The chaos in the arena gradually settled into something resembling order. The attacking demons had been subdued—not killed, but restrained by freed gladiators who remembered what combat meant after millennia of enforced servitude. The ones who'd scattered were gone, fleeing into the Underworld's depths to process what they'd witnessed.

And the ones who'd knelt remained kneeling.

Hundreds of them. Demons who'd watched their king bow and understood that something fundamental had shifted. That ...