Seventeen mortal winters.
That is how long I have watched from within the depths—neither wholly living nor truly dead—bound in a place where shadow bleeds into silence. Time passes differently for beings such as I. Yet I have counted every year, every season, every heartbeat of the world I once sought to end.
And in all that span of breath and dusk and memory, I have watched him.
Sung Suho.
Son of Ashborn's chosen.
In the earliest days, he was nothing but a flicker, a question mark etched into the aftermath of divine rebellion. A child born from one who carried both the blessing and the burden of Shadow. At first, I did not care for him—why should I have? The world had already crowned its savior. What need was there for another?
But then came the hunger.
The longing to move again, to matter again, to tear across the skies not as a ghost but as a force. And Jinwoo—curse his clever mercy—he gave me not vengeance, but purpose. Not extinction, but endurance. To guide, he said. To prepare. To watch.
And so I did.
Seventeen winters, and I have watched that boy claw his way upward, defiant in weakness, stubborn in sorrow. I have seen shadows rise around him—not his father's, but his own—and I have felt the ember of something ancient stir behind his eyes. He does not yet understand what he is. Not fully. Not deeply. But the fire is there. The desire.
I recognize it.
For I, too, once burned as he burns now.
In Suho I see the me that was—before the crown of annihilation, before the chains of purpose forged by the Absolute, before the Monarchs were born and corrupted. When I was still only a dragon who wanted to fly higher than any other. When I sought strength not to destroy, but to become.
That yearning… I see it in him. Even now.
And he has grown. Gods, he has grown. Stronger, sharper, wiser with every passing storm. The trials he has endured, the enemies he has faced—they have not broken him. They have forged him.
But the time is coming.
I can feel it in the marrow of my essence, in the way the veil between worlds grows thin. The storm brews again. The Monarchs stir. And Suho will no longer be a boy wondering what he is meant to be. He will be the one they fear—or the one they break.
Seventeen winters.
The waiting is almost over.
And when that hour comes… I will stand beside him, not as the destroyer of worlds, but as the last echo of the first flame. The guide in darkness. The voice of all that came before.
I was born to end all things.
But perhaps Suho was born… to inherit them.
Yet in these quiet hours between echoes of conflict, there is a greater silence still—the kind only known to immortals who have outlived the weight of their own names.
I watch him.
Suho.
They call him many things now—Shadow's Heir, Dragon's Scion, Flicker of the Final Light. Titles bestowed by those who only see fragments of what moves beneath his skin. But I see the whole of him. I see the war that simmers in his marrow and the fault lines forming in his soul. I see Jinwoo's son, yes, but I see myself too—the first Monarch of Destruction, before the black crown of ruin took root in my heart.
Seventeen winters have passed in the mortal world. Seventeen years of breathing, bleeding, growing—and I've observed every single one like a ritual. I know the way his shoulders grew broader with burden, not just strength. I know the quiet moments when he turns toward the sky, hoping his father might look back from it. And I know the question he never speaks aloud: Am I enough?
He does not yet understand the nature of inheritance.
Jinwoo gave him love, yes. Legacy, too. But shadow is not something inherited like a throne or sword—it consumes. It questions. And Destruction? Destruction cannot be passed down. It must be born again, clawing out of the chrysalis of fire and grief and will.
That is why I remain.
That is why I wait in this abyss between memory and magic.
I have seen Monarchs rise and fall. I have warred beside the greatest of them, and torn others from existence with my own jaws. But none—none—had the spark that boy now carries in the hollows of his chest. Even now, it terrifies me… and I was once the terror of stars.
But power is a tempest without direction. It turns inward. I remember this well.
I remember a time when I thought only in absolutes: Obliteration or victory. Silence or screams. There was no middle path, no silver thread between survival and savagery. But Suho walks that thread. Each step he takes on it humbles me. I, who thought the dance of light and darkness beneath me.
He dreams of uniting what was never meant to be whole. The rage of the Beast. The frost of the Ice Queen. The corruption of the Insects. Even the Tyrant of Plagues, and the Despair who turned on us all. He dares to speak not of conquest—but communion. I would have laughed once. Now, I listen.
He is nearing a convergence.
I feel it.
The threads tighten, the winds shift, and even the Void watches with bated breath. Seventeen years was never the end. It was only the shaping of the blade.
And soon, the forge will call.
There was a time when I looked upon mortals and saw only ash-to-be. Fleeting embers to be extinguished in the long night of our dominion. They died so easily, knelt so quickly, shattered under the barest weight of our wills. What purpose could they serve, save as kindling for a more permanent world?
But Suho makes a lie of that certainty.
He was born from the union of paradox—Jinwoo's shadow and human soul—and yet carries the breath of something ancient, older than his lineage, older perhaps even than the war that birthed us Monarchs. That tension coils in him like a sleeping dragon. Not of me. Not yet. But something close enough to unsettle even my long-hardened certainty.
And in that uncertainty… I find curiosity.
There are moments—brief, but growing—when I forget I am bound. When I feel not like a prisoner of shadow, but a sovereign standing once more upon a ridge of burning stone, watching his young heir rise from the battlefield's ruin. Not as a puppet. Not as a pawn. But as a true successor. One who might wield not just the power of Destruction, but its understanding.
That is what separates monsters from Monarchs.
Destruction is not chaos. It is not rage. It is necessity. It is the collapse that precedes rebirth. And Suho—unlike even Jinwoo, at times—seems to grasp this truth by instinct rather than tutelage. He breaks, yes, but only to clear the path. He kills, but only to protect. In this way, he surpasses me. Already.
And it unnerves me.
For if he truly is to inherit not just my strength but my place… what becomes of me? What place is there for an old king in a world that no longer fears him? Am I to be a whisper in the dark corners of his soul, reduced to legend and cautionary tale? Or is there still a role—still a reckoning—to come?
I do not yet know.
But I feel the weight of time pressing in. Seventeen mortal years have passed since I first stirred within this slumbering chrysalis. Seventeen years of watching, of waiting, of wanting. The boy is no longer a boy. The man is nearly formed. And the world has begun to stir in answer to his awakening.
The rift between what was and what is coming has begun to split.
The Monarchs feel it. The Rulers too. Even the System—designed to govern, not to fear—has begun to evolve in response. Old pathways are breaking. New rules are writing themselves in blood and shadow. Jinwoo foresaw this, I think. That is why he left the final choice not to fate… but to Suho.
And by extension… to me.
The reckoning is near. I feel it in the marrow of the world. The sky strains beneath the weight of approaching storm. The stars have begun to dim, as if turning their faces away from what must come. And through it all, the Heir walks forward, alone.
But not for much longer.
I remember the moment I first looked into his eyes—within that dream-forged trial, when the System allowed me to test him with the Denison beast. He did not know me then. But I knew him. Not by name, not by fate, but by fire. There was a heat behind those mortal eyes not unlike my own, long before I became what the world came to fear.
And he did not flinch.
Even as my presence pressed against the edges of his soul, even as the jaws of the dragon closed in, he stood his ground. Untrained. Unprepared. Mortal.
But unyielding.
That was the moment I first felt it: not merely interest, not amusement, but recognition. In him, I saw the echo of a younger self—not yet crowned, not yet cursed, but reaching, always reaching for the summit that all others called impossible.
Jinwoo tempered him, yes. Gave him tools, gave him paths. But he could never give him this fire. That was born in Suho alone. And now, seventeen years hence, it burns brighter than ever.
I have watched him pass trials of pain and pride, of grief and fury. I have watched him hesitate, falter, and rise again. I have seen him touch darkness and turn away, not out of fear—but choice. That is the difference between shadow and ruin. Between wielding power and being consumed by it.
He has faced echoes of the Monarchs before. Wisps of their design, fragments of their spite. But soon he will face them fully—one by one. And when he does, I do not believe he will kneel. He will not barter. He will not beg.
And if they refuse his call?
Then I shall answer for him.
The Beast Monarch was the first to feel my wrath rekindled. That old brute had the audacity to scoff at Suho, to call him unworthy of our mantle. It was no longer my pride that burned at that insult—but my purpose. How dare he deny what fate, fire, and blood have already decreed?
I manifested then—not fully, not freely, but enough. Enough to remind the Beast what it means to bow. Enough to make him remember my roar in the marrow of his being.
Suho does not yet understand the depth of this inheritance. He believes himself the son of Shadow, but he is more. He carries the echo of every Monarch's hatred, every Ruler's hope. He is the child of war and the herald of its conclusion.
And when the time comes, he will have to choose.
To rule. To destroy. To redeem. Or to transcend.
I wonder, sometimes, if Jinwoo meant for that final step to be left to me. Not to guide Suho… but to challenge him. To stand before him, not as his ally—but as the last gate. The final test. If that is to be my role, then I will not falter.
Because if he is to bear the title I once held… he must first earn it from me.
Seventeen years. A blink to a being like me, yet long enough to feel the ache of time settle deep into the marrow of memory. Long enough to know that the boy is no longer a boy.
He is a storm gathering shape.
Suho.
I speak his name rarely, even to myself. To name a thing is to grant it power, and though he carries a fragment of mine, he is not mine. Not yet. Not fully. Jinwoo gave me purpose when he sealed me to his son, but he did not give me dominion. Clever shade. Even in death, Ashborn's heir plays his pieces too well.
Still, I watch. I witness.
In the quiet of shadow, in the stillness between his breaths, I study him. When he bleeds, my fury stirs. When he falters, I recoil in silence, for it is not yet my place to intervene. When he grows—I listen.
He has not yet reached the height of his power, but I see the foundations. Instinct honed by struggle. Will forged in solitude. And something else—something that unnerves me.
Compassion.
That brittle, beautiful weakness.
He hesitates before he strikes a killing blow if he senses a heart that can be reasoned with. He grieves for those he cannot save. He carries their names like weights in his spirit. Jinwoo bore such burdens too, once. Perhaps that is what binds them—what separates them from monsters like me.
I wonder if that tether will hold.
Seventeen years ago, when I was first bound to this boy's soul, I cursed the light. I resented the choice that denied me death. But time has worn away the sharper edges of that fury. Time, and observation.
There are moments—fleeting and fragile—when I see myself in him.
The hunger. The rage. The desire to protect through obliteration.
These are not traits of a hero. These are the markings of a conqueror. And yet he uses them as shields rather than swords.
I did not understand that once. Now… I begin to.
He will face them soon—the others. Monarchs reborn or remnants yet lingering. And when he does, the truth of what he has become will shine. Or it will burn.
And what of Jinwoo?
Ah, Jinwoo. The quiet architect of all this.
You thought I would not notice the patterns you left behind, the scars you carved into the System to leave your son a path. You pretended to retreat. You played the loyal father, the humble king… but you never stopped calculating.
You brought me here for a reason.
Perhaps you hoped I would guide him. Or temper him. Or serve as some final crucible through which he must pass.
But I know you too well, Shadow Monarch. You brought me here because you knew I would see him for what he is before even he could—your son is not merely your heir.
He is the culmination of all that we were.
The Nine. The Rulers. The Monarchs. The Balance and the Ruin.
And when the time comes, he will have to choose which of those legacies to honor.
Or whether to cast them all into the flame and become something else.
The winds shift, though I do not feel them. The pulse of the world quickens, though I have no blood to sense it.
But I know. As I once knew before the End came.
The convergence nears.
And when it arrives, the name Suho will either be carved in eternity… or obliterated, like all failed gods before him.
The stars no longer speak to me as they once did. Their music—ancient and mathematical—has quieted in my ears, dulled by the veil between what I am now and what I was. But in the silence, there is still rhythm. In the quiet pulse of Suho's soul, there is a cadence not unlike the beat of a war drum—steady, inevitable, sharpening with each passing season.
He is learning. Not just how to fight, but how to be.
I have watched beings gain power and crumble beneath it. I have watched kings drown in glory and gods unravel before their own altars. But Suho… he does not seek the crown. He does not hunger for dominion. That is what makes him dangerous.
Because if power comes to one who desires it not, it becomes more than a weapon—it becomes an extension of will, unbound by pride or fear.
It is strange. When I ruled the skies, I would have crushed such humility beneath my heel. I believed then, as so many did, that to feel was to weaken. That mercy was a flaw, and restraint a death sentence.
But here in the long dark, watching this mortal child shape himself into something that defies both Monarch and Ruler, I begin to suspect I was wrong.
No—more than that. I begin to remember.
Before I was crowned King of Destruction, before the wars and betrayals, before the roar of my name sent legions to their knees… there was a time when I too stood alone.
Young. Fearless. Stupid.
I had wings but no sky, fire but no purpose. I did not earn my title. I seized it. And for an age, that was enough.
But not for him.
Not for Suho.
He does not seize. He carries. The weight of lineage, of history, of a world that never asked to be saved but cannot seem to stop needing salvation. He wears it quietly, but I see how it pulls at his shoulders.
Jinwoo, you saw this too, didn't you?
That he would never be you.
That he would not follow your path.
He is his own storm.
Still, even a storm can falter.
I have seen it—when his convictions waver, when the faces of the dead haunt him more than the threats of the living. And in those moments, I reach for him. Not with voice or command, but with presence. A shadow flickering at the edge of his thought. A whisper of ancient fury just enough to stiffen his spine.
He thinks it is instinct.
Let him.
There is still time before we meet again—truly meet. When he no longer needs to borrow my fire but dares to wield it fully. When he is ready to look me in the eye, not as a servant or student, but as one who would inherit.
And I… I will test him. I must.
That was the deal, was it not, Jinwoo?
That I would guide him. Prepare him. Shape him in fire until only the truth of his spirit remains.
But understand this.
I am no kindly teacher. I am not the lingering warmth of a dead father's shadow.
I am the echo of annihilation.
And if your son is to carry the legacies of Monarch and Ruler alike, then he must prove he is not just their heir.
He must prove he is something more.
Something worthy.
Something inevitable.
The time is coming.
I can feel it like a storm behind a locked gate.
Soon, he will cross into the space between worlds—into the places where even light forgets to reach. There, the Beast will wait. And the Beast remembers me far too well.
I wonder what Suho will make of that.
I wonder what he will make of me.
Time moves slowly for the dead. And slower still for those like me—trapped between remembrance and purpose, spirit and silence. But for Suho, seventeen years have passed like fire spreading across dry earth. Fast. Unrelenting. Transformative.
Seventeen years of survival. Of silence. Of slow ascent through a world that has no place for one like him—and less still for those who follow in the footsteps of the Shadow Monarch.
And yet, here he stands.
I have watched from behind the curtain of his instincts. I have followed each breath of his fury, each falter of doubt, and each impossible triumph. I do not love him. I cannot. Love is a thing for mortals and fools. But I am drawn to him—not as a protector to a ward, but as a dragon to flame.
He burns with something I recognize.
Resolve. Not yet shaped into cruelty, not yet twisted into ambition. A dangerous thing, that—resolve without cruelty. It makes the wielder harder to predict.
Even now, as his power grows, he asks himself whether he should, not just whether he can. That restraint, that self-awareness—it reminds me of the very thing I lost before I fell fully into Destruction's embrace.
Jinwoo… your son does not chase glory.
He chases understanding.
In that pursuit, he is more dangerous than either of us ever were.
And still, I see the ghosts that walk with him.
I see how he stares at battlefields long after the bodies fall. How he traces the lines of ancient runes with hands that shake from more than exhaustion. He is not like us. He does not distance himself from the ruin he leaves behind. He feels it.
That is both his greatest gift—and the flaw that may undo him.
For one who would stand above Monarchs and Rulers, there must be a crucible. A moment that purifies. Burns away the hesitation. Leaves behind only truth.
That moment is coming.
And I am not sure whether I fear it… or crave it.
The other Monarchs wait. Some hidden, some scattered across cracks between dimensions. They feel him now. Faintly. Like a tremor before an eruption. They do not yet know his name, but they know something stirs.
When Suho meets the Beast, the confrontation will not be won by power alone. The Beast is pride incarnate—rage without patience. He will not bend. Not to Suho. Not to you. Not even to me.
And that is why I must appear.
He will listen to my roar, even now. Even after death.
He will remember who I am.
And in that moment, Suho will see me for what I was. Not as legend. Not as legacy. But as witness—to the cost of the path he walks.
He may recoil. He may question why a thing like me is bound to his soul. But if he endures, if he understands the truth of what I show him…
Then he will no longer walk as heir.
He will rise as sovereign.
And I will not stand in his way.
The years have carved themselves into Suho, not in lines upon the skin—his body is still young—but in the depth behind his eyes. That quiet storm. The weight of someone who has seen too much and survived in spite of it. I've known that look in myself, long ago, before Destruction hardened me into something the cosmos would fear.
He does not yet know what it means to be feared across realms, but I see that future written in his path.
Not because he desires domination.
But because he refuses to yield.
And that is what makes him dangerous.
I remember when I was like him—before I became the Monarch of Destruction, I was simply Antares, one of many. Younger. Still filled with questions. Still wondering if power could coexist with purpose. I recall a time when I too asked myself if there could be meaning beyond survival, beyond conquest.
And then the war came. And the answers were burned from me.
Suho has not yet been pushed into such a fire. But the embers are at his feet now, and I feel the wind changing.
The System awakens. Slowly. Whispering possibilities through his dreams. Not enough to guide him, only enough to test him. That, too, is familiar. The difference is that I once believed the System to be a chain. Now I see it as a mirror. It does not shape the worthy—it reflects what they already are.
And Suho is beginning to see it.
He no longer asks if he is worthy of his father's legacy. That question died somewhere between his tenth battle and his first command. Now he asks if he can survive his own.
He is not Jinwoo. He will not be Ashborn reborn. That path is closed.
But he is something else. Something new.
The synthesis of Monarch and Ruler, of mortal will and otherworldly weight.
I should despise that.
I should resent the mingling of those ancient forces, the ones who once hunted us through the cosmos like beasts to be culled. I should hate that the child of the Shadow Monarch holds within him the light of our enemies and the echoes of their judgment.
And yet… I do not.
Perhaps because I see in him something I never achieved.
Balance.
Even when the dragon stirs within his instincts—even when my voice rises through his veins and he strikes with the fury of crimson flame—there is still something human in his eyes.
He has not lost himself.
Not yet.
But that time draws close. I can feel it as surely as I feel the tension in the world's seams, as surely as I once felt the call to battle in the old wars.
There is a convergence on the horizon.
Rulers stirring from slumber. Monarchs reforming in forgotten cracks between realities. Dimensional gates pulsing like heartbeats. And in the center of it all… Suho.
He will not be allowed to remain hidden for much longer.
The worlds remember the name Sung Jinwoo.
Soon, they will come to learn the name Sung Suho.
And when they do…
They will come for him.
They will come for him—not as they once came for Jinwoo, in ignorance and fear, but with intent. With strategy. With memory.
Because they will remember me.
And when they behold him, they will not see a child or a successor. They will see the impossible: the final heir of both their salvation and their annihilation. The seed of the balance they tried and failed to enforce. The boy who carries within him the last shadow of the King of the Dead and the final ember of the Crimson Calamity.
They will remember the wars I started. The cities I shattered. The worlds I devoured.
And they will believe Suho is my return.
But he is not.
He is something worse.
He is what comes after all of us.
I know this now. I did not at first. When I awakened in the dark beyond death, sealed behind the veil of time and consciousness, I thought I was being punished—bound to witness the rise of a lesser shadow. Jinwoo's son. A flicker. A pretender.
But seventeen mortal years is a long time to watch a flame grow.
And Suho has grown.
He stumbled, yes. As all mortals do. But he stood back up. Not as an inheritor of thrones, but as a creature who began to forge one of his own. A throne not born of memory or borrowed power—but shaped by will, conviction, and sacrifice.
I've seen him choose kindness when fury would have been easier. I've seen him spare what should have been crushed. And I've seen him strike with terrifying precision when the moment called for retribution.
It was not in those victories that I saw myself.
It was in the costs.
The quiet moments after. The silence. The way he carries the weight of every soul he could not save—like a chain he refuses to break.
Once, I wore that chain too. Before I turned it into a weapon. Before I convinced myself that feeling was weakness, and weakness would only ever lead to annihilation.
He is not like me.
But in some cruel twist of fate… he is what I might have become, had I walked a different path.
And now, I begin to understand why Jinwoo gave me this burden. Why, in his last act of defiance against the cycle, he tethered my soul to this boy's ascent.
Not as a jailor.
Not as a curse.
But as a final chance.
Not for redemption—there is no redemption for what I have done.
But for legacy.
I was the Monarch of Destruction. The world-breaker. The Endbringer.
Perhaps, if I remain long enough at Suho's side, if I guide him as best I can without corrupting what makes him human… then perhaps my memory may become more than a warning.
Perhaps it may become a lesson.
The others will resist. The Beast will snarl and rage. The Plague will scheme. The Frost will wait, patient and cold.
But I will be there.
And when the time comes, when they rise to strike Suho down, I will remind them:
Antares has not been silenced.
He has chosen.
Seventeen mortal years.
And still, I linger.
Not out of defiance. Not out of vengeance.
But out of something far more alien to me: hope.
What a wretched, brilliant thing that is.
I once believed hope was the domain of fools and weaklings. A phantom warmth they clung to while the cold jaws of inevitability closed around them. I burned civilizations that prayed for deliverance. I slaughtered champions who stood tall beneath banners of justice and valor. I crushed hope, again and again—because I thought it a lie.
But Suho… he does not cling to hope. He does not worship it.
He carries it. Like a torch in a storm, half aware the wind will eventually snuff it out—but refusing to let it fall.
I have seen him break. I have seen him kneel, bleeding, shaking, screaming into a void that offered no answer. And I have seen him rise again.
Not because he believed he could win.
But because someone else believed in him.
That belief… it is his greatest strength. And it terrifies me.
Because I know what it can cost.
Because I once inspired that same belief.
And when I fell, when I let it rot into something monstrous,
I betrayed every soul that had ever looked to me for light.
He cannot make that mistake.
I will not let him.
That is why I remain here, beyond shadow and beyond flame—woven into the deepest recesses of his being, waiting for the hour when my voice must rise again. Not to lead. Not to rule. But to warn.
He is beginning to hear me, you know. In dreams. In battle. In stillness.
My voice is a whisper in the roar of his instincts. A growl behind his breath. A memory that is not his own.
I do not speak to him directly. That time has not yet come.
But I shape his path in subtle ways.
A flicker of draconic fury when he is cornered.
A pull toward wrath when fear might paralyze.
A push toward restraint when destruction would come too easy.
I do not want him to become me.
But he must understand me.
Because to carry Destruction without being consumed by it,
One must know the hunger intimately—and deny it still.
He is close now. Closer than he knows. The balance within him is sharpening.
Shadow. Flame. Mortality. Inheritance. Choice.
And beyond the veil of this mortal world, the others stir.
I feel them. Watching. Weighing. Preparing.
The Frost Monarch sharpens her stillness, waiting to entomb him in silence.
The Plague Monarch grins behind his rot, hungering to infect the last clean fire.
The Beast Monarch paces, bristling, snarling, aching to tear down the boy who carries my scent.
Let them come.
Let them test him.
If they would strike down my heir, then let them face me once more.
I may be bound. I may be broken. But I am not diminished.
And through Suho, I will rise—not to destroy, but to stand between what was and what must never be again.
Seventeen years.
I once carved ruin into the bones of time in less than one.
And yet now, I have waited—patiently. Silently.
Not because I was forced to. But because he needed time. Because he deserved time.
Because Jinwoo trusted me to give him that much.
The moment is near. I can feel it in the marrow of existence.
The rift will open. The first confrontation will come. And Suho will stand where I once stood: between annihilation and ascension.
He will not stand alone.
I have studied him in silence longer than I have studied any adversary.
Longer than I ever studied Ashborn.
Longer than I gave the Rulers.
And far, far longer than I gave humanity.
At first, I sought only weakness. I watched him like a beast in a pit, searching for the moment his mortal shell would shatter, the moment I might rise from the ashes of his failure and reclaim my dominion.
But he did not break.
Oh, he stumbled. He screamed. He bled.
But he did not break.
And in that, something ancient stirred in me.
He does not yet understand what he carries. The titles, the powers, the bloodlines—these are fragments. Echoes. Scattered crowns of extinct gods and monsters. But Suho, he is the thread that binds them. The child not of inheritance alone, but of convergence.
Shadow, born of the Silent King.
Destruction, forged in my fire.
Mortality, gifted by the Mother of Humanity.
Instinct, awakened through trial.
And now… Dominion. The unspoken power that only those who have truly lost everything can wield without ruin.
Jinwoo chose him. But I am beginning to understand why.
Not because he is strong.
But because he is unfinished.
A blade still in the forge.
A storm still gathering.
A soul still fighting the call of absolutes.
He is the antithesis of what I once was.
Where I demanded obedience, he seeks understanding.
Where I burned bridges to claim the sky, he kneels to mend what others would shatter.
It would be infuriating, if it wasn't so… familiar.
I remember a time—long before I was a Monarch—when I too wondered if there could be more than domination. When I stood at the edge of becoming, haunted by visions of a world shaped not by terror, but by purpose.
I cast those thoughts aside. I let the dragons in me drown the dreamer. I crowned myself Destruction incarnate, and the cosmos trembled.
But Suho… Suho listens to the dreamer.
Even now, surrounded by powers that would demand he crush, conquer, and command—he listens.
To his father's voice.
To the memory of those he could not save.
To the boy he once was.
And to me.
That, perhaps, is the most dangerous of all.
He listens to me.
Not with obedience. Not with awe.
But with judgment.
He questions the fury in his blood.
He weighs my presence against his own principles.
He is not afraid to use what I give him—but neither does he let it define him.
That is why I do not seek to possess him.
There was a time I would have.
A time I would have devoured his will and worn his flesh as my resurrection.
But I have seen what rises when Destruction walks alone.
I have seen the end of all things.
And I will not walk that path again.
So I wait.
And I shape.
And I whisper.
Because the moment is coming.
The fracture in the veil.
The Beast's challenge.
The choosing.
And when it comes—when the worlds begin to blur, when the Monarchs gather once more, when Suho must stand alone and declare his path—I will be there.
Not as his master.
But as the voice that reminds him:
"You are not me.
You are more."
He does not know that I dream now.
Strange, is it not? That a being forged from the raw, unrelenting marrow of Destruction… dreams. Not as mortals do. Not of things lost or longed for. But of what might yet be.
It began subtly—mere impressions at first, impressions I mistook for memory. But the longer I remained bound to Suho, the more those fragments became visions, and those visions took form. I began to dream of futures.
Some filled with ruin.
Some filled with redemption.
And some… something beyond both.
I have seen a sky split open by golden flame.
I have seen him crowned in shadow, weeping beneath a blood-red sun.
I have seen him alone on a throne of broken Rulers and Monarchs alike, his eyes hollow, his soul burned to ash from the weight of it all.
But I have also seen a path where he chooses neither throne nor war.
Where he walks away.
Where he turns the weapons we have forged for conquest into tools for preservation.
That path is the narrowest of all.
And it is the one I find myself watching more and more.
Seventeen mortal years I have endured this exile within him. Not imprisoned—no, entwined. I am the echo behind his fury, the pulse beneath his strength, the whisper beneath his instincts.
But more than that—I am the witness.
He was a child when I first stirred. Still learning to crawl through the cradle of the System his father left behind. Still unsure whether he was born to fight or to flee.
And now? He stands at the edge of ascension.
Not as a vessel.
Not as a puppet.
As himself.
I find myself… reluctant.
I once believed that if I waited long enough, if I nudged just right, I could return. That the world would tire of its fragile balance, and in the chaos, I would reclaim my form. Suho would fall, and I would rise.
But that belief has withered.
Not because I lack power.
Not because he lacks weakness.
But because I have come to care.
Not in the way mortals do. Not with affection or sentiment. No. My regard is forged in fire, honed through millennia of watching, waiting, weighing.
I care because in him, I see what we Monarchs never allowed ourselves to be: whole.
He is not Light.
He is not Void.
He is not merely Inheritance.
He is Becoming.
And if he continues on this path, he may become something greater than even Ashborn dreamed.
I—Destruction, the End of Worlds—I, who once scoffed at the notion of balance, now wonder if he is the answer.
The one who will not destroy the cycle.
But complete it.
I am no longer certain where he ends and I begin.
This… convergence was never part of the original design. When I was first bound to him—shackled in shadow and memory—I believed it to be a mockery. A final insult from Ashborn, a punishment veiled as purpose. To chain the King of Destruction within the heir of his legacy, to make me a guide, a warden, a mentor.
It was unbearable.
And yet… seventeen years later, I remain. Not dormant. Not silent. But changed.
I have whispered to him in dreams. I have tested the shape of his resolve in the crucibles he did not know were mine. I have conjured beasts from my memory to strike at him in the hollows between waking and waking again. Not to destroy him—but to know him. To see if the foundation upon which he stands is firm… or merely borrowed strength.
He has not disappointed me.
Even in the quiet moments—when no enemies press in, when no rewards await—he persists. He sharpens his body, tempers his will, tends to others. He does not hunger for power, but neither does he fear it. He carries his burdens without seeking pity. He listens to the voices within him—his father's legacy, the System's cold logic, even mine—and yet follows only his own judgment.
How rare. How infuriating. How… worthy.
I sometimes wonder what I would have done, had I been given the same chance.
Had I been shaped not only by war, but by love.
Not only by conquest, but by grief.
Had I known what it was to fight not out of hunger, but to protect.
But I am not he. My beginning is too far gone. My name is too stained. The cosmos remembers me as calamity, and rightly so.
Still… I can feel something stirring.
Not in the world. Not yet.
But within the boy.
He has stopped being a boy. I still call him such out of habit, but Suho is now a force. A presence. He walks among mortals as one of them, and yet none truly sees him. How could they? He is a vessel of Rulers and Monarchs both. A bearer of contradictions.
And he is beginning to realize that he is the only one who can bear them.
That there is no guide left. Not truly. His father cannot return. The System is fragmenting. The Rulers have grown quiet, and the Monarchs whisper in the dark only when it suits them.
And me?
I remain.
Waiting.
Watching.
I have warned one Monarch already—the Beast, arrogant even in phantom form. He thought to defy Suho's claim, to test his strength. I let the boy struggle for a time. It was necessary. But when the Beast mocked him, dismissed him, I stepped forward.
And he remembered.
They all do.
I am not gone. I have not faded.
But it is not my time anymore.
Soon, it will be his.
And when that hour arrives, the worlds will witness not the return of Destruction.
But the rise of the one who mastered it.
Time does not pass for me as it does for mortals.
It folds, it echoes, it slithers and sinks into itself like ash collapsing in a dying brazier. For seventeen mortal years, I have watched the boy—Sung Suho—grow from infant wails to the measured breath of a young man shouldering fates too large for his frame. Yet to me, it has been both the blink of a moment and the crawl of endless eons.
And still… I feel it. The stir of something near. Looming. A convergence.
This mortal world—this human realm so brittle, so endlessly burning and rebuilding itself—has always moved toward apexes, moments where the weight of what was collides with the burden of what will be. I know the scent of it. I have lived too long not to recognize destiny when it circles like a starving vulture.
Suho is not ready. Not fully. But he is awakening.
The mana around him no longer resists—it bends. The shadows, once shallow, now deepen when he walks. They ripple. They listen. The instincts of Destruction hum beneath his skin, just beneath the threshold of full control. The System—once inert within him—now pulses like a drumbeat echoing from far beyond the veil. Even I am no longer a whisper, no longer just a memory in the marrow of his being. I can taste his thoughts when he nears the Rift. I can feel his fury when he strikes. And more than once, he has called me forth without understanding the name in his blood.
That name—mine—is changing him.
He has begun to mirror fragments of me, not in form, but in hunger. In solitude. In how he learns to see the world not only as it is, but as it might be once reshaped beneath his hands. It is the same fracture that all Monarchs must endure: to know that power does not isolate you from others, but from yourself. The boy, though surrounded by those who love him, walks as one who suspects the storm will always come for him alone.
He is right.
And yet… unlike me, he does not relish it.
I see Jinwoo's hand in that. The Shadow Monarch who raised Suho tempered him differently. Jinwoo sowed restraint where I would have fostered dominance. He sowed empathy where I would have taught supremacy. It infuriates me sometimes, how much of the old Rulers' idealism lingers in Suho's spirit. He does not revel in conquest. He mourns it. He grieves for enemies. He hesitates where I would have struck.
But that—perhaps—is his greatest strength.
He does not fear what he is becoming.
No, he grieves it.
And in that grief, he will find a strength I never had.