The grand ballroom of the Valerius manor had transformed from a stage of opulent revelry into a silent, horrified courtroom. The air was thick with the stench of ozone from Ravi's divine outburst and the cloying scent of fear-sweat from Veridia's elite. Broken crystal crunched underfoot. The groans of the shattered guards were the only sounds that dared to challenge the suffocating silence.
Every eye was fixed on the two figures at the center of the hall: the trembling, pale-faced Duke, his mask of civility stripped away to reveal the terrified sinner beneath, and the Slum God, who advanced upon him with the slow, inexorable dread of a glacier.
"No… stay back!" Duke Valerius stammered, stumbling backward, his fine leather shoes slipping on the polished marble. "I have wealth! Power! I can give you anything! Name your price!"
Ravi stopped just a few feet from him. A cold, contemptuous smile touched his lips. "You seek to bargain for your soul with the very currency you stole? Your gold is meaningless to me. Your power is an illusion."
His voice dropped, becoming a low, menacing whisper that seemed to slither into the Duke's very soul. "You crave wealth above all else, Nicodemus. You murdered for it. You built this palace of lies upon it. It is only fitting that it becomes the instrument of your judgment."
Ravi raised his hand, palm open, towards the Duke.
He did not touch him.
Instead, his gaze swept around the ballroom, at the gilded decorations, the golden cutlery on the tables, the heavy gold chains and jewel-encrusted rings worn by the terrified guests.
"You surround yourselves with gilded filth," Ravi declared, his voice rising again to that resonant, divine timbre. "Let us see it for what it truly is."
A low, humming sound began to fill the room, a vibration that seemed to emanate from Ravi himself. The guests gasped as they felt the jewelry on their bodies grow warm, then hot. Rings began to burn fingers, heavy necklaces seared the skin on their chests. With yelps of pain, they frantically tore off the offending items, casting them to the floor as if they were cursed.
The golden objects – the discarded jewelry, the cutlery, the gold leaf on the walls, even the gold coins in the Duke's own pockets – began to glow with an intense, molten light. Then, they lifted into the air. Streams of liquid gold, like incandescent serpents, slithered through the air from all corners of the ballroom, converging on the space between Ravi and the Duke.
The nobles watched in abject, hypnotized terror as the molten gold coalesced, twisting and writhing, forming a gleaming, beautiful, and utterly horrifying sphere of liquid metal that hovered before Ravi, radiating immense heat.
"What… what are you doing?!" the Duke shrieked, his mind unable to comprehend the arcane horror unfolding before him. This was not magic as he knew it. This was reality itself being unmade and remade at a whim.
"You wished for wealth, Nicodemus," Ravi said, his eyes glowing with the reflected light of the molten gold. "I shall grant you an abundance of it."
With a flick of his wrist, the sphere of liquid gold shot forward. It did not strike the Duke, but enveloped him, flowing over him like water. The Duke opened his mouth to scream, but the molten gold poured down his throat, silencing him with a gurgling, searing finality. It covered his body, seeping into his fine clothes, clinging to his skin, pouring into his eyes, his ears, his nostrils.
There was no fire, no smoke. Just the horrifying, silent process of the gold flowing over and into him, a beautiful, liquid sarcophagus. The Duke's body convulsed violently for a moment, then went rigid. The molten gold cooled rapidly, hardening into a solid, gleaming statue, a perfect effigy of Duke Nicodemus Valerius in his final, terrified moments, his face a silent scream of agony, his eyes wide with a horror that was now eternally preserved in solid gold.
The statue stood there, a grotesque monument to avarice, radiating a faint, residual heat.
The ballroom was utterly, deathly silent. The assembled nobles stared, their minds shattered. They had just witnessed a man, one of the most powerful in the city, be drowned and encased in his own wealth. The sheer, terrifying, and poetic brutality of the act was beyond their comprehension.
This wasn't an assassination. This was a divine execution. A miracle of horror.
Ravi surveyed his handiwork. The golden statue, a testament to a sinner judged. His gaze then swept across the terrified, pale faces of the other nobles. He saw their fear, but more importantly, he saw their own stained souls, their own hidden sins reflected in their wide, horrified eyes.
"Behold your pillar of society," Ravi's voice echoed in the tomb-like silence. "Behold the fate of those who build their thrones on the bones of the innocent."
He took a step towards the cowering crowd. A collective whimper rippled through them. They were trapped, rats in a cage with a god of vengeance.
"Look at this statue," he commanded, his voice laced with cold fury. "Look at it and see your own reflections. Your own greed. Your own corruption. Each of you has secrets. Each of you has sins that fester in the dark."
His eyes, burning with golden light, seemed to pierce each one of them individually. "Lord Beaumont," he said, his gaze falling on a portly, sweating man. "You who divert grain shipments meant for the poor to sell at a profit, letting children starve."
Beaumont gasped, clutching his chest, his face turning the color of ash.
"Lady Evangeline," Ravi continued, his gaze shifting to a beautiful, cruel-faced woman. "You who arrange 'accidents' for your romantic rivals, your dungeons holding more than just fine wine."
Evangeline let out a small, strangled cry, her mask of haughty beauty crumbling.
He went on, picking out nobles one by one, his voice reciting a litany of their most private, most heinous crimes with terrifying accuracy. He spoke of bribes, of betrayals, of murders, of depravities that would make even a slum dweller sick. With each accusation, another noble would break down, sobbing, fainting, or simply staring in catatonic terror.
He was not guessing. He was seeing. He was reading the dark stains on their souls as easily as a scholar reads a book.
Mira, watching from her alcove, felt a wave of righteous, chilling satisfaction. These were the people who ruled the world, who kept The Pit in its squalor through their neglect and greed. And now, they were being stripped bare, their sins laid out for all to see by her god.
After eviscerating the reputations of a dozen of the most powerful people in Veridia, Ravi fell silent. He let the weight of his words, and the sight of the golden statue, sink into their terrified minds.
"This," he said finally, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous level, "is your first and only warning. Your city is sick. Your society is a gilded lie. I have come to cleanse it."
He raised his hand, and a wave of pure, terrifying pressure washed over them, forcing many to their knees. "Return to your homes. Look at your fortunes, and know that they are tainted. Look at your families, and know that your sins may be visited upon them. A new age has dawned in Veridia. An age of reckoning."
His voice was a solemn vow, a promise of future pain. "I will be watching. And when I find a sin worthy of my attention, I will come again. And my judgment will not be so… artistic."
With that final, chilling promise, he turned. The golden light that had clung to him faded, and he walked towards the shattered balcony doors, the carnage of the ballroom behind him.
"Wait!" a voice cried out, thin and reedy with terror. It was a young nobleman, barely more than a boy, who had been on the fringes of the crowd. "Who… what are you?"
Ravi paused at the edge of the balcony, his back to them. He did not turn as he answered, his voice echoing back into the hall, a name that would now be seared into the nightmares of Veridia's elite for generations to come.
"I am the Slum God. And my Decree is absolute."
He then stepped out into the night and vanished, leaving behind a hall of broken bodies, shattered souls, and a single, gleaming golden statue, a permanent testament to a judgment of gold and ash. The city of masks had seen the face of its new, terrifying reality. The games of the nobility were over. The hunt had begun.