SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant Chapter 644: The Art He Chose

"For what?"

Esmond stared at Trafalgar as if the question itself had reached deeper than Caelum's tools.

His ruined hands trembled against the restraints. The potion had restored enough flesh to leave him functional, yet every small movement dragged pain back into his face. His lips parted, closed, parted again. The old arrogance had not vanished completely. It clung to him in scraps, like a fine coat soaked in blood and refusing to fall from his shoulders.

"For knowledge," Esmond said at last.

Trafalgar's expression did not change.

Selara's mouth tightened.

Esmond noticed both reactions and released a weak, breathless sound that might have been a laugh if his throat had not been so raw. "You look disappointed. Did you expect some grand declaration? A throne? A banner? A secret army beneath the floor? No. The Vaelion wanted to learn from the Void Creatures. That was all."

"That was all?" Selara repeated.

Her voice had thinned to something dangerous.

Esmond turned his head toward her with visible effort. "Do not dress it in outrage before understanding it. They did not know what Icarus would become. I did not know either. From what I was told, he had access to a Void Creature and an idea that bordered on madness. The Vaelion offered me the chance to approach it, study it, work beside him for a time. Icarus was a punctual opportunity, an opening that appeared where none should have existed."

Trafalgar folded his arms. "You are saying they sent you to him."

"Yes," Esmond rasped. "They arranged the route. They offered the possibility. I accepted."

"And the war?" Trafalgar asked.

Esmond's brow furrowed, genuinely this time. "I did not expect a war between two Great Families. I am not a strategist, boy. I did not gather armies or whisper into patriarchs' ears. Icarus wanted something, the Vaelion wanted to observe what could be learned, and I wanted access to a subject no sane continent would ever place on a table."

Caelum's gaze did not leave him.

Trafalgar's thoughts moved faster than Esmond's words.

The Vaelion were involved. Perhaps not with every corpse, every order, every battlefield. Perhaps not with the full collapse of Thal'zar territory. Yet they had placed Esmond near Icarus. They had offered him access. They had known enough about the Void Creature to move a prisoner they had spent decades hiding.

That was already damning.

'They touched the Void and tried to keep their gloves white,' Trafalgar thought.

He looked down at Esmond. "After that?"

"With the commotion, I left," Esmond said. "Icarus had his obsessions. The Vaelion had their questions. The war swallowed attention wonderfully. Guards moved, chains loosened, records became less faithful than their owners believed." A small, ugly smile twitched over his mouth. "So I escaped. I lived outside their cage after that."

"Convenient," Trafalgar said.

"Necessary," Esmond replied. "I had learned enough to deserve my own work again."

Selara stepped forward.

Her face had gone pale, though her eyes burned with a fury that made the room feel smaller around her. "And you could not restrain yourself."

Esmond looked at her.

Selara's hand curled slowly at her side. "You took what you learned from the Void Creature and used it on her. That child. That homunculus. You built her with everything you had been given, everything you had stolen, everything you had learned from bodies that never asked to become your lessons."

Esmond's gaze drifted toward the broken door, toward where Selara had taken the homunculus away.

"She is extraordinary," he whispered.

Selara's face twisted with disgust. "Extraordinary?"

"Yes," Esmond said, and the word came with feverish conviction. "I saw what Void-born matter could endure. I saw regeneration that mocked anatomy. I saw hunger stitched into tissue, instinct refusing collapse, corruption becoming structure when guided properly. I took fragments of principle, nothing more. I refined them. Adapted them. Made them usable."

Selara's voice cracked through the room. "You made a child-shaped prisoner."

"I made life from impossibility."

"You made obedience and called it life."

Esmond's eyes sharpened with the remains of old pride. "Obedience is the first mercy given to unstable creation. Freedom given too early is cruelty."

Selara moved as if she might strike him herself.

Caelum's attention shifted toward her, subtle but ready. Trafalgar did not stop her.

"Art," Selara said, the word coming out like poison. "You called it your art before. Is that what this is to you? A girl with commands stitched under her skin? A body that bleeds Void filth because you could not bear the idea of leaving a horror unstudied?"

Esmond breathed through his mouth. Blood dried at one corner.

"You always hated that word when I used it honestly."

"Honestly?" Selara's laugh carried no warmth. "You call this honesty? Your masterpiece, yes? That is what you called her. A masterpiece. How hollow does a man have to be to look at that child and see applause?"

Esmond's ruined fingers twitched. The restraints chimed softly.

"My heart?" he murmured. "My soul?" His smile came back in a thin, broken line. "I lost those years ago, Selara. You know that better than anyone."

"No," she said. "I knew you were cruel. I knew you were vain. I knew you were brilliant in the most repulsive way a person can be brilliant. I did not know there was nothing left beneath it."

"There is work beneath it," Esmond said. "That has always been enough."

Trafalgar's jaw tightened.

He stepped closer, bringing the conversation back before Selara's rage swallowed the room completely. "What else do you know about the Vaelion and the Void Creature?"

"Very little," Esmond said. "Less than you want. They wanted to learn from Void Creatures. Why? For what end? I do not know. They did not invite me into their family dreams. I was useful, not trusted."

"You expect me to believe you never asked?"

"I asked constantly." Esmond's eyes flicked toward Caelum, and fear crossed his face again. "They never answered."

Trafalgar leaned down. "Do you know whether the intelligent Void Creature that escaped made contact with the Vaelion?"

Esmond's face drained further.

For the first time, the thought appeared to disturb him in a way his own crimes had not.

"I do not know," he said. "And I would prefer never to know."

"Why?"

"Because politics is a swamp, and things that crawl out of the Void make poor dinner guests." Esmond swallowed, his throat clicking. "I was interested in the work. The flesh. The reaction. The impossible behavior of tissue under pressure from something beyond the world. I did not care whose banners moved around it."

Selara stared at him with open revulsion. "That is your excuse? You did not care?"

"It is not an excuse," Esmond said. "It is the truth."

"And what was the objective of creating her?" Selara asked, each word cutting rougher than the last. "What were you going to do with her after Aurevane applauded? Sell her? Improve her? Build another? How many people had to die so you could stand before a crowd and pretend your atrocity had manners?"

Esmond's breathing quickened. Pain and pride warred across his face.

"Aurevane would have praised what it could not understand," he said. "The Vaelion would have wanted to know what I changed. Others would have paid for lesser versions. Scholars would have denied wanting them while asking for notes in private. That is how the world works, Selara. You hate me because I do not bother lying about the appetite."

"You never learned anything," Selara whispered. "A Vaelion died because of you. You were imprisoned for it. A century passed, and the first thing you did with freedom was find another body to ruin."

Esmond's eyes gleamed.

"The first thing I did with freedom," he said, "was continue."

The words left the room colder than any confession.

Trafalgar watched Selara's hand drift toward her pistol.

Esmond saw it too, and despite the blood, the restraints, the broken fingers, and the terror Caelum had carved into him, his smile returned with that same incurable rot.

"If you let me live," he whispered, "I will do it again."