Chapter 730: 730

And now this.

With this female godling, this harpy kin of theirs, it seemed as though escape was being offered.

That was not what they wanted.

Yet they trusted her.

They trusted that whatever path she was leading them down was not one of evasion, but of truth. And so, despite their hesitation, they rose from their seats and walked forward, one by one, until they stood beside her, fourteen figures framed by silence, judgment, and the unspoken weight of divine law.

She nodded once and led the fourteen godlings toward the victims, closing the distance between accusation and truth.

"Before the gaze of the Goddess," she asked, her voice solemn, "do you recognize any of these godlings as the ones who caused your pain and suffering?"

The young man stepped forward, a victim with his arm bound in splints, his face twisted with barely contained rage. He drew in a sharp breath, ready to speak.

Before the words could leave his mouth, something shifted.

The burly corporeal entity standing behind the harpy godling changed, its vast form drawing inward, becoming denser, heavier. Its presence surged forward, not as a threat spoken aloud, but as a crushing awareness that pressed against the young man’s senses.

He froze.

His breath caught in his throat. Whatever he had been about to say, the lie he was about to spout out of anger collapsed under the weight of that presence. He swallowed hard, his gaze dropping to the floor as his jaw clenched shut.

Then Gram spoke.

"I don’t know about the others," he said quietly, his voice stripped of anger, carrying only exhaustion, "but I saw no godling during the disaster."

He lifted his eyes, hollow and defeated.

"It was like a natural phenomenon," Gram continued. "Something that simply happened... and we were in its path."

The other victims exchanged glances.

One by one, they looked toward Xerosis, who stood unmoving, statuesque, his expression unreadable. When they spoke, there was no hesitation, only weary certainty.

"None of us saw the godlings," one of them said. "Not clearly. Not enough to say it was caused by them."

That was enough.

The humans in the stands erupted.

"What nonsense is this?!" someone shouted.

"Do you take us for fools?!"

"No one here is stupid, every deduction points to the godlings as the ones responsible!"

Voices piled atop one another, outrage drowning out reason as the chamber dissolved into chaos.

The four judges, two human, two godling did not shout. They did not call for order. Instead, they acted in perfect, chilling unison. Each of them gripped their heavy, dark-wood mallets and brought them down on the dais.

THUD.

The first strike hit like a physical blow to the chest. The shouting stopped instantly as the air was sucked out of the room.

THUD.

The second strike sent a ripple of "weird power" through the floorboards. It acted on the bodies of the spectators rather than their minds; knees buckled, and every person standing was suddenly, invisibly pressed back into their seats by a weight that felt like iron.

THUD.

The third strike brought a silence so absolute it was deafening. The ringing in everyone’s ears was the only sound left. The humans sat rigid, their mouths closed by a force they couldn’t fight, their eyes wide with a mix of awe and terror.

Every spectator sat frozen in their seat, breaths shallow, mouths closed. The court stood silent once more, and beneath that silence lingered the unmistakable sense that something far greater than law was now watching.

One of the judges looked toward the female godling and spoke evenly, "Please continue."

The harpy godling inclined her head, then turned to face the humans seated in the stands.

"You are all correct in one regard," she said. "No one here is foolish enough to fail to recognize the gravity of this situation."

A pause.

"But no lie has been spoken by me under the Goddess’s doctrine."

As she said this, she turned her gaze toward the human lawyers.

The lawyers fell silent, the weight of divine law pressing down upon them. After a long moment, one of them rose slowly from his seat.

"Indeed," he admitted, his voice subdued, "no lie has been spoken."

He swallowed before continuing.

"From the very beginning, we possessed no proof or evidence that these godlings were the offenders in this case. What we had were deductions, assumptions drawn to give form to our employers fear, and conclusions made convenient by circumstance."

He turned toward the human spectators.

"The godlings have cooperated with us from the start, despite knowing all of this. Neither we nor the victims can identify which godling, if any, caused the disasters."

His voice lowered.

"It was the godlings themselves who surrendered to the court. They offered themselves for judgment so that this case could even take place."

A murmur spread, not of anger this time, but of discomfort.

The narrative had shifted.

What had once been a trial of monsters now stood revealed as something far more unsettling: a mirror held up to human judgment, and the quiet realization that justice, when built on fear rather than truth, could condemn the innocent just as easily as the guilty.

The lawyer who had initially called the case a fallacy sneered, refusing to let the momentum of the "For Humanity" movement die so easily. He stood tall, his hand resting on a holy relic at his belt. "You speak as if we were helpless without their cooperation," he scoffed. "Even if the godlings had never surrendered, we, the servants of the Goddess, possess the divine spell of "Lex Divina". With the victims as a focus, we could have located the offenders anywhere in the world."

A wave of cheering broke out from the human stands. The nobles leaned forward, their "bright smiles" returning.

The Harpy godling didn’t stop smiling. If anything, her expression became more pitying, as if she were a teacher watching a student fail a simple lesson.

"Indeed, such a spell exists," she said, her voice easily cutting through the cheers. "But you seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the spell’s mechanics in a disaster of this scale. Lex Divina requires a thread of connection, a touch, a gaze, a direct interaction. In these storms, the offenders never came in contact with the victims. They were miles away, or high above the clouds, moving the world with a thought. There is no thread to pull."

She leaned over the railing, her iridescent wings casting a jagged shadow over the lawyer. "And even if you could cast it, do you understand the implications? The repercussions this would have on the Goddess’s faith and the stability of the world? To turn the Goddess into a common bounty hunter for every perceived slight? You would break the very faith you claim to protect."

The silence that followed was heavy. The Harpy looked directly at the fourteen godlings, then back to the human lawyers.

"Even now," she continued, "the initial words of my fellow lawyer stand. We godlings perform and act beyond mortal comprehension. We see the ripples of time, the weight of the elements, and the fragility of the spheres. Hence why we think before acting, even if our actions result in tragedies you cannot understand."

The human lawyer who had previously been cut off, the one who had admitted to the lack of evidence looked at his aggressive colleague. His face held a look of profound disgust, not for the godlings, but for the arrogance and ignorance of his colleague.

"The Harpy is right," he said, his voice echoing clearly. "The Goddess’s doctrine made it clear: we are no heroes. Our role is to maintain the balance of the Law, not to go around seeking justice like vigilantes and hunting people to be punished for the sake of a crowd’s satisfaction."

The "unwanted detail" of this realization was the sudden, visible shame of the human judges. They had allowed this trial to proceed to look like they were appeasing the nobles, like they had knowingly bent the doctrine of "non-interference" that the Goddess had established.

And in that silence, the court began to realize that the greatest threat to justice had never been the godlings at all, but the hands that were too eager to wield it.

The female harpy godling sent a brief, grateful glance toward the human lawyer who had spoken out. It was not approval, but acknowledgment, one servant of the law recognizing another.

"I have said all this," she continued, "not to deny that these fourteen godlings may yet face justice."

Her voice hardened slightly.

"But to reveal the true nature of what is unfolding here."

She turned toward the victims.

"Your leaders do not care for your loss," she said plainly. "It may appear otherwise, after all, see how well they have dressed you, how prominently they have placed you before this court."

A few of the victims shifted uneasily.

"But they do not grieve with you. This is merely another performance. Another calculation."

Her gaze swept the chamber.

"A test to gauge the relationship between gods, godlings, and mankind."