Loryn's ethereal voice drifted across the sanctuary. "Could be desertion. Guards taking their pay and fleeing before the inevitable conflict with the Soul Warden."

"Seven demons, all experienced soldiers, all deserting within two days?" Rynath's tone was skeptical. "That's statistically improbable."

"It's nonsense," Kaedor insisted, though he'd stopped meeting anyone's eyes. "A yellow-eyed demon who makes people disappear? It's a fairy tale. And even if it wasn't, even if there was some rogue demon hunting our people, it wouldn't last long. Not against us." He gestured at the assembled generals. "Any one of us could handle a lone hunter. All four of us together? We'd crush it in seconds."

"Perhaps," Rynath said quietly. "Or perhaps we're underestimating the threat. Again."

Before Kaedor could respond, the sanctuary doors burst open with a crack that echoed through the chamber like breaking bones.

An advisor stumbled in, his face pale, his breathing labored. He dropped to one knee immediately, his head bowed so low his forehead nearly touched the floor.

"Master," he gasped, "forgive the interruption, but I have urgent news."

Pho's expression didn't change, but the temperature in the sanctuary dropped several degrees. Frost began forming on the walls, spreading from where the Deathfrost Demon sat.

"This had better be worthy of interrupting my council," Pho said, his voice carrying a warning that made the advisor's body shake.

"There was... something, Master. Flying near the castle. One of the outer sentries spotted it and fired ice lances, but it escaped before we could identify it properly."

Rynath straightened immediately. "What kind of something? A demon? A creature?"

"We're... we're not certain, General. It was too fast, too far away. The sentry said it looked like..." The advisor swallowed hard. "Like a bird."

Silence fell over the sanctuary again, but this time it was different.

Kaedor was the first to break it, his voice carrying false bravado. "A bird? We're interrupting the council over a bird?"

"The wildlife knows better than to approach the castle," Kragoth rumbled, his small eyes narrowing. "Has for decades. The cold kills most things before they get within a mile of the walls. What kind of bird would even try?"

"A bird sent by someone," Rynath said quietly. "Scouting. Gathering intelligence."

"Or," Loryn added in his distant voice, "a bird that's been... modified. Enhanced. Turned into a tool for reconnaissance."

Pho rose from his seat, the movement slow and deliberate. Every eye in the sanctuary turned to watch him as he descended the dais, each step accompanied by the sharp crack of ice forming beneath his feet.

He walked past his generals, past the trembling advisor, moving to stand before the sanctuary doors that still stood open. His pale eyes stared out into the corridor beyond, seeing something that the others couldn't.

"A yellow-eyed demon," he said softly, almost to himself. "Demons disappearing without a trace. And now a bird that shouldn't exist, scouting my castle." He turned, his gaze sweeping across his four generals. "Interesting."

Kragoth shifted uncomfortably. "Master, if there truly is a threat…"

"If there is such a demon," Pho interrupted, his voice cutting through Kragoth's words like a blade through silk, "you will kill it. Or you will bring it here, alive, to kneel before my throne. I care not which."

His pale eyes moved from Kragoth to Rynath to Loryn to Kaedor, lingering on each general with the weight of absolute authority. "Am I understood?"

Four voices answered as one. "Yes, Master."

"Good." Pho walked back toward his throne, his hands clasped behind his back. "Now. Get back to work. All of you. The Soul Warden will be coming soon. I can feel it. The pieces are moving, the game is entering its final stages, and I will not be caught unprepared."

He sat, settling back into the glacial throne with casual ease. Then his expression changed, just slightly.

His pale eyes grew colder, harder, and when he looked at his generals again, there was something in that gaze that made even Kragoth, the massive warrior who'd killed hundreds of demons with his bare hands, feel a tremor of genuine fear.

"The Soul Warden has taken my profits," Pho said, his voice dropping to something barely above a whisper but somehow filling the entire sanctuary.

"He has disrupted my operations. He has cost me gold and time and reputation." The temperature dropped again, so cold now that moisture in the air was crystallizing and falling like snow.

"And when he comes here, when he finally shows himself, I will freeze him solid and shatter him into so many pieces that his soul will spend eternity trying to pull itself back together."

The four generals stood frozen, not from ice but from the sheer weight of their master's presence. Sweat that shouldn't have been possible in the arctic cold beaded on their foreheads.

Their hands trembled despite their Nightmare-rank power. Because in that moment, they were reminded of exactly what they served.

Not just a Disaster-class demon. Not just the Deathfrost Demon. But something that had survived for centuries through cunning, cruelty, and an absolute refusal to accept anything less than total victory.

"Dismissed," Pho said, his tone returning to its normal icy calm.

The generals didn't need to be told twice. They turned and fled the sanctuary with as much dignity as they could maintain while essentially running from their master's presence.

The advisor was the last to leave, scrambling backward on his hands and knees before finally finding his feet and bolting through the doors.

The sanctuary fell silent.

Pho sat alone on his throne, staring at nothing, his expression thoughtful.

Then, slowly, a smile spread across his face. Small, cold, and utterly devoid of warmth or humanity.

"Come then, Soul Warden," he whispered to the empty chamber. "Come and test yourself against the Deathfrost. Let us see if you're truly as dangerous as the rumors suggest. I will avenge my brother, and tear you apart."

He raised one hand, and ice began to form in his palm. Shaping itself, crystallizing into a perfect replica of a human figure.

Pho closed his fist.

The ice figure shattered.

"How delightfully naive."

-----

Jack stared into Tarvek's soul.

That's what it felt like, at least.

Those yellow eyes burning through the blood and terror and exhaustion to see something deeper.

Tarvek felt naked under that gaze, stripped of every carefully constructed wall he'd built to survive this place.

The armored figure studied him in complete silence. Five seconds. Ten seconds. Fifteen seconds. Twenty seconds.

Tarvek's mind screamed at him to say something, to beg, to plead, to do anything that might convince this monster not to kill him.

But his throat had locked shut, his body frozen between the instinct to flee and the absolute certainty that fleeing would only make his death more painful.

'This is it,' Tarvek thought, his vision starting to tunnel. 'This is how I die. Not from overwork. Not from starvation. Not from the whip. But from looking into the eyes of something that shouldn't exist.'

The yellow eyes blinked once.

Then the figure simply... vanished.

He just vanished. One moment he was there, crouched in front of Tarvek with those predator's eyes boring into his skull. The next moment, there was nothing, but empty air.

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