The silence in the grand hall was so thick you could choke on it. The oppressive weight of Hades's aura pressed down on the kneeling envoys, a cold, despairing pressure that felt like the end of the world itself. They had confessed everything, their faces pressed to the cold floor, waiting for the judgment they were sure would be annihilation.
And then, it was broken.
"HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!"
The sudden, booming laughter exploded through the chamber, so loud and unexpected it felt like a physical shockwave. The envoys flinched, their bodies seizing up in confusion and terror. The two massive Kingsguard, Bogdan and Bjorn, didn't even blink.
Hades was leaning back on his throne, laughing from the depths of his chest, a wide, terrifying grin on his face.
"SPLENDID ANSWER!!!" he exclaimed, his voice echoing off the walls.
The envoys dared to look up, their minds reeling. Was this a trick? Was he mocking them before he killed them?
As suddenly as it started, the laughter stopped. The grin vanished. Hades leaned forward again, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop another twenty degrees. His eyes narrowed to slits, glowing with a faint, dangerous light. His voice, when he spoke again, was no longer loud. It was a low, auratic, and deathly cold whisper that slithered into their ears and froze their blood.
"That is what I was expecting. The truth."
He paused, letting the words hang in the air like a executioner's axe.
"If you would have lied… if you had given even a single word of a different answer…"
Another pause, longer this time. The head envoy, Roclus, felt his heart hammering against his ribs like it was trying to escape.
"…Then I would have turned you all to dust where you knelt." Hades's voice was utterly flat, devoid of all emotion. "And then I would have turned my gaze to your bustling, proud kingdom. And I would have wiped it off the map. Every stone. Every life. Every memory. Gone. As if it had never existed."
The finality in his tone was absolute. There was no boast, no rage. It was a simple statement of fact, more terrifying than any scream. They knew, with every fiber of their being, that he was not exaggerating. He could do it. He would do it.
"Well," Hades said, his tone shifting back to something resembling normalcy, though the cold intensity in his eyes remained. "Go. Go and tell your king what you have seen here. Tell him what you felt. And inform him that I, Hades Azrathor, will come to your kingdom. I will meet him in two weeks. The audience is not a request. It is a scheduling notification."
The envoys scrambled backward on their hands and knees, not even daring to stand. "YES, MY LORD! YES, SIR! WE WILL TELL HIM! THANK YOU, MY LORD!" they babbled, their voices cracking with a mixture of pure terror and desperate relief.
They practically fell over each other to get out of the manor, fleeing through the paradise that now felt like a beautiful, deadly trap. The moment they were beyond the border, the head envoy fumbled for a small, magical communication stone, his hands shaking so badly he nearly dropped it.
"Whisper! Abort! Abort the mission! Return immediately! The sovereign knows everything! He saw you! He saw the legions! He… he… just get back NOW!"
Days later, in the polished marble throne room of Elmeria, The five envoys stood before the Royal Assembly. The vast throne room was packed. King Elmer III sat on his throne, but flanking the room were the powerful figures of his realm. The air was thick with the scent of perfume, polished leather, and palpable anxiety.
The envoys, still pale and shaking, delivered their report. They described it all—the terraformed paradise, the disciplined, monstrous guards, the oppressive aura of the manor, and the being on the throne who saw everything.
When they finished, the hall erupted.
Duke Ranulf, his military medals gleaming, was the first to roar, his voice echoing off the marble. "This is precisely what I feared! This... this Demon is consolidating power! He parades his strength to intimidate us! We must recall all legions! Not just the Fourth and Fifth! We must mobilize the entire army and meet this threat with unified force! We must strike before he digests his new territory!"
Countess Merisia, her fingers steepled, spoke with icy calm that cut through his fervour. "Strike with what, Duke? Did you not hear them? He saw the Fourth and Fifth Legions. He counted the soldiers. From his throne. He knew our spy's every move. You propose to 'strike' a foe who has already written the report on your own battle plans before you've even thought of them."
A young, proud Marquis from a wealthy coastal province scoffed. "So we are to simply kneel? To some beast-king from the wastelands? Our pride—"
"PRIDE?" The voice that cut him off was not the King's. It was the oldest man in the room, Baron Silas, a man whose family had held the western border for generations. His face was ashen. "You speak of pride, boy, when you have not felt what my people felt. A pressure that does not threaten, but informs you of your own death. He does not demand our pride. He does not even demand our surrender. He is merely announcing his existence and waiting to see if we are foolish enough to require a demonstration. I, for one, do not wish to see that demonstration on my lands."
The debate raged. Hawks called for war. Doves called for desperate diplomacy. The merchant lords calculated the unimaginable cost of both.
Through it all, King Elmer III sat silently, listening to the fear and fury of his entire ruling class. He saw not a unified kingdom, but a fractured council facing an impossible foe.
Finally, he raised a hand. The room fell silent, every eye turning to him.
He did not look at his generals or his merchants. He looked at old Baron Silas, who had understood the true nature of the threat immediately.
"The Baron is correct," the King said, his voice heavy with a finality that drained the hope from the room. "This is not a call to war. It is a verdict. We have been measured and found wanting. No army can fight a being who treats reality as a suggestion. No strategy can defeat clairvoyance."
He stood up, his gaze sweeping over the counts, dukes, marquises, and barons.
"Therefore, I make this decree to the entire assembly. The being known as Hades Azrathor is beyond our comprehension. He is beyond our strength. He is a walking cataclysm."
He took a deep breath, making the declaration official before all his nobles.
"From this hour, the sovereign of Yggdrasil is to be recognized by his true title by every lord, lady, and subject in this kingdom. He is a Demon Lord. And our only path to survival is to hope his mercy is as infinite as his power."
The silence that followed was absolute. It was the sound of a kingdom's pride shattering. There were no more arguments. The political factions were rendered meaningless in the face of a power that could ignore politics entirely.