Damian didn't blink. "Who designed the trigger?"
Callahan hesitated.
Gregoris stepped forward once. That was enough.
"Olivier," Callahan said, the name falling from his mouth like it burned. "It was him."
He didn't look up; he couldn't.
"He knew that Gabriel would kill him if it meant the Empire would be safe," he continued, his voice cracking now—not from remorse, but from the pressure of memory collapsing under truth. "So he made sure it would never come to that. He bound Gabriel's soul to the wards of the Empire itself. Said it was poetic—that if Gabriel ever turned on the contract, if he ever tried to sever it by force, it wouldn't be George or Hadeon or any of us that killed him…"
He drew a shallow, shuddering breath.
"It would be the Empire. The ether. The very thing he bled to protect."
The room didn't move. Not a breath stirred.
Gregoris, silent at Damian's side, didn't speak—because he understood. The cruelty of it wasn't the trigger. It was the design.
