Back in the chamber, the air felt still, almost heavy, after the raw display of power.
Eleanor's body sat slumped in the chair, but the gaze that met Governor Akira's was not her own. Bal'ark, great demon lord, breaker of armies, scourge of the Lower Realms… now stared up at him with the quiet, beaten submission of a whipped animal.
It hadn't even taken two minutes. Two minutes of the Governor's unrestrained will and precise, unyielding pressure, and the demon's pride had cracked like brittle glass. Information poured from its lips without hesitation, names, locations, structures of infiltration. From sleeper agents hidden in high-ranking positions to the coordinates of secret strongholds buried under mountains, every secret the Federation had hunted for years was laid bare.
