CHAPTER 631: 631

Zarvok’s smile did not falter. With a flicker of will, he loosened the binds that chained their strength. Power rushed back into their veins, not as full as before, but enough to remind them who they were.

"Follow me," Zarvok commanded, turning on his heel.

Ikenga’s hand found Keles’s, his voice steady despite the weight pressing on them. "Where to?"

Zarvok glanced back, his expression unreadable. "To behold a sight few across existence are ever granted. And," his smile widened just slightly, "to answer the questions burning in your hearts."

With a snap of his fingers, reality itself shuddered. The air fractured like glass, and the world around them began to peel away.

Their position shifted in an instant. The palace, the streets, the kneeling masses all vanished beneath them as they now stood suspended high in the sky, this abyssal layer expanse stretching far out around them.

Ikenga’s eyes narrowed as he steadied himself against the strange vertigo of being carried by Zarvok’s will alone. His voice cut through the heavy silence.

"What is your plan with Rattan and his people? Why keep them alive?"

Zarvok did not answer at first. His gaze turned outward, into the distance where the abyss bent and churned like a living sea. Then, with the faintest smirk, he lifted a hand and pointed.

"For this."

Ikenga and Keles followed his gesture and their breath caught.

Far in the distance, the River Styx stretched across the horizon. That eternal current, known to thread through every abyssal layer without end, was faltering. What had once been a torrent of endless dark red waters now trickled weakly, its tides receding as if some unseen hand had begun to drain its lifeblood.

The Mother of All Demons, source of their endless birthright was withering.

Ikenga’s chest tightened. He knew what this meant. He connected the pieces at once: Rattan’s imprisonment, the silence of the demons, Zarvok’s hesitation when told of the mages’ last desperate plan. His eyes flicked back to Zarvok, who was already watching him, and nodded as though he had read the thoughts directly.

"Now you understand," Zarvok said calmly, his voice carrying the weight of inevitability. "When you spoke of the mages’ final stratagem, my silence was not hesitation, but foresight. I already knew what awaited us."

With his omnipresence spread through this layer, Zarvok had seen it all: the Styx shrinking, drying, vanishing tide by tide.

"Once an abyssal layer is claimed by a Demon Lord," Zarvok continued, his tone now edged with both gravity and pride, "this is the price. The river recedes. The Mother turns her gaze elsewhere. The strength and privileges once gifted to us are stripped away. No more tides of demons, no more unending spawn to hurl at our enemies."

He lowered his hand, eyes burning faintly as he turned to them both.

"A Demon Lord bereft of the river must forge his own army. He must build his own power with his own hands. Otherwise his path ends here."

For a long moment, silence hung heavy in the abyssal sky. The Styx dwindled in the distance, its waters slipping away like sand between fingers. Below, an empire teetered on the brink, and above, Zarvok’s smile returned small, sharp, and utterly certain.

"This is why, at the final moment of the battle, I began to care for losses," Zarvok said, his tone almost casual but edged with calculation. "Especially when third-stage demons and above began to die."

He pointed outward toward the vast new land now seamlessly absorbed into the abyss, its mountains and plains stitched into place as though they had never belonged elsewhere. His smile widened.

"You should already know where I am going with this. These lands, these people... they will become my new army. They will be remade a host that will follow me into conquest, to expand both their growth and mine."

Keles’s voice was steady, but her eyes narrowed with sharp suspicion. "And what of Rattan? What is his purpose in all this?"

Zarvok’s gaze drifted downward, toward the palace that glimmered like an obsidian heart amid the abyss. His words came measured, heavy with intent.

"Rattan is the key. He is their emperor, their leader. Their obedience to him is the stepping stone to their obedience to me. Once he has played his role, he will not be discarded. He will take up a new one. For he is a king" Zarvok’s eyes sharpened, a cruel glint in them "and a king will serve his Demon Lord."

Ikenga shook his head slowly, disbelief tugging at his features. "This... this is not what I expected a Demon Lord to be."

The words seemed to amuse Zarvok more than they offended. With a sharp snap of his fingers, reality twisted once more.

Their feet now touched polished obsidian floors, cold and gleaming. Above them rose a vast hall of impossible design, its pillars carved from shadows that seemed to breathe, its walls whispering faint echoes of things never spoken aloud. They were in Zarvok’s palace.

Zarvok turned, his white-suited figure stark against the abyssal throne behind him. "Tell me, then" his voice softened, but carried the weight of inevitability "what did you have in mind?"

Ikenga shrugged, though the gesture carried more weariness than defiance. "Nothing, really. But it was not this."

"Well then," Zarvok said, his playful veneer peeling away as his true posture returned sharp, commanding, absolute. "Let me educate you on what a Demon Lord is."

His voice no longer carried the teasing lilt it had moments before. Each word rang through the hall as he spoke.

"As Origin Gods, the term world consciousness should be nothing new to you."

Ikenga and Keles exchanged a glance before giving a slow, silent nod.

"Good," Zarvok continued. "Then understand this: a Demon Lord is something... similar. An existence bound to a layer, its voice, its command, its sole will. But unlike a world consciousness. static, impartial, tethered, I hold freedom. This abyss layer does not merely exist; it bends, it shapes, it obeys. I am its pulse, its mind, its authority."

He spread his hand, and as if to prove his point, the obsidian floor rippled outward like water. Pillars shifted shape, walls bent and unbent, and then all snapped back into place as if nothing had moved at all.

"Here, mountains may rise at a whim. Seas can swell or vanish in the span of a thought. Entire landscapes may shift at my leisure. And because of the difference between us" his gaze locked on them, unblinking "I can with a mere impulse deny you access to your power so long as you remain within my abyss. You are not guests here, Ikenga, Keles. You are within me."

A silence settled, thick and crushing.

Zarvok’s smile did not return. "And like the layer itself, I grow. But not as I once did, niether through faith or worship, nor as mortals do, through struggle and time. I grow by conquering. By swallowing worlds. Every land absorbed becomes part of me, every soul reshaped into my army, every root and stone bound into this abyss. That is the law of a Demon Lord."

He turned then, his eyes distant, almost reverent as he recalled something older than himself.

"I told you before," he murmured, "of a being whose abyss layer stretched to the size of a universe. Entire star systems devoured, worlds upon worlds swallowed into its endless fold. They began as I do now. Small. Bound to one layer. Stripped of privilege. Forced to craft their strength by hand. Before becoming what they are, they too stood where I stand now."

His gaze snapped back to Ikenga and Keles, hard and ambitious.

"And now, I begin my ascent."

"Why go through all this?" Ikenga asked, his tone sharpened by disbelief. "As long as you remain here, in this layer your realm, you are unstoppable. No one could lay a hand on you."

Zarvok shook his head slowly, almost pitying. "No. That won’t do. That would be nothing more than building my own prison and locking myself inside it. A gilded cage, perhaps, but a cage nonetheless."

He stepped closer, his voice dropping lower, heavier. "You know little of the true cosmos, Ikenga. As a Demon Lord, I not only lost the endless tide of the River Styx, but also the abyss’s protection itself. If a higher being desires this realm, if they have cause to take it, then all they need do is sever the space between this layer and the abyss. And then I am left... naked. Exposed. A sovereign cut loose, with nothing shielding me but the strength I can muster for myself."

The air in the hall seemed to darken, as though his words alone bent the atmosphere around them and fluctuated with his mood.

"So while I may seem strong now, while I may appear to hold absolute dominion, power without force to defend it is an illusion. To keep this throne, I must forge strength. To grow, I must conquer. Anything less, and all I have built will be swallowed by another."