The throne room of the Demon King’s citadel, a cavernous hall of obsidian and cold, enchanted flame, fell into a silence so profound it felt like a physical weight. King Arnos Voldigoad, his crimson eyes narrowed to slits, watched the pulsating, cursed altar where the Legendary Sword was impaled. His ministers, an assembly of the most fearsous beings across seven continents, stood poised like statues, their immense magical energies coiled tight, ready to be unleashed in a cataclysmic volley. The prophecy had spoken of this moment—the summoning of the Hero, the one fated light that could challenge the dominion of shadow. Arnos had almost looked forward to it. A final, worthy opponent to crush before his reign became absolute and eternally boring.

His expectations, however, were shattered in the very next heartbeat.

The sword didn’t just glow; it detonated with celestial light. A silent, expanding sphere of pure, blinding radiance washed over the chamber, scouring away shadows and making the demonic torches flicker like dying candles. The air hummed with a sacred frequency that set demonic teeth on edge. It was the Call, the undeniable, universe-mandated summons for the prophesied champion. Arnos felt his lip curl into a snarl. Finally, he thought, power crackling around his clenched fist. His ministers shifted, muscles tensing, spells hovering at their fingertips. The moment the light faded, they would reduce the summoned fool to atoms before he could even take a breath.

The light collapsed inwards, dissolving into fading motes of gold.

There, standing awkwardly beside the now-quiescent sword, was… Gods, you couldn’t be a day over seventeen.

A collective, psychic jolt of pure, unadulterated disbelief reverberated through the minds of every ancient, battle-hardened entity in the room.

"What the actual hell?!"

The thought wasn’t whispered; it was a deafening, silent scream that echoed in the skull of every minister, from the hulking War-General Bargo to the sly spymaster Gennul. But it rang loudest in the mind of Arnos himself. A maelstrom of outrage, insult, and sheer cosmic annoyance boiled within him. Had the so-called Gods of Light truly fallen this low? Had their arrogance or desperation driven them to send a child to face the Demon King? Was this some kind of elaborate, sick joke? A circus, as the mortals called it! His glorious, epoch-defining final confrontation… and they send him a teenager who probably still worried about school exams and festivals!

The profound silence stretched, thick with absurdity. It was broken by a soft, awkward cough.

One of the ministers, Twila, the Archmage of Crimson Flux, shuffled her feet. Her elegant, horned head tilted, a flicker of something akin to maternal pity in her serpentine eyes as she looked at the confused youth. She cleared her throat again, her voice cutting through the tense silence with painful clarity.

"Your Majesty, I understand the protocol and the prophecy, truly I do," she began, her tone diplomatically hesitant. "But… in the strictest strategic sense… is it absolutely necessary for us to kill the Hero?"

Arnos had initially thought it a rhetorical question, a moment of dark humor to punctuate the insanity. But the genuine, logistical concern in Twila’s voice was the final straw. The immense pressure of apocalyptic expectations, millennia of planning, and now this… farce… came crashing down. A wave of profound, world-weary exhaustion washed over him. He didn’t roar, didn’t unleash his power. He simply, slowly, brought a gauntleted hand up to his face, dragging his palm down his features with a sound of scraping metal.

He let out a sigh so deep it seemed to drain the very warmth from the room, muttering the words under his breath, a quiet epitaph for his shattered dramatic climax.

"Well, isn't this just a colossal pile of bullshit?"