The Almighty Dominance (by Sunshine) novel Chapter 683

"It's fabricated." Ragnar's composure had finally begun to fray at the seams, his certainty fraying with it. "It's a projection. A trick. You're being manipulated — all of you — this is a fraud!"

Around him, people exchanged uncertain glances, the seed of doubt quietly taking root among the crowd.

"Fraud?" The word left Alex's lips with a sharp laugh — humorless, deliberate. "Then let's go live."

A soft mechanical hum moved through the hall.

Eve drifted forward — unhurried, silver, small — as though the chaos filling the hall were nothing more than weather passing through. Its casing opened gently, and from its optical array two live feeds bloomed into the air: soft but clear, laying both armies bare for every soul in the room to witness.

"Sofina." Alex's voice was quiet and precise. "You can address those armies directly. From here. They will see your face — and every word you speak, they will hear."

Sofina straightened.

"People of House Dornwald. People of House Eisenwall." Her voice was calm, almost tender — the voice of someone addressing family long separated.

"You are people of Prussia. Warriors of Prussia. And I am your queen. Six dukes have given their word to that — six, as our laws require. It is enough." She paused, letting the weight of it reach them.

"Duke Dornwald and Duke Eisenwall did not lead you out of love for Prussia. They led you out of hunger for a throne — and they used your loyalty, your lives, as leverage. That is not service. That is treason. And treason carries one sentence."

She nodded to Eve.

The silver drone moved forward and turned its feeds outward, projecting them for the entire hall to see — the bodies of both dukes, headless, cooling on the marble floor where they had fallen. No ceremony. No softening. Just the clean, irreversible fact of it.

In their separate command aircraft, the generals of House Dornwald and House Eisenwall watched through their screens in rigid silence. The color drained from their faces.

They had received their orders minutes ago — mobilize, hold position, await further command from the Duke. They were ready. Every regiment fueled, every missile loaded, every pilot strapped in and waiting.

But the men who were supposed to give that further command were already dead.

And surrounding them on every axis — above, below, and at every cardinal point — was an army five times their size that had materialized from nowhere.

Just presence. Total, suffocating, absolute presence.

The generals understood what that meant. They had spent their careers learning the language of military positioning, and what they were reading now, in every direction they could look, said the same thing in terms that needed no translation.

This is already over. You just haven't admitted it yet.

Sofina's voice cut through the stunned silence like cold steel.

"People of House Dornwald. People of House Eisenwall." She continued, her gaze moving across the live feeds as though she could see every general through the screen.

"Your dukes were traitors — men who held this kingdom hostage to seat themselves on a throne that was never theirs. I have executed them for it. But you — you are not them. You are soldiers of Prussia. And Prussia still needs you."

"Lay down your weapons. Stand down your formations. Await the appointment of new leadership for your territories. Do this now, and you will be treated as the citizens you are."

Her eyes hardened.

"But hear me clearly. The armies surrounding you belong to Xia and to Estoria. They outnumber you five to one on every front, and they have sworn — sworn — that if you choose to fight, they will not stop at your battalions. They will not stop at your airfields or your armories."

Her voice dropped half a register, quiet and absolute. "They will take apart every city, every town, every farm in the Dornwald and Eisenwall territories.”

“Your families are home right now. Your children. Your parents. Your wives." She let one beat of silence do the work a hundred words could not. "Your choices in the next minutes decide what happens to them."

"Cease your weapons. Now."

On the four screens, the feeds held. Five-to-one odds, staring back at every general still breathing.

The silence on both sides stretched — that particular, excruciating silence of men doing the only mathematics that mattered.

Their dukes were dead. The chain of command ended at a headless body on a marble floor a hundred kilometers away.

Without a living lord to issue the order, without a target to march toward, without a reason that outweighed the faces waiting for them at home — there was nothing left to fight for.

And fighting five times your own strength, when you've already lost, is not courage.

It's butchery.

On the Dornwald feed, a general lowered his arm. The signal passed down the line in seconds — engines throttling back, formation lights shifting from combat-red to standby, aircraft banking away from their attack vectors in slow, deliberate arcs.

Eisenwall's forces followed within moments. No communication between them. No negotiation. Just the same calculation arriving at the same answer.

The armies of Xia and Estoria mirrored the movement — weapons lowering, formations pulling back, creating space where there had been pressure.

Orderly. Controlled. The grammar of a victory that had never needed to fire a single shot.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify