SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant Chapter 641: The Question Left Open

The room went quiet after Trafalgar's question.

Selara kept her eyes on Esmond, waiting for the answer with the kind of attention that made the ruined chamber feel smaller. Whatever hatred lived in her now, curiosity stood beside it. Esmond had been her master once. A monster, yes, but also the man who had taught her enough to recognize how deep his crimes went. If the Vaelion had kept him alive, if they had placed tools in his hands again after everything he had done, then this was no longer only about Esmond.

Caelum watched as well.

He had one hand near Matteo's pulse and the other resting close to his coat, ready to draw another vial if the old scholar's breathing changed. Even so, his attention had shifted toward Esmond. A confirmation would not be enough to condemn House Vaelion by itself. Great Families had done ugly work before and buried the details under prettier language. But if the Vaelion had used Esmond, and if that use touched the Thal'zar war, the shape of the entire conflict would change.

Trafalgar felt the thought crawl through the room before anyone said it aloud.

The war between Thal'zar and Sylvanel had already cost too much. A patriarch had died. Soldiers on both sides had been fed into battlefields. Towns, routes, families, trade, old loyalties — all of it had been shoved into the teeth of a conflict that now looked less and less like a war born from simple ambition. Icarus had captured a Void Creature, but how? He had tried to give it intelligence, but who had told him that was even possible? And when he needed someone with the exact horror of expertise required for such work, Esmond had appeared.

That did not smell like coincidence.

'If the Vaelion were behind this, even partly, then they did not just break peace,' Trafalgar thought, his gaze fixed on the old man beneath him. 'They cracked the foundation the Eight Great Families have stood on for centuries. A human Great Family. The mages. The respectable ones, of course. Because apparently the world has a sense of humor after all.'

The obsidian armor around him began to fade.

The wings folded first, their dark plates dissolving into drifting motes of mana. The weight pressing Esmond down lessened by degrees, though Trafalgar did not release him. The chestpiece broke apart next, vanishing from his shoulders, arms, and back until only Trafalgar remained, one knee still planted against Esmond with Maledicta at his throat.

Esmond did not answer.

That alone kept Trafalgar from pushing the conclusion any further. Suspicion was useful. Certainty was better. And for all the pieces now lining up in his head, Esmond had not said the word yet.

At last, the old man lifted his gaze.

His eyes met Trafalgar's, and for the first time since the fight ended, the amusement there lost some of its easy polish. Trafalgar's eyes were dark blue, deep enough that the broken light of the chamber seemed to sink into them rather than reflect. Looking into them felt like staring into cold ocean water at night: beautiful from far away, dangerous once it had you below the surface.

Esmond's voice came out rough.

"And why should I answer a question like that?"

Trafalgar did not react with surprise. In truth, this was closer to what he had expected from the start. Esmond had been talkative before because pain, adrenaline, and wounded pride had loosened his tongue. Now that the first rush had passed, his mind had returned to its proper shape. Crooked, vile, and far more careful.

Trafalgar lifted his head slightly. "Caelum."

"Yes, Young Master."

"Cuff him," Trafalgar said. "I suppose he doesn't want to answer now. So we'll have to pull the answers out another way."

Esmond laughed. The sound scraped out of his throat, dry and ugly, but it still carried that superior little edge that made Trafalgar want to break more than a rib. "I endured the Vaelion, boy. Do you think I will fold because you found yourself a loyal dog with a pretty coat and a few hidden blades?" Caelum's expression did not change.

Esmond kept going, eyes glittering. "If you want anything useful from me, you will need imagination. Real imagination. Pain alone is terribly overrated once one has had time to develop a relationship with it."

Trafalgar looked down at him. "Lucky me, then."

Esmond's smile thinned.

"I happen to have an expert in that art right here," Trafalgar said. "And I've been meaning to test his skills."

Caelum inclined his head, as if receiving a perfectly ordinary instruction.

Trafalgar's mouth curved with faint, unpleasant amusement. "You remember what you told me, right, Caelum? That I didn't need to dirty my hands. That next time, I should let you show me your craft."

The clones still moving through the wreckage vanished at once, dissolving into pale distortions before the air closed where they had stood. Caelum rose from Matteo's side only after confirming the old scholar's breathing was steady, and his hand slipped inside his coat.

"Of course, Young Master," he said. "I do not forget such matters. You need not worry."

A pair of restraints appeared in Caelum's hands.

They did not look like ordinary shackles. The metal was dark, almost blue under the ruined ward-light, with thin runic seams carved through the cuffs like veins under skin. Each band carried a dull inner glow, not bright enough to announce itself, but steady enough to make the mana around it recoil. Trafalgar recognized the function before Caelum explained it.

Mana suppression.

The kind meant for people who could not be trusted with even a finger's worth of power.

"These will seal his channels," Caelum said, stepping toward Esmond. "No skill activation. No mana circulation. No access to personal storage. If he has anything hidden in his inventory, it will remain there unless I decide otherwise."

Esmond's gaze sharpened at the cuffs. A man like Esmond could laugh at knives and broken bones. Tools that cut him away from his methods, from hidden vials, from prepared failsafes — those were another language entirely. Selara noticed it as well.

She stood beside the homunculus, one hand still hovering near the cloth pressed to the wound in the girl's side. The homunculus had not moved since choosing to hold it there. Her fingers remained curled around the fabric, clumsy but firm, her pale face turned toward the floor as if the act of doing anything without command required all the strength she had.

Selara looked from Esmond to Trafalgar.

"Trafalgar," she said.

He glanced toward her.

"I'm going to find her proper clothes and treat her wounds somewhere else." Selara's voice held steady, but there was iron underneath it. "I don't want her present for this. I don't want to be present either, if I'm being honest. But when he starts talking, call me."

Trafalgar looked at the homunculus.

For a moment, the room's violence seemed to cling to her more than to anyone else. She stood in the middle of evidence that she had never chosen, built from crimes she could not name, wounded by people trying not to kill her and shaped by a man who had screamed at her to save him like she was a tool fallen out of reach.

Trafalgar nodded. "Take her."

Selara's shoulders eased by a fraction.

She turned to the homunculus and offered her hand, palm open. "Come with me."

The homunculus stared at the hand.

Selara did not close the distance for her. She waited, jaw tight, anger held back by something gentler and more difficult. After a long breath, the homunculus shifted. One step first. Awkward. Uneven. Then another. She did not take Selara's hand, but she followed her toward the broken door, still holding the cloth against her side.

Before leaving, Selara looked back at Esmond.

The old man smiled at her, bloody and vile. "Still rescuing ruined things, Selara?"

Selara's face did not soften.

"No," she said. "I'm taking one away from you."

She left with the homunculus.

The room felt colder after that.

Matteo slept against the wall, wrapped in torn cloth and potion haze, his chest rising with careful rhythm. Selara's footsteps faded beyond the doorway. The broken ward plate gave off a faint, wounded hum. Marrowglass fragments lay across the floor like dead insects, dark and brittle where Caelum's vial had ruined them.

That left three men awake in the chamber.

Caelum moved first.

He seized Esmond by the back of the collar and hauled him up with enough force to make the old man hiss through his teeth. Trafalgar removed Maledicta from Esmond's throat only when Caelum had control of both arms. The cuffs snapped around Esmond's wrists one after the other, and the runes bit into life.

Esmond's mana vanished from the air. His face tightened before he could hide it. Caelum dragged a chair from the wreckage. One leg had cracked, but a quick pulse of mana from his palm fused the break well enough for its purpose. He forced Esmond down onto it, bound his wrists behind the backrest, and secured his ankles to the lower frame with two more narrow bands drawn from the same coat.

Esmond breathed through his nose, eyes moving from Caelum to Trafalgar.

"You are making a mistake," he said softly.

Caelum checked the restraints with almost tender precision. "People often say that when they are losing control of the conversation."

Esmond's lips peeled back. "You think you are frightening."

"No," Caelum replied. "I think I am just a helper for my young master." Trafalgar stood a few steps away, Maledicta resting at his side, watching the scene with a calm that did not reach his eyes. Esmond was restrained now. Matteo was asleep. Selara had removed the homunculus from the room. The circuit had been broken, the hostage taken away, the shouting stripped from the air.

Now there were no distractions left.

Caelum finished tightening the last cuff and stepped behind Esmond's chair, one gloved hand resting lightly on the old man's shoulder.

"You asked for creativity," Caelum said.

Esmond's smile returned, thinner than before.

Caelum leaned down until his voice reached only him and Trafalgar.

"Let us see how much of it you can appreciate."