Tyrix's voice somehow got even LOUDER, which Ruho hadn't thought was physically possible.
"AND WHAT GAME WILL BE THE PERPETRATOR AND DECIDER FOR THIS PATHETIC! FEEBLE! OBJECTIVELY UGLY! MORTALLLLLLLLLLLL!"
"HEY!" Ruho shouted, genuinely offended. "Objectively ugly?! I'm not—I mean, I'm covered in blood right now, but that's not my fault! That's circumstantial ugliness at best!"
"OH WOW!" Tyrix continued, completely ignoring him. "LOOKS LIKE WE HAVE A LOT OF VIEWERS TODAY! OVER THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND MORTAL VIEWERS TUNING IN! KYLE! KYLE, GET THE FUCKING JUMBOTRON CAMERA PANNING! WE NEED THOSE WIDE SHOTS!"
A different voice—younger, stressed, probably an overworked production assistant—crackled through. "Yes, yes, sorry boss! Panning now!"
"What the hell is happening?" Ruho asked, looking around his entrance hall like the answers would materialize out of thin air. "Can I—can I see what's going on? What are you people watching?"
"Oh, you want to see?" Tyrix sounded delighted. "KYLE! Get him a viewing portal! Living room! Make it big! I want him to feel the ENERGY!"
There was a sound like reality tearing, and then Ruho heard a loud HUM coming from deeper in the castle. He ran toward it—through a doorway he hadn't explored yet, into what was apparently the living room. It was a large space with stone floors, wooden furniture that looked vaguely medieval, tapestries on the walls, and now, hovering in the center of the room, a massive screen.
Not a TV. A screen. Like someone had cut a rectangle out of reality itself and replaced it with a window to somewhere else. It was easily a hundred inches across, maybe bigger, and it was broadcasting in crystal-clear high definition.
The image showed a stadium. An absolutely massive stadium, like a Roman colosseum mixed with a modern sports arena mixed with something that defied architectural logic. The stands rose up in impossible spirals, packed with figures some human-shaped, some definitely not human-shaped, all of them cheering and waving and holding signs that Ruho couldn't quite read from this angle.
In the center was a stage, spotlights blazing, and there standing in what looked like a glowing circle of divine energy was presumably Tyrix. Ruho couldn't see him clearly, just a silhouette surrounded by special effects that would make a Broadway production jealous.
"INCLUDING DASTARDLY LEGENDS!" Tyrix's voice boomed from both the screen and directly in Ruho's head, creating a disorienting stereo effect. "LIKE THE SOPHISTICATED BUTCHER OF ENGLAND! THE! JACK! THE! RIPPERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!"
The camera panned actual professional camera work, smooth and dramatic to focus on a section of the stands. There, sitting in what looked like a VIP box, was a man in his fifties with a neatly trimmed beard and wearing what appeared to be Victorian-era formal wear. He was twirling his beard thoughtfully, looking mildly entertained, like he was watching a cricket match.
"HOW THE FUCK IS HE HERE?!" Ruho screamed at the screen. "That's—he was a serial killer! A murderer! Why is he in the audience like he's watching a sporting event?!"
"This show brings EVERYONE," Azirel explained, his voice tinged with something like awe. "Heaven, hell, purgatory, everywhere in between. It's neutral ground. Divine entertainment transcends moral judgments. I'm pretty sure I just saw Hitler three rows back."
"SAW WHO NOW?!" Ruho's voice cracked.
"Don't worry about it," Azirel said quickly. "Focus on Tyrix. This is important."
"AND WE EVEN HAVE IMMORTAL BIG LEAGUE GUESTS!" Tyrix continued, his enthusiasm somehow still climbing. "LIKE SUSANO-O! THE GOD OF SWORDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!"
The camera panned again to show Susano-o in another VIP box, looking exactly as Ruho imagined a storm god would look—wild hair, intense eyes, an aura of barely contained violence. He was eating what looked like popcorn and gave the camera a thumbs up.
"AND EVEN THE HEROIC MAN TURNED GOD! THE LEGEND HIMSELF! HERRRRRRRRCULEEEEEEEEEEEEES!"
Another pan. Another VIP box. And there—unmistakably, impossibly—was Hercules. Massive. Muscular. Wearing what looked like a lion skin over modern casual clothes, because apparently even demigods got comfortable in the afterlife. He flexed for the camera and the crowd went absolutely wild.
Ruho felt something warm bloom in his chest. These people these LEGENDS were here to watch him? All these viewers, all this attention, all because of his struggle to survive? He mattered. He was important. He was—
"AND WE EVEN HAVE ENTITIES IN THE MIDDLE GROUND!" Tyrix shouted. "CREATURES OF MYTH AND LEGEND! THE TERROR OF THE NORTHERN FORESTS! THE CONSUMER OF THE LOST! THE WENDIIIIIIIIGOOOOOOOOO!"
The camera panned to a section of stands that looked... different. Darker. The lighting there was dimmer, shadows deeper. And sitting in what could only be described as a cage made of pure darkness was something that made Ruho's blood run cold.
It was tall. Too tall. Its limbs were too long, joints bending in ways that shouldn't be possible. Its skin—if you could call it skin—was pale and stretched tight over a skeletal frame. Antlers sprouted from its skull, massive and branching. And its eyes... its eyes glowed with a hunger that transcended physical need.
"WAIT!" Ruho shouted. "The Wendigo is REAL?! I thought that was just a legend! A Native American myth!"
"Oh, it's real," Azirel said, his tone grim. "Very real. And very, very dangerous. Most cryptids are real, actually. Bigfoot, Mothman, the Jersey Devil—all real, all currently in the afterlife or liminal spaces, and apparently all interested in your survival odds."
"AND NOW!" Tyrix's voice hit a crescendo that probably violated several laws of physics. "WE WILL LET ALL ONE POINT TWO MILLION OF YOU VOTE! BETWEEN ALL FIFTY-FIVE THOUSAND POSSIBLE GAMES! TO SEE WHAT CHALLENGE WILL BE THE ARBITER OF RUHO'S—"
He paused. The entire stadium paused. The silence was deafening.
Then, as one, over a million voices—mortal, divine, and everything in between—screamed together:
"DIVINE INTERVENTION!!!"
The sound was like a physical force. Ruho felt it vibrate through his bones, felt it shake the stone walls of his castle, felt it reverberate in his chest like a second heartbeat.
Confetti cannons exploded across the stadium. Fireworks launched into whatever passed for sky in the divine realm. The crowd was on its feet, cheering, waving, absolutely losing their minds.
And Ruho just stood there, staring at the massive screen, trying to process what was happening.
"HOW?!" he shouted over the noise. "HOW DO ONE POINT TWO MILLION PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT ME?! IT'S BEEN LIKE FOUR DAYS! FOUR DAYS SINCE I GOT HERE! HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?!"
"Time moves differently in different realms," Azirel explained, shouting to be heard over the celebration. "Four days for you might be four weeks for some viewers, four hours for others. Plus, the trainee gods have been sharing your file. Word of mouth spreads fast when you've got literal eternity to gossip. And Tyrix has been promoting this episode for a while apparently. The '50/50 Karma Mortal Who Died Masturbating' angle really captured people's imagination."
"I HATE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS!" Ruho screamed.
On the screen, the stadium was transforming. The stage was rising, platforms extending, what looked like a massive voting board materializing in the air above Tyrix. Numbers started appearing—game titles, vote counts, all updating in real-time as over a million entities cast their votes.
"VOTING IS NOW OPEN!" Tyrix announced. "YOU HAVE SIXTY SECONDS TO CHOOSE! WILL IT BE THE GAUNTLET OF FIRE? THE MAZE OF MADNESS? THE TRIAL OF TRUTHFULNESS? THE COMBAT CAROUSEL? OR ONE OF THE OTHER FIFTY-FOUR THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED AND NINETY-SIX OPTIONS! VOTE NOW!"
The numbers on the board started climbing. Thousands of votes per second. Tens of thousands. The games were ranked by popularity, with names scrolling past too fast for Ruho to read.
"This is insane," he whispered, sinking down onto a stone bench that was probably meant for medieval nobles but now served as his existential crisis seat. "This is actually insane. I'm on TV. Divine TV. Being watched by serial killers and gods and cryptids. And they're voting on what challenge I have to complete. This is my life. This is actually my life now."
"Look on the bright side," Azirel offered. "At least you're popular?"
Ruho buried his face in his hands. His body was still covered in dried crocodile blood. His castle smelled like a slaughterhouse. He had eighty kilograms of meat slowly cooking in a torture chamber. And now he was the star of a divine game show with over a million viewers.
"I want to go back to being dead," he muttered into his palms. "Just regular dead. No afterlife. No resurrection. Just... nothing."
On the screen, the voting timer ticked down.
50 seconds.
40 seconds.
The crowd was chanting now, different sections cheering for different games. Ruho could hear individual names being screamed—"COMBAT CAROUSEL!" "MAZE OF MADNESS!" "TRIAL OF ENDURANCE!"
30 seconds.
Jack the Ripper was consulting with someone in the next box over possibly another historical murderer, Ruho couldn't tell from this angle. Hercules was flexing again, because apparently that was his default state. The Wendigo hadn't moved, just kept staring with those hungry, hungry eyes.
20 seconds.
"What happens if I refuse?" Ruho asked quietly. "What if I just... don't play?"
"You can't refuse," Azirel said, his tone apologetic. "Divine Intervention isn't optional. It's compulsory entertainment. The contract was signed when you agreed to let the other trainee gods watch you. Tyrix has jurisdiction now."
"I didn't know that's what I was agreeing to!"
"Should've read the fine print."
10 seconds.
The vote counts were converging. Three games were pulling ahead of the pack, their numbers climbing faster than the others.
5 seconds.
The stadium was screaming. All of it. Every voice. Every entity. Creating a wall of sound that probably registered on seismographs in nearby dimensions.
3 seconds.
2 seconds.
1 second.
"VOTING IS CLOSED!" Tyrix announced.
The board froze. The numbers stopped climbing. And slowly, dramatically, the winning game's title expanded across the entire display, letters ten feet tall, glowing with divine energy:
Ruho waited, his heart pounding, to see what fresh hell over a million spectators had chosen for him.