With a cruel snap of his fingers, Augustus ignited a jagged, violet barrier that encased the entire throne room. "No reinforcements. No escape," he hissed. "Only the scent of royal blood."
The massacre began instantly. Augustus's shadow-assassins lunged from the floor, but they were met with a flash of silver and jade. Luminara, the Queen of the Elves, ripped a massive, obsidian scythe from the harness on her back. Her movements were a blur of lethal grace; with a single fluid rotation, she reaped through a dozen demons, leaving trails of glowing green essence in her wake. Beside her, Light, the Ruler of the Feather-Winged, hoisted his legendary Staff of a Thousand Faces. The staff shimmered, shifting from a blunt mace into a dual-headed spear as he blasted holy energy through the ranks of the Black Marohs.
While the other Rulers held the line, Augustus moved like a blur toward King Alaric. The King drew his ancestral blade, swinging with every ounce of his strength. He unleashed his finest techniques—the Sun-Splitter and the Storm-Breaker—but Augustus caught the blade with his bare, clawed hand.
"How... how are you this powerful?" Alaric gasped, his lungs burning from the Demon Lord's suffocating aura.
"You are not strong, Alaric," Augustus whispered, kicking the King into a marble pillar. "You are simply weak." Augustus stepped onto the King's chest, raising a hand crackling with dark matter. "Rulers! Stand down, or watch your King be erased from existence!"
The battle halted. Luminara and Light lowered their weapons, trapped. But then, a sound echoed through the hall that shouldn't have been possible.
In his cradle, Silus opened his eyes.
They didn't look like the eyes of a Child; they burned with a blinding, molten gold. Suddenly, the gravity in the room increased a hundredfold. The "Divine Pressure" was so immense that the marble floor shattered. Augustus was slammed into the ground, his bones creaking under the weight of an invisible god. The violet barrier didn't just break—it evaporated.
A pulse of golden light exploded from the cradle, blasting Augustus and his entire legion out of the castle and miles into the wasteland. As the pressure vanished, Silus began to cry, his golden eyes fading back to blue.
Five Years Later...
The world had changed. Alaric had placed a massive bounty at the Adventurer's Guild: the head of Augustus in exchange for unlimited riches. Yet, the bounty remained unclaimed. Every hero who tracked the Demon Lord into the Abyss was never seen again.
Inside the palace, everyone believed Silus was a normal, happy child. They were wrong.
While the guards slept, five-year-old Silus spent his nights in the Great Library. He didn't just read; he absorbed. He practiced mana manipulation in the silence of the moon. One afternoon, Queen Luminara was visiting the King when she felt a familiar, terrifying ripple of mana coming from the royal gardens.
She rushed toward the source, her hand instinctively reaching for her scythe, but she stopped dead in her tracks. There stood little Silus, his tiny hand raised toward a massive, swirling magic circle. It wasn't a basic spell—it was a High-Tier Ancient Summoning.
From the rift emerged a creature of nightmare and legend: Veldora, the Storm-Crested Dragon. A beast so powerful that its very breath could level a mountain range. The dragon looked down at the five-year-old boy, and instead of attacking, it bowed its massive head in total submission.
Luminara's breath hitched. She realized then that the world hadn't just been saved five years ago—it had been claimed by a new, limit-breaking master.