[BL]Hunted by the God of Destruction Chapter 22: Phone Call

The phone rang.

Once.

Twice.

Three tis.

Elias didn’t move at first. He just stared at the screen, thumb hovering over the edge of the casing, as if waiting for the sound to change. For soone else to answer. For anything. But nothing ca, only the sharp, sterile tone of too-late hours and the fluorescent hum of his room, bright in places where it shouldn’t be.

Of course, he thought, hand rising automatically to rake through his hair, the motion too practiced to be conscious. It was a tic, nothing more, sothing he’d done since childhood, always when thoughts pushed too hard against the inside of his skull.

He sighed and began to lower the phone to end the call when...

"Clarke. I didn’t take you as a... morning person."

Victor’s voice didn’t match the hour. It was too clear, too composed, like he’d been waiting beside the phone in a room that didn’t sleep, like rest was optional for people like him. Or dangerous.

Elias didn’t bother playing nice. "I got another voicemail from Ruo."

There was a pause. Not long or loud, but full of sothing asured and careful. The kind of silence that only ant one thing: Victor was listening. More importantly, he had not expected the ssage.

"Where are you?"

"The dorms?" Elias said dryly, one brow ticking up. "You’re the one who told not to go back to the apartnt. Rember?"

The second pause was longer, dragged out like the slow stretch of a shadow across a quiet floor.

"I’ll send soone for you," Victor said at last.

Elias sat up straighter, a twist of suspicion blooming sharp in his chest. "What? Why? I can just forward the voicemail."

"No," Victor replied, and there was sothing too calm in it, sothing surgical. "Because Ruo’s phone is in pieces, Elias. And her number was deactivated three months ago. What you got... ca from sothing else. Sothing that was ant to reach you but not be traced."

A beat. Then another.

"Why are you helping ?" Elias asked while looking out the windows.

"Let’s just say I want my main lead alive." Victor said, his voice now steady and precise, as if he were giving instructions rather than reassurance.

"I don’t need an escort," Elias muttered, running his hand through his hair again, this ti sharper, more agitation than instinct. "I haven’t touched anything else. I’m not stupid."

"No, you’re not," Victor said. "That’s the problem."

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It crackled. Just long enough for Elias to feel a shift in the air, as if a warning was sliding into place.

"I’ll send you the driver’s na, the vehicle ID, and the route," Victor added, each word placed with deliberate care. "Don’t take anything else. Don’t answer the door unless it’s him."

And that, that, was when Elias felt it.

Not panic, not imdiately.

It was colder than that. A quiet, creeping dread that started sowhere behind his ribs and crawled up his spine like frost.

The kind of fear that didn’t scream but whispered, sothing is wrong, and you’re already too close to it.

He swallowed hard, but his throat was dry, and the tension didn’t go down.

This was the kind of situation where the people who never panicked started giving instructions like they were reading from the last page of the playbook. Like they already knew where the trap was laid, and they just didn’t want to say it out loud.

"What aren’t you telling ?" Elias asked, voice lower now, rough at the edges.

There was a longer silence this ti. Then...

"I think soone else knows you have the voicemail."

He stood, slowly, like moving might anchor the thought before it slipped through him. "How?"

"We’re still figuring it out. But there was a signal spike flagged near the dorms less than ten minutes after you received it."

"Tracked?" Elias asked sharply.

"Worse," Victor said. "Mirrored."

His mind blanked. For just a second.

"That’s not possible."

"No," Victor said. "It shouldn’t be."

Then his phone buzzed. Once. A soft vibration that sounded far too loud in the stillness.

Elias looked down.

A ssage.

From Matteo.

"I’m outside. Nun sent . Don’t bring anything else."

His chest tightened, not from surprise, but from the particular kind of terror that cos when sothing that should be familiar suddenly feels wrong. When the voice you trust is wearing the wrong script. When safety becos too convenient.

’No. Not him. Not Matteo.’

The one person who hadn’t played this ga. Who had stood outside the hierarchy. Who had stayed... clean. Untouched.

"Did you send a cop for ?" Elias asked, low and clipped.

Victor didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice hadn’t changed.

"No."

The line cut.

The call ended.

And the quiet that followed was violent.

Elias stared at the screen, the ssage still glowing like a wound over the backdrop of the terminated call. His heart was pounding in his chest, as if it wanted to escape him.

’Victor said he would send a na. A vehicle ID. A route.’

There had been none of those.

The realization landed with chanical clarity, snapping into place like cold tal on bone.

He didn’t panic; Elias didn’t want to accept that he was panicking.

He leaned back into the mattress, spine rigid as if rembering sothing sharp and unforgiving, and let his fingers drift over the edge of the phone screen. Slowly. Deliberately.

Then he typed a single character.

A question mark.

Sent.

The bubble turned blue.

Delivered.

Read.

No reply.

His next ssage was colder. More precise.

"What do you an Nun sent you?"

Because now Elias wasn’t sure who he was talking to.

Or if he was talking to anyone at all.