Incubus Living In A World Of Superpower Users - Chapter 382

Chapter 382: The Storm Wasn’t Approaching…. It Had Begun

The call cut.

The holoscreen went dark, leaving only Sera’s reflection staring back. Her frown was etched sharply against the glow of the courtyard sun.

But on the other side of that line, her brother was already moving in a room far removed from the crowded academy halls.

The Director’s office was vast, not in the way of luxury but in the way of scale. Walls of polished steel rose high, curving around the chamber, embedded with thin strips of holo-panels that pulsed in slow rhythm, like a heartbeat that belonged to the building itself.

The surface of the walls carried a sheen so fine they reflected light in fragments, breaking the glow into shards that danced faintly across the floor.

The chamber was deliberately impersonal—every edge sharp, every surface hard, as though designed to remind anyone who stepped inside that power here was structural, not human.

Dozens of reports floated in midair, layered one over another, flickering with graphs, text streams, and raw feeds that no single person could possibly read all at once.

The faint hum of the central power grid bled through the floor, constant, steady, a reminder that even silence here was never complete.

The air was cool and almost sterile, with a faint chemical sharpness from the wall systems that cleansed the oxygen every hour.

The office gave a faint sense of feeling that made anyone entering feel breathless just like when an employee goes to the CEO’s office for the first time.

Every sound seemed smaller inside these walls, as if footsteps dared not echo.

He stood in the center, shoulders squared, his expression cut into lines that only deepened when no one else was there to see.

The desk beside him wasn’t cluttered, but it carried weight—a spread of data slates stacked with precise order, their edges aligned, their surfaces glowing with unread alerts. Not a single one was out of place.

Even his chaos had been sorted into something he could control. Above, a central projection stretched across half the ceiling: a world map traced with arteries of red light.

Every vein marked a mobilization already detected, and more were appearing as he watched. The lines brightened, pulsing with urgency, like open wounds bleeding light into the air, each flare crawling outward until it consumed another inch of the map’s surface.

His jaw tightened as he scanned the feeds. Cult networks that had been silent for years now pulsed with new activity.

Cells thought to be dismantled had reemerged, coordinated as though they had never truly been gone.

Reports from forbidden zones—the sealed territories no officer was permitted to enter without clearance at the highest level—showed anomalies.

Energy surges, movement patterns, life in places where no life should exist—none of it pointed to coincidence.

The longer he stared, the more it felt like the map itself was accusing him, showing every blind spot, every failure, every fire they hadn’t been fast enough to smother.

The Director’s breath pressed out slowly, the exhale that carried no release. This wasn’t another cycle of noise, another surge of fanatics to stamp down until they went quiet again.

It was broader and sharper. It stretched too wide for one branch and too deep for even the Association in its entirety.

And that was the part that kept him still: not the noise, but the silence underneath it. For every flare the map showed, he knew there were more hidden, the kind that left no trail until it was too late.

He thought of Sera—her sharp eyes, her insistence on asking what others ignored, the way she leaned forward whenever someone told her “don’t.”

She carried his stubbornness and drive to see beneath surfaces, though she would never admit she had inherited them from him.

He had always admired that strength in her, but right now it wasn’t strength. It was a danger she didn’t yet understand.

He wished he could place walls around her mind, enough to keep her curiosity from reaching places that would break her if she pushed too far.

He remembered her as a child, leaning over books too heavy for her arms, refusing to stop even when the words blurred, even when exhaustion pulled at her.

That same determination had grown sharper with age, and now it made her fearless in ways that terrified him.

But he knew her too well. She would dig twice as deep when he told her not to look. He had cut the call short because he saw it in her eyes—the way she was already connecting the scraps.

If she tied them together fully, she would end up on paths he could not shield her from. His silence had been an act of protection, but it felt no less like a betrayal.

A faint chime at the door pulled him from his thoughts. The panels shifted, admitting his aide. She moved quickly, uniform pressed crisp, posture tight with urgency.

In her hands, she clutched a slate, its surface flickering with fresh data.

“Director,” she said, her tone formal but clipped, “the latest readings confirm it. We’re picking up irregular signals in orbit.

They don’t match any known satellite or craft on record. The patterns aren’t natural.” She hesitated, eyes flicking briefly to the floor before meeting his again.

“At the same time, underground channels are spreading word of… visitors. Whispers that gods themselves are moving.”

The words didn’t echo, but they lingered heavily in the air. Not because of the way she spoke them, but because of what they implied.

The idea of “gods” was always treated with careful silence inside these walls. To say the word aloud was to admit the possibility of something no one wanted to face.

The Director didn’t flinch. His voice was calm, but every syllable carried iron. “Compile every trace of the orbital signatures.

Cross-match them with all forbidden zone activity. No gaps. No assumptions. Send the raw data through the secure line to central command. Nothing leaves this office without a seal.”

“Yes, sir.” She nodded quickly, clutching the slate tighter as though the order itself steadied her. But she didn’t leave.

She lingered one step longer, tension evident in the way her shoulders resisted relaxing. “The council is waiting on your word. Do you want them convened?”

He didn’t answer right away. His eyes lifted to the map, to the veins of red light cutting across the projection like fire spreading through veins of glass.

Each pulse marked unrest—each flare another corner of the world where silence had broken.

He felt the weight of history pressing behind those lights—every past storm that had nearly undone them, every moment they had clung to order by a thread. This was worse. There were too many fires at once.

The council. A body of men and women who only gathered when the ordinary structures failed.

To summon them was to admit that the situation had already crossed beyond control. Convening them meant acknowledging that the storm was larger than the Association alone.

He thought of the last time the council had gathered—how the city had gone silent, how even the smallest children had sensed the air shift.

The memory was one he had hoped would never repeat. Yet here it was again, demanding itself into the present.

His gaze stayed fixed on the spreading red. The more he stared, the more it resembled fire crawling across fragile flesh.

He imagined the world beneath the light, the cities where those pulses were born, the ordinary lives that would be swept away without warning.

For every red flare on the map, there were thousands of faces behind it, unaware of the storm pressing closer.

He closed his eyes for a moment, but the map remained imprinted behind his eyelids, the red veins burning into memory.

Finally, he spoke. “Assemble the council. This is no longer an isolated issue. If what we’re seeing is true, this isn’t cults rising from their graves.

This is gods pressing their hands against our walls.”

The aide’s jaw tightened, but she bowed sharply and withdrew, leaving him once again with the quiet hum of machines.

He remained still for a long moment. The map burned above him, red pulses multiplying one after another, spilling like veins that couldn’t be stopped.

He lifted a hand, brushing his fingers through the projection, as though he could smother the fire by touch alone.

But the marks only grew brighter, spreading further, the light clinging to his palm as though mocking the attempt.

His shadow stretched long across the polished walls. His voice dropped, low enough it wasn’t meant for anyone but himself.

“If they want to see how far we’ll burn,” he murmured, “then I’ll make sure they choke on the smoke.”

The weight of the promise filled the room, heavier than the reports, heavier than the map itself.

He didn’t move when new alerts bled across the displays, and he didn’t flinch when warning signals pulsed sharper in the corners of his vision.

He stood rooted, eyes locked on the fire crawling across the world, because he already knew.

The storm wasn’t approaching.

It had begun.