# Chapter 280: A God's Power
The pressure on Soren's throat was immense, a cold, unyielding force that crushed his windpipe and sent fire screaming through his lungs. His vision tunneled, the edges blurring into a grey haze as Valerius lifted him higher, his boots scraping uselessly against the cracked marble floor. The world shrank to the Inquisitor's face, a mask of serene, terrifying beauty. His skin, once weathered and human, was now smooth and pale like polished alabaster, the swirling violet light in his eyes the only sign of life within. The very air around him hummed, a discordant symphony of stolen power that made Soren's teeth ache.
"You struggle," Valerius said, his voice a layered chorus of his own and something deeper, something ancient and resonant. It wasn't a question, but a statement of fact, delivered with the mild curiosity of a man studying an insect. He didn't even seem to be exerting himself. The hand holding Soren aloft was steady, the power flowing through it as natural as blood. "Even now, with your Gift cowering in your soul, with your body broken, you still cling to the illusion of resistance. It's… quaint."
From the corner of his eye, Soren saw a flicker of movement. Nyra. She had pushed herself up from the rubble, a shard of broken glass clutched in her hand like a dagger. Her face was a mask of fury and desperation, her usual calculating calm shattered by raw, protective instinct. She launched herself forward, a silent, desperate charge aimed at Valerius's back.
Valerius didn't turn. He didn't even flinch. He merely raised his free hand, a gesture of casual dismissal. A wave of invisible force, thick and suffocating, erupted from him. It struck Nyra not like a blow, but like a solid wall. The air cracked. She was thrown backward as if by a titan's fist, her body hurtling through the air to slam into a bank of shattered monitoring equipment. The impact sent a shower of sparks and a cloud of acrid smoke into the air. She crumpled to the floor amidst the wreckage, a groan of pain lost in the groaning of the chamber itself.
"See?" Valerius murmured, his attention returning to Soren. "Futility. The world is full of it. Conflict. Strife. Pain. All born from the chaotic jangle of individual wills, each one crying out for its own meaningless purpose. The Gifted are the worst of all. You are given a spark of the divine, and what do you do with it? You squabble over scraps of land, over lines on a map, over the hollow praise of crowds. You burn yourselves out for nothing."
He gestured with his chin toward the center of the room, where the Divine Bulwark pulsed with a steady, rhythmic light. The purple lightning no longer arced wildly; it now flowed in controlled, hypnotic rivers of energy, all converging on Valerius. The machine was no longer just a machine. It was an extension of him, a second heart pumping a universe of power into his veins. The entire laboratory vibrated with its thrum, a low, gut-churning frequency that Soren felt in his bones.
"The Synod… they were fools," Valerius continued, his voice taking on a lecturing tone, as if addressing a classroom of acolytes. "They believed the Gift was a blessing to be controlled, a weapon to be pointed. They built this Bulwark to amplify their champions, to create the perfect soldier. They never understood its true purpose. It is not a weapon. It is a crucible. A filter. And I am the result."
He finally lowered Soren, not releasing him, but letting his feet touch the ground just enough to take a sliver of the crushing weight off his throat. Soren gasped, dragging in a ragged, painful breath that tasted of ozone and dust. His mind raced, searching for an opening, a weakness, anything. But there was nothing. Valerius was a fortress of pure energy, his nullification Gift no longer a simple counter but an all-encompassing field of absolute control.
"They spoke of a prophecy," Valerius mused, his violet eyes seeming to look through Soren, into a past only he could see. "A Cinder-Born, rising from the ashes to either save the world or end it. They feared you, Soren Vale. They watched your every step, convinced you were the variable that would undo their careful order. They were right, but not in the way they imagined."
A slow, beatific smile spread across his face, a horrifying expression of pure, unadulterated megalomania. "The prophecy was never about you stopping me. It was about you *completing* me. The Divine Bulwark was designed to absorb the ambient magic of the world, to draw it in and consolidate it. But it needed a catalyst. A power source of sufficient raw, untamed energy to ignite the final merge. A power born not of training or doctrine, but of pure, unrefined survival. Your power, Cinder-Born. The very thing that makes you an outcast, a monster in their eyes… that is the final key."
The truth of it crashed down on Soren, heavier than Valerius's grip. All his fighting, all his pain, all the sacrifices he had made to climb the Ladder, to save his family—it had all been a lie. A carefully constructed path leading him to this exact spot, this exact moment. He wasn't a hero. He wasn't a rebel. He was fuel. A living battery for a madman's apotheosis.
"Your struggle was necessary," Valerius said, his voice softening into a grotesque parody of sympathy. "Every battle, every loss, every moment of despair… it forged your Gift into something potent, something unique. You are the perfect sacrifice. Your power will be the cornerstone of my new world."
He released Soren's throat. Soren collapsed to his knees, coughing violently, his body trembling with a mixture of oxygen deprivation and sheer, soul-crushing horror. He looked up, his gaze finding Nyra. She was trying to push herself up again, her face pale but her eyes burning with unyielding defiance. She was a strategist, a thinker. If anyone could find a way out of this, it was her. But even she looked lost, her mind grappling with an enemy who operated on a level beyond tactics or strategy.
"Imagine it," Valerius whispered, spreading his arms wide as if to embrace the crumbling room. "No more war. No more Ladder. No more debt, no more suffering. All will be quiet. All will be still. I will take the chaos of a billion screaming souls and give it a single, perfect purpose: to be part of me. Free will is the source of all pain, Soren. I am offering the world an end to pain. A silent, perfect peace."
The room shook more violently. A massive crack snaked its way across the ceiling, and dust rained down like a grey snow. The energy flowing from the Bulwark intensified, the purple light growing so bright it was painful to look at. Valerius stood at its epicenter, his body glowing from within, a dark sun about to go supernova.
"You see, I am not destroying the world," he said, his voice booming with cosmic certainty. "I am perfecting it. I am giving it the god it has always cried out for. And you… you will have the honor of being the first to join me. Not as a slave, not as a servant, but as an integral part of my divinity. Your rage, your love, your grief… they will become echoes in my eternal symphony."
Soren's hand clenched into a fist. The despair was still there, a cold, heavy stone in his gut, but something else was rising with it. A spark of the old, stubborn fire. The fire that had kept him going in the Bloom-Wastes, the fire that had made him fight for his family when all hope was lost. Valerius wanted to take his will. He would not give it to him. He would not go quietly into this silent, perfect hell.
He pushed himself to his feet, his legs shaking but holding. He met Valerius's swirling violet gaze, and for the first time, he didn't see a god. He saw a man. A terrified, arrogant man who was so afraid of the pain of existence that he was willing to erase existence itself.
"You're wrong," Soren rasped, his voice a raw, broken thing. "It's not peace you're creating. It's a tomb."
Valerius's smile didn't falter. It only widened. "A beautiful, peaceful tomb. And you are the final cornerstone." He moved faster than Soren could track, a blur of pale flesh and purple light. One moment he was across the room, the next he was standing before Soren. His hand, smooth and cold as death, shot out and closed around Soren's throat once more. He lifted him from the floor, the effortless display of strength a final, crushing declaration of his power. The world swam again, the light from the Bulwark and the violet of Valerius's eyes merging into a single, overwhelming point of light. "And you, my dear Cinder-Born," Valerius boomed, his voice once again layered with that otherworldly echo, "are the final sacrifice. Your power will be the cornerstone of my new world."