Chapter 51 – Special Chapter: The King and His Mirror (Part 3)

【Solomon PoV】

The ritual chamber was perfect.

I’d spent weeks preparing this space. Obsidian floors etched with binding circles. Candles arranged in geometric precision. The Ring of Solomon on my hand, pulsing with power that made the air shimmer. Mary knelt in the center of it all, her body held in place by golden chains of pure authority. Spectral, beautiful, unbreakable.

This was my masterpiece.

“Today you become mine completely.”

I walked around her slowly, savoring the moment. She trembled, trying to resist, but the Relic’s influence was absolute. Her will was already fractured. One more push and she’d shatter into something I could rebuild exactly how I wanted.

“No more fighting. No more defiance. Just perfect, beautiful obedience.”

I raised my hand, the Ring flaring with light that filled the chamber. The binding circles activated, glowing with power that resonated in my bones. This was divine authority made manifest. This was the power that had commanded demons and bound angels. This was proof of my superiority over every entity in this facility.

“You will love me. You will serve me. You will exist only for my pleasure.”

Mary’s head bowed lower, forced down by the weight of my command. Blood dripped from her nose, staining the obsidian floor. The collar around her neck burned brighter, syncing with the ritual, preparing to rewrite her very essence.

“You belong to—”

The door slid open.

I froze mid-sentence, rage flooding through me. I’d given explicit orders. No interruptions. No disturbances. This was a sacred moment, the culmination of months of work.

A young man strolled in.

Not burst in. Not rushed in. Strolled, like he was entering a coffee shop instead of a secured ritual chamber. He wore the same gray hoodie and jeans from earlier. Patient Zero’s useless son. The nepotism baby wandering around my prison like he owned the place.

“This area is restricted.”

My voice was ice. A warning. A threat barely contained.

“Yeah, I figured. The door didn’t feel like being locked though.”

He said it so casually, like doors choosing to unlock themselves was the most normal thing in the world. He glanced around the chamber, taking in the candles, the binding circles, Mary kneeling in golden chains.

“This looks super illegal.”

The audacity of this child.

“Get out. Now. Or I’ll have you removed.”

“Nah, I’m good.”

He stepped further into the chamber, his sneakers squeaking on the obsidian. The binding circles should have reacted to an unauthorized presence. Should have burned him, repelled him, alerted me to the intrusion. They did nothing. Just kept glowing like he wasn’t even there.

I raised my hand, the Ring blazing with power.

“Kneel.”

The command was absolute. It carried the weight of divine authority, the force of angelic law made manifest. It was the same word that had broken gods, that had crushed the wills of entities older than human civilization. The Ring projected my will directly into his existence, demanding submission, imposing Order on chaos.

The power hit him like a tsunami.

Golden light wrapped around his body, chains of authority attempting to bind him, to force him down, to make him submit to my superiority.

Nothing happened.

He kept walking. Didn’t slow down, didn’t flinch, didn’t even acknowledge that I’d just hit him with enough power to break a lesser god. The chains touched him and vanished. Not shattered, not resisted. They just ceased to exist the moment they made contact with him.

My blood ran cold.

“Kneel!”

I poured more power through the Ring. The entire chamber shook with the force of the command. Candles exploded. The binding circles cracked. Mary gasped as the spillover pressure crushed down on her.

The boy kept walking.

He was ignoring me. Not fighting my authority, not overpowering it. He was simply invalid to it. Like I didn’t exist. Like my power was nothing more than background noise he couldn’t hear.

“What are you?”

He finally looked at me. Those gray eyes held no fear, no respect, no acknowledgment of my status or power.

“Tired. Also annoyed. You’re doing something really messed up here.”

He walked past me.

Actually walked past me. Dismissed me like I was furniture, like I was irrelevant. He approached Mary, who was still trapped in the golden chains, still kneeling in the center of my ritual circle.

“Stop! She’s mine!”

“No she’s not.”

Three words. Said with such casual certainty that they cut deeper than any insult.

He crouched in front of Mary, studying the binding collar around her neck. The collar that took me months to acquire, that was keyed specifically to the Ring’s frequency. His hand reached out, fingers tracing the glowing runes.

“Don’t touch that! The feedback will kill you!”

He touched it anyway.

The collar’s defensive mechanisms activated. Energy surged, enough voltage to stop a heart, enough magical force to fry a brain. It should have killed him instantly. Should have at least knocked him back, made him think twice.

He frowned slightly, like the sensation was mildly uncomfortable.

Then he just… broke it.

No special technique. No counter-spell. No ritual or preparation. He grabbed the collar with both hands and snapped it like it was made of plastic. The binding runes shattered. The connection to my Ring severed. The magical backlash that should have detonated in his face just dispersed harmlessly into the air.

My ritual circles went dark.

The golden chains holding Mary vanished like they’d never existed.

She collapsed forward, and he caught her. Easily, gently, like she weighed nothing. Her blood-stained face pressed against his hoodie. Her trembling hands clutched at his arms like he was the only solid thing in a world that had gone insane.

She was crying.

Not the broken, hopeless sobs from my conditioning sessions. These were tears of relief. Of salvation. She looked up at him with an expression I’d spent months trying to cultivate, trying to force into existence through the Ring’s power.

Devotion.

Absolute, genuine devotion. The look of someone staring at their savior, their god, their entire reason for existing.

She’d never looked at me like that.

Not once.

Even when I’d broken her will, even when I’d crushed her resistance, she’d never given me that expression. She’d given me fear, pain, resignation. But never this. Never the pure, unconditional worship I saw in her eyes as she looked at this nobody in a gray hoodie.

The boy stood, lifting her effortlessly in his arms.

Mary clung to him, her face buried in his chest. She was murmuring something, words I couldn’t hear, but her tone was grateful. Reverent. She’d given up asking me for mercy weeks ago. Now she was thanking him.

He turned toward the door, carrying my possession, my future masterpiece, my perfectly conditioned doll.

“Wait.”

My voice cracked. I hated how weak it sounded. How desperate.

He paused, glancing back over his shoulder with that same infuriating indifference.

“You can’t just take her. I have authority here. I have the Ring. I am the law in this facility.”

“Cool story.”

He adjusted his grip on Mary, making sure she was secure.

“Here’s the thing though. You were playing with toys too dangerous for you. This girl isn’t a possession. She’s a person. And you’re done hurting her.”

“I’ll report you. I’ll have you arrested. You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”

“Some dude who gets off on torturing people weaker than him? Yeah, I got a pretty good idea.”

He walked toward the door. Mary looked back at me once, and the expression on her face destroyed me. Not fear. Not even hatred. Just pity. Like I was something pathetic and small and not worth her emotional energy.

She looked at him like he was everything.

She looked at me like I was nothing.

“You’ll regret this!”

It was a child’s threat. Impotent. Meaningless. But it was all I had left.

He stopped in the doorway, silhouetted against the harsh hallway lights.

“Probably. But at least I’ll sleep tonight.”

Then he was gone. Walking down my corridor, carrying my possession, leaving my ritual chamber in ruins. The candles had burned out. The binding circles were shattered. The Ring on my hand pulsed with power that suddenly felt hollow.

I stood alone in the dark.

The most powerful Relic in human history sat on my finger, worthless. Months of work, months of careful conditioning and ritual preparation, destroyed in minutes. By a nobody. A civilian. A boy who wasn’t even officially hired yet.

He hadn’t fought me.

That was the worst part. If he’d overpowered me, if he’d beaten me in combat, I could’ve accepted that. Could’ve framed it as a temporary setback, a battle lost but not the war.

He’d invalidated me.

Walked through my authority like it didn’t exist. Broken my carefully crafted collar like it was made of paper. Taken Mary from the center of my power while I stood there helpless.

And she’d gone with him willingly. Gratefully. Looking at him like he was her savior while treating me like I was the monster.

I sank to my knees in the dark ritual chamber.

The Ring pulsed on my hand, still powerful, still capable of binding gods. But it meant nothing. All my authority, all my divine right, all my carefully cultivated power—none of it mattered against someone who was simply immune to the concept.

This was humiliation.

This was defeat in its purest, most absolute form.

And it was delivered by a bored kid in a hoodie who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else.

I stayed on my knees in the darkness, surrounded by the ruins of my perfect ritual, feeling something I hadn’t felt in years.

Fear.

Because if the Ring didn’t work on him, if my authority meant nothing, if he could just walk through my power like it was smoke…

What else could he do?

The question echoed in the empty chamber.

No one answered.