Chapter 728: 728

"Your Excellency Xerosis," the first human lawyer began, voice steady but heavy with conviction, "we come today not to challenge the divinity of the godlings, nor to undermine the gods themselves. We seek justice for the innocent, who’s homes were destroyed, families lost, livelihoods stolen by those entrusted with power.

He paused, letting his words settle. "Fourteen godlings, acting beyond the command of any ruler, unleashed storms and floods upon the Humanity kingdom. Towns leveled. Children drowned. Entire villages erased. The survivors left to bear the cost of being alive while having lost everything. Yet the offenders have walked free until now. That is unacceptable."

Murmurs rippled among the human spectators. Some nodded, others pressed their hands over their mouths. The lawyer’s gaze swept the godlings in attendance, not a flicker of fear in his eyes. "We demand accountability. Not excuses. Not deflections. Justice must be served, for humanity watches, and history will remember how this day was judged."

Another lawyer stepped forward, her robes heavy, face set in rigid lines. "We do not question that Erik, the human king, has played a part in these events. But he is not the focus here. The godlings wielded power as a weapon. Their actions defy reason, mercy, and law. And for that, they are answerable not to each other, but to survivors, the mortals they endangered."

She let the words hang. A ripple of tension crossed the godlings’ ranks. Eyes darted, some avoided contact, others remained cold and unmoving.

From the far side of the court, the godling lawyers rose. Their movement was slower, measured, almost ritualistic. Chains clinked as their veiled entities followed, their presence heavier, more oppressive. The first godling lawyer’s voice, when it came, was calm.

"Your Excellency Xerosis," he began, "we do not deny that actions were taken. But the circumstances must be weighed carefully. Our clients were responding to an affront that goes beyond mortal comprehension: the offense committed against one of our own, a being now ascended to godhood, once a kin and leader among us. That offense was committed by Erik, the human king. It was not a simple slight. It was a violation of divine order."

He paused, allowing the weight of the words to fall on both the humans and the court. "The godlings acted in defense of kin and principle. They did not strike recklessly at individuals of their choosing but responded in a measured, necessary way. Yet the mortals involved directly or indirectly cannot always grasp the full measure of such an offense."

Another godling lawyer took up the mantle. His tone was Milder and softer. "We do not claim immunity. Nor do we seek to evade the consequences of what was done and the storm. But we must also insist that the human side recognize context. When these godlings acted against one who dishonors their own, they are bound by a different moral framework. Judgment cannot ignore that framework without disregarding the very nature of divinity itself."

The air was tense. The humans bristled, ready to object. The godlings stiffened, as if prepared to answer any challenge.

The silence was broken by the rageful voice of one of the human survivors, "What understanding are you talking about? There is nothing to understand here, except that you all killed hundreds thousands of innocent lives in a single night just because you were offended by an action taken by a weak incompetent king?"

"why are we the one’s bearing this price, what changed in you targeting us who have not offended you and the one who did is untouched by you all?" The man raging, tearful face cried out in the court.

A middle-aged woman, her eyes hollow from loss stood up. She carried nothing but the remnants of a child’s toy, scorched and waterlogged. Each step she took echoed on the stone floor, a fragile rhythm of grief.

"I was asleep when the storms came," she began, voice trembling yet loud enough to carry. "The rain fell like metal from the sky. Houses collapsed. The river swallowed everything. My husband gone. My children gone..." she could not continue speaking as she broken down crying.

Murmurs ran through the crowd. Some spectators wept quietly. Others clenched their fists. The words were raw, unembellished, but carried the unbearable weight of loss.

The room fell into a heavy, suffocating silence as Gram cleared his throat. He didn’t look at the group; his gaze was fixed on the middle-aged woman across from him, his eyes glassy with shared trauma.

"My experience was... it was a mirror to yours," he began, his voice barely a rasp. "I was asleep. Deep, dreamless sleep. The kind you only get when you think the world is safe. Then, the ceiling didn’t just collapse, it vanished."

He took a shuddering breath, his knuckles whitening as he gripped a small, frayed scrap of blue fabric. "Next thing I knew, I wasn’t in my bed. I was being hauled upward by a roar so loud it felt like my bones were vibrating. I woke up in the eye, a hollow, screaming cathedral of wind. It was pitch black, lit only by the constant, flickering strobe of horizontal lightning."

Gram’s voice drifted, as if he were back in that sky-high vacuum. "From up there, I watched. I watched as my town, the streets I’d walked for forty years was peeled off the earth like wet paper. Houses, trees... they were just debris, spinning in the dark. And then, as if the storm had grown bored of us, the wind just... stopped."

The woman gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.

"The silence was worse than the noise," Gram whispered. "For a heartbeat, we all just hung there. Me, and hundreds of others. People I knew. People I drink and laugh with. We reached for each other in the air, but gravity is a cruel thing. We fell. We fell from a height no human should ever fall from"

He looked down at his hands, which were shaking uncontrollably. "I hit a body of water close by. That’s the only reason I’m breathing. But my wife... my little girl..." He choked back a sob, his fingers digging into the scrap of cloth, a piece of his daughter’s favorite sundress. "They didn’t find the water. My friends, my neighbors... the wind took them, and the earth took them back. I don’t know why I was the one the water caught. I have no idea why I’m here and they aren’t."

Tears finally spilled over, carving tracks through the dust still caked on his cheeks. He fell silent, clenching the fabric to his chest as if it were the only thing keeping him anchored to the ground.

A young man with one arm bandaged stepped forward "We trusted our king to protect us," he said, eyes blazing in hatred. "But he failed. And when the godlings came, they punished us as if we were the guilty ones! Entire towns brough to ruins. Crops gone. Livestock dead. Families destroyed. My sister was swept away while I watched."

His words hung in the air like thunder. The godlings shifted, unease flickering across their stoic faces. Even those who had not directly participated felt the sting of accusation, the moral weight pressing down upon them.

The next speaker was an elderly priest from a coastal village "We believed in the gods. We prayed for protection. But our prayers fell silent as the storm came. The godlings acted as if humanity were expendable, as if our lives were no more than pawns in a game we never agreed to play. And when the king failed to play right, we suffered doubly. How are we to trust either of you?"

The murmurs in the crowd turned to whispers of anger. The slogan "For humanity" was spoken more openly now, rising like the tide itself, a low chant that threaded between the spectators.

One of the youngest survivors, a girl of no more than ten was brought forward by two guards. Her small voice, shaking with fear and grief, pierced the silence: "They took everything. Mother. Father. My home. My friends. I don’t know why. I didn’t do anything wrong, and I still... still feel like I’m bad because they were angry at me and my people."

Her words landed like stones against the godlings’ hearts. A Merfolk godling hands clenched briefly at his sides, the only outward sign of the storm of emotion within him. Every godling in attendance felt it, the human suffering they had helped cause, no matter how justified they had believed it to be.

The final witness, a middle-aged farmer, stepped forward, gripping a soaked scroll with names of villages destroyed. "We survived by luck. Many did not. And even those of us who lived... what do we have left? The gods claim us as worshippers, yet we are powerless against their wrath. The godlings were supposed to guide, to protect, to honor humanity... and yet we are here, waiting for judgment from one of their own."