Chapter 68: Chapter 68: Back home

The south didn’t look like a war site.

Crisis here came dressed beautifully in polished marble lobbies, glass towers, and luxury ether cars gliding past military barricades like they were temporary street decorations. Power wore designer suits and fake smiles. It pretended to be civilized.

It never was.

By the time Gregoris arrived, the rebellion was already structurally crippled. It hadn’t made the news yet. Shadows didn’t leave smoke trails. They slipped through financial networks, private military channels, encrypted ether contracts, and quiet corruption with incredible accuracy. By morning, half the “movement” leaders no longer existed in any usable capacity.

Still, the local power brokers thought they had room to negotiate.

They had requested a “coordination meeting.”

Gregoris accepted. He was curious what they would propose, and if it was something audaciously stupid, then he could kill them all and return to Rafael until morning.

They chose a tower.

If the South had one defining political trait, it was theatrical stupidity.

The “coordination meeting” took place in a corporate sky lounge that pretended not to be a war bunker with shielded glass, hidden ether ward plates built into the walls, and reinforced security doors disguised as luxury architecture. Everything smelled faintly of expensive perfume, polished wood, and contrived calm that only very rich people mistake for safety.

Gregoris stepped out of the elevator.

Two Shadows stepped with him.

Inside, the room had already been arranged like something between a summit and a stage play. Velvet seating. Crystal decanters. A large ether projection screen paused on the southern region economic stability chart, as if numbers could disguise treason.

Four of the most powerful southern elites sat waiting.

They looked confident, prepared even.

They had no idea.

Gregoris did not greet them. He did not pretend this was a conversation between equals.

He simply walked to the head of the table and stopped, posture calm, eyes unreadable, and authority bleeding through the air like gravity had decided to obey him specifically.

“Duke Alamina,” the eldest greeted smoothly, using Damian’s formal recognition name. “Thank you for agreeing to meet. We believe you’ll find this discussion… advantageous.”

Unfortunate choice of word.

Gregoris didn’t sit.

“Speak,” he said.

The woman nearest him smiled the way people smile at predators when they believe money makes them exempt from teeth.

“The South requires stability. Leadership,” she began. “Prince Christian’s reassignment to Donin has left… a vacancy. Someone must ensure order. Someone competent. Someone with…”

“Influence,” another man supplied helpfully. “Connections, financial capacity, and global credibility.”

And then, because they truly didn’t understand what stood in front of them, the youngest of them smiled like he had solved something.

“And we do not expect that burden to be… unpaid.”

The briefcase placed on the table opened with a soft mechanical hiss.

Not money. Worse. Titles.

Ownership blocks of southern ether industries.

Backdoor access to three major transport networks.

Governmental advisory seats.

Private militia allegiance contracts dressed as “security support.”

And, printed neat in the center…

A suggestion to formalize an independent southern administrative board, overseen by Gregoris. Not in obedience to Damian. Parallel to him.

A quiet coup disguised as cooperation.

Gregoris looked at the documents for exactly three seconds.

“You have misunderstood something fundamental,” he said calmly.

Then he closed the case without touching it again.

It was astonishing how loud silence could become when the most dangerous man in the Empire no longer cared to pretend.

The men across from him shifted. Suits rustled. Rings clinked faintly against glass. Someone swallowed and immediately regretted making a sound. They’d expected negotiation. Perhaps intimidation. Even outrage would have been comforting.

Instead, they got absolutely nothing.

Gregoris simply stared at them.

He looked faintly… inconvenienced. As if they were one more administrative mistake in a pile of things he hadn’t asked to deal with. As if they hadn’t just attempted a political coup wrapped in etiquette and expensive stationery but had instead spilled something irritating on his floor.

A muscle flexed in his jaw.

Someone tried to speak.

He didn’t let them.

His eyebrow lifted a fraction. Then he smiled, the smile that made old war recordings censor faces, because expressions like that were classified.

Around the room, ether shifted enough that the air thickened, like the world itself held its breath.

More Shadows stepped out of nowhere.

They were suddenly there, weapons wrapped in administrative legality and imperial authority. Papers meant nothing now. Contracts meant nothing. Family names meant nothing. Only reality mattered, and reality had come wearing black.

Gregoris didn’t bother touching the case again.

He didn’t bother acknowledging fear widening in southern eyes.

He simply tipped his head the slightest degree.

The room moved without him needing a voice.

Shadows began to separate men from hope with quiet professionalism. Restraints sealed with wardlight. Ether contracts were burned out of existence with sanctioned authorization. Someone begged. Someone else insisted this was a misunderstanding. Another reached for a comm they didn’t get to finish unlocking.

Gregoris didn’t look at any of them.

He was already turning away in his mind; he had already finished with everything here that was not worth his time.

His steps clicked once against tile.

Then stopped.

He glanced back over his shoulder, faint irritation ghosted across his features.

He could have still been in bed and had Rafael under his hands instead of paperwork under fluorescent lights. He could have ignored the south for one more day if people hadn’t insisted on ruining their own lives for ambition they were never meant to hold.

Without a word, he turned again and walked out of the glittering tower that had tried to impress him, shoulders loose, expression calm, already gone in every way that mattered except physically.

Behind him, the South began to understand fear the way it should have from the beginning.

Ahead of him, the path cleared.

And somewhere far away, in a mansion too quiet for Rafael’s temper, the bond pulsed faintly.

Gregoris smiled once, almost lazily.

He was going back.

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