

"Do they know that you are really a god?" Ashwin asked. "And that you need Elias." 

Victor didn't move right away. The glass rested in his hand, the amber catching a thread of light from the monitor and throwing it back across the table in a flicker that didn't reach his eyes.

"They suspect," he said at last. "But they don't know."

Ashwin remained still, the question unspoken between them.

Victor took another sip, slow and thoughtful.

"Gods don't walk," he continued, voice low. "Not anymore. Not here. They fall, they fade, and they vanish into their own silence when no one worships them anymore. Elias, it's a shortcut; his affinity with divine power without using it it's rare and one can filter the power through him."

"The Clarke family are devoted to you; one would believe that they would groom their son to serve you."

Victor's fingers curled once around the glass, but he didn't lift it again. The ice had settled. The weight of the silence had not.

"I don't need a trained omega," he repeated, slower this time. "I need him."

Ashwin didn't speak, though something in his posture shifted, a breath held behind his ribs, a thought bitten down before it turned to opinion.

Victor's gaze returned to the screen. The waveform still blinked, patient. Ruo's voice, severed mid-warning, hung in the air like a door left half-open. He didn't close it.

"He reached for me," Victor said quietly. "Not Matteo. Not his professors. Not even the family that raised him to kneel in their name. He ran barefoot through an alley with blood on his ankles and a target on his back, and he still listened to my voice."

"That doesn't mean he trusts you," Ashwin said, evenly.

"No," Victor murmured. "Not now, but he would soon enough." 

"You are scary." 

Victor didn't deny it.

He tilted the glass, watching the last of the ice melt into the amber, his expression unreadable beneath the weight of his certainty.

"I'm not here to be safe," he said. "I'm here to be right."

Ashwin let out a quiet breath, not quite a laugh. "And here I thought the gods had outgrown vanity."

Victor finally looked up, the corner of his mouth lifting in an eerie smile.

"They haven't," he said. "They've just become more selective and Elias is mine."