The following months pass in a gentle torpor. The Ashworth manor, the scene of your bloody triumph, is now a memory, a frozen picture in your mind. You no longer feel the immediate thrill of victory, but rather a cold, calculated satisfaction. The chaos you orchestrated, the destruction of many lives, no longer gives you the same thrill. Boredom gnaws at you, a dull worm eating away at your satisfaction. Holmes and Watson, broken by the weight of their unintended actions, represent to you only a past challenge. You need something bigger, something more... ambitious.
Your room, in the heart of an anonymous London neighborhood, becomes your laboratory. The walls are covered with scribbles, complex diagrams, cryptic notes describing a network of corruption, a spiderweb woven within the British government. Your nights are short, filled with plans crafted with the precision of a watchmaker. You no longer seek mere revenge, but the destruction of a system, a national upheaval that will annihilate not only Holmes and Watson but every trace of their influence, their order. Every piece of the puzzle is carefully placed, every person manipulated with the utmost care. Secret agents, corrupt politicians, venal journalists — all are pawns in your game, knowingly or not. You delight in manipulating them, making them dance to a macabre tune of deception and despair. This time, your victims will not be just individuals, but entire institutions.
You feel a different excitement, deeper, more dangerous. It is no longer the pleasure of the immediate game, but the cold anticipation of a catastrophe. The death of Holmes and Watson is a final point, certainly, but it is only the last act of a national tragedy that you direct masterfully, a conductor wielding the baton of destruction. You have become the architect of ruin, a builder of chaos on an unprecedented scale. And every passing day brings you closer to the pinnacle of your work, a monument of destruction and despair, a testament to your perverse genius.