The call with Valerian eventually ended, but Lucius's rage remained undiminished. His power continued to radiate outward in suffocating waves, keeping supernatural beings throughout the world pinned and trembling. Within the pace, court officials had abandoned any pretense of normal function, communicating exclusively through human messengers while they remained prostrate on marble floors.

  Lucius paced the chamber with predatory intensity, his movements unnaturally fluid despite the rigid tension in his frame. The air around him seemed to distort slightly, reality itself bending under the pressure of his unleashed emotion. His eyes had taken on an unsettling luminescence, glowing with ancient power no longer fully contained.

  Nova watched this dispy of raw emotion from his position on the bed, his expression thoughtful despite his confusion. For centuries, he had observed vampires in their unguarded moments—learning to read the subtle signals that might mean punishment or brief reprieve. He had become an expert in vampire psychology through necessity, developing an intuitive understanding of their moods and triggers as a survival mechanism.

  But nothing in his two centuries of captivity had prepared him for this. The king's rage was both terrifying in its scale and bewildering in its focus. The entire supernatural world y paralyzed by Lucius's fury—yet that fury was centered entirely on what had been done to Nova, a being the king had only just met.

  As Lucius continued his relentless pacing, muttering occasionally about failures and lost time, Nova finally broke the tense silence with a question of disarming simplicity.

  "Why are you so mad about me?"

  The words hung in the air, unadorned and direct. No careful phrasing, no deferential qualifiers—just five words that cut through two thousand years of complex emotion with the precision of innocence.

  Lucius froze mid-step, turning toward Nova with an expression of complete surprise, as if he'd forgotten anyone else was in the room. For a being who had orchestrated the development of vampire society across millennia, who had foreseen countless possibilities and pnned for every contingency, this simple question left him utterly unprepared.

  "What?" he asked, his voice barely audible.

  "Why are you so mad about me?" Nova repeated, meeting Lucius's gaze directly—something he would never have dared with his former owner. "You don't even know me."

  Something in Nova's voice—perhaps its directness, or the genuine confusion it contained—penetrated where nothing else could. Lucius stared at him as if truly seeing him for the first time, not as the figure from his prophetic dreams or the subject of his millennia of waiting, but as the actual being before him—confused, wounded, and completely unaware of their connection.

  The realization struck Lucius with almost physical force. For two thousand years, he had dreamed of Nova, watched countless versions of him across possible futures, fallen in love with his spirit and resilience. But Nova had known him for mere hours, had no context for their profound connection, no understanding of the visions that had sustained Lucius across millennia.

  In this moment of crity, the rage that had fueled Lucius's power began to recede, repced by something gentler but no less profound. The oppressive force that had crushed supernatural beings worldwide gradually lifted—not entirely, but enough that many could rise to their knees, enough that breathing became easier across vampire territories.

  Throughout the pace, court officials felt the change immediately, exchanging bewildered gnces as the crushing pressure diminished. In distant territories, supernatural beings who had been pinned for hours found themselves suddenly able to move, though still weakened by the residual effects of Lucius's power.

  In the private chamber, Lucius remained silent, still processing the implications of Nova's question. After two thousand years of waiting, after centuries of careful pnning, after decades of searching, he now faced the stark reality of Nova's perspective—a being who had no idea why this all-powerful king would care so deeply about his suffering.

  For perhaps the first time in his immortal existence, Lucius found himself entirely without strategy or prepared response. The simple question had stripped away millennia of careful calcution, leaving only the vulnerability of truth.

  This moment marked not just the gradual containment of his power, but the true beginning of their retionship—not as figures from prophetic visions, but as two beings meeting in reality, with all the complications and misunderstandings that entailed.

  The irony was not lost on Lucius. After millennia of preparation, the one thing he hadn't prepared for was Nova simply asking why he cared.