Lord of the realm

Chapter 228: Humiliation

As the explosion’s smoke and debris began to clear, everyone turned their attention to where Jaenor had been.

The crater was deep, perhaps thirty feet, carved into bedrock by the sheer force of Suyajna’s attack. Steam rose from superheated stone. Reality itself looked scarred, warped by power that transcended normal nature.

And floating above the crater, completely uninjured, was Jaenor.

He wasn’t even scratched. His clothing, simple, dark, and practical, showed no signs of damage. His skin remained unmarked. He didn’t even look winded.

He simply floated there, his arms crossed, his impossible eyes fixed on Suyajna with an expression of profound disappointment.

"Was that supposed to hurt me?" he asked, and his voice carried clear disdain.

"A full-power attack from a daemon god, and I don’t even feel it? That’s how outmatched you are. That’s how far beyond you I’ve become."

Shock rippled through every observer. The Sovereigns exchanged glances; that attack should have injured even them. The Sins stirred uneasily, recognizing that the power differential was more extreme than they’d anticipated.

Even Kaelthrys’s expression showed a flicker of reassessment. She’d known Jaenor was powerful. But this level of casual invulnerability to daemon-god attacks suggested he’d transcended further than even her initial estimation.

Suyajna stared at her son, the vessel she’d consumed, and the sacrifice she’d used to ascend, and for the first time since manifesting, genuine uncertainty entered her expression.

"That’s... that’s not possible," she whispered.

"I absorbed you. Took your power, your essence, everything you were. You shouldn’t exist at all, let alone be stronger than me."

"You took what I was," Jaenor corrected, descending slowly to stand at the crater’s edge.

"Past tense. But Magdalyna gave me something you never could. She gave me a chance to become more. To evolve beyond what you tried to make me. And now—"

His power flared, golden-red light shot through with every other color, with shades that defied description.

"—now I’m everything you tried to steal, plus everything you could never achieve. I am sacrifice transformed into power. I am the response to your betrayal. And I am so far beyond you that calling it a ’gap’ would be generous."

Suyajna’s expression hardened, her initial shock being replaced by defensive anger.

"You don’t understand what I did," she said, her voice taking on the tone of someone explaining to a child.

"What I achieved through your consumption. This isn’t cruelty, Jaenor. This is a necessity.

Vision.

The courage to do what must be done for the greater good."

"Greater good," Jaenor repeated flatly.

"Yes!" Suyajna’s conviction blazed in her black eyes.

"Look at this world. Look at what men have made of it. War. Destruction. The Separation itself happened because male Arkwrights and male origin users couldn’t share power peacefully. Thousands of years of conflict, all traceable to masculine pride and aggression."

She gestured broadly, encompassing the devastated battlefield.

"I’m creating something better. A world where women, powerful, capable women, govern. Where feminine wisdom guides rather than masculine brutality. Where beings like Morgana and I can shape reality according to our vision rather than being persecuted by male-dominated hierarchies."

"By murdering your own son," Jaenor said.

"By making a sacrifice!" Suyajna insisted.

"Your life for the transformation of entire civilizations. Your existence ending so that countless others could flourish. That’s not murder; that’s mathematics. One death to prevent millions. One sacrifice to end cycles of violence that have persisted since before recorded history."

She took a step toward him, her expression showing genuine belief that she could make him understand.

"And you weren’t just anyone. You were Arkwright. Cursed bloodline. Destined to either become a monster or be killed trying to prevent it. I gave your life meaning. Purpose beyond just being another cautionary tale. Through your sacrifice, through what you became and what I took from you, we can—"

"I don’t care," Jaenor interrupted, his voice cutting through her justifications like a blade.

Suyajna stopped, genuinely taken aback.

"You don’t... you should care. This is about the future of—"

"I don’t care about your philosophy," Jaenor clarified.

"Don’t care about your vision for a better world. Don’t care about your persecution complex or your hatred of men or your belief that you’re somehow morally superior while committing atrocities."

He took a step forward, and the ground cracked beneath his foot from sheer presence.

"You used me. From conception to consumption. My entire life was a lie designed to serve your purposes. And now you want me to appreciate the vision?

To understand the necessity?

To acknowledge that my suffering had meaning?"

Another step, and the air itself began to warp around him.

"No. You’re just a parasite who dressed up cruelty as ideology. Who convinced yourself and your lover that betrayal was justified by claiming it served a greater purpose. But there is no greater purpose.

There’s just you, trying to achieve power you didn’t earn, through sacrifice you had no right to demand."

Suyajna’s expression shifted from conviction to defensive anger.

"You ungrateful, I gave birth to you! Fed you! Protected you from forces that would have killed you in infancy! Everything you are exists because I—"

"You’re not my mother," Jaenor said, and his voice dropped to something absolutely cold. "Mothers love their children. Mothers sacrifice for their children’s benefit, not the other way around. You’re just a monster wearing a mother’s face. And I’m done listening to your justifications."

He moved.

One instant he was ten feet away.

The next, he was directly in front of Suyajna, moving faster than even her daemon-enhanced perception could fully track.

His hand came up, not formed into a blade, not channeling any visible technique.

Just his open palm.

And he slapped her.

The sound was like a thunderclap.

Suyajna’s head snapped to the side, her body following, and she was launched backward at speeds that turned her into a blur. She struck the ground half a mile away with enough force to create another crater, her body bouncing twice before finally coming to rest.

The battlefield went absolutely silent.

Everyone, Sovereigns, Sins, Morgana, and even Kaelthrys, stared in shocked disbelief.

A simple slap.

No techniques, no accumulated power, no divine force.

Just physical contact.

And it had sent a daemon god flying like she weighed nothing.

The Seven Sins moved instinctively, their loyalty to the entity they’d helped resurrect overriding their self-preservation instincts. Pride’s darkness began gathering. Wrath’s fury manifested as visible heat distortion. Lust’s reality-warping is prepared to engage.

Jaenor turned his head toward them slowly, and his eyes fixed on each Sin individually.

He didn’t speak.

He just looked at them.

And one by one, they stopped.

Froze in place, unable to continue their advance. Because looking into those eyes, they saw something that terrified even beings who embodied fundamental sins.

They saw that he could end them.

Easily.

Without effort or hesitation. And that he was choosing, in this moment, to show mercy they hadn’t earned.

"Don’t," Jaenor said quietly.

"Don’t make me demonstrate exactly how outmatched you are."

The command carried weight that made even Pride, first among the Sins and the most powerful and prideful, lower his gaze and step back.

They recognized absolute authority when confronted with it. Recognized that sometimes, survival meant knowing when you were outmatched.

Jaenor turned back toward where Suyajna was climbing out of her crater, her face showing a handprint that glowed with residual energy from his strike. Blood, actual blood, trickled from her mouth where teeth had cut her lip.

She looked shocked.

Genuinely, completely shocked. She’d absorbed Jaenor’s power, had ascended to Sovereign level, and had killed three Sovereigns in direct combat.

And he’d swatted her aside like an insect.

"How?" she whispered, her voice carrying clearly despite the distance.

"How are you this much stronger? I took everything you had. Your power should be mine. You should be nothing!"

"You took what I was," Jaenor said, beginning to walk toward her slowly, deliberately.

"Not what I could become. Magdalyna saw that potential and gave everything to realize it. She loved me, truly loved me, enough to sacrifice herself so I could return. Something you could never understand."

"She should have been my mother."

He continued his measured advance.

"And now I’m going to show you exactly what that sacrifice purchased. Exactly what power looks like when it’s earned through love rather than stolen through betrayal."

"I’m going to show you what it means to face someone who’s transcended every limitation you tried to impose."

His form began to glow, power building that made the very air scream.

"I’m going to show you what real strength looks like."

Jaenor walked toward Suyajna with the measured pace of inevitability itself.

Not displaying urgency. Just steady, unstoppable forward momentum.

Suyajna climbed fully out of her crater, wiping blood from her mouth. Her black eyes blazed with a mixture of fury and something she hadn’t felt in millennia, genuine fear. But she was still a daemon god. Still powerful beyond mortal comprehension.

Still dangerous.