Read Novel Full Chapter 803: New Gods
Chapter 803: New Gods
The Dark Regent leaned in closer, close enough that the man could smell the faint, expensive cologne beneath the copper tang of blood. His voice dropped to something intimate, almost confiding.
"Having your life in my hands. Knowing that I decide when you die. Whether you die at all. How slowly or how quickly. Every shallow, rattling breath you manage to pull in from this moment forward exists only because I permit it. Every erratic thump of your heart is a momentary gift I could revoke with a single thought. Every additional second you’re allowed to remain conscious is my personal mercy—and mercy, as you’re discovering... has a very high price tag."
That single remaining eye—wide, bloodshot, pupil blown to black—stared up at him with nothing left but naked, animal terror.
No pride.
No last flicker of defiance.
Just the raw, prehistoric recognition of prey finally understanding the shape of the predator’s teeth and realizing the chase has always been theater. The jaw hung slack, ruined teeth visible through shredded lips; drool and blood mixed in thick ropes that dripped onto the turf.
Dark Regent inhaled deeply through his nose, savoring.
The fear was no metaphor. It had texture—thick, metallic, electric. It coated the back of his throat like smoke from a ritual fire.
Something ancient uncoiled in his chest, something that had starved for far too long and was now glutting itself on the purest vintage of dread. He could feel it spreading through his veins like warm liquor.
"Nothing quite like it," he murmured, finally releasing the ruined face and stepping back to survey his handiwork with the dispassionate eye of an artist critiquing canvas.
"The begging that turns into wet gurgles. The way that eye keeps darting, searching for an exit we both know doesn’t exist. The precise instant hope extinguishes—that tiny, final light winking out behind the pupil—and all that remains is surrender. Absolute. Beautiful. Irrevocable. You understand now, don’t you? You’ve always belonged to me.
"Every day you thought you were free was just me allowing the leash to play out. And now it’s pulled tight."
He glanced down at his hands—knuckles split in thin red lines, smeared crimson to the wrists, yet perfectly steady.
The hands of a surgeon who preferred living subjects. The hands of a sculptor who worked in bone and terror instead of marble.
The hands of something that had long ago discarded the pretense of humanity.
He smiled—slow, satisfied, almost tender.
"The sheer volume of your fear," he said, "is a living current. I can breathe it in. Let it circulate. Let it power me. Every flinch when I move my hand. Every choked whimper when you try to speak. Every time your eye meets mine and realizes there is no mercy coming—it feeds me. Completes something that was missing. Makes me more."
Another deep, theatrical inhale—genuine this time. Chest expanding as though drawing the terror straight into his lungs.
"It’s fuel. And I’ve been running dangerously low. All the boards, all the pieces, all the endless moving parts—a man requires recreation. A man needs to remember what lives beneath the suits, the boardrooms, the veneer of civilization."
He gestured lazily at the carnage: the blood soaking the artificial green in dark pools, the body hanging limp between the guards like wet laundry, the guards themselves standing motionless as statues carved from indifference.
"This is what I am. This is what I have always been. And you—you loyal, obedient, catastrophically stupid creature who delivered exactly what I demanded except in the precise manner I specified—you have the honor of serving as today’s reminder."
"Please... boss..." The voice was barely audible—more air than sound, bubbling through shattered teeth and a throat half-collapsed. "I delivered... did everything... please..."
The Dark Regent laughed—soft, almost fond.
"I know you did. That’s the tragedy of it, isn’t it? You succeeded. The job completed. The outcome flawless. And none of it carries the slightest weight." He crouched again, bringing his face level with that single, terrified eye.
"Because you executed it your way instead of mine. And that single deviation means I can never extend trust to you again. Ever."
He reached out and patted the pulped cheek—gentle, almost affectionate, the gesture more obscene than any blow.
"Don’t panic. We’re nearly finished. Just a little more theater. Just enough brutality to burn this moment into the memory of every person watching. Just enough so that the next time someone thinks ’close enough’ is acceptable, they remember your face. Your eyes. Your final, gurgling plea."
He rose. Stretched luxuriously. Cracked his neck with a soft pop.
The rooftop door opened.
Sixty-three floors above the indifferent city, across a distance that should have devoured any sound, the Dark Regent heard it: the faintest metallic click of latch releasing, the whisper of hinges engineered to near-silence.
His guards didn’t flinch. Didn’t glance. Didn’t reach for holsters.
They had heard nothing.
But he had.
The Dark Regent lifted his gaze from the broken thing dangling between the guards’ grip. Looked across the manicured putting green—past the sand traps, past the bar cart stocked with bottles worth more than most people’s annual salaries, past all the obscene trappings of power suspended in the sky—
And smiled.
She approached with the languid certainty of someone for whom time itself waited politely. Black coat falling to mid-calf, flowing like spilled ink in the golden afternoon light. Heels striking concrete in a deliberate, unhurried cadence—not footsteps so much as measured heartbeats counting down to something inevitable.
If anyone had dared look closely at the Dark Regent’s face in that moment, they might have glimpsed something rare:
Admiration. Respect. And beneath both—an unmistakable trace of deference.
Not the deference of subordinate to superior. Not even the deference of one predator acknowledging another at the top of the food chain. This was older. Deeper. The recognition between entities that operate on planes most humans never touch.
She did not glance at him. Did not acknowledge the blood-soaked turf, the guards frozen in witness, the wreckage of a man who had once believed loyalty would be enough. She moved past it all as though the scene were furniture—present, expensive, ultimately irrelevant—and continued to the rooftop’s edge.
She leaned against the railing.
Looked down.
Sixty-three floors below, the city writhed in its afternoon fever: cars hemorrhaging through arteries of asphalt, pedestrians scurrying in meaningless vectors—work to home, home to distraction, distraction to whatever small consolations kept insignificant souls tethered to existence. All of them blind to the machinery above them.
All of them waiting—for promotion, for love, for justice, for meaning—
People moving in patterns that seemed random but weren’t—work to home, home to store, store to wherever insignificant lives took insignificant souls.
She watched them. The humans.
Going about their daily existence with no concept of what tomorrow would bring. No understanding of what forces moved above them, around them, through them.
Just... living. Hoping. Waiting for the universe to reveal what it had in store for them.
Waiting.
As if the universe owed them answers. As if fate was something that happened to them rather than something decided for them by those who stood sixty-three floors above their heads and watched them like ants.
She watched them the way one watches livestock from a balcony: curious, detached, faintly amused.
She had never been one of them. Never would be.
While they waited for the universe to show its hand, she already knew the cards. Already knew the dealer. Already knew exactly how the game would end because she was the one who’d written the rules.
Where the Dark Regent played at being a god—relishing the performance, savoring every theatrical flourish—she simply was one.
She watched from the ledge with the bored patience of someone who had already seen every possible variation of the human comedy play out a thousand times.
Even from sixty-three floors up, her vision cut through the haze like it owed her money.
She could pick out every details the naked eye would never reach.
The woman on the sidewalk below fumbling her purse strap with the frantic energy of someone late to a meeting she secretly hated; the man stepping off the curb while staring at his phone, oblivious that the light had changed and a delivery scooter was about to turn him into modern performance art.
The child yanking a parent’s hand, pointing at a brightly lit shop window full of toys he would never own because fate had already decided his parents’ credit score was funnier than his dreams.
She observed them the way a cat observes goldfish in a bowl—not hungry, not yet, just mildly entertained by how earnestly they swam in circles pretending the glass wasn’t there.
Behind her, the soundtrack of lesser god’s cruelty continued: wet thuds of club on meat, choked gurgles that had once been pleas, the rhythmic drip of blood turning synthetic turf into abstract expressionism no curator would ever hang.
Dark Regent was still working—methodical, almost meditative—turning a loyal subordinate into a cautionary tale with the same focus another man might use to perfect his golf swing.
She didn’t turn. Didn’t flinch.
Eventually the wet sounds tapered off.
"Take him," the Dark Regent said, voice calm, almost cheerful. "You know where."
Shuffling. Dragging. A final, bubbling wheeze fading down the service stairs. Blood trails glistened on the green like someone had tried (and failed) to finger-paint a warning.
Silence returned.
She turned.