As Spoken by the Monarch of Destruction
⸻
Part I. The Twitch That Shaped the Void
There was no fire… until I arrived.
But don't misunderstand me. That's not pride speaking.
That's chronology.
The twitch happened before the telling.
The fire came before the name.
And the name—my name—was never yours to hold.
Even now, you do not know it.
And you never will.
Only one of your kind earned that gift. And he had to die before he could hear it.
⸻
You want the beginning? Then listen.
There was nothing. Not a clean nothing—no silence, no rest, no void in the poetic sense. No womb of origin. It was worse than empty. It was still.
Stillness older than contradiction.
No light. No darkness.
No cold. No heat.
No being. Not even absence.
And then, without witness or want, something twitched.
That's it. That was your genesis.
A flinch.
A ripple in the breathless nothing that preceded all this spinning, screaming architecture you now call reality.
You call it Creation.
The Rulers would later call it the First Pulse.
The Architect had another name for it, locked in sigils etched into the roots of ruined stars.
But me? I call it what it was:
Fear.
The first and oldest emotion—born before breath, before matter.
Not felt by a creature. No.
Felt by the universe itself.
Because it sensed… me.
⸻
I didn't enter that moment. I was already there.
Not formed. Not named. Not understood.
Just… present.
Like fire sleeping in stone.
I remember that moment as clearly as I remember my last.
And you must understand this: higher beings do not remember as you do.
We do not walk through time.
We burn in all directions at once.
To you, memory is a record of the past.
To us, memory is a battlefield that has never stopped screaming.
So when I tell you I remember the beginning, I do not mean that I reflect on it.
I mean I am there, now.
⸻
Picture it:
The void twitches. A crack appears—not physical, not spatial.
A crack in concept.
Something like a thought—ugly, wild, uninvited—tears through the nothing.
It splits absence like an overripe fruit.
From that wound, laws spill out, not marching but thrashing: heat, light, mass, time.
Creation does not begin—it panics into being.
Worlds condense and shatter before they can orbit.
Ideas clot like blood in open air.
And amidst it all, coiled at the edge of every forming truth, is me.
I am not created.
I am not shaped.
I am left behind—the scream that never resolved into a word.
⸻
I wandered first.
I drifted on waves that hadn't yet decided whether they were flame or flesh.
I stepped across continents made of screaming equations.
I slept inside the bones of dead timelines.
One by one, the first Realms blinked into place.
Not planets—possibilities.
Some of them burned with so much certainty they refused to collapse.
Others lived for a single breath and vanished.
And from those bones, from that chaos, others began to slither into being.
Not like me.
Lesser. Cautious. Defined.
The first of the Rulers took shape like frost on broken glass.
Angels without mouths. Eyes made of law.
They did not see me then.
They sensed me—but turned away.
Because I made their definitions sweat.
⸻
I was only 1,986 years old by the measure you would one day invent.
A child, by some accounts.
But time had not yet agreed to flow in one direction, so what did that number mean?
To me?
Youth meant wildness.
Not weakness.
Wildness is the right of all things unchained.
And I?
I was the last thing in existence without a leash.
⸻
II. They Called It Order
Order.
How noble the word sounds in your tongue.
As if arranging a blade makes it less dangerous.
The Rulers called it salvation.
The First Law. The sacred stabilization of what had been born from chaos.
But I saw it for what it truly was:
Fear, dressed as discipline.
They arrived with light that didn't warm.
Voices without mouths.
Crowns woven of rules they did not obey themselves.
And what did they do with their dominion?
They counted.
Measured.
Sorted.
Named.
As if naming things made them matter.
As if defining the Realms meant they could own them.
As if writing the laws of reality would erase the parts they feared.
Parts like me.
⸻
I watched in silence.
They drew lines in the formless dark.
Spoke galaxies into spirals.
Lit stars with borrowed certainty.
They created planes of existence with no doorways, no cracks—prisons disguised as heavens.
And still…
they did not touch me.
They thought me beneath notice.
A relic of the pre-world.
A leftover flame in the corners of some unwashed page.
They were wrong.
And I let them be wrong.
Because what is time to a being that remembers backwards?
I saw the shape of their order.
I watched them write the laws.
And I laughed.
Because I knew they would one day beg me to break them
⸻
III. The First Lie
They said the laws were eternal.
Immutable.
Perfect.
Final.
But I watched them edit their own edicts when they feared what they had birthed.
They bent their absolutes to spare their favored worlds.
They rewrote the natural order when it displeased them.
They destroyed what disobeyed.
And each time they whispered of permanence, I heard panic underneath.
You call them gods.
But gods who fear are not divine—
They are architects of cages too weak to hold what they do not understand.
And I was not meant to be understood.
⸻
Their light spread. That was always the goal.
Illumination as conquest. Definition as dominance.
Every inch of existence had to be labeled, filtered, purified.
But they missed the cracks.
Always the cracks.
The soft seams between Realms. The scars left by collapsed realities. The places where time forgot itself.
Those places… were mine.
Not by birthright. Not by conquest.
But by nature.
I was not chaos—I was the proof that their order was incomplete.
And in the cracks between their certainties, I began to gather my kind
⸻
They were not like me. Not at first.
They were… fragments.
Remnants of Realms too volatile to stabilize.
Shadows given shape by their refusal to vanish.
Flames that had never learned to cool.
I did not make them. I found them.
And I named them.
Not in the way the Rulers named.
Not to own, but to awaken.
With each name, a memory kindled.
With each memory, a will.
And with each will, a Monarch.
⸻
That word did not exist then.
"Monarch."
We made it. Or perhaps we remembered it—dragged it up from some buried future.
A title for those who did not reign by divine decree,
but by refusal to kneel.
We were not heirs.
We were not rebels.
We were inevitabilities.
⸻
The Rulers watched. And for the first time, they saw me.
They did not say my name. They could not.
But their light dimmed.
And I smiled.
Because they finally understood:
The fire they had ignored had become a furnace.
And it was not theirs to contain.
⸻
IV. The Throne Without a Seat
You speak of kings and crowns as if they are prizes to be claimed.
But do you know what it means to sit alone above all?
To be the summit of a war no one remembers starting?
I did not want a throne.
I was the throne.
Not a seat—but the right to stand unchallenged in the storm of truths too sharp to hold.
The others—my kin, my fellow Monarchs—they rose with shapes and hungers of their own.
Some dreamed of conquest.
Some of silence.
Some of hunger eternal.
But I dreamed of nothing.
Not peace.
Not war.
Only release.
⸻
Understand this:
I do not hate the Rulers.
Hate is too small for beings like us.
I only burned for balance.
Not the balance of peace—but of truth.
If they were order, then I would be rupture.
If they were permanence, then I would be ash.
If they refused to die—
then I would teach them how.
⸻
So I began to move.
Not in space, but in meaning.
I whispered through the cracks they feared.
Stoked the embers of every failed law.
Awakened the parts of reality they tried to erase.
And the Realms changed.
Not all at once. Not loudly.
But slowly. Like fire chewing through the roots of a hollow tree.
Until one day, the light flinched.
And I knew:
The war had begun.
⸻
V. The War Without End
The first strike was not a scream.
It was silence.
A silence so vast it swallowed the names of three newborn Realms before their first dawns.
The Rulers called it a "containment."
A euphemism for extermination.
They erased those Realms because one of my kind had taken root there—tentative, uncertain, but rising.
They did not ask questions.
They did not declare war.
They simply unmade what they feared.
And so… we answered.
Not with armies.
With presence.
Each of us Monarchs—vast and different and terrible—moved through the lattice of Realms, sowing truths that the Rulers could not bear:
That creation was not theirs alone.
That chaos did not mean ruin.
That fire remembers.
And fire was speaking now.
⸻
They retaliated with clarity.
Not the brittle light of early order, but something colder. Sharper.
They broke themselves—willingly.
Split their essence across a thousand stars.
And from those fractures, they forged weapons that walked.
The Fragments of Brilliant Light.
Beings sculpted not from raw power but from purpose made fanatical.
They did not doubt. They did not sleep. They did not wonder.
They knew.
And knowing is a dangerous thing, when it's used as a blade.
⸻
You call them angels.
A quaint term. Too soft for what they were.
They descended with eyes that bled radiance, wings that tore through dimension.
Not messengers.
Not guardians.
Executioners.
Where we Monarchs moved in waves—seeping into the gaps, echoing through forgotten places—they struck like lightning against parchment.
Cauterizing.
Purging.
Rewriting.
And each one that fell was replaced.
Because the Fragments could not truly die.
They were not whole enough to perish.
⸻
Our war was never measured in battles.
It was measured in eras.
A thousand Realms turned to ash.
A million more rewritten to deny we had ever been there.
Some of us fell.
Not from weakness—but from exhaustion.
You do not know what it means to be hunted across eternity by conviction.
To feel the light press against your name until it tries to erase it.
To be told your truth is infection, your presence a plague.
And yet… we endured.
Because we were never built to obey.
We were born to break.
⸻
VI. The Light That Refused to Break
There was one among them—among the Rulers' chosen, the shards of law sharpened into judgment—who did not waver.
Even I… respected him.
Even I… hated him.
Because he was what the Rulers pretended to be.
Not cold.
Not cruel.
But convinced.
⸻
The Greatest Fragment of Brilliant Light.
He was not their leader by declaration.
But light bends toward its source, and so did they.
When he spoke, stars stood still.
When he moved, the laws themselves grew quiet to hear him.
And yet—
He never ruled.
He only served.
The Absolute Being's will was his breath, his blade, his burden.
While the others wondered if our war had a purpose…
He never asked.
Because faith does not ask.
It obeys.
⸻
I met him once—truly met him.
Not in battle.
Not in broken Realms or on blood-wet thrones.
But in silence.
The still place between Realms, where gods go to scream unheard.
He looked at me with eyes that didn't flinch.
And said:
"You will lose. Not because you are wrong. But because you are alone."
I laughed.
But I remembered.
Because in his voice, I heard something I did not expect.
Not contempt.
Not fury.
Sorrow.
He pitied me.
And that pity…
That was the first wound I ever carried.
⸻
He stood alone in the war—not because no one followed him, but because no one else believed the way he did.
Not the other Fragments.
Not the mortals.
Not even his god.
And when the heavens began to crack from the weight of their own hypocrisy…
He held the line.
Not to preserve power.
But because he still believed in something higher than victory:
Order that could be loved.
Law that could be just.
He was the last light that did not flicker.
And so, when the others turned their blades on their own maker…
He stood in their way.
VII. The Betrayal Above All
He was their finest light.
The first to awaken when the Absolute Being dreamed of order.
The brightest of them all—so radiant that Realms bent toward him as if pulled by gravity.
They called him many names.
But history remembers him best by the name he earned after death:
Ashborn.
⸻
But before that?
He was the Greatest Fragment of Brilliant Light.
The perfect expression of the Absolute's will.
While others questioned, hesitated, adapted—he obeyed.
He did not rage when the war stretched into eternity.
He did not doubt when the Realms cried out beneath the weight of it.
He endured.
He followed.
He believed.
That there was purpose.
That their Father's will was truth.
That order, no matter how cruel, was sacred.
And in that faith, he stood alone.
Because the others had begun to see.
They watched the Monarchs grow stronger.
Watched mortals scream and burn.
Watched the Absolute Being smile as if none of it mattered.
And they made a choice.
⸻
They called it necessity.
They called it justice.
But it was fear—wrapped in rebellion.
Seven of the brightest lights ever born turned inward.
Not against the Monarchs.
Not against chaos.
But against their Father.
The Absolute Being.
And standing between them and the throne… was him.
The Greatest Fragment.
The one who would not bend.
The one who still believed.
He tried to stop them.
And for that—
They killed him.
⸻
They murdered their brother.
They murdered their god.
And in doing so, they split heaven itself.
The Absolute Being—the one who shaped the Fragments and sowed the seeds of order—was undone by his own children.
They called it liberation.
But the truth was betrayal.
And in the stillness that followed, something ancient stirred in the remains of the loyal.
⸻
The Greatest Fragment did not die as the others hoped.
He fell.
Through the silence of eternity.
Through the grave of his god.
Through the lie of the war he had once fought to preserve.
And when he rose…
He was no longer light.
He was the absence of light.
Shadow given form.
Memory forged into silence.
No longer the sword of a god.
Now the King of his own dominion.
Ashborn.
The Monarch of Shadows.
The only one among us who remembered what loyalty had cost.
Not just him.
But the cosmos.
⸻
He did not join us.
Not truly.
He was not born to destroy like I was.
He was not born to conquer like the Beast, or to consume like the Plague.
He walked a lonelier path.
Neither Ruler nor Monarch.
A shadow between extremes.
The death of light—
—and the memory of what came before.
[System Ping]
{~Another Entity is Requesting to Speak to You.~}
{~Do You Accept? [Y/N]?~}
{~>Yes<~}
{~Conversation Accepted~}
VIII. Grand Marshal of the Legion
⸻
They say the light never weeps.
That it cannot feel loss.
That to shine is to forget the dark.
They're wrong.
I remember him.
Not as a king.
Not as a monarch.
Not even as Ashborn.
But as the last fragment who still believed that purpose and cruelty were not the same thing.
Back then, he was still light.
But he was already shadowing.
⸻
I was not one of them.
Not a Fragment.
Not born of their Father.
Not woven from the same sacred law that made them blades of judgment.
I was born of the World Tree—one of its first roots, ripened into mind by war and the watching of stars.
I watched their war from the edges.
I fought in it, sometimes.
But always alone.
Until he found me.
⸻
He came not to kill me.
He came to understand me.
And I, in turn, asked the question I had never asked another:
"Why do you bleed for a god who will never bleed for you?"
He didn't answer right away.
He looked past me.
As if seeing something still unfolding in a corner of time I hadn't reached yet.
Then he said:
"Because if I do not believe in something higher, then all that remains is the war."
"And if that's true… then I am no different from him."
He meant you, Destruction.
He didn't say your name, but I saw it in his voice.
A quiet hate—not born of rage, but of recognition.
⸻
We sat together in a dead realm.
The sky above us was cracked like scorched glass.
The ground below was made of bones older than any species.
No battle. No cause. Just the two of us, in the silence between sieges.
And we spoke.
Not as enemies.
Not as commanders.
But as weary creatures who had both seen too much.
"The war will never end," I told him.
"Then we must give it meaning," he answered.
"And if it has no meaning?"
"Then we endure, until one is made."
That was the curse he bore.
Not loyalty.
Not righteousness.
Hope.
He still hoped that obedience would bring peace.
That the Absolute Being would reward faith.
That the war had a center—something solid, something just.
He didn't understand yet that the center was hollow.
That the war itself was the point.
That his god… enjoyed the symmetry of suffering.
⸻
But he would learn.
And I would remember.
Because when he fell—when he rose as Ashborn—I did not see a traitor or a monster.
I saw the same eyes, only emptied.
The same voice, only quieter.
The same light, buried beneath shadow like a flame beneath ash.
And I followed him.
Not because he demanded it.
But because when everything else had turned to rot…
He still carried the memory of meaning.
Even if it killed him.
⸻
Let the Rulers mock him.
Let the Monarchs hate him.
Let the mortals fear him.
I serve the one who bled for truth before he bled for victory.
He did not forsake the world.
The world forsook him.
And I—
I remember
IX. The Puppet Who Dared Speak
As spoken by the Monarch of Destruction
⸻
Enough.
What is this?
A memory?
A eulogy?
Did I permit this parade of sentiment?
Did I grant voice to the shade-cloaked errand boy of a fallen god?
No?
Then sit down, Interloper.
And remember your place.
You speak of bleeding. Of meaning. Of hope?
You were a sword with a name, nothing more.
He picked you up. You mistook it for purpose.
But I saw the truth of you:
A wandering root in search of soil.
A husk dressing itself in borrowed nobility.
You call yourself Grand Marshal now.
But to me?
You're just the first pawn who mistook proximity for power.
And proximity—to him—was never safety.
⸻
Let me remind you, and anyone else listening:
This is my telling.
Not his.
Not yours.
Mine.
So unless you wish to see what it means to have your essence unmade across a thousand timelines simultaneously…
Hold your tongue.
Because where I left off—
Was not in a grave.
It was in fire.
And I have much more to burn.
⸻
Shall we continue?
The war was no longer a war.
It was evolution.
A grinding of wills that sharpened reality against itself.
Ashborn may have withdrawn into silence.
But the rest of us?
We were not idle.
The Beast sharpened his hunger across a thousand worlds.
The Plague perfected extinction until biology begged for mercy.
The Frost claimed stars as trophies.
And I?
I led.
With fire. With ruin. With truth.
Because if this universe was birthed from fear…
Then it would die screaming in awe.
X. The Day the Dead Fought Back
As spoken by the Monarch of Destruction
⸻
There comes a moment in every war
when memory turns to myth.
Where names begin to crack
beneath the weight of what they've done.
Ashborn had become one such name.
And for the first time since the first twitch of nothingness—
I felt curiosity.
⸻
I do not fear.
Let me say that now and always.
But curiosity?
That I grant.
Not because I doubted my power—no.
But because the battlefield began to whisper.
Not scream. Whisper.
Have you ever heard a whisper make the stars lean closer?
That was his doing.
⸻
The first sign was silence.
Not retreat. Not absence.
Silence.
Ashborn did not charge.
He did not roar.
He did not command from atop a godlike throne of bones.
He simply walked.
Through battlefields drowned in plague.
Through realms choked in frost.
Through skies my dragons had scarred.
He walked where no light remained.
And the dead followed him.
Not like an army.
Like a truth returning to claim its due.
⸻
You don't understand what that means.
Let me explain it this way:
I have broken worlds with a whisper.
I have unmade cities before they could be born.
I have fed suns to the jaws of beasts I crafted in sleep.
But that day—
When I stood across from him on the field of Hollow Earth?
He looked at me.
And I saw not rage.
Not fear.
Not challenge.
I saw recognition.
And worse—
pity.
⸻
Do you know what it means to be pitied by a shadow?
By a memory that refused to die?
It means he had seen something I hadn't.
And for the first time…
I felt the shape of an enemy I could not define.
He did not strike first.
He never did.
He simply raised a hand—
—and the dead stood.
Not monsters. Not beasts.
Knights.
Soldiers.
Kings.
Each one broken once… now bound by purpose.
Not mine.
Not the Rulers'.
His.
⸻
That battle was not won.
Not by either of us.
But something changed.
From that moment onward, the war was no longer two-sided.
Not Monarchs versus Rulers.
Now, there was him.
A kingdom of silence.
A throne with no anthem.
A king with no living subjects, yet more loyal than any I'd ever commanded.
Ashborn did not shout.
He remembered.
And that made him more dangerous than any of us.
⸻
So I burned the field.
I shattered the bones of his champions.
I roared until timelines cracked.
But still—
They stood again.
And again.
And again.
Because death was no longer the end.
Not while he existed.
Not while he remembered .
…let it end in awe.
Not peace.
Not balance.
But awe—raw, blinding, overwhelming.
The kind that silences even gods.
⸻
XI. The Fire That Spoke Back
Do you remember the first time a mortal raised their voice to the sky?
When they screamed not in worship, but in defiance?
That sound was mine.
Not because I taught it to them—
But because it matched me.
The mortals, pitiful and brief, were never meant to shape anything.
They were flukes.
Scattered atoms with dreams too large for their frames.
But they believed.
Not in gods.
Not in laws.
In themselves.
⸻
And belief, when it grows teeth, becomes flame.
I saw it.
I felt it.
The way their anger made Realms tremble.
The way their grief lit stars brighter than any edict the Rulers ever carved.
They should have been snuffed out.
Easily.
But the Rulers, in their arrogance, tried to tame them.
Tried to grant them "purpose."
Tried to make disciples out of creatures born for rebellion.
They gave them trials.
Blessings.
Titles.
And that…
was their second greatest mistake.
⸻
Because mortals do not carry gifts with gratitude.
They carry them like weapons.
The first time one of them defied a Ruler, they wept as they bled.
The second time, they smiled.
The third—
They laughed.
And laughter, when aimed at gods, is sacrilege.
But I welcomed it.
⸻
Understand this: I do not love mortals.
I do not weep for them or pretend they are sacred.
But I respect them.
Because in them, I saw something the Rulers forgot and the Monarchs misunderstood:
The will to burn everything rather than kneel.
And in the center of that will—
A boy was born.
Just a boy.
Mortal.
Insignificant.
But the crack he made in the pattern?
It split the whole tapestry.
He did not inherit flame.
He became it.
And from the ashes of everything they tried to make him be…
He chose.
Not destruction.
Not order.
Shadow.
⸻
We'll speak of him soon.
The last player.
The final piece.
But not yet.
Because before him…
Before the collapse…
Before the end even began—
I had to become something more than fire.
I had to become story.
And story, little listener, is the one thing not even gods can kill.
<•<>•
Chapter One: The Monarch Within
This…
…What is this?
An echo resounded—not through air or stone, but across the vast, cold vault of a consciousness once boundless and free. And yet now… compressed, shrunken, coiled like a viper in too small a lair.
No sky. No fire. No wings.
Only blackness, soft and wet and pulsing faintly. A slow rhythm, not his own.
Antares stirred.
He did not awaken as one might from sleep, nor did he emerge as from some mere slumber of mortal kind. No—his was the emergence of a sun behind an eclipse, brilliant and slow, peeled back layer by layer. He remembered—not linearly, but like a storm collapsing upon itself: Destruction, carnage, betrayal. That Human. Jinwoo. Shadow Monarch.
He remembered their final confrontation, and more importantly, that insult of an offer.
Was this the Void? A prison? Some conjured plane of mockery designed by the Architect, or worse, by one of those insufferable Rulers?
He opened his mind's eye.
And found it.
A presence.
Weak. Flickering. Mortal. And yet…
Familiar.
"Well—is there none whom dare respond?"
"SPEAK, damn you!"
His voice—if it could be called that now—boomed within the confines of whatever this space was. No one answered. No reply came, save for the cooing of a babe.
A babe.
He felt it more than saw it, a mind—newly formed, unaware, unformed. It stirred faintly beside him. No… around him. Within him. He was—what?
Inside.
The realization burned. It chafed against every fiber of his regal self. A Monarch. The Apex. The King of Dragons. Now reduced to this? A whisper entombed within flesh so new it had not yet spoken a single word.
"Show yourself, coward!"
No answer. Only warm wetness. Softness. And light—not the blinding flare of battle, but filtered, diffused. Something passed before the child's eyes.
Antares saw it through him.
A ceiling. White. Plain. Safe.
Safety was the lie of sheep. He had brought destruction to civilizations who called such places home. And now he lay powerless beneath it.
Time passed. It was difficult to measure it here. This world flowed differently than the timeless dominion he once ruled. Now everything was sequential, temporal. He could feel the heartbeat of the child as if it were his own—but it wasn't.
It was his prison.
And then… the memory returned. Fully. Whole.
Jinwoo's words.
The final choice.
The trap.
"Only you can do this… or you can perish into nothing now."
"You call this living?"
He remembered roaring those words. Remembered the offer he had scorned—belittled—the idea that he would serve. That he would be offered purpose by a human.
But Jinwoo hadn't blinked. He hadn't flinched. He had simply looked at Antares with that maddening calm, and said—
"Then die. Truly this time."
But Antares had not died.
No, that traitorous bastard had sealed him—folded all that was him, every scale, every flame, every memory, into this child. And he'd done more.
Antares could feel it now. Threads of other power ran alongside his own. Older. Colder. That cursed shadow mana. Jinwoo had not just buried him—he had bound him in chains woven from his own legacy.
And the child?
The vessel?
Sung. Suho.
Of course. His son. Jinwoo's heir.
The implications rippled through Antares like fresh fire through old veins.
"You son of a—"
A sudden jolt.
Pain?
No—emotion. Foreign. Not his. The infant stirred, sensing the fury inside, the alien weight buried deep within.
And for the first time since his arrival in this quiet hell, Antares saw the boy.
Not merely through his senses, but from within—the soulstuff. Pure and unformed. Innocent, yes, but not weak.
The child had a spark.
And that spark… was disturbingly familiar.
A shadow of a throne.
The echo of a crown not yet worn.
He is both of us.
A flicker of… amusement? No. Not quite. Recognition, perhaps. A slow, reluctant understanding began to unfurl within Antares. Jinwoo had not chosen at random. He had not sought vengeance.
He had chosen a legacy.
"You… damned manipulator," Antares muttered to no one.
The room changed. Or rather, the child did. Time passed again, and this time, Antares felt it. Saw the patterns. Smelled the food. Heard voices.
A woman. Kind. Strong.
Jinah?
No… not quite.
She cared for the boy with fierce affection, but she was no monarch. Merely mortal. Perhaps a relative. Perhaps not.
Then came the others.
Bellion. Igris. Beru.
They came and went like shadows dancing on the wall. Ever watchful. Antares recoiled the first time he felt them draw close. Not for fear—he would never admit fear—but recognition.
These were no mere sentinels. These were commanders. Loyal to the Shadow Monarch.
Loyal, and dangerous.
Antares remained quiet. Observing. Learning.
But the boy grew.
And so did the power.
The veil was thin here. That was the first thing he noticed.
Not the thinness of a physical shroud, no—it was not the veil of shadows that cloaked Monarchs, nor the eldritch mist that draped the Dimensional Rift. It was subtler than that. The veil here was spiritual, conceptual. It separated what was from what should never be, and it wavered.
Antares, the Destruction Incarnate, once shattered the barriers between planes with roars alone. But now, he strained to hear even the pulse of this world. It was distant. Muffled. Like listening to a war from beneath the waves.
And still, something called to him through it.
Or rather—someone.
The pull was slight, subtle, and agonizing in its familiarity.
A heartbeat.
Not his own.
Thud-thump.
It was small. Fragile. The beat of a young human child—utterly mortal, impossibly delicate. But with it came a strange synchrony, an echo deep within his own awareness.
And as it pulsed again, a second rhythm answered. One he did know. One he could not mistake.
Shadow.
He was not merely imprisoned.
He was woven in.
Infantile breathing.
A stilled, weightless body.
A soul that slumbered with radiant innocence.
Antares felt it all.
And in that terrifying realization, the rage did not come. Not at first.
Instead, the vast, titanic being that had once reduced civilizations to ash fell silent—paralyzed in a way no blade had ever managed.
He was not watching a prison.
He was experiencing a life. Living it.
Or more accurately… cohabiting it.
The child stirred. His tiny fingers twitched against a silken blanket embroidered with symbols of dragons and stars. He was unaware of the primordial storm that coiled, half-formed, in the pit of his soul.
Antares felt the child's dreams. They were nonsensical—full of color and warmth and murky, half-formed impressions of a tall figure cloaked in black flame, always watching, always smiling.
The Shadow Monarch.
YOU.
YOU DARE.
Antares finally roared again—but this time, the voice did not carry. The soul-space swallowed his fury like a black hole devouring light.
He did not speak the words. He simply felt them echoing in the cradle of his being.
"What madness have you conjured, Ashborn?"
There was no response. How could there be? Ashborn is no more. This was the act of that pretentious mortal. Jinwoo. And said act, Antares had to begrudgingly admit, was impressive.
But Jinwoo's will—subtle, omnipresent—remained like a seal upon the edge of every thought.
And it was then that Antares finally understood the nature of his punishment.
This was no death.
Nor was it mercy.
It was purpose.
It was design.
Jinwoo had taken everything—the Monarch's spirit, power, identity—and stitched it into the soul of his son.
A mortal son, born to a world at peace.
But not for long.
For even now, Antares could feel it. The child—Suho—would awaken. Something inherited would rise. Perhaps today. Perhaps years hence.
And Antares would be there to witness it.
Not as King. Not as Destroyer.
But as something else.
He reeled at the realization. All his ancient instincts screamed for rejection.
To be bound into the very blood of a human child? To have his essence—his dignity—reduced to guidance? As if he were some ancestral whisper, some hollowed relic of myth passed down like an old tale?
It was profane.
It was genius.
It was predictable. To the point it made him sick. These sentiments…
…Disgustingly Human
Antares wanted to curse him. Wanted to rend the seal apart, to claw his way free and immolate the world once more.
But he could not.
Not because of the seal—though it was formidable.
But because of the boy.
There was something there. Something that struck him with a chill far colder than death.
A familiarity. An echo.
That heartbeat.
It was not only the child's.
It was Jinwoo's.
No—worse.
It was Ashborn's.
Twisted by birth. Reforged by love. And now, contaminated by destruction.
The three Monarchs—merged, fragmented, layered—all within one vessel.
And Antares?
Antares had been made the shepherd.
———
Time.
A concept Antares had long discarded.
Once, his existence had been measured not in moments, but in annihilations. Cities did not mark time with clocks in his presence—they marked it with screams, with collapses, with flame and rupture. Mortals aged and withered before he would so much as blink.
And yet now…he was forced to live every second.
Minute by minute. Breath by breath.
Through the eyes of a child.
There was no grandeur to it. No divine revelation.
Just the passage of days.
Soft lullabies sung by a gentle voice—Suho's mother.
Tiny arms flailing toward dangling mobiles that jingled with harmless delight.
The sensation of warmth when laid on a father's chest—one who smiled not as Monarch, but simply as Dad.
And in all of it, Antares could do nothing but watch.
He was a king imprisoned not by bars, but by witnessing.
He learned the child's rhythms. When Suho would cry, he felt the thunder of need before the sound. When Suho laughed, he felt the ripples of joy spread like a tide within a shared soulspace.
It was maddening.
It was beautiful.
It was wrong.
Antares fought it, at first. He erected mental walls, tried to preserve the fragments of himself that had once blotted out stars. But the child was persistent. Not through any conscious effort—but simply by being.
Because Antares was bound to everything the child experienced.
A lullaby could echo through his memories like an anthem of war.
The grip of a tiny hand on a parent's finger felt like the clasp of fate itself.
And that smile…Suho's innocent, unknowing smile…it cracked the walls.
Then came the first dream.
It was not Antares' dream.
It was Suho's.
But it was shaped—ever so slightly—by him.
A dragon, not of fire, but of golden light, soared through skies untouched by battle. Children laughed atop its back. No city burned. No cries echoed.
And on the horizon, a great shadow followed—not to consume, but to protect.
Antares was silent for three days after that.
⸻
Years passed.
Time, once meaningless, became a burden.
Suho began to speak. He walked, clumsily at first, then with the boundless energy of youth. He called out to his parents—called his father Appa with wide, trusting eyes.
And Jinwoo would smile.
A smile so utterly human.
It enraged Antares.
"You play house with the fate of worlds, Shadow Monarch…"
He muttered those words into the depths of his own sealed mind.
But no answer came. Jinwoo no longer spoke. His presence, once ever-hovering like an all-seeing god, had faded—entrusting Antares with silence.
Suho, however, had grown louder.
Too loud.
⸻
It began subtly.
Suho would cry, and shadows in the room would flicker unnaturally.
He would laugh, and toys would float for a second too long before falling.
He would sleep, and nightmares of dragons and black flames would leak into the waking world, warping corners of his bedroom with momentary spatial distortions.
Antares knew the signs.
The seal was not holding.
Or perhaps…it was, but the inheritance was awakening regardless.
The child was not just a host. Not merely a vessel.
He was an heir.
And all of Antares' fury, his instincts, his legacy, was being absorbed drop by drop.
Not stolen. Not suppressed.
Inherited.
⸻
It came to a head one day at school.
The child was seven.
A boy—a classmate—had taken Suho's drawing and torn it in two.
Nothing unusual. Children quarrel. Tempers rise. Teachers intervene.
But that day… something ancient stirred.
Suho's eyes flashed red—not crimson like blood, but deep like volcanic embers buried beneath millennia of stone.
And for the first time, Antares felt the child's fury…and it answered him.
He had not called for it.
But Suho had reached him.
And when the boy cried out in terror, when the classroom lights shattered overhead, and the air grew thick with invisible pressure—Antares realized:
The Monarch of Destruction had not been sealed away.
He had been sown
Into blood.
Into breath.
Into a lineage shaped by war and remade by peace.
Antares could no longer deny it. He was not some parasitic remnant clinging to the child's life. He was part of it now—grafted onto the root, not the branch. This was not coexistence. It was integration. And when the seal frayed, it wasn't merely his power that bled through.
It was theirs.
The classroom had gone still. Frozen. As if time itself held its breath.
Shadows coiled in the corners of the room. The torn paper on the floor burned to ash without flame. And above it all, the weight of Suho's unformed wrath pressed upon every innocent in his presence.
The teacher fainted.
The children screamed.
And Suho—little Suho—just stood there, blinking, confused, as if some great force had just passed through him like a gust of wind through a field of grass.
Antares, still silent within, said nothing. For once, there was no taunt, no roar of triumph.
Just awe.
He has my instincts. But he does not know what they mean.
He had seen tyrants born, had seen fledgling Monarchs claw their way from weakness into godhood. But this was different. Suho had not clawed.
He had inherited.
The mana density in the air still hadn't settled when Bellion arrived.
It took less than a second.
A shimmer, a twist in reality, and the towering knight of shadows appeared within the mortal plane—his vast frame shrinking just enough to avoid collapsing the walls around him. Black mist spilled from his form like ink leaking through paper.
No one but Suho saw him.
No one but Antares felt the tension ripple.
Bellion knelt.
He didn't speak. He didn't scold. He simply placed a single clawed hand upon the child's shoulder… and the shadows receded.
The children began to cry. Some had wet themselves. Others had curled up into corners, rocking and shaking.
And Suho?
He turned to Bellion with wide, glistening eyes.
"I didn't mean to," he whispered. "It just happened."
Bellion did not answer with words. Instead, his fingers briefly traced a rune in the air—one Antares recognized immediately. A seal of containment. Jinwoo's script.
It glowed faintly, then faded.
Antares flinched.
He's reinforcing the seal… but only partially. Why?
The answer came not from Bellion, but from within the ripple left in his wake. A flicker of essence. Familiar. Absolute.
Jinwoo.
Just a thread. A whisper. But enough.
"Watch him," the whisper seemed to say.
And then it was gone.
Antares seethed. He wanted to shout, to hurl the fury of his old self into the void, to demand explanation. You dare use me as guardian? As jailor? As guide? He was no one's steward. No one's teacher.
And yet.
He looked again through the boy's eyes.
Suho was trembling now. Not from fear of others—but fear of himself.
He didn't understand what he had done. He didn't remember doing it.
Antares could feel the boy's heartbeat stuttering, erratic. Could feel the heat of shame rising like fever through his chest.
And then, to Antares' horror…
The child wept.
It was not a Monarch's cry. Not a noble shedding of single tears under moonlit pride.
It was a child's sob—raw, gasping, messy.
And Antares could feel it.
Like a blade dragging across nerve.
Something in him twisted.
He wanted to call it revulsion.
He feared it might be empathy.
———
Jinwoo didn't scold Suho when he came home.
He didn't even speak right away.
The boy sat at the edge of the bed, knees tucked under his chin, eyes rimmed red. Bellion stood silently nearby, fading into shadow, awaiting command that would not come.
And Jinwoo…
He sat beside his son.
Not across from him. Not above him.
Beside.
He held no weapons. Wore no armor. Only a soft black sweater and the weight of fatherhood.
Antares watched.
And waited.
"Do you know what happened today?" Jinwoo finally asked, voice gentle.
Suho didn't answer.
He didn't have to.
Jinwoo reached out and placed a hand on his son's back.
"You were angry. And something answered you."
Silence.
A pause.
Then Suho nodded, barely.
"…I didn't want it to. I just… I was mad. Really mad. He broke my picture."
Antares felt it rise in him again—that strange sensation, foreign and unwelcome.
Pity? No. Never. Then what? Understanding?
Jinwoo smiled faintly.
"You're not in trouble."
Suho blinked, confused. "…I'm not?"
"No. You're learning."
Jinwoo's eyes—those same eyes that once stared down Monarchs—softened.
"You inherited something powerful, Suho. More than you know. More than I ever meant to give you. And there's… someone else inside you too."
Antares stiffened.
Suho tilted his head. "Someone else?"
Jinwoo nodded.
"A voice. A strength. It might scare you. But he's not your enemy."
Now Antares snarled.
How DARE—
But Suho's face turned downward. "…I think I felt him."
"And what did he feel like?" Jinwoo asked.
Suho paused. Thought. Then answered, "…Big. Sad. Angry."
That stopped everything.
Even Antares.
Sad?
Jinwoo nodded once, solemn.
"That sounds about right."
Then came the silence—the kind that only exists between father and son, a silence filled with all the things that words can't hold.
And Suho whispered, "Will he hurt me?"
Antares didn't know what he wanted Jinwoo to say.
Maybe yes. Maybe if you let him. Maybe he'll try.
But Jinwoo only said:
"No. He'll protect you. Even if he doesn't want to."
And Antares broke.
Not loudly.
Not obviously.
Not with rage.
But with a crack, thin and hairline, like the first fracture in a dam that had held for eons.
You bastard. You knew this would happen. You planned it. Every word, every layer of the seal, every choice—this was your design.
And still, the worst part was not that he was imprisoned.
It was that he wasn't even alone in his own torment.
He shared it now—with a boy who felt too much and understood too little.
And despite himself, despite all his howling pride and ruined glory…
He wanted to help.
Not for Jinwoo.
Not for vengeance.
But because the boy deserved it.
———
More time passed.
The seal held.
But it no longer felt like a barrier.
It felt like a lens.
And Antares began to see.
Not just through Suho.
But with him.
The boy began to dream again—this time of a great palace in the sky, lit by stars that moved like dragons. Antares remembered it. Not precisely. But enough. The Throne Hall of his ancient empire. Long destroyed. Long buried.
Suho did not walk it as a conqueror.
He ran it as a child.
Laughing.
Unafraid.
And Antares, once a terror etched into cosmic history, found himself watching from the shadows of that dream.
Silent.
Curious.
Moved.
One night, when Suho was ten, he stood in front of the mirror, frowning at his reflection.
"Are you really in there?" he whispered.
Antares did not answer.
Could not.
But Suho nodded anyway.
"I think you are."
The boy pressed a palm to the mirror.
"I don't want to be scary. But I don't want to be weak either."
And Antares, bound behind the veil, felt something shift.
The boy was not asking for power.
He was asking for balance.
A Monarch might demand strength.
A child asks for harmony.
And so Antares gave him nothing.
But he stopped withholding.
He began to listen.
———
Another dream.
Years later.
Suho was older now—taller, stronger, quieter.
In the dream, he stood before a throne of obsidian carved with runes in three languages.
One of them was human.
One was Monarch.
The third… was Antares' own. A dead language known only to dragons.
Suho traced the symbols with his fingers.
And he spoke aloud.
"I am not just his son."
Antares stirred.
"I am not just yours."
The shadows in the dream bowed.
Suho raised his hand.
And the world did not burn.
It bloomed.
Golden flame—cleansing, not consuming—poured from his fingers. Not shadow. Not destruction.
Something new.
Antares understood then.
It had never been about containment.
It was creation.
The Shadow Monarch had not buried the Monarch of Destruction in his son.
He had planted him.
And now, at last, the seed was sprouting.
Antares, Monarch of Destruction, scourge of worlds,and the King of Wild Dragons, looked into the heart of the child he had once cursed…
…and saw something he had never imagined possible.
A future.
Not for himself.
But for what they could become.
Together.
———
And yet, the moment always came.
The turning point. The reckoning.
For children, it arrives quietly—without thunder or omen.
But this child was no ordinary one.
And so the moment came as it always must when power outpaces understanding.
It began not with fury.
But with fear.
———
A month passed.
The incident at school had been softened in reports—a malfunctioning heating unit, the teachers said, a child's emotional outburst, nothing more. Jinwoo had erased footage, altered memories, bent the facts to shield Suho from scrutiny.
But children remember.
And Suho felt it.
The way some kids didn't look him in the eye anymore. The way whispers hushed when he entered a room. The silence that followed him even when he wasn't speaking.
A loneliness began to grow.
One Antares recognized all too well.
Isolation is the shadow of power, he remembered. Even a child cannot escape it.
And as the loneliness grew, so did the questions.
Why did things break around him when he got upset?
Why did dreams feel like prophecies?
Why did he sometimes hear another heartbeat inside his own?
Then, late one night, Suho spoke aloud.
Not to his father. Not to Bellion.
But to the one he felt.
"I know you're real," he whispered into the darkness.
His room lay quiet. Only the sound of wind tapping against the window.
But Suho didn't stop.
"I don't think you're bad. Just… sad. And maybe… lost."
Antares didn't answer.
Couldn't.
But he heard it. Felt it. The tremble in the boy's voice. The reaching.
And for a moment—for just a moment—he wanted to reach back.
He didn't.
Because Jinwoo did.
———
The next morning, Jinwoo took Suho to the mountains.
A private place. Snow-lined ridges. A still lake of black glass beneath the frost. No one else for miles. The sky hung like a veil of silk over them, moonlight caught in its folds.
They walked in silence, just father and son.
Suho thought it was another training day. A hike. A chance to get stronger.
He didn't know it was a farewell.
Jinwoo stopped near the cliff's edge, where stone met sky. There, he turned to face his son.
"You've been talking to him," he said softly.
Suho froze.
"I…" He faltered. Then: "I didn't mean to. He's just there. Sometimes I think he's angry, but not at me. Sometimes he's just… watching."
Jinwoo nodded.
"He is. He always has been."
Suho swallowed. "Is he… me?"
Jinwoo's eyes softened with something like sorrow.
"No. And yes. He's not your enemy. But he's not your future either."
Suho looked down at his hands. They trembled faintly. Not with fear. With weight.
"I don't want to hurt people. I want to protect them."
"I know," Jinwoo said. "That's why this has to be done."
Then Jinwoo knelt before him.
And for the first time, Suho saw his father not as the great Shadow Monarch, the protector of nations, the slayer of Monarchs.
But as a man.
A man who carried burdens too vast for any one soul.
And now prepared to pass one down.
"I gave you a gift," Jinwoo said. "A piece of something ancient. Something I fought once. Someone I destroyed."
Suho blinked.
"The voice…?"
Jinwoo nodded. "His name was Antares. Monarch of Destruction."
The name felt like stone in the air.
Suho took a step back.
"He's… inside me?"
"Not all of him. Just enough. Enough to help you grow. To teach you things I could never teach."
"Then why are you taking him away?"
Jinwoo looked past his son, into the cold mists rising from the cliffs.
"Because the world isn't ready."
He stood slowly.
"Because you're not ready."
And then Jinwoo raised his hand.
Antares knew what was coming before the first sigil burned into the air.
No.
Not rage. Not rebellion.
Just… a quiet desperation.
He's sealing the boy's memories. Not mine. Not my essence. Just… Suho's awareness of me. Of what he's done. Of what he could become.
Antares lunged toward the veil, desperate to speak, to press something through the thinning bond.
WAIT. LET ME SAY SOMETHING—
But the runes began to shine.
Ancient words. Royal commands. Monarch and Ruler intertwined.
Memory. Emotion. Identity.
He wasn't sealing power.
He was sealing self.
The boy would forget.
Everything.
The classroom.
The dreams.
The voice inside.
And perhaps worst of all—
The bond they had begun to share.
Antares didn't scream.
He had done enough screaming in lifetimes past.
Instead, he went still.
And watched.
As Suho's eyes began to flutter.
As his shoulders sagged.
As his voice came soft:
"…I'm tired, Dad."
Jinwoo caught him gently.
"I know."
And the last of the sigils faded.
Suho slumped forward into his father's arms.
Breathing. Safe. Silent.
Clean of memory.
And Antares…
Was alone again.
But not truly.
Because he remained.
Dormant.
Patient.
Watching.
He knew now what Jinwoo had truly done.
He hadn't erased him.
He had pressed pause.
Locked away the knowing until the time would come to bear it again.
When Suho would be ready.
And when Antares…
Would have to choose.
Who to be.
———
Later, in the shadowed space where no one else could hear, Jinwoo spoke aloud.
Not to his son.
But to the one he had sealed inside him.
"I'm sorry."
Antares didn't reply.
Jinwoo looked down at the sleeping boy, now back in his bed, forehead peaceful, smile unknowing.
"You were right to fear. But wrong to hate."
Antares scoffed silently.
And you were right to hope. But wrong to trust.
Jinwoo stepped back into the darkness.
"You won't be alone in there forever. When the time is right… he'll remember you. And by then… maybe you'll be ready too."
Then he was gone.
And for the first time in centuries…
Antares closed his eyes.
Not to sleep.
But to wait.
For the moment the world would have need of him again.
Or worse—
For the moment the boy would.
———