SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant Chapter 645: Evidence

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

Selara raised the pistol.

There was no warning in the movement. One moment her hand was at her side, and the next the barrel was aimed at his forehead. Her face had gone cold in a way Trafalgar had not seen before, stripped of disgust and grief until only decision remained.

Esmond looked at the weapon, and for a breath, even he stopped smiling.

Trafalgar stepped between the line of fire and the chair.

Selara's eyes cut to him. "Move."

"No."

Her finger tightened around the trigger. "He said he would do it again."

"I heard him."

"Then you understand why he dies here."

Trafalgar did not soften his voice. That would have insulted her more. "If you shoot him now, Aurevane gets a dead criminal and a room full of claims. They will bury half of this under procedure before sunset."

Selara's jaw flexed.

Trafalgar kept going, steady and practical. "Alive, he can speak. Alive, he can confirm Vaelion involvement. Alive, he can explain what he used to create the homunculus. That gives us leverage. Dead, he becomes convenient."

Esmond breathed through cracked lips, his eyes sliding between them with faint interest. Even ruined, bound, and terrified, he was listening for weaknesses.

Selara noticed. The pistol dipped by a finger's width, not enough to lower it, enough to show she had heard Trafalgar.

"I hate that you're right," she said.

"I don't like it much either."

Caelum stepped closer to Esmond's side. "Keeping him alive will be simple, Young Master. The restraints already block mana and personal storage. I can keep him asleep with controlled doses. If he wakes earlier than intended, the cuffs will make him harmless."

Esmond swallowed. "Harmless is an ambitious word."

Caelum looked at him. "I can make it accurate."

The old man's mouth closed.

Selara finally lowered the pistol. The anger did not leave her face; it only changed address. "Fine. He breathes because he is useful. That is all."

Esmond tried to laugh, but the sound came out thin and broken. "You are learning, Selara."

She looked at him as if he had spat on the floor. "Do not mistake restraint for mercy."

Caelum uncorked another vial. Esmond jerked away at the smell, or tried to. The restraints allowed nothing meaningful. Caelum pressed two fingers under his jaw and poured the liquid into his mouth with the calm of someone feeding medicine to an animal that had bitten three handlers already.

Esmond coughed once. His eyes rolled back before he could shape another insult. His head slumped against the chair, and the room lost one more ugly voice.

Caelum waited, checked his pulse, then ran through his hands, mouth, collar, sleeves, boots, and the lining of his torn coat. He removed two tiny capsules, one needle hidden beneath a fingernail, and a sliver of black glass tucked behind a molar.

Trafalgar watched the growing pile on the broken table. "Of course."

"He is cautious," Caelum said. "Also predictable, after one accepts that every part of him may contain a tool."

Selara looked away first.

"Where do we keep him?" Trafalgar asked.

Caelum glanced toward the floor. "This house has a lower archive. The wards feed downward, and the pressure pattern is different beneath the study. Matteo built a sealed room here."

Selara looked at him. "You found that while fighting?"

"I noticed it before the fighting, Director."

Trafalgar exhaled through his nose. "Naturally."

Caelum inclined his head, taking it as praise. "I would still add my own measures. Matteo's wards are strong, but they answer to Matteo."

Meaning he did not trust them. Good.

Trafalgar walked to Matteo and crouched beside him. "Wake him."

Caelum drew a different vial and held it under Matteo's nose. The old scholar's face pinched. Caelum tipped a few drops past his lips.

Matteo woke with a violent cough, one hand reaching for the cane that was no longer near him. Pain caught up to him at once. He hissed, gripped his side, and glared at the room as if the room itself had offended him.

"What happened?" he rasped.

"You lived," Trafalgar said.

Matteo blinked hard, dragged his focus across the broken chamber, and landed on Esmond unconscious in the chair. "He is alive?"

"For now."

Matteo's eyes narrowed despite the blood loss. "For now is doing a great deal of work in that sentence."

Selara stepped in before Trafalgar could answer. "He talked. The Vaelion kept him after they took him. They used him for their own benefit."

Matteo went very still.

Trafalgar saw the reaction and kept the rest buried. No Void details, no mention of an intelligent creature, no wider suspicion. Matteo could understand the danger without being handed the whole knife.

"For their benefit," Matteo repeated.

Selara nodded. "That is what we know. He was not rotting in a cell for a century."

The old scholar's fingers tightened against his bloodied coat. "I helped hand him to them."

"Yes," Selara said.

The word struck harder than accusation.

Matteo looked toward Esmond again. The arrogance had not returned to his face yet. He looked older, sicker, and for once, unable to polish his guilt into a lecture.

Trafalgar stood. "Caelum says you have a lower archive."

Matteo's eyes moved to him. "You have been inspecting my house?"

Caelum answered politely. "Enough to be helpful."

Matteo stared at him, decided he lacked the strength to argue, and dragged himself upright with Selara's help. "There is a sealed archive beneath the study. It is meant for dangerous documents and unstable materials."

"It can hold him?" Trafalgar asked.

"It can hold a furious alchemist, six cursed cabinets, and one regrettable winter where a reagent tried to sing. It can hold him."

That sounded like Matteo attempting humor and failing through blood loss. Trafalgar let it pass.

They moved Esmond below.

Caelum carried him without ceremony, one arm hooked around the chair itself rather than the body, as if Esmond did not deserve the dignity of being lifted properly. Matteo opened the archive with his cane and a blood-marked command pressed into a ward plate. The door revealed a narrow chamber of stone shelves, iron channels, and layered containment circles carved so densely the air tasted metallic.

Esmond was placed in the centre.

Caelum secured the chair to the floor, checked the suppression cuffs again, and added three of his own seals around the restraints. A clone formed near the rear wall, quiet and watchful, daggers already drawn.

Matteo noticed. "My wards are enough."

Caelum smiled faintly. "I am sure they are."

Nobody believed that was agreement.

When the door sealed, the room above felt smaller despite having one monster fewer inside it.

Selara did not sit. She stood in the middle of the wreckage, looking toward the direction of Aurevane's tower as if the walls had become glass.

"I am going to the administrative tower," she said.

Matteo rubbed at his injured arm. "Choose your words carefully. If you throw every accusation at once, they will defend the institution before they hear the crime."

"They hid her under the Atrium," Selara said. "They protected the room, honoured the creator's rules, and prepared to call her a masterpiece in front of half the continent. They can hear one ugly sentence."

Trafalgar nodded. "I'm coming."

"As am I," Caelum said.

Matteo looked between them and cursed under his breath. "Give me a stabiliser. If this becomes a public disaster, I would rather watch it happen from the room than hear about it afterward."

Caelum handed him a potion.

Before they left, Selara checked on the homunculus. The girl was in a side room, dressed in a simple cloak Selara had found, her wound bound properly. She sat on the edge of a chair with both hands folded in her lap, as if waiting for the world to tell her what shape to take.

Selara's voice softened. "You can stay here. It is safer than coming with us."

The homunculus looked at her, said nothing, and stayed where she was.

Caelum left another clone by the door.

They left the house soon after.

The trip to the tower passed quickly. Guards tried to stop them at the entrance, but Selara did not slow. Matteo's name opened the first checkpoint. Trafalgar's opened the second. Caelum handled the third by speaking softly to a man who immediately remembered another urgent duty elsewhere.

At the highest administrative chamber, a guard stepped forward. "Director Selara, the council is in session. You cannot—"

Selara opened the door herself.

Inside, Aurevane's senior officials turned from the long table, irritation already forming on several faces.

Selara stepped in without bowing.

"Tell me," she said, her voice carrying across the chamber, "which one of you approved a homunculus built with Void-born material for the main stage?"