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.
———