I agree with what Cynic said about these two lines. You should be very, very clear about who your viewpoint character is at any given time and what the level of immersion is. If immersion is deep like it seems to be through the rest of the chapter, you obviously shouldn't reveal things that someone would never observe in themselves. "Whether he heard the comment was unclear" can be "he tried to give no sign that he had understood the comment", or something like that.
Another thing about the prose is that the description seems to bounce from detail to detail, without spending enough time on one to fully immerse the reader. And once the setting is clear, you don't need to worry about it until it changes for some reason. I read several bits about the overwhelming sound, and it started to interrupt flow for me. I mean, the first line, then maybe a few more sentences in the next paragraph is enough, I think.
As for substance, the “big reveal” technique could be good to establish your promise as a writer. The reader thinks, he got me once, let’s see if he can do it again. So, I can see why you did the execution this way. One problem for me though is that it was done TOO well, so to speak.
Here’s what I mean:
“…and so we honor him today. Against all odds he has prevailed!” - Herald
“They love you Druka , now don’t they.” – Orsak
It’s also odd that he knows the name of the one leading him to his execution. These seem too much like things that would ONLY be said is a certain kind of reception for the King sort of ceremony. That’s probably the point, but it could lead a reader to feel more tricked than surprised. You also have to leave out certain details about the pitch of the crowd’s voices and the looks on their faces for this deception to work. If you were to instead leave the purpose of the gathering completely unclear, or at least if the misdirection were a bit more subtle, you’d still have your “wow” effect, I think. I mean someone going so quietly to their own execution is going to lead to surprise in itsef.
Otherwise, I keep feeling like the scene could be drawn a lot smaller. You don’t need as much movement up the platform, through the crowd, etc. and you don’t need the exposition about the cities, the empire whatever that is. Until you have a proper point of observation anchored in a sympathetic character, all that stuff is going to be forgotten because there’s no reason for the reader to really care. You can start to see the price you’re paying for your surprise effect, because all you can really talk about is where the character is, how people around him are reacting and then his last words and execution. You can’t tell the reader why they should care about this character yet because doing so would reveal the fact that he’s done something that he’s to be executed for.
There’s also some minor problems about including both the word “God” and “Leuka” in the same passage, and other small consistency issues, but nothing too major for a first draft.
