The doors of the Council Hall told history if one looked at it's stone.
History of the nine founding Infernal Houses, each a tableau of their signature power: Zarthus's twin-headed serpent constricting a mountain; Morwen's soul-forges blazing; Kraz'gul's war-beasts trampling fields of light.
Liam ran a finger over the cool, polished stone as he waited in the antechamber, he didn't care for artistry, but he felt the ambition.
This was the heart of the empire he was supposed to subjugate.
From within, the sound was a low – the sound of power debating its own future.
The Nine Houses had arrived.
He didn't need to see them to feel their presence. The System painted a picture in cold hard data:
[Ambient Hostility Level: 87%]
[Dominance Aura Detected: 9 Entities. Average Threat: A-Class.]
Liam leaned against the wall, conserving his energy.
His heartbeat steady.
No panic and no pills.
He had only the cold clarity of an actor in the wings, waiting for his cue.
Inside the hall, it reeked of suppressed violence.
The chamber was a perfect circle, a statement of the supposed equality of the Houses.
A ring of nine monolithic thrones, hewn from different materials – basalt, fossilized bone, weeping iron – faced a central dais.
Upon that dais sat a single, larger throne: the Sovereign's seat. It was empty.
The leaders of the Infernal Houses looked a gallery of nightmares and majesty.
Hulking brutes clad in rune-carved plate sat beside slender, androgynous figures whose eyes swirled with captive souls. But all eyes, for a moment, were on the empty throne.
Then, the herald's voice boomed, cutting through the discord.
"Her Majesty, Lilith Zevra, First of Her Name, Queen of the Demon Empire, Sovereign of the Infernal Planes!"
The great doors opposite Liam's hiding place swung inward.
A hush fell, so absolute it was louder than the previous noise.
Lilith entered.
She was a vision of absolute, unassailable authority.
Her gown was the deep purple of a fresh bruise against the sky, and her crown of black, when overly observed – seemed to drink the light from the green-flamed braziers.
She walked foward.
Her gaze sweeping over the assembled Houses as if they were slightly disappointing statues.
As she passed each throne, its occupant rose.
A gesture of respect? No, far from it.
It was instead protocol—a ritualized acknowledgment of the crown, if not the woman who wore it.
They remained standing until she ascended the dais and took the Sovereign's seat, arranging the folds of her gown with chilling calm.
The moment she was seated, they dropped back into their thrones as one. The silence stretched, long and testing.
It was Veridia Zarthus who broke it – the faint shimmer of her skin catching the sickly green torchlight like scales beneath water.
Her beauty the sculpted cruelty of something venomous. A mane of dark hair fell in sleek waves to her shoulders, streaked faintly with silver that gleamed oddly...too oddly.
Her voice came as a low rasp that grated on the air.
"Your Majesty. We are pleased to see you well. But we did not come here for you. We came for Azrakul. The Primordial Demon. The purpose of this council is to look our savior in the eye. Where is he?"
Lilith steepled her fingers, her expression one of bored amusement.
"The whims of a being who predates time itself are not for me to command, Veridia. Who knows? The Originator of Sin might yet attend this gathering…" She let her gaze drift toward the high, shadowed arches of the ceiling. "…if he feels it is worthy of his time."
A murmur rippled through the chamber.
It was the perfect, infuriating response. It maintained the mystery and placed the burden of worthiness on them.
"Worthy?" scoffed Lord Morwen, a gaunt demon with fingers that tapped a restless rhythm on the arm of his soul-ivory throne.
"Our legions are in retreat. Our borders are shrinking by the day. The Radiant Empire's paladins desecrate our outposts with impunity. The state of the empire is not one of 'worthiness,' Your Majesty. It is one of decay. A decay that began with your… ambitious… war."
The dam broke then.
The discussion, carefully moderated at first, devolved into a litany of failures. House Kraz'gul's patriarch, a mountain of scarred muscle, slammed a fist on his stone throne.
"You spent the legion's strength like cheap coin on a conquest you couldn't finish! My soldiers died for your vanity!"
"The soul-forges run low on fuel because our trade routes are cut!" Morwen added, his voice a desperate accusation. "Your war has impoverished us, not enriched us."
Lilith sat through it all.
She let the accusations wash over her with regal indifference. But Liam, watching through a slender crack in the service entrance, could see the minute tension in her jaw.
She was absorbing every blow, calculating the angles.
Then Veridia rose.
The room quieted. She was the true opposition, and her movement commanded attention.
"We have heard the reports from the front. We have seen the empty forges. But now we are faced with a new… fiction." She began to pace slowly before the dais, a beast circling.
"A summoning...a miracle...and then a god, pulled from the void to save us all. How convenient. How desperately convenient for a queen whose grip on power was slipping through her bloodstained fingers."
She stopped, turning to face Lilith directly.
"I accuse you, Lilith Zevra, of the highest treason. Not against a single House, but against the Demon Empire itself. You brought us no salvation. This summoned god is a scam. A final, pathetic gambit to cling to a crown you never deserved and have so utterly failed to wear."
She began to list the failures, her voice rising with each point, hammering them into the chamber like nails into a coffin.
"The Battle of the Crying Fens—a rout, due to your refusal to heed Zarthus scouts. The Siege of Dawn's Spire—abandoned, wasting a year of siegeworks and ten thousand lives. The economic collapse that has every common demon in Eldhar wondering if they'll eat next week while you feast in your castle." Veridia's lip curled into a sneer. "You are a failure. A blight. And this story of a Primordial Demon is the crowning lie of your disastrous reign."
She turned to the other Houses, her arms spread.
"The evidence is before us! Her incompetence is etched in our dead! I call for a vote of no confidence. I move that Lilith Zevra be removed from the Sovereign's Throne, effective immediately!"
A chorus of agreement rose from several of the thrones. The hall was on the brink of a coup.
Lilith simply leaned forward, her golden eyes burning into Veridia.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop.
"Removed?" she asked, her voice dangerously soft. "And who, precisely, is going to remove me?"
Veridia smiled, a cold, triumphant thing.
"The law is clear, former Queen. The Demon Sovereign is chosen by the will of the ruling Houses. Our will. And our will… is that you are unfit."
The silence that followed was the silence of a verdict. The power had shifted. The crown was moments from being torn from her head.
And then, a voice echoed from the main entrance to the hall, the one through which Lilith had entered.
It was not loud – yet it cut through the silence, resonant, ancient, and laced with an amusement that felt like a threat.
It rolled through the vast space, seeming to emanate from the stones.
"No."
A single word. A contradiction that stopped the world.
All heads snapped toward the doors. The massive, carved panels were still closed.
"The Demon Sovereign," the voice continued, each syllable dripping with contempt for their very laws, "is whoever I say it is."
Thud.
A footstep on the flagstone floor beyond the doors. Heavy. Evil.
Thud.
It was closer. The sound echoed in the absolute quiet, a counter-rhythm to every frantic heartbeat in the room.
Thud.
The great doors began to swing inward, no rushed bang, instead a slow, inexorable groan, as if moved by an unseen hand.
And there, framed in the darkness of the archway, stood Liam.
He did not wear armor.
He was in the simple, dark robes he'd been given. But the way he stood — the absolute, unshakable stillness, the slate-cold grey of his eyes — made him seem more imposing than any armored warlord.
He took a single step into the hall, his gaze sweeping over the stunned, silent faces of the Nine Infernal Houses, his expression one of mild, profound boredom.