Chapter 735: 735

"You misunderstand my words," he said. "Human life, especially the lives of common folk holds great value."

He tilted his head slightly, then gestured toward Erik.

"You can only see him," the godling continued. "But I can smell him."

"In your eyes, he is beautiful, calm, regal, composed. But my nose tells a different story. On him, I smell desperation... fear... uncertainty... and lust."

Each word landed like a blow.

"All of it tangled beneath the mask he presents to the world," the godling said. "And the lives we took? They are the cause of this. They pushed him into such a state."

He straightened slightly, his voice dropping.

"So no," he finished, "your lives are not meaningless."

Gram’s fists clenched at his sides, nails biting into his palms. The werewolf godling leaned in closer, his gaze searching Gram’s face, waiting, perhaps, for defiance, for anger, for violence.

But Gram did nothing.

Even as rage burned in his chest, his body refused to obey it. Fear rooted him in place, cold and undeniable, reminding him just how vast the gulf between them truly was.

Suddenly, a massive, furred palm settled atop Gram’s head.

It was warm. Heavy. And impossibly gentle.

The werewolf godling rubbed his head as one might soothe a child, the gesture jarringly tender for a being of such overwhelming presence.

"I will grant you the knowledge and the strength you seek," the godling said. "How far you grow with it is entirely up to you."

Then his voice rose, carrying effortlessly across the court so that every human in the stands could hear.

"While the nobles hoard knowledge as a means of control," he declared, "they do not withhold religion from you. They do not prevent you from seeking the gods of this world we all share."

Murmurs stirred.

"In the case of men like my new disciple here," the godling continued, gesturing to Gram, "men who seek power not for dominion but to protect what they love, there is a god who answers such purpose."

He paused, letting the name settle.

"Maul," he said. "God of cold vengeance and unyielding protection."

The air itself seemed to tighten.

"He grants strength to those who wish to protect their families and loved ones," the godling went on. "So understand this, your weakness is not always forced upon you. Some of it is self-made."

With that, he drew Gram to his side.

The motion was firm, unquestionable, an act that carried both protection and declaration. Gram stumbled a half-step before steadying himself, now standing among beings whose presence alone shrunk the air around them.

He looked up at the godlings surrounding him.

He had expected resistance. Condemnation. Retribution.

After all, he had just stood in the heart of the court and declared that he sought the strength to one day kill them.

Yet none of them moved to stop it.

Some watched him with wary interest, others with expressions carefully unreadable. A few regarded him with something disturbingly close to approval. Whether it was underestimation, guilt, or the unyielding authority of Xerosis’s words that bound them, Gram could not tell.

Perhaps it was all of it.

His fingers tightened around the scrap of cloth clenched in his hand—the only thing grounding him, proof that this moment was real. Whatever they offered him now, he would take it. He would endure it. He would grow.

And when the time came, he would seek justice with his own two hands.

Thus concluded Gram’s justice.

The court shifted once more.

The young man with the broken arm, his limb bound in a stiff cast was called forward next. After the last two judgments had veered so violently from expectation, the atmosphere had changed entirely. No one knew what form justice would take now.

All eyes turned to him.

The sudden weight of attention crashed down like a physical force. The young man stiffened as an unseen pressure wrapped around his chest, squeezing tight. He drew in a breath and found it shallow, strained, as though the air itself resisted him.

His heart pounded.

He could not say where the pressure came from, whether it was the judges, the godlings, or the sheer magnitude of the place he stood in. He only knew that his legs felt unsteady, and every instinct in his body screamed that this moment would define him just as surely as it had the others.

And the court waited to see whether he would break or speak.

The silence of the court gnawed at him.

It pressed in from all sides, heavy and suffocating. He could hear his own heartbeat, too loud, too fast and the sound only made the sensation worse. His eyes began to wander, darting aimlessly as though searching for escape, or something solid to hold onto.

Then his gaze crossed with Gram’s.

Gram stood among the godlings now, defiant and chosen.

The sight steadied him.

It was as if the young man had found an anchor in the storm. Drawing in a shaky breath, he raised his uninjured arm and pointed.

"I want what he got," he blurted out. "I request all that he did. I want knowledge, how to gain strength, how to gain power, so I can protect myself."

The words rang hollow in the vast chamber.

From the stands came the sound of suppressed disappointment, quiet sighs, faint murmurs, expectations collapsing inward. This was not what many had hoped to hear.

The godlings, meanwhile, regarded the young man in silence.

He could barely hold their gaze. His eyes skittered away, lingering on the floor, the walls, anywhere but on them. Fear clung to him openly, unmasked.

The godlings exchanged glances.

No words were spoken, yet the meaning passed clearly between them. They were deciding who, if anyone would take the young man as a disciple, who would bear the burden of teaching him.

From their expressions alone, the answer was evident.

None of them were interested.

Compared to Gram’s fire and fury, this young man offered little more than imitation and fear. There was no defiance in him, no conviction forged by loss, only desire born of envy and survival.

And in the eyes of these godlings, that was far less compelling.

Considering the sentence handed down by Xerosis, to live as mortals and make reparations, the godlings had already resigned themselves to nearly a century bound to fragile flesh and limited time.

If they were to endure such an existence, then how they spent it mattered.

Gram, at the very least, was an interesting figure, sharp-edged, dangerous, driven by conviction. The young man, less so. But this was not a matter of preference. The court had ruled, and rulings were to be obeyed.

So they decided to let him choose.

The fourteen godlings inclined their heads in unison, a silent gesture of acceptance directed toward the judges and Xerosis alike. The young man’s request would be granted.

Turning her keen gaze upon him, a harpy godling stepped forward. Her wings folded neatly behind her as she spoke, her voice sweet to the ear.

"Which among us," she asked, "do you wish to impart the knowledge you seek?"

The question placed him once again before a choice, but this time, it did not paralyze him.

Born and raised on the western continent, the harpy godlings had been woven into his childhood stories and local legends. They were said to rule the skies, to watch over the land from above, unseen and untouchable.

He remembered a moment from his youth, standing alone beneath an open sky, swearing he had glimpsed shapes moving among the clouds. Wings. Feathers catching the sun.

No one had believed him. He had been called a liar, a dreamer.

Now, standing in the court of gods, he felt something twist painfully in his chest.

His thoughts drifted to those he had lost, friends who would never see this moment, never hear the truth of it. How they would react if they were here now. How his words would no longer be dismissed as childish fantasy.

His vision blurred. Tears welled and spilled over before he could stop them.

He lifted his arm and pointed.

The female harpy godling.

She is the most beautiful among them, he thought, barely suppressing the smile that tugged at his lips.

And in this small, telling moment, the court saw the difference between a man who sought power to change the world and one who sought it to be admired by it.

The female harpy godling, the one he had pointed to, raised a brow in mild surprise. After a brief pause, she nodded, accepting the sentence without protest.

Just like that, the oppressive pressure vanished.

The young man felt it immediately, as though a heavy weight had been lifted from his chest. Attention shifted away from him, flowing instead toward the oldest figure among the victims.

The elderly man.

When he realized all eyes were now on him, he smiled.

It was not a carefree smile, grief lingered in the lines of his face, etched deep by years and recent loss but he wore it anyway. If this was to be his moment, he would not let it be swallowed by sorrow alone.