The heavy oak doors of the Davis manor didn't merely burst open—they disintegrated into a storm of splintered wood and iron dust.
Baron Davis sat at his polished mahogany desk, a crystal glass filled with an expensive vintage halfway to his lips, when the atmospheric shockwave rattled the stone foundations. He looked up, his jaw slacking as his son tumbled through the threshold, broken and crawling, sobbing a pathetic mixture of blood and snot onto the pristine velvet carpet.
Behind the boy stood a silhouette that instantly converted the air in the study into a crushing, pressurized vacuum.
The Baron stood up so abruptly his chair clattered backward onto the floor. He was a man who had successfully navigated the cutthroat, predatory politics of Asheviliah for decades, yet the moment his eyes met the intruder's, his knees buckled like wet parchment.
He knew that face. Every high noble in the neighboring kingdoms possessed a covert portrait of the ruler of Avangard locked away in their private vaults—a stark warning of the cataclysmic storm that walked in human skin.
"L-Leornars..." the Baron gasped out, the crystal glass shattering in his trembling grip, spilling crimson wine across his documents like fresh blood.
As the Baron stared in unadulterated terror, the spatial reality of the room seemed to warp and twist. The shadows pooling behind Leornars didn't merely flicker in the torchlight; they rose like thick, oily tendrils, coiling into a colossal, monstrous silhouette.
To the Baron's horrified eyes, Leornars's overwhelming aura manifested as a terrifying, three-headed viper woven from pitch-black mana. The central head stared down with cold, reptilian judgment, while the flanking heads hissed violently with the echoed sound of a thousand dying shrieks. The sheer, suffocating weight of the King's presence felt like an entire mountain chain settling directly onto the Baron's sternum.
"Baron Davis," Leornars spoke, his voice dropping into a low, rhythmic vibration that vibrated the stained-glass windows in their frames. "Your son has proven to be extraordinarily talkative. He mentioned a subterranean network known as the 'Gilded Cage.' He mentioned contracts written in human blood. He mentioned a system you personally helped construct."
The Baron collapsed heavily back into his seat, clutching his throat as he gasped for air that felt like liquid lead in his lungs. "It's... it is simply the way of the world, Sire! Asheviliah thrives upon—"
"Asheviliah thrives upon the crushed marrow of the innocent," Leornars cut him off, casually stepping over the weeping, broken boy on the carpet.
He leaned forward over the mahogany desk, the towering three-headed viper of his aura looming directly over the trembling noble, its shadowy fangs inches from his throat.
"I want names. I want the exact coordinates of every cell, every human broker, and every corrupt official currently on your payroll. Hand over the map to the Gilded Cage."
"If I give you everything..." the Baron wheezed out, tears of pure dread streaming down his pale cheeks, "will you grant us mercy? Please... spare my bloodline..."
Leornars stared down into his very soul, his crimson eyes utterly unreadable, dark, and bottomless.
"I will not kill you if you reveal everything."
The Baron broke entirely. Desperate to secure his survival, he scrambled on his knees toward the bookshelf, prying open a hidden compartment in the floorboards. He retrieved a heavy, brass-bound ledger and began babbling uncontrollably—shouting names, transaction dates, and the precise coordinates of the underground slave rig. He surrendered every political ally, every cousin, and every business partner in a frantic bid to breathe for one more hour.
When the final name was recorded, Leornars took the ledger into his hand. He stood up straight, and the suffocating aura of the black viper receded into a cold, flickering flame around his coat.
"I have retrieved what I came for," Leornars stated calmly.
He turned toward the shattered doorway, reaching down with one hand to haul the Baron's son up by the collar, while gripping the Baron's cloak with the other. He didn't escort them out politely; he threw them both into the center of the grand entrance hall like discarded trash.
"You swore... you swore you wouldn't kill us!" the Baron shrieked, scrambling across the marble floor to wrap his arms around his terrified son.
"I stated that *I* would not kill you," Leornars replied, his voice completely devoid of human warmth. "However, I never promised to shield you from the consequences of your own home."
Leornars stepped out onto the manicured front lawn and casually raised his right hand, his fingers gesturing toward the sky.
"Purgatory Flame."
A colossal pillar of violet-black fire erupted from the earth beneath the estate, instantly engulfing the entire Davis manor in a blinding pillar of hellfire.
This was no ordinary blaze; it generated no smoke, nor did it flicker in the wind. It roared with a terrifying spiritual hunger, consuming the stone structure, the ancient wood, and the very atmosphere.
From within the heart of the inferno, the Baron and his son screamed in agony, but the violet flames offered no mercy of a quick death. Purgatory fire burned the exact spiritual weight of a soul's sins first—prolonging their consciousness and excruciating pain as the flames fed upon their terror, their history, and their crimes.
Leornars stood on the lawn, watching the majestic manor turn into a towering pyre of violet light. Behind him in the tree line, the young girl he had freed from the estate's dungeons watched the spectacle in stunned, speechless silence.
"The manor is burning," Leornars noted softly, looking down at the heavy ledger resting in his hand. "Yet the fire is merely beginning. We have a cage to break."