The air in the throne room was thick with the copper tang of fresh blood and the oppressive chill of the Sovereign's presence. The heavy thud-thud-thud of burlap sacks being dragged across the floor created a rhythmic, morbid percussion. Thorn's soldiers, their armor still stained with the gore of the East Border, stood in a rigid line, their breaths coming in shallow, synchronized rasps.
Inside those sacks were the trophies of a massacre. The heads of the resistance fighters—men who had dared to dream of a world without demons—now served as nothing more than biological receipts for Hebner Grand's wrath.
"The border is silent, my Lord," Thorn stated, his voice ringing out in the cavernous space. He stood amidst the sacks of remains as if they were nothing more than discarded laundry. "The human filth has been cleared. The few who survived fled like rats into the dark."
Hebner didn't look at the sacks. He sat on his throne of jagged glass, his chin resting on a propped fist, his eyes fixed on some distant, invisible horizon. "Silence of the human beings is how the world should be," he murmured, his voice a low, terrifying vibration. He finally shifted his gaze to the blood-soaked floor. "Take them to the Awake Graves. I want those heads hung from the iron hooks of the display trees. Let the wind whistle through their teeth so that every human who dares look toward Voidmore knows the price of a 'cleansing.'"
"It shall be done," Thorn replied with a curt bow. The Awake Graves were the most macabre site in the city—a place where the trophies of war were preserved by demonic magic so they never truly decomposed, their eyes eternally open to witness the glory of the demon empire.
Hebner leaned forward, the shadows around his throne coiling like vipers. His cold, piercing gaze locked onto Thorn's amber eyes. "And Thorn... a word regarding your new acquisition."
Thorn went still. "The human girl, my Lord?"
"Tell that sickly creature not to loiter around my city seducing my soldiers with her pathetic fragility," Hebner said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, icy whisper. " If she continues to cast her eyes toward things she cannot comprehend, she will be consumed, piece by piece, by the hunger she is trying so desperately to provoke."
Thorn felt a jolt of genuine surprise. He glanced through the arched, stained-glass windows of the palace, his gaze traveling across the darkened skyline toward the silhouette of his own estate, The Crying Pillars. Seducing? he wondered. How could a girl who could barely breathe find the energy to catch the attention of the Sovereign himself?
"I... I understand, my Lord," Thorn stammered, his mind racing. "I will ensure she remains confined to the servants' quarters. She is merely a toy, a curiosity."
"Ensure she does not cross my path again," Hebner growled, his power suddenly flaring, making the torches in the room flicker and die. "If I see her watery eyes peering from the shadows once more. I will tear her into pieces and feed her to the hounds of the void. My patience for human faces is a well that has long since run dry."
Thorn bowed lower this time, feeling the raw, visceral hatred radiating from his King. He knew the history—the scars Hebner carried from his time as a powerless human. To Hebner, every human face was a reminder of a life he had burned away.
"Understood, Sovereign. She will be invisible," Thorn promised. He then shifted his posture, clearing his throat to change the subject to the night's main event. "The preparations are complete, my Lord. The Celebration of the Day of Eclipse is beginning. It has been exactly one hundred years since your glorious transformation. The century mark is a milestone that has the entire city in a frenzy."
Hebner's expression remained a mask of stone, though a faint, dark light flickered in his eyes.
"The demons have already begun gathering at the Shade Square," Thorn continued, his voice taking on a darker, more excited tone. "The wine of the abyss is flowing, and the captives have been brought out. You know how the boys get during the Eclipse, my Lord. The feast is as much about the blood as it is about the... carnal release. They are already misbehaving. The square is a sea of flesh and chaos, waiting for their King to drink the first drop of fresh human blood and bless the night's debauchery."
The Day of Eclipse was the holiest and most horrific day in the demon calendar. It was the only time the Demon Lord partook in a ceremonial glass of Prime Life—fresh human blood—to rejuvenate his immortal core. For the rest of the demons, it was a night of lawless indulgence, where captive humans were used for sport, sex, and slaughter in a wild, drug-fueled feast of the senses.
Hebner stood up from his throne, his towering frame casting a shadow that seemed to stretch for miles. "A hundred years of ruling," he mused, though his voice sounded more like a threat than a celebration. "I will be there to mark the century. Dismissed."
Thorn signaled to his men, and the gruesome sacks were dragged out toward the Awake Graves. As Thorn followed them out, his thoughts drifted back to Hannah. The King was angry. The city was about to explode into a night of violent lust and blood. And somewhere in the middle of it all was a sickly human girl who had somehow managed to get under the skin of a heartless god.
If she was smart, she would hide. But as Thorn looked at the red moon beginning to overlap the sun in the sky, he had a feeling that Hannah McKay was anything but a victim.