He had gone personally to invite the most powerful beings across the Six Realms, so they could witness the birth of the supreme Demon God.
To welcome the future sovereign of all Six Realms.
And now, every one of those precautions had become the very reasons Seraphina refused to believe me.
Watching them close in, panic seized me. I screamed, "I am the Demon Queen! If you don't believe me, go ask the Demon Sovereign yourself!"
They didn't even pause. Blades rose and fell.
Agony tore through me, bone-deep and blinding, as my limbs were severed one after another.
My whole body convulsed. Every breath came thinner than the last.
Seraphina clapped a hand over her mouth, laughing. "Oh, look at her! No arms, no legs, just that swollen belly. She looks like a turtle pulled into its shell!"
The others doubled over with laughter, clapping and cheering.
I glared at them through a haze of red, my voice raw and shaking. "You will regret this."
Seraphina stepped closer and looked down at me.
"In all the Six Realms, no one has ever made me regret a thing."
"But I can certainly teach you what regret feels like."
The moment the words left her lips, she shaped her hand into a blade and sliced my belly open.
A fresh wave of agony swallowed me whole.
Through the blur of fading consciousness, I watched Seraphina reach inside me and pull out a blood-soaked infant boy.
He was alive. His tiny fists swung on instinct, batting at Seraphina's arm as if in protest.
Seraphina stared at my son, eyes widening.
"A mongrel born from a mortal, and his life force is this strong?"
"What a pity. You're still nothing but mortal filth. Leaving you here would only taint the Demon Realm's sacred ground. Today, I'll clean house on the Demon Sovereign's behalf."
Terror flooded every fiber of my being. My voice came out barely above a whisper.
"He is the Demon Sovereign's child. You must not harm him."
Seraphina's brows twisted together, and she fixed me with a look of pure contempt.
"You wretched mortal. To save this bastard, you'd tell a lie that absurd?"
"The Demon Sovereign's power is beyond measure. A mortal body could never carry his offspring."
The other maidens chimed in.
"Exactly. The Demon Sovereign's power is so immense that anyone with weak spiritual energy would be destroyed just from the union alone."
"You're a mortal. You don't even have the constitution to be with him, let alone bear his child."