Chapter 235: Name Above the Door III
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Bat Bat leaned back and groaned dramatically. "This is oppression of small flying intellectuals."
Elena said, "It is grammar."
Bat Bat replied, "It is tyranny."
"It is not."
Bat Bat pointed accusingly at Elena. "Auri knew what I meant."
"But others didn’t. You will cause trouble for the young master if you don’t learn proper grammar."
Bat Bat gasped as if betrayed by philosophy itself. "I was speaking with natural artistic freedom."
Elena’s mouth moved faintly. "You were wrong."
Bat Bat looked at the maid. "Do you see how she attacks my language?"
The maid lowered her eyes at once. "I would never presume to judge, Lady Bat Bat."
That instantly restored some of Bat Bat’s dignity.
"See," Bat Bat said. "She understands diplomacy. Like Bat Bat."
Elena exhaled softly, the kind of breath that belonged to people who had once prepared to die in battle and now had to explain pronouns to a bat.
"Again," Elena said. "You are she."
Bat Bat sagged.
"I am she," she said in the tone of a prisoner signing a forced confession.
Elena nodded. "Good."
Bat Bat immediately added, "But only because I choose mercy."
Elena let the moment pass. Then her expression shifted, becoming quieter.
"Go and check on Sekhmet," she told the maid.
The maid bowed at once. "Yes, Lady Elena."
She left quickly, grateful for an excuse to escape before Bat Bat declared a war on grammar itself.
Bat Bat watched her go, then muttered, "I still believe all of this could have been solved with context."
Elena stood.
"You may believe that."
Bat Bat lifted her chin. "I do."
"And yet," Elena said, "you are still she."
Bat Bat drooped. "Cruel."
Elsewhere in the house, behind a closed door in a quieter chamber, Sekhmet sat alone.
The room was not dark, but the curtains had been drawn enough to soften the day. It suited him. Two days had passed since the auction hall and since Elena’s promise to explain everything. She had explained enough to change the shape of his world and not enough to make it simple. That was the problem with truths buried too long. Once uncovered, they did not arrive in a neat line. They came like broken glass tipped out from an old box.
His father had a family. He has a full family.
That single fact kept repeating inside him like a bell that had not decided whether it was good news or cruelty.
His father was trapped inside family politics, hidden punishment, and whatever that other place was that even Elena and Seraphiel spoke around instead of through. But absent by force, not by indifference. That should have brought relief. It did bring relief. But it also brought anger, and beneath that anger sat something rawer.
His whole life had been built around one shape of absence.
Now that shape has changed.
He sat in a chair by the low table, one hand resting against the wood, eyes lowered in thought. The control ring Seraphiel had given him lay nearby. A polished mid grade chaos stone rested beside it. He had spent part of the morning learning how the ring responded to his energy, how its internal laws tightened when fed correctly, how it resonated faintly with the two sealed half-gods hidden inside the void land. He could feel them through it now in a distant, strange way. Not thoughts. Not emotions. Presence. Like two dangerous knots tied at the end of a private thread.
The system had already updated him on the state of his body twice that morning. His chaos rank remained steady at two. His blood awakening at five percent. Chaos energy and chaos body balanced high enough that he still felt slightly unreal in his own skin. His back had healed from Alex’s claws, though the memory remained vivid. Sometimes when he closed his eyes he still felt the throat in his mouth. Still felt the rush of ancient blood entering him like a stormfire.
That part he had not discussed with anyone.
Not even Elena.
Not even Seraphiel.
Some hungers was easier to study alone at first.
He looked toward the window and thought of the void land. The grass. The possibility of pure chaos trees. A hidden world turning green under his care. The idea was so strange and so powerful that it kept threading through his other thoughts whether he invited it or not.
A knock came.
Sekhmet lifted his head. "Come in."
The maid Elena had sent, stepped inside, bowed, and said, "Lady Elena asked me to check on you, Young Master."
Sekhmet nodded once. "Tell her I am fine."
The maid hesitated for half a breath, then said gently, "She seemed worried."
That pulled something quiet through his chest.
"I know," he said.
The maid bowed again. "Very well."
She withdrew.
Sekhmet leaned back in the chair after she left. Fine was not the right word. But it was the word people used when the alternatives were too complicated for hallways.
A few minutes later there was another knock. He almost expected Elena this time. Instead, when the door opened, Lily stepped inside.
The door closed softly behind her, and for a moment neither of them spoke. The room was quiet in the way only rooms full of thinking could be quiet. The curtains softened the daylight, the tea on the table had gone slightly cold, and the air carried that tired stillness left behind by someone who had spent too long sitting with truths too large to fit neatly inside his own mind.
Lily noticed it immediately.
She did not need a system. She did not need blood sight. She only needed eyes and a heart.
Sekhmet looked wrong.
Not injured. Not in the obvious way. He was sitting straight enough, breathing steadily enough, and the wounds from two nights ago had long since closed under the terrifying efficiency of his new body. But his stillness was too heavy. His gaze was not on the room. It was somewhere inward, far from the chair, far from the table, far from the house itself.
Lily stepped closer, her expression softening as she studied him. "What happened?"
Sekhmet looked up at her.