"Millions of innocent citizens have died at your hands," Josh's voice boomed like a storm tearing through the trees and mountain peaks. His words rolled across the field, heavy and inescapable.
The very air seemed to tremble. "Their blood cries out for justice — a debt that must be paid in full. Though you have laid down your arms and surrendered yourselves as slaves to the Nazare Blade Empire, understand this…" His golden eyes narrowed, burning with something almost divine. "A debt is a debt. And debts must always be collected."
A shudder ran through the enemy ranks. Soldiers who had faced death countless times on the battlefield now found their knees buckling, hope slipping from their grasp. Some began to sob quietly, others clasped their hands together and prayed under their breath.
Josh's gaze locked on the man who had orchestrated this bloodshed — Emperor Cailan Gravis.
With a single, wordless gesture, Josh beckoned.
The emperor stiffened. Did this boy… just summon me? His nostrils flared, his jaw set. He was Cailan Gravis, sovereign ruler of the Scorpion Empire — the one whose very name made kingdoms tremble. And now some upstart dared to summon him like a disobedient hound?
His face twisted with rage. "You dare..., you little—"
The words never finished.
A crushing, unseen force struck him mid-sentence. The ground cracked beneath his feet, and his body buckled under a weight that no human could endure. It was as though reality itself had decided he no longer deserved to exist.
In the next instant, Emperor Cailan Gravis simply… disintegrated.
His flesh, his bones, his soul — all reduced to motes of dust that scattered into the wind.
Silence.
Not the silence of peace, but the suffocating silence of something greater than fear. Even the wind seemed to halt, as if paying respect to the fallen emperor — or fearing the one who had just executed him.
Agatha, now the emperor's consort, formerly a mage under the great Archmage Amber Nois, deflected to the side of the trickster god, and then she surrendered to him during the course of the war, stood frozen.
For a moment, her lips curled in disgust. The emperor's death didn't sadden her; she had seen weaknesses in him for the fleeting days spent together. As soon as he died, she had started to make her plans.
She couldn't just be a slave! No, she was already scheming — planning to latch onto Josh, as she had latched onto Cailan. Follow the strongest man, satisfy his needs, and survive under his shadow. It had worked before. It would work again.
She took one step forward. Then another. Her lips were already parting to speak.
Josh turned his head ever so slightly.
Her body crumpled before a single word left her mouth.
No blood. No scream. Just nothingness — erased as though she had never existed.
Josh's voice broke the stillness. "Every general," he commanded, his tone sharp enough to cut steel, "step forward."
The commanders of the Scorpion Empire stiffened. He hadn't called them by name, but he didn't need to. His eyes had already found them. Each man felt that burning gaze pierce into his very soul. They dared not disobey.
One by one, they stepped out from the ranks, their armor clinking like funeral bells in the wind. The sound echoed across the blood-soaked field, mournful and accusing. Some tried to keep their chins high, defiant even in the face of death, but their eyes betrayed them — wide, darting, rimmed with fear. Others stared at the ground as though praying it might open up and swallow them whole. Every single one of them felt the weight of judgment pressing down like a mountain on their shoulders.
Josh didn't move. His presence alone froze the air around them. He simply stood there, hands clasped behind his back, posture calm — too calm — as though he were not looking at the highest generals of a once-mighty empire but at criminals awaiting sentencing. His shadow stretched impossibly long behind him, like some celestial judge looming over their souls.
"You have led men to slaughter innocents," he said, his voice quiet — too quiet. The quiet was worse than a shout, worse than a thunderclap. It was the sound of a storm just before it strikes. "You have burned villages, broken families, salted the very earth with their tears. I could kill you all where you stand."
The glow in his eyes deepened, golden fire swirling in his irises. The surviving soldiers standing far behind the generals stumbled back instinctively, as though the very light from his gaze might flay them alive.
"But I am not merely an executioner," Josh continued, and even the wind seemed to stop to hear him speak. "Today, you will hear your sentence. And you will live — or die — by the weight of it."
The generals trembled. One of them, a grizzled man with a scar running down his cheek, swallowed hard. Another took an involuntary step back but quickly stopped, knowing there was nowhere to run.
Judgment had begun.
"You, you, and you," Josh said, pointing with a finger that seemed to carry the weight of an entire world. "You are responsible for slaughtering women and children. There is no need for any trial."
He lifted the kingly staff and struck it gently against the earth — and the earth answered. A pulse of blinding energy shot outward, and before the condemned men could even scream, they disintegrated like old parchment turning to ash. Their armor clattered to the ground, empty.
Three out of seven generals were gone in an instant. The smell of ozone and burnt flesh hung in the air. The others could barely keep standing.
Josh turned his gaze to two more, and they flinched as though struck. His voice was colder now, stripped of even the faintest mercy. "You and you are cruel and wicked. You beheaded innocent men in cold blood and forced their wives to watch. For you, I pronounce death."
He didn't even raise the staff this time — just flicked his wrist. The air itself became the weapon. A howling wind materialized, ripping through their bodies with surgical precision. When it passed, there was nothing left of them but a few drops of crimson splattered across the dirt.
The field was silent except for the distant sobbing of soldiers who had once called these men their leaders.
Only two generals remained.
And Josh was just getting started.