The room was cold.
Not because snow drifted outside the high, stone-arched windows, nor because a winter draft seeped through the heavy masonry.
It was simply, intrinsically cold—a unnatural, suffocating chill that seemed to radiate from the very stone itself.
Four men knelt side-by-side against the unforgiving stone floor, their wrists bound tightly behind their backs with coarse hemp rope. Their fine silk tunics were torn, their faces bruised and smeared with sweat.
For the last several hours, they had screamed until their throats bled.
They had threatened.
They had begged.
They had offered vast fortunes, ancient lands, and political loyalty.
None of it had mattered.
The silent, heavily armored guards who had dragged them into the subterranean chamber had offered no answers. They had simply forced the four lords to their knees, bolted the heavy iron-reinforced doors, and retreated into the dark.
Then, the heavy iron hinges creaked open.
Footsteps echoed through the damp darkness of the corridor.
Slow.
Measured.
Absolute.
Leornars entered the chamber.
He looked nothing like the grand Emperor of Durmount they had seen from afar. There was no gleaming crown resting upon his brow, no ceremonial dragon-scaled armor, no legion of royal executioners surrounding him.
He was merely a young man in his twenties, wearing a plain, high-collared dark coat. His raven-black hair—interspersed with striking, silvery white strands at his temples—fell loosely over his forehead.
His eyes were ordinary, dark brown.
*For a single moment.*
He came to a stop several paces away from where the four men knelt, his slender silhouette framed against the torchlight of the hallway.
The four nobles bowed their heads instinctively, trembling violently against their bindings. Then, the oldest of the four slowly raised his head, his gaze catching the young man's face.
His color drained instantly, leaving him as pale as a corpse.
"Y-You..." the noble rasped, his voice trembling so hard his teeth chattered.
Leornars said nothing.
His dark eyes swept over the four men slowly, deliberately, lingering on each bruised face as if meticulously engraving every feature into his memory.
Finally, his gaze locked onto the man kneeling at the far left—a middle-aged, stocky aristocrat with a broken nose.
"You remember me?" Leornars asked quietly, his smooth voice dripping into the quiet chamber like drops of ice water.
The stocky man swallowed hard, his chest heaving with panicked breaths. "N-No..."
Leornars tilted his head slightly, his expression completely blank. "No?"
"N-No! I swear to the heavens, my lord, I don't know who you—"
"You threw the rock."
The stocky lord's face twisted in sheer terror, his jaw dropping open, the words dying instantly in his throat.
Leornars took a single, unhurried step forward. The soft click of his leather boot against the flagstone echoed like a thunderclap.
"You threw the rock."
Silence fell over the room—a heavy, suffocating weight that made it difficult to draw breath.
"You were laughing," Leornars continued, his voice dropping into a soft, melodic register that was somehow far more terrifying than a scream. He took another step forward. "You were standing in the back of the mob, right behind everyone else."
Another step.
"You couldn't reach my daughter with your bare hands because of the crowd."
Leornars stopped right in front of the kneeling man. His voice became barely audible, a fragile thread in the dark.
"So you picked up a jagged rock from the street."
The stocky noble began to shake uncontrollably, hot tears carving clean tracks through the dirt on his cheeks. "P-Please... have mercy..."
Leornars stared down at him.
"No."
Slowly, gracefully, Leornars crouched down until he was at eye level with the terrified aristocrat.
Their eyes met.
For several agonizing seconds, Leornars simply looked at him. There was no fiery rage burning in his features, no contorted villainy, no malicious grin.
That was the most horrifying part of all.
There was only a vast, infinite emptiness—an abyss of absolute, exhausted coldness.
Then Leornars spoke again, his voice cracking ever so slightly.
"No... no..."
He leaned in closer.
"You heard my nine-year-old daughter crying out for her father."
The stocky man's breath caught in his throat. He stopped moving entirely, paralyzed by pure instinct.
"You threw a rock at her."
Slowly, deep within the dark pupils of Leornars's eyes, a faint, terrifying crimson light began to ignite. It spread like burning embers, illuminating his sharp jawline and pale skin with a sickening blood-red glow.
"A rock," Leornars whispered, his crimson eyes gleaming in the dim chamber. "At my nine-year-old child."
No one dared to move. The four bound nobles looked as if they had been turned to stone.
Leornars looked away for a brief moment, his gaze drifting toward the shadow-draped ceiling. His jaw tightened until the muscles stood out sharp and rigid.
"Killing my wife..." He exhaled a long, cold breath that misted in the freezing air. "...that was already your absolute death sentence."
He slowly turned his glowing crimson gaze back to the stocky lord.
"But my daughter..."
His voice faltered, a rare, fragile tremor breaking through his icy composure.
"No." He shook his head slowly, black hair falling over his glowing eyes. "No, no, no..."
Leornars stood up in a single, fluid motion, towering over the four bound men.
"That is a line I do not even cross myself," he said, his posture straightening, his dark coat falling smoothly around his slender frame.
The four nobles stared up at him in sheer, unadulterated horror as the terrifying weight of his aura pressed down upon their chests like iron anvils.
"I have ordered the deaths of millions," Leornars said flatly, his glowing crimson eyes moving slowly across the room, judging each of them in turn. "I have burned cities to ash. I have engineered famines that starved continents."
He paused, his voice dropping to an icy, absolute decree.
"But I have never killed a child."
A long, agonizing pause stretched between them.
"Never in front of a child," Leornars added, his expression hardening into an impenetrable mask of pure, absolute coldness. "I have a moral code, you see."
He slowly began to pace in front of them, his hands clasped casually behind his back.
"But you..."
He stopped, turning his head slightly to look back at them over his shoulder.
"Humans..."
The sheer, overwhelming contempt laced within that single word made the four lords recoil as if struck.
"You butchered my wife directly in front of my nine-year-old daughter," Leornars said, his right hand curling into a tight, trembling fist at his side. "And then... you proceeded to beat them both into the mud until neither was breathing."
Silence returned, absolute and unforgiving.
"You know..." Leornars murmured, turning to look up at the stone archways above. "If you had merely hurt them..."
He let out a soft, hollow exhale.
"...I might have let it slide."
The four aristocrats stared at him in utter disbelief, their eyes wide with shock.
"Maybe I would have taken a thumb," Leornars remarked casually, raising his hand and shrugging faintly. "Perhaps two. A foot, to teach a lesson."
Then, every trace of casual emotion vanished from his face, leaving behind a terrifying, hollow slate.
"But this?"
His glowing crimson eyes snapped back to the four kneeling men.
"This..."
A long, suffocating silence gripped the room.
The noble sitting next to the stocky man broke down, sobbing hysterically as he slumped against the cold stone floor. "We didn't know! God help us, we didn't know!"
Leornars turned toward him with terrifying swiftness. "You didn't know what?"
"That they were your family!" the noble shrieked, his voice cracking with desperate terror. "We were just following the mob! We didn't know they belonged to the black-haired strategist!"
Leornars stared down at the weeping lord.
Then, he laughed.
It was a single, short, quiet sound—a dry, raspy noise completely void of humor, joy, or warmth.
"That makes it infinitely worse."
The weeping lord froze instantly, his sob dying in his throat.
"You didn't know they were my family," Leornars said, taking a slow, deliberate step closer until his shadow completely swallowed the kneeling noble. "So... if they had been a peasant's wife and a farmer's daughter... you would have done the exact same thing to them."
Silence.
"That is your grand defense?" Leornars asked softly.
No one answered. The four men could only stare at the stone floor, paralyzed by the horrific logic of his words.
Leornars lowered his gaze, staring at the flagstones between his boots.
For the first time since entering the chamber, the terrible, crushing aura surrounding him seemed to collapse inward. His shoulders sloped slightly, his posture losing its rigid imperial perfection.
When he spoke again, his voice sounded almost... tired.
"What haven't I given you people?"
The four lords slowly raised their tear-streaked faces, looking at him in confused terror.
"Money?" Leornars asked, his voice beginning to rise, echoing off the damp stone walls. "Safety? Order?"
He whirled around, pointing a sharp, slender finger toward the heavy iron doors leading out to the thriving, peaceful capital.
"I saved you fools!"
His voice cracked with a sudden, roaring fury that shattered the cold silence of the room.
"I lifted you out of serfdom! I fed your starving children! I built infirmaries for your sick!"
*BANG!*
Leornars slammed his bare fist against the solid stone wall with terrifying, unnatural strength. The impact sent a spiderweb of deep cracks splintering through the heavy masonry, showering the floor with stone dust.
The entire chamber trembled violently from the force of the blow.
"I fucking saved you!" he roared, his chest heaving as he whirled back around to face them.
His eyes burned with a blinding, white-hot crimson light that illuminated the entire room in a bloody hue.
"And the very second someone whispers a lie into your ears—the second a corrupt lord tells you I am a devil..."
He stepped closer, his dark coat whipping around his legs.
"...you instantly fill your empty, pathetic brains with whatever vile nonsense you can find!"
His heavy breathing rattled in the cold room as he took another furious step forward.
"I gave you food!"
Another step.
"Shelter!"
Another step.
"Freedom!"
His voice suddenly dropped into a terrifying, raspy whisper that made the hair on the back of their necks stand up.
"And this... this is what I received in return."
He stood directly over them, looking down at their trembling forms. For a brief second, his crimson eyes flickered with a profound, tragic disappointment—not the wrath of a conqueror, but the broken heart of a savior who had realized his flock was made of wolves.
"It is quite the unfortunate outcome..." Leornars whispered softly to the dark air. "...that I am who I am."
He lowered his head, his black and silver hair veiling his face.
"I truly loved humanity," he said quietly.
Silence returned to the room.
"I really did," he added, closing his eyes.
For one fleeting, fragile moment, the terrifying Emperor of Durmount vanished entirely. In his place stood the ghost of the man he had once been—the gentle, brilliant young scholar who believed that people were inherently good, who believed that if you saved a man from darkness, that man would eventually pass the light onto another.
Then, his eyes snapped open.
The crimson light returned, twice as intense, burning like twin stars of absolute death.
"You four just proved a fundamental truth to me."
He looked down at the four lords, his handsome face smoothing out into a terrifying, impassive mask.
"Even a saved snake will bite the hand that fed it."
The oldest noble raised his hands, weeping softly. "Please... Lord Leornars... please..."
Leornars didn't answer.
He turned his back on them and walked slowly toward the open iron door, his long coat trailing behind him.
He reached the threshold and stopped, resting his pale hand against the cold iron frame.
"If humanity can only act civilized when a blade is held to its throat..."
He glanced back over his shoulder, his crimson eyes narrowing into lethal slits.
"...then I will hold the blade."
The four bound men stared at his back in absolute horror.
"If you insist on behaving like wild dogs..."
Leornars slowly pulled the heavy door open.
"...then what is the point of letting dogs have a say in their own destiny?"
He stepped out into the dark, torchlit hallway.
Then, he paused.
A faint, slow smile appeared on his young face. It was not a smile of satisfaction, nor one of rage.
It was something far, far colder—the terrifying expression of a man who had completely severed his last connection to human mercy.
"Honestly..." Leornars murmured, looking back into the dark room one last time. "I really did try."
His brilliant crimson eyes flared with a blinding, malevolent light in the darkness of the corridor.
"I did."
The faint smile vanished, replaced by a line of absolute stone.
"But even devils sometimes reach the absolute threshold of their..."
He paused, resting his slender fingers against his chin as if pondering the word.
"...patience."
The heavy iron door remained open behind him, framing his dark silhouette against the flickering red torches.
His final words drifted into the cold chamber, barely louder than a whisper, yet carrying the crushing weight of a global death sentence:
"A devil is what you believed I was."
His crimson eyes burned like hellfire in the dark.
"So..."
Leornars turned away, his dark coat sweeping behind him as he walked down the stone corridor into the deep, endless shadow.
"Ta-da."
A brilliant, suffocating pulse of blood-red crimson light spilled across the stone walls of the chamber, swallowing the dark entirely.
"A devil is precisely what I will be."