SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

Trafalgar waited inside the ruined room with Matteo asleep against the wall and Esmond tied to the chair.

The old man had stopped speaking. His head hung forward, his eyes unfocused, his breathing thin and uneven through bloodied lips. His hands rested where Caelum had left them, fingers trembling in small jerks every few breaths. The potion had repaired the damage enough to keep them attached, useful, sensitive, and that was probably the most Caelum thing Trafalgar had ever witnessed.

A part of him was disappointed by how little Esmond had endured.

A few nails. A few fingers. That had been enough to peel away the old scholar’s dignity until there was only begging left. But the physical damage had not been the worst of it. The mana threads had done the real work. They had gone under the skin, into places knives could only dream of reaching, and Trafalgar had seen the exact moment Esmond realized pain had more doors than he knew how to close.

Well. The work was done.

He wanted to talk now, and that was what mattered.

The door opened at last.

Director Selara stepped into the room.

Her eyes found Esmond first. She took in the chair, the blood, the damaged restraints, the wet shine on his face, the ruin of his hands. Trafalgar watched her expression and failed to name it. Hatred was there, certainly. Disgust too. Perhaps some old, exhausted satisfaction buried under a century of resentment. Pity, however, had not entered the room with her.

Trafalgar also noticed who had not entered with her.

”The homunculus,” he said. ”Are you sure it was fine to leave her outside without anyone watching?”

Caelum answered before Selara could.

”Young Master, I left a clone observing her. Please do not worry. I assumed you would dislike leaving her unattended, so she is being watched.”

Trafalgar glanced toward him. ”I see. Good. Thank you, Caelum.”

Caelum inclined his head with that immaculate politeness of his, as if he had not spent the last few minutes teaching an old monster how many ways a hand could regret existing.

Selara looked at Trafalgar. ”Caelum said he is ready to talk.”

Trafalgar turned back to Esmond.

He stepped closer, placed one finger beneath the old man’s chin, and lifted his head. Esmond’s eyes crawled upward to meet his. They looked smaller now. Less bright. Fear had done what pain could not and drained some of the performance out of him.

”Are you ready, Esmond?”

Esmond nodded as much as the restraints allowed.

Good. He really did not want to receive more.

Selara moved to one side of the room, near enough to hear everything, far enough to keep herself from standing over Esmond like another torturer. Caelum also withdrew a few paces, though his presence remained attached to Esmond’s hands like a shadow with gloves.

Trafalgar glanced toward Matteo. ”He won’t wake up, right?”

”Negative, Young Master,” Caelum replied. ”I would need to administer an antidote for that. Otherwise, he will sleep for quite some time, at least until the effect passes.”

”Alright.”

Trafalgar faced Esmond again.

”Now, Esmond,” he said, studying the old man’s ruined face. ”What was the last question I asked you?”

Esmond swallowed.

Trafalgar gave him a faint, cold smile. ”Right. Were you working under Vaelion custody?”

Esmond stared at him.

His lips moved once, but no words came out. His gaze flicked to Selara, then to Caelum, then down to his own fingers. When he finally spoke, he tried to bend around the answer instead of giving it.

”The Vaelion are not a simple house,” Esmond rasped. ”Their internal structures are layered. Custody can mean many things depending on which office, which branch, which generation—”

Trafalgar slapped him.

The sound cracked across the ruined room.

Esmond’s head snapped to the side, breath spilling from him in a wet gasp. Selara did not move. Caelum did not even blink.

Trafalgar leaned close enough for Esmond to feel every word.

”I do not have time for this,” he said. ”I would like this to be resolved quickly, and I would prefer not to invite Caelum back into the conversation.”

Esmond’s eyes dragged toward Caelum.

Caelum stood straight, hands folded behind his back, expression flawless. Nothing on his face suggested pride, discomfort, satisfaction, or even memory. Whatever he had done to Esmond might as well have been paperwork.

That seemed to frighten Esmond more than Trafalgar’s slap.

At last, the old man’s throat worked.

”Yes,” Esmond said. ”I was working for the Vaelion.”

Selara’s eyes narrowed.

Trafalgar did not interrupt.

Esmond drew in a ragged breath. ”I did not spend a hundred years in an ordinary cell either. At first, yes. When they captured me, they tried to make me talk. They are a family of mages, so they used what mages always believe will solve everything. Psychological spells. Memory pressure. Mind probes. Suggestion arrays. Refined little invasions wrapped in theory.”

His mouth twitched without humor.

”They achieved very little.”

His eyes moved again to Caelum.

”What he did,” Esmond whispered, ”was different.”

Trafalgar folded his arms. ”I’m surprised the Vaelion didn’t have someone skilled enough for that.”

”They have experts,” Esmond said. ”Sure they do. But many torturers are vulgar creatures. They think endurance breaks under weight. They do not understand where a man keeps the tenderest part of himself.”

Caelum’s lips barely moved. ”A flattering review.”

Esmond flinched at his voice.

Trafalgar kept the pressure steady. ”What did you do there?”

Esmond’s gaze fell to the floor for a moment, perhaps searching the cracks for a way to escape the past he had finally been forced to open.

”At the beginning, I lived in a cell,” he said. ”Stone walls. Wards layered through every corner. Food brought when they remembered I was alive. They were quite offended by what I had done to their bloodline, you understand.”

Selara’s voice cut in, low and poisonous. ”A man died.”

”Yes,” Esmond said, not looking at her. ”He did.”

Selara’s fingers tightened against her sleeve, but she let him continue.

”For decades, that was my existence,” Esmond said. ”A cell. Questions that came less often each year. Guards who changed. Names I never bothered learning. They wanted me punished, forgotten, preserved in the most miserable sense of the word. A locked mistake.”

He coughed, and blood darkened his lower lip again.

Caelum did not move to help him. Not yet.

”Then everything changed,” Esmond continued. ”A shift inside House Vaelion. Power moved from one hand to another. The former patriarch stepped away from the seat and into something more respectable. The Council of Sages, if I am not mistaken. He even changed his surname afterward. A neat habit for men who wish to pretend history has stopped recognizing them.”

Trafalgar turned his head slightly toward Caelum.

”Is that true?”

Caelum answered at once. ”Yes, Young Master. The previous Vaelion patriarch entered the Council of Sages after leaving his seat. The name change is also accurate.”

Trafalgar’s thoughts cooled.

’So we are not the only ones with someone inside. Tch. I should have known that already.’

The realization annoyed him more than it surprised him. Of course the Vaelion had a hand near the Council. Great Families did not survive by watching institutions from the outside and hoping the weather stayed pleasant.

He looked back at Esmond. ”You said everything changed when power shifted. Explain.”

Esmond’s hands trembled against the restraints.

”The current patriarch,” he said. ”When he rose, the room around me changed before the door ever opened. Different guards. Different questions. Different seals on the documents. My cell remained a cell, but people began looking at it as storage rather than punishment.”

Selara’s face hardened.

Esmond’s voice grew rougher. ”He saw use in me. That was all. One day, I was a shame locked beneath Vaelion stone. The next, I was a restricted asset with conditions.”

Trafalgar’s eyes did not leave him. ”A restricted asset.”

”A prisoner with a laboratory,” Esmond said, and the words came out with something almost like longing. ”Do not imagine freedom. They were never that generous. The cuffs stayed. The wards stayed. Every reagent was counted. Every tool recorded. Assistants came and went without being told enough to understand what they touched. Doors opened only from the outside. Even the windows were illusions at first.”

His breathing hitched, but he forced himself on.

”But there was a table again. Ink. Glass. Controlled heat. Samples. Bodies sometimes, though never openly. Records. Bloodline fragments. The Vaelion had questions they were too dignified to ask in public, and I had answers no respectable scholar would admit to wanting.”

Selara’s voice came quieter now. ”They used you.”

Esmond looked at her, and for one ugly instant, a smile tried to return.

”Yes,” he said. ”And I used what they gave me.”

Trafalgar took one step closer.

”For what?”