The castle stood at the island's heart like a monument.
As Ashen's convoy crossed the final bridge and passed through the outer gate, he felt the mana first.
It was thick enough to press against his skin, denser than anything he had sensed on Esperra so far, so concentrated that it nearly reached Seravelle's level. That alone would have been unusual.
Then he noticed the faint sheen over the air.
At first glance, it looked like nothing more than a shimmer above heated stone.
But his old instincts, the ones left behind by a life spent bending time and reading flows others could not see, told him the truth. This entire island was wrapped in vast barriers, mostly for concealment, but also to clamp down on the aura of everyone inside and keep the place from feeling like a battlefield before the meeting even began.
'So that was how they did it.' He looked ahead again, expression intrigued.
The castle itself was enormous, built in a style that refused to choose between elegance and intimidation.
Tall columns lined the outer corridors. Wide steps led upward toward the inner hall. The stonework was clean and severe, but the size of the place made sure no one forgot who it was built by.
There was no wasted space, no ornament for ornament's sake. Everything existed to remind visitors that comfort was the last thing to think about when entering this seat of power.
'Right. Subtlety is dead and buried here.'
Behind him, the convoy's wheels rolled over polished stone with a hush.
The inner courtyard opened before them.
And there they were.
The attendees were already gathering, each group separated by invisible lines of authority.
Some stood in loose clusters. Some waited in stillness. Others had clearly arrived only to glare at everyone else and let that count as participation.
The first thing Ashen noticed was the variety. The second was the tension hiding under it.
This meeting room was a chamber built of people who could shatter mountains if they got emotional. The ceiling arched high overhead, and the light pouring in from the upper windows did little to soften his dreadful imagination.
Seats had been arranged in broad, deliberate tiers around the central floor, leaving a wide empty space in the middle like the room itself expected someone to be judged.
Maybe someone was.
Ashen stepped down from the car and followed Lucia inside.
The air grew heavier the deeper they went.
He saw the major players first, because they were impossible to miss.
The Sin Lords occupied the highest seats, one for each domain, their presences wrapped in mist or shadow. Even hidden, they carried themselves like calamity in waiting.
Beneath them stood their direct subordinates, aides, spokespeople, nobles, administrators, and the men and women who kept their domains from collapsing into a thousand smaller disasters.
It was a strange sight if one looked at it too long. A meeting of the world's strongest people, and yet half the room was made up of exhausted functionaries.
Ashen nearly smiled.
Almost immediately, his eyes found Seraphine.
She stood out so sharply that it was almost rude.
The Lust Domain's attendants wore clothing that barely deserved the name of religious attire, and yet Seraphine still managed to look more like a Saintess than all of them combined.
Her long coat fell neatly around her frame, contrasting against the softer, more provocative atmosphere of her domain. She was already looking in his direction, and the moment their eyes met, a mischievous curve touched her lips.
Then, with the solemnity of a woman committing sacred blasphemy, she drew a tiny heart with her fingers and blew him a kiss.
Ashen kept his face composed.
He did not return the kiss.
Instead, he used their bond to send her a quick spark of pleasure.
The reaction was immediate. Seraphine's blush rose so fast it was almost impressive.
That was when the mist beside her shifted.
The Lust Sin Lord had noticed.
A pale illusory hand emerged from the haze and settled on Seraphine's head with infuriating ease, as if she were some beloved daughter that has misbivahed.
Seraphine's blush deepened at once.
Ashen's mouth twitched.
'Caught already?'
He moved on before the scene could become any more embarrassing, though he doubted Seraphine had the same impulse. She looked perfectly willing to make a fool of herself if it meant getting a reaction out of him.
Across the chamber, the other Sin Lords sat in their own islands of pressure.
The Gluttony seat was easy enough to identify. The people gathered there carried the sort of heavy, indulgent atmosphere one associated with appetite that had long since stopped pretending to be moderate.
Ashen did not need to see the lord himself to know who it was.
Then came Envy.
That section of the room felt sharper somehow, crowded with a restless sort of attention that made the back of his neck itch. The attendants there looked too alert, too tightly wound.
Ashen had the distinct impression that if he stared at them too long, one of them would start resenting the fact that he was staring at all.
He kept moving.
The Greed section had a different quality altogether.
Thick and slick… and almost greasy. Despite not being able to see their Sin Lord, Ashen somehow got an inkling that he was looking at him right now.
'No thanks. I've had enough people silently judging me to last a year.'
Finally, his eyes landed on the least crowded seat.
Sloth.
Dorian was sprawled there as if the entire meeting had been scheduled purely to inconvenience him. He looked, at a casual glance, like a tourist who had wandered into the wrong room and decided to stay out of politeness.
His posture was lazy, his expression mild, and his presence so deceptively ordinary that anyone who mistook it for weakness would deserve whatever happened next.
He was surrounded by men and women who looked like soldiers, but from what Ashen had been told, they were among the strongest individuals on the continent and possessed enough influence to earn a seat in this gathering. The majority of them were heads of mercenary regiments.
When gathered together, they could probably rival an official Seravelle regiment. To avoid the fate of being divided up and absorbed into those same armies, they had little choice but to huddle together.
Of course, in the face of the Sin Lords, that was never enough. That was why they shamelessly clung to the sole Lord who neither cared enough to subdue them under his rule nor cared enough to chase them away.
Maybe it was also his easy-going nature that gave them the courage to do so. After all, from an outsider's perspective, Dorian looked more like a jolly middle-aged uncle than one of humanity's rulers, especially when compared to the majestic atmosphere surrounding the other Sin Lords.
Of course, appearances could be deceiving. Unlike Cornelia, who also appeared relatively ordinary compared to her fellow Lords despite her recent ascension, Dorian's unremarkable presence was simply the product of his supreme control over every shred of his power.
Cornelia, on the other hand, had yet to accumulate the necessary weight and conceptual authority to influence reality merely through her existence.
He glanced once more across the chamber and found Alice among the Wrath Domain's direct subordinates, standing with the department heads and territory nobles under Cornelia's sphere of influence. She looked perfectly at ease, which only made her more intimidating.
A few seats away from them, the other nobles under Wrath sat with a careful posture.
Ashen counted enough familiar faces to know that the domain's machinery was all here: military commanders, district overseers, internal administrators, and the people who kept the border running when the monsters tried to tear it apart piece by piece.
That included him too, of course.
He sat under the Wrath banner now, and people spoke to him accordingly.
Though it still felt odd, sometimes, to think of himself as one of the nobles of a domain rather than the idiot who had stumbled into the position by force of circumstances and sheer irritation.
The last of the attendees settled into place.
The room quieted.
At the center of it all, the attention slowly shifted toward the highest seats.
The first voice that spoke belonged to the Lust Sin Lord.
It carried easily through the chamber, warm and smooth, with enough playfulness to make the formality feel almost voluntary.
"Then, let us begin."
Ashen settled into his seat and listened.
The opening exchanges were what he expected. Reports. Confirmations. Status updates from the major domains. Small pieces of order built carefully atop a large and inconvenient problem. The room functioned like a machine.
For a while, that was almost comforting.
As reports moved from one domain to another, Ashen let his gaze drift again. It did not wander for long, however, as the Lust Mistress' ethereal voice soon brushed against his ears with syrupy sweetness once more.
"Now that this is out of the way~ perhaps we should address the main issue of this gathering?"