The Primeval Era

Damian gazed at the silent but calm wrath of the old man standing before him, and when he looked at The Hallowed Voice, he felt something he hadn’t felt since his transformation.

Danger.

It wasn’t the overt, aggressive danger of a warrior preparing to strike or a demon gathering power for an assault. It was quieter than that, deeper, the danger of standing beside a river that looked calm on its surface while currents beneath it ran with enough force to drag mountains underwater.

The Hallowed Voice radiated a power that Damian’s Primeval senses registered as genuinely threatening, not because the old man was hostile but because the sheer depth of his cultivation existed on a level where even Damian’s elevated existence couldn’t dismiss it entirely.

If he hadn’t been here, if Serala had returned to find the siege without him, The Hallowed Voice would have likely been able to handle Barbatos and the other Demon Dukes on his own, albeit with tremendous mayhem and death spread across the Citadel in the process.

The rivers of Mana still churned around the cathedral, white and gold currents flowing back into their carved channels after stripping thousands of traitors of everything they had spent lifetimes accumulating.

Brilliant light spread across the Citadel in the aftermath, sacred energy settling back into patterns that had existed for generations, and the groaning of the newly made Dross who had been Saints and Anointed Ones minutes ago provided a grim backdrop to the silence that had settled between Damian and the old man.

Damian looked toward Serala.

The communication was silent, a glance that carried the weight of why they had come here in the first place, the information they needed about demons and the path to the River of the World and whatever lay beyond it. Serala met his gaze and understood, her wing-shaped pupils reflecting the same urgency that burned behind his, and she opened her mouth to speak.

The Hallowed Voice spoke first.

"It would be our honor to host the Heir of Zuku Vakochev for the day while we finish dealing with all this chaos," he said, and his voice had returned to the gentle register of a man offering hospitality rather than the deep instrument that had stripped the cultivation from thousands of traitors moments ago.

His kind eyes rested on Damian with an expression that held genuine warmth alongside the calculation that never quite left them.

"I met your father a few times in the past. He was a good man. A rare thing among those who hold the power of empires, and rarer still among those who hold it well."

He paused, and something heavier moved across his lined face.

"By the time the Murderous Saint made his move against the Vakochev Empire, your father and your mother had already fallen. There wasn’t much we could do from this distance. I was faced with a decision that has kept me awake across more nights than I care to count."

His kind eyes didn’t waver from Damian’s. "Go to war, or keep the peace. If I went to war against the Dominion, hundreds of thousands on the side of the Covenant and hundreds of thousands on the side of the Dominion would have perished, and the true culprits would have remained at the top while the common faithful and common soldiers died in their place. For the sake of preserving lives on both sides, I did not make a move."

The Hallowed Voice inclined his head, and the gesture carried a humility that Damian had not expected from a being of his stature.

"For this, I hope your father can understand."

...!

The words hung between them. This was not a man making excuses. This was a ruler who had weighed the cost of action against the cost of inaction and had chosen the path that preserved more lives, even though that path had meant watching a good Emperor and his Empress fall while doing nothing to prevent it!

Damian could feel anger at the choice, and part of him did, but the larger part recognized that the same calculus his father had spoken about during their communion, the burden of leadership and the impossible decisions it demanded, had applied to the Hallowed Voice just as it had applied to Emperor Zuku Vakochev.

He nodded with a calm gaze.

"My father was killed," Damian said, and his voice was steady and direct, holding the tone of someone who had finished grieving for what could not be changed and was now focused entirely on what could still be saved. "But my mother’s soul was not consumed. It was preserved and taken to the other side of the River of the World. That is why I am here and why I am moving with haste, because my Ama cannot remain in their hands any longer."

The Hallowed Voice’s kind eyes sharpened. Wise Woman Kethiwe drew a sharp breath beside him.

Several of the Holy Women within earshot exchanged glances of horror, because the implication of a soul being preserved rather than consumed by demons carried meanings that anyone versed in the old knowledge understood immediately.

"If you have any information on the demons and the Demon Emperor," Damian continued, "I would love to hear it. We can at most...spend half a day here."

...!

The Hallowed Voice held Damian’s gaze for a long moment. He nodded once, slowly, with the deliberate gravity of someone making a commitment.

"Half a day," he said. "Then we will make it count."

Damian inclined his head in acknowledgment, then turned and rose back into the sky.

He ascended toward the five Dukes still burning in their solar chains above the cathedral, the white-gold radiance of his form intensifying as he climbed, and the kneeling masses and departing Dominion forces and stunned defenders all watched him rise with the collective silence of people who had run out of reactions long ago.

The demons greeted his return with eyes that cursed him.

Barbatos glared through the pain with crimson eyes that promised violence across lifetimes. Beleth’s massive form trembled with suppressed rage, his cracked bone armor still smoking where the chains branded it. Sitri’s locked expression held hatred refined by centuries of practice. Leraje’s hunter’s eyes tracked his approach with the focus of a predator memorizing the face of something it intended to kill. Eligos, silent as always, simply watched with the cold patience of a being that was already calculating how to exploit whatever came next.

Their Land and Sky Physiques remained suppressed beneath the solar chains, their true power locked behind bindings of purifying light that refused to let corruption assert itself.

Whatever grand transformations they were capable of, whatever terrifying forms they could take when their full strength was unleashed, none of it was available to them as long as the chains held.

Damian floated before them and said nothing for a moment, letting the silence and the burning do what silence and burning did to beings who were accustomed to being the ones inflicting pain rather than receiving it.

When he spoke, his voice was calm and cold, barely above a whisper, and somehow that was worse than the booming declarations he had been making all day.

"I will give you a chance to speak and tell me anything I want to know."

The five Dukes stared at him.

"I know that you said you have your main bodies back beyond the River of the World." He looked at Barbatos as he said this, and she had the decency to flinch.

"So you don’t have to feel pressured that if you speak, the others will know and you’ll be branded a traitor. I will separate you all into different corners of the Citadel and talk to you one by one."

He paused, letting the offer settle across the five of them.

"For your information, if you want a swift death of these bodies of yours, you can let me know. If you provide enough useful information, I may even let you go."

His wing-shaped pupils burned with verdant-blue light that cast the faces of the bound Dukes in sharp relief. "So let’s do this cleanly, okay?"

...!