Chapter 514
He did not cry back then.
Instead, he laughed.
It was a quiet laugh, strikingly similar to the synchronized laughter now echoing among the Gods gathered in this hall.
The years passed like a blade being sharpened in secret.
The youngest learned that within this palace, vast as the world itself, affection was nothing more than an outdated form of currency.
Every time he tried to approach his siblings of similar age, all he received was merciless ridicule.
"You can't do anything. You're nothing but a useless little brother," one of his older brothers said, laughing alongside the others.
He was shunned.
Avoided.
Even during dinner, the chairs on both sides of his seat at the end of the table were always left empty.
But the youngest did not hate them.
No.
He was far too intelligent to waste his energy on futile hatred.
Instead, he observed.
He recorded.
And in silence, he constructed a map of power.
Until one gloomy evening, when the news of Xavier XVII and Myra Astrielle's suicide erupted like a storm without warning, the youngest was the only one who showed no surprise.
He merely stood before the vacant throne, gazed at his siblings as they began fighting one another over the crown, and whispered to himself,
"Now... it's my turn to decide who lives and who kneels."
And he won.
Not through a bloody civil war, but through Authority, something that surpassed even what his father had once possessed.
When the youngest stood in this very hall for the first time as its ruler, an invisible yet undeniable wave of pressure spread outward from beneath his feet.
One by one, the knees of the Gods and even his own siblings bent against their will, like blades of grass crushed beneath the force of a raging typhoon.
"We swear our loyalty," they declared.
Not out of love, but because they had no other choice.
The siblings who had once mocked him now trembled in the front row, unable to meet the gaze of the youngest, whose faint smile was exactly the same smile he had worn when blowing out the candles on his sixth birthday.
He did not cast them out.
Instead, he assigned them the lowest-ranking positions beneath the Gods.
Let them experience, every single day, what it truly meant to be "useless."
Fhooh!!
The youngest slowly raised his left hand.
The movement was painfully slow, like someone drawing a deep breath before diving into waters that offered no certainty of ever returning to the surface.
"Prepare the flames," he said.
His voice emerged not as a shouted command, but as a whisper that seeped into the very pores of the air, into the consciousness of every god gathered within the hall, and into the cracks of the marble floor where King Xavier XVII had once ruled before choosing death.
"Make the preparations immediately. I want the fire burning before night gives way to dawn. Not an ordinary fire, but flames born from unanswered prayers, from tears that were never wiped away, from hopes severed before they ever had the chance to grow. Erietta Bathee will be burned upside down. And I want her to feel the heat crawl from her head to the tips of her feet, slowly... so she understands that death does not always arrive as a liberator. Sometimes, it comes as an executioner that delights in every scream."
Before those whispered orders had even settled upon the tongues of the faintly smiling, unblinking gods, news arrived from outside the hall.
It came through the cracks in the fractured marble pillars, through the ventilation shafts connecting the throne room to the dark underground corridors, and from the mouth of a messenger kneeling at the entrance with ragged breaths and robes stained by the dust of a long journey.
The news did not arrive as a whisper.
It struck like a tremor.
A minor earthquake that caused the lamps hanging from the ceiling to sway gently, making the faint smiles upon the gods' lips falter for a fraction of a second before hardening once again.
"Your Majesty," the messenger spoke.
His voice broke midway through the sentence, like someone who had just witnessed something that should never have existed in this world.
"The Four Clans have breached the Land of the Gods. The Rebels, the Hypocrites, the Deceivers, and the Sinners. They did not come with a massive army, but with something far more terrifying... conviction, Your Majesty. They are absolutely certain they will not die today. And that certainty... drives them forward like an army that knows no fear."
From both sides of the hall, the gods who only moments earlier had laughed together while savoring the image of Erietta Bathee's suffering sprang into motion.
Not out of panic.
But out of instinct.
An instinct sharpened through thousands of years of ruling the Land of the Gods.
An instinct that understood one undeniable truth: when all four clans invaded simultaneously, it was no coincidence.
It was no ordinary assault.
It was something carefully planned, meticulously organized, and flawlessly concealed until the very last moment.
Yet before they could even take their first step toward the hall's exit, before their faded robes could billow from the force of their hurried movements, the messenger, still kneeling with trembling knees and his head bowed far too low, far too respectfully, far too fearfully, added something else.
Something that froze the entire hall.
Something that turned every restrained breath into absolute silence.
Something that caused the faint smile upon the youngest's lips to widen by another single millimeter.
Not from joy.
But from curiosity.
A cold curiosity.
A curiosity born from the realization that today would not unfold according to his plans.
"And there is something more, Your Majesty," the messenger continued.
His voice no longer cracked.
Instead, it trembled like the string of a violin plucked by impatient hands.
"From the western gate... the Fourteen Disturbers have entered. Not nine, as our records have always indicated, but fourteen. Five of them... Your Majesty, forgive this servant... five of them are Disturbers whom we had previously slain. Bes. Enlil. Lamashtu. Ahura Mazda. Mictlantecuhtli. They have returned to life. Not as though they had been resurrected in the ordinary sense... but as though they had never died at all. And they did not come alone. Accompanying them is a sixteen-year-old girl with silvery-white hair, unblinking eyes, and an expression that never changes. Judging by her appearance... she is Aldraya Kansh Que, the former Supreme Angel of the Thirteen Supreme Angels, who once devoted her entire existence to the Almighty, Quil-Hasa, before her love and devotion slowly transformed into hatred so profound that it consumed everything."
He paused for a moment and swallowed hard.
Not because of thirst, but because the words that followed felt like shards of broken glass lodged inside his throat.
"And there is also a nineteen-year-old man accompanying them. Judging by his appearance, he looks like a samurai... but his hands, Your Majesty... his hands have never once held a sword. And his hair... his hair looks as though he hasn't bathed for a thousand years."
The youngest did not move.
He simply remained seated upon his throne, his left leg crossed over his right, his snow-white hair cascading down his back like a frozen waterfall, and the faint smile that never reached his eyes now widening just enough for even those standing in the very last row to notice.
"The Fourteen Disturbers..." he repeated.
The words came not as a question, but as the sound of someone savoring an unexpected flavor that had somehow appeared upon today's menu.
"... With five walking corpses among them. A former Supreme Angel who betrayed Heaven after being humiliated. And a man who doesn't even know how to hold a sword... yet dares to set foot in the Land of the Gods."
To be continued...