Victor didn't raise his voice.
He didn't have to.
Because the moment the words left his mouth, the ether in the room stirred like a beast roused from slumber, coiling low around the base of the greenhouse with the slow, insidious elegance of something that had no reason to hurry.
It began subtly, almost politely, like a trick of the light, an edge of red against the glossy marble, a flicker near the table leg, and then it wasn't subtle at all. It wasn't light. Vast. Hungry. Uncontainable.
The air itself thickened with it, scarlet and endless, a living tide pouring from the very center of Victor's body, his skin humming with energy so old it shimmered. It stretched across the room like a sea of blood polished into glass, creeping across the floorboards, up the sides of chairs, and weaving into the cracks of the greenhouse structure like it had always been meant to live here, like it was returning home.
