Gorath paused, almost in contemplation before continuing.

"The reason why Lilith kept the truth from you. Why she let you think the war was just about territory and pride. Because asking someone to lead a suicide mission requires them to not know it's suicide."

"But you're telling me anyway."

"Because you're not someone anymore. You're something. Something that opens the gates of hell. Something that killed a Grand Commander and made the Radiant Empire retreat. Something that might—impossibly, improbably—have a chance where everyone else has none."

Gorath stepped closer.

"I'm telling you because you deserve to know what you're really fighting for. Not just Lilith's crown. Not just demon survival. But the prevention of prophesied genocide. The desperate attempt to save an entire species from ordained destruction."

Liam looked at the prophecy on the table. At the ancient words that condemned demon-kind to death.

"Why should I do it?" he asked. His voice was that wrong, ancient thing.

The voice of something that had stopped being Liam Cross and hadn't quite figured out what it had become instead.

"Gorath, you know the truth. I'm not the demon god. I play the role to survive. To maintain the performance."

He gestured to himself.

"So why go out of my way to put myself in such danger? Why lead a suicide mission for an empire that isn't mine, for demons I barely know, for a cause that has nothing to do with me?"

The question hung.

Gorath studied him for a long moment. His ancient eyes seeing something in Liam that maybe even Liam couldn't see.

"That's a question only you can answer," he said finally. "I can tell you the truth. Explain the stakes. Lay out the mathematics of extinction. But I can't tell you why it should matter to you."

He walked to the cabinet. Retrieved another document. Placed it beside the prophecy.

"This is the summoning ritual Lilith used. The one that pulled your soul from another world and bound it to a demon body. Do you know what the targeting parameters were?"

Liam didn't answer. Knew he didn't have to.

"Desperate souls. Dying souls. Humans at the end of hope who'd lost everything and had nothing left to fight for." Gorath's voice was soft. "Lilith didn't summon a hero. She summoned a corpse that hadn't stopped moving yet. Someone who'd given up on their own world. Their own life. Their own existence."

He looked at Liam directly.

"She summoned you because you were already dead. Already broken. Already without purpose or meaning or reason to continue."

"Your point?"

"My point is that you're not performing for survival. You're not playing a role to maintain a facade." Gorath's expression was complicated. "You're performing because for the first time in your life—your lives, plural—something matters. Someone needs you. The role has weight and purpose and consequence beyond just not dying."

He gestured to the documents.

"Liam Cross was an actor without an audience. A man going through motions without meaning. Lord Azra is a god with believers. A commander with soldiers who worship him. A force that shapes the world instead of being shaped by it."

"And you think that's enough?" Liam's voice was cold. "That purpose is worth suicide?"

"I think," Gorath said carefully, "that you've been asking the wrong question. Not 'why should I risk myself for this empire' but 'what am I if I don't?'"

He walked toward the door. Paused with his hand on the frame.

"The Radiant Empire will come. The heroes will be summoned. The prophecy will unfold. With or without you, that's certain." His burning eyes looked back. "The only variable is whether you die trying to stop it or die knowing you could have tried and chose not to."

"That's not a choice. That's emotional manipulation."

"That's truth." Gorath's smile was sad. "And truth is often the cruelest manipulation there is."

He opened the door. Dawn light spilled in, making the documents on the table seem to burn with their own illumination.

"I'm not asking you to decide now. I'm not even asking you to decide soon." His voice was tired. Ancient. The voice of someone who'd survived three centuries and found it insufficient. "I'm asking you to carry the knowledge. Understand what's coming. Recognize that you're the only variable in an equation that currently equals extinction."

"And if I refuse?"

"Then you refuse. The prophecy continues. The heroes come. The demons die. And you—whatever you are now, whatever Liam Cross has become—you survive until you don't. Until the twenty-one heroes find you. Until divine judgment catches up with the thing pretending to be god."

Gorath stepped through the door. Spoke without looking back.

"But I don't think you'll refuse. Not because you're brave or noble or any of the things heroes are supposed to be." His voice carried certainty. "But because you've tasted what it feels like to matter. And humans—even ones that are only two percent human—don't walk away from that easily."

He left.

The door closed.

And Liam sat in the study surrounded by ancient books and artifacts and truths that weighed more than mountains.

[Humanity Index: 2%]

Two percent wasn't enough to feel noble about saving an empire.

But it was enough to remember what it felt like to matter.

To be needed.

To have a role that transcended survival into something almost like purpose.

The prophecy stared up at him from the table. Twenty-one heroes. Divine judgment. Ordained genocide.

Mathematics that said the Demon Empire was doomed.

That everything he'd fought for, everyone who believed in him, every demon who'd bowed and worshipped and called him god...

All of it was temporary.

All of it was ending.

Unless someone changed the equation.

Unless someone broke the prophecy.

Unless a dead man pretending to be a demon god decided that suicide was preferable to irrelevance.

Liam stared at the prophecy until the words blurred.

Then he stood.

Walked to the window.

Watched the sun rise over Ashard—the territory he'd secured, the outposts he'd saved, the war he'd paused through violence and performance and the sacrifice of almost everything that made him human.

And made a decision that Liam Cross never could have.

But Lord Azra—the Primordial Demon, the Originator of Sin, the thing that had consumed an actor and worn his face—could make easily.

He would pursue and destroy.

He would slaughter heroes as they came.

He would lead the suicide mission because the alternative was admitting he was just performing.

And whatever he'd become, whoever remained in this demon body with grey eyes that flickered crimson...

He needed to believe the performance was real.

Even if believing it killed him.

The sun rose higher.

The day began.

And somewhere in Eldhar, Lilith waited for the return of a weapon she'd created.

Not knowing that the weapon had just chosen to turn itself against impossible odds.

Not knowing that salvation looked a lot like damnation.

Not knowing that sometimes the difference between a god and a corpse was just the willingness to die for something that mattered.

Even if only barely.

Even if only two percent.

Even if only enough to remember what purpose felt like before the end.

Even if only to die a monster who wasn't desperate, but willing enough to become one - for something more than himself.

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