The rain hadn't stopped, but by the time Victor rose from his chair, the storm no longer mattered. He wasn't walking through it; he was the one calling it when it should be winter.
The air folded around him, thunder humming low, the scent of ozone curling through the room. The lights flickered once, and Elias felt his chest tighten just before it happened, the soft, impossible shift in pressure that meant Victor was no longer there.
The sound wasn't a crack or a flare, but silence collapsing inward. The next heartbeat dropped Victor into the center of a storm.
Rain whipped sideways through the air, but none of it touched him. His presence forced it away; droplets hung suspended for a moment before sliding down invisible walls of power. The Adler estate, or the former Clarke's estate, rose before him like a beacon of arrogance: white marble, wet glass, and golden ether veins crawling through the walls.
He could smell the corruption from here: sour, burnt, and sweet with decay.
