Chapter 618: The Devourer

Michael found himself standing at the edge of a garden.

He didn’t know how he’d gotten there. He had been walking, through cities, through streets, through parks and now he was here, at the edge of a place he had never seen but somehow recognized. The garden was beautiful, filled with flowers that bloomed in colors that seemed to defy nature, lit by lanterns that glowed with a soft, warm light.

At the center of the garden, a fountain trickled softly.

And beside it, a statue.

It was a statue of a family, three angels, a man, a woman, and a child. The man was tall, with hair that seemed to be carved from shadow itself. The woman was beautiful, her arms wrapped protectively around the child. And the child was held between them, the small face turned upward toward the sky.

Michael stared at the statue for a long time.

Then he heard voices.

"Did you see the news? Supergirl was seen recently after such a long time, it’s been a while since we’ve seen her on the news."

"Yeah.. She’s a hero in her own right. But she’s also... you know. His Girlfriend."

Michael closed his eyes as he walked for hours.

Through cities and towns. Through parks and plazas and quiet neighborhoods. Through all the places where mortals lived and loved and feared and hoped. And everywhere he went, he heard the same things.

The Shadow Monarch protects us.

The Shadow Monarch saved us.

The Shadow Monarch is our hero.

He heard stories from hunters and housewives, from children and elders, from rich and poor and everything in between. He heard stories of a man who had faced gods and monsters and had emerged victorious. He heard stories of a man who had built an army of the dead, not to conquer, but to protect. He heard stories of a man who had taken the concept of Death itself and had used it, not to destroy but to shelter.

And he heard stories of the shadows.

The Shadow Lanterns, who patrolled the stars and kept the peace.

The Shadow Soldiers, who appeared whenever the innocent were threatened.

The Marshals, who had fought alongside their monarch through every trial and tribulation.

Michael stopped walking.

He stood in the middle of a street in a city he did not know, beneath a sky that was just beginning to lighten with the first hints of dawn. The stars were fading, one by one, and the world was waking up around him.

His voice was quiet, barely a whisper.

"He is Death. The end of all things."

He paused.

"But they do not fear him. Even those who do say they fear him, they do not hate him. If anything they love him."

He looked up at the fading stars, his expression unreadable.

"He is a being of darkness, of shadows, of death itself. And yet, everywhere I go, I hear the same thing..."

He closed his eyes.

"How can a being of darkness inspire such... light?"

He opened his eyes, staring out at the quiet city, at the sleeping houses and the empty streets and the world that the Shadow Monarch had sworn to protect.

"He is not what I expected," Michael said to himself. "He is no monster."

He paused.

"He is a protector, a lover, and a father.."

He looked down at his hands, the hands that had shaped worlds, that had delivered the word of God, that had judged souls and carried messages of divine will.

"Why am I here... what is my purpose..."

Michael turned and walked away, his footsteps silent on the pavement.

And as the sun rose over the city, he whispered one final thing to himself a question that would haunt him for the rest of his eternal existence.

"Was he truly a threat...?"

He did not know the answer.

But for the first time in eons, he was not sure he wanted to.

.

.

.

The Sixth Dimension - The Rulers’ Sanctum

The Rulers gathered and stood in a circle, their forms tall and robed, their faces hidden in shadow, their eyes glowing with the same pale, colorless light that had illuminated the heavenly host. But now, that light flickered, uncertain and afraid.

"We have no choice," one of them said. "The Shadow Monarch will destroy everything we have built, everything we fought for."

"We did try to negotiate," another said quietly. "We offered him terms."

"He did not wish to negotiate, he made that very clear."

Silence fell across the chamber.

Then, the oldest of them spoke.

"There is no other choice, we unleash it."

The chamber seemed to darken, the light dimming as the words hung in the air.

"Nidhogg."

The name echoed through the chamber like a curse.

"I still think this is madness," one of them said, their voice trembling. "Nidhogg was deemed too dangerous and too unstable. The Absolute being sealed it away for a reason. We do not have the power to contain it. We never did. The Monarchs only fought a replica of it, the real deal was always too dangerous to be free."

"We do not need to contain it. We only need to aim it towards them." The oldest Ruler’s voice hardened. "The Shadow Monarch is powerful. Perhaps the most powerful being we have ever faced. But Nidhogg is not a being. It is a force of nature, but as a living, breathing creature. It was born of the Great Darkness itself, as old as the World Tree, before light, before anything we know. It is older than the us."

"It is still wrong."

"Yes. And it is our only chance."

Silence.

"What of the cost?" another asked. "If we unleash it, it will not stop with the Shadow Monarch. It will not stop with his armies and it will not stop with his world. It will consume everything, it will devour the multiverse itself."

"We will deal with it later."

"Later? You speak as though we could contain it again. We cannot. The Absolute being is gone. There is no one left with the power to seal it."

"Then we will find a way. Or we will not. But we cannot face the Shadow Monarch and hope to survive. He is beyond us. He has become something we cannot defeat. And if we do not act now, we will be erased from existence. He will outlast us."

A long pause.

"Then we do it. We unleash Nidhogg, and we pray to whatever gods may still be listening that it is enough."

They descended through layers of reality that had been sealed since before the first star was born.

The chamber was a monument to fear, a vast, hollow sphere of obsidian that hung in the void, its surface etched with runes that glowed with pale light. Chains of light and shadow wrapped around it, binding it to the fabric of existence itself, they were not simply restraints.

The Rulers stood at the edge of the sphere.

"Behold," the oldest of them said. "One of the firstborns of the Great Darkness. The Devourer of Worlds, the One who was sealed before time began."

The chains pulsed and the sphere cracked.

And the thing inside opened its eyes.

They were red, not the red of blood, they were darker, something that seemed to swallow the light around them. They were ancient beyond comprehension, filled with a hunger that had no end and a hatred that had no beginning.

The chains groaned and the sphere cracked further.

The Rulers stepped back, not in fear, but in reverence. Not for the creature, but for the weight of what they were about to do.

"Nidhogg. " The oldest Ruler spoke the name like a prayer, like a curse. "The Shadow Monarch threatens all we have built. He defies the order we have maintained for eons. He has taken the concept of Death and made it his own. He has created new Monarchs and given them powers that were never meant to be shared."

A pause.

"We release you and we command you by the ancient pact, by the blood of the World Tree, by the darkness and light that birthed us all destroy him. Devour him. Erase him from existence. And when you are done.."

The chains shattered and the sphere exploded and the thing that emerged was beyond description.

It was a serpent, but not a serpent like any that had ever crawled or flown or been imagined by mortal minds. Its body was vast, stretching across the void like a river of shadow and flesh, its scales darker than night.

It did not speak, its presence was a language of its own one of hunger, of destruction, of an endless, unquenchable desire to consume.

It turned its gaze upon the Rulers.

They did not flinch.

"Go," the oldest commanded. "The Shadow Monarch is in the World of Chaos. His armies are gathered there and his fellow Monarchs fight beside him. Devour them all. Leave nothing behind, and you’ll truly be free."

Nidhogg’s eyes burned brighter as it made a tear in reality with its claws, and then it disappeared in it.

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