Ascendant of Shadows: The Monarch and The Eminence

The pulse of void energy was not a silent thing. It was a wave of pure anti-sound, a psychic scream that washed over the entire kingdom. Normal citizens felt it as a sudden, crippling wave of vertigo and despair. Mages clutched their heads as the mana in their bodies recoiled violently. Knights felt the strength drain from their limbs. It was an aura of absolute negation, and it announced the arrival of a power far beyond the scope of this world.

In his dorm room, Sung Jin-woo was already cloaked in his Monarch's aura, a shroud of deep violet energy that nullified the Weaver's oppressive presence. The shadows in the room writhed and deepened, his true nature beginning to bleed through into reality.

Cid stood beside him, no longer the goofy student but the Eminence in Shadow. His own power, a bottomless abyss of pure will, rose to meet the challenge, the air around him distorting as if reality itself was afraid to touch him.

"Grand Weaver..." Cid murmured, the name he had flippantly invented now tasting like ash in his mouth. He felt a strange, unprecedented sensation: a genuine, honest-to-gods thrill that was not born from his own chuunibyou delusions, but from a legitimate, palpable threat. This was real.

"It's tearing a permanent Gate," Jin-woo stated, his eyes fixed on the distant northern horizon, where the sky was beginning to crack like black glass. "It's not just visiting. It's moving in."

Without another word, both of them dissolved. Jin-woo melted into a pool of shadow on the floor. Cid became one with the darkness of the room. They were gone, their journey to the battlefield instantaneous.

The northern forest was a hellscape. The area of grey, lifeless decay had expanded tenfold. In its center, a stable, swirling vortex of pure nothingness, a perfect circle of anti-existence, had formed. It was a permanent wound in the world.

And from it, a figure was emerging.

It was not a mindless beast like the Void Hounds. It was humanoid, tall and unnervingly slender. Its body was composed of a shimmering, oily black substance that seemed to absorb all light, and it wore what looked like a fractured porcelain mask for a face, with dozens of spider-like cracks radiating from a single, unblinking red eye in its center. It had four long, graceful arms, and with every gesture, it seemed to conduct an invisible, silent orchestra of annihilation. This was the Grand Weaver.

Surrounding the area was the entirety of Shadow Garden. The Seven Shades stood at the forefront, their faces grim. Alpha had her blade drawn, but she hadn't given the order to attack. She knew, with chilling certainty, that it would be suicide.

"What is that thing?" Epsilon whispered, her usual confidence shaken. "The pressure... it's making my slime suit unstable."

"It's... singing," Beta murmured, her eyes wide with a strange terror. "There's no sound, but I can... feel it. A song about everything ending."

The Grand Weaver turned its single red eye upon them. It raised one of its four hands and simply... plucked a string in the air.

TWANG.

A visible black vibration shot out. It wasn't aimed at anyone. It struck a massive, ancient oak tree at the edge of the clearing. The tree didn't explode or burn. It simply ceased to be. One moment it was there, the next, it was gone, leaving a perfect, tree-shaped hole in reality that was slowly filled by the surrounding air. The tree's story had been plucked from the tapestry of existence.

The members of Shadow Garden felt a collective shiver of pure dread. How do you fight something that can unmake you with a gesture?

It was then that two figures appeared, materializing from the shadows on either side of the Weaver, flanking it.

On one side, the Shadow Monarch, his form wreathed in a storm of purple-black energy, his glowing eyes burning with cold fury.

On the other, the Eminence in Shadow, his liquid-dark coat swirling around him, his presence an absolute void of untapped potential.

"Lord Shadow!"

"Monarch-nim!"

The cries of relief from Shadow Garden and Jin-woo's hidden shadow soldiers were simultaneous.

The Grand Weaver slowly turned its masked head, its single red eye flicking from Jin-woo to Cid. The silent, maddening song it was "singing" faltered for a fraction of a second. It recognized them. The two great flames. The primary targets.

Its other three hands began to move, plucking and strumming at the fabric of reality itself. Its silent aria began a new movement: a crescendo of destruction aimed directly at the trio.

"Shadow Garden, fall back!" Alpha commanded, her voice sharp. "This is a battle beyond our station! We will provide support from a distance!" She knew their role had changed from combatants to spectators.

The Weaver strummed a chord. The very ground beneath Jin-woo and Cid dissolved, turning into a pit of non-existence.

But they were no longer there. They floated in the air, held aloft by their own immense power.

"It erases concepts," Jin-woo noted, his voice calm and analytical, relayed mentally to Cid. "A dangerous ability."

Cid didn't respond with words. He acted. He drew his slime sword, the blade a perfect, light-devouring black. He poured an immense amount of his will into it, not to create an explosion, but to create a concept of his own. The concept of "a blade that can cut anything."

"Shadow Blade: Severance," he whispered.

He slashed horizontally. The attack was not a beam or a wave of energy. It was a line. A perfect, razor-thin cut appeared in the space between him and the Weaver. It was a cut in reality itself.

The Weaver, in turn, plucked a string, sending a wave of annihilation to meet the attack.

When the two forces met, the world went white. Not a bright, explosive white, but a blank, sterile white. The color of a blank page. Concept met anti-concept. For a moment, nothing existed in that space.

From the safe perimeter, the Shades were thrown back by the sheer force of the metaphysical collision.

"What was that?!" Delta shouted, digging her claws into the ground to keep from flying away.

"They... they cancelled each other out!" Beta gasped. "Lord Shadow's attack and the enemy's power... they erased each other!"

Jin-woo used the opening.

"Arise," he commanded.

But he did not summon his normal soldiers. This foe was too dangerous for them. He reached back, deep into the annals of his power, to the very foundation of his throne. He summoned the original Shadow Army. The true one.

From the ground, which was now reasserting its existence, two figures rose. A massive, hulking dragon made of pure, solidified darkness, its scales shifting and roiling. It was the corpse of the Dragon Monarch, Antares. And beside it, a figure cloaked in white, radiating an aura of chilling frost—the original Monarch of Frost.

He had summoned the shadows of his former enemies. The ultimate tribute. The ultimate weapon.

The Grand Weaver's head snapped towards the two new apparitions. The pressure they radiated was immense, familiar. The silent song in its mind hit a discordant, almost panicked note.

"Go," Jin-woo ordered.

The Shadow Frost Monarch raised its hands, and the very air began to freeze, not with ice, but with the cold of the void. It was a cold that slowed time itself. At the same moment, the Shadow Dragon Monarch unleashed a torrent of pure destructive breath, a recreation of the very power that could destroy worlds.

The Grand Weaver was forced onto the defensive for the first time. It strummed its reality-strings in a frantic, defensive melody, erecting shimmering black barriers that shattered, one by one, under the combined assault of two former Monarchs.

While the Weaver was occupied, Cid made his move. He vanished, his speed not a blur but a complete cessation of presence, and reappeared directly behind the Weaver. He had learned from its first attack. You don't destroy it. You overwhelm its story with a better one.

He raised his hand, no sword this time. His palm began to glow with that familiar, terrifyingly dense purple-black energy.

"A story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end," Shadow declared, his voice resonating with absolute power. "Your song... is monotonous. Allow me to provide a climax."

He was preparing his ultimate attack. I Am Atomic.

But this time, he wasn't compressing it into a beam. He was letting it build, letting its narrative weight, its conceptual power, grow to an unbearable level. He was going to overwrite the Weaver's entire existence with a single, cataclysmic explosion.

Jin-woo saw what he was doing. The sheer, unrestrained energy Cid was gathering would not just destroy the Weaver; it would annihilate half the continent. It was overkill on a suicidal scale.

"Don't!" Jin-woo projected. "You'll destroy the planet!"

The Grand Weaver, sensing the terrifying buildup behind it, let out a piercing psychic shriek and unleashed a final, desperate pulse of power, blasting the two shadow Monarchs back. It turned, all four of its arms now aimed at Cid, ready to pluck the string that would end his story before he could finish his attack.

It was the ultimate standoff. A being that could erase existence versus a being that could become an existence-ending explosion.

And Sung Jin-woo was caught in the middle.

He made a choice. He couldn't let either of them fire. He raised his hands.

"Domain of the Monarch."

The world dissolved. The forest, the sky, the Weaver, Cid, the Shadow Garden—all of it was dragged into his personal dimension. A vast, empty world of black ground and a purple sky, filled with the silent, watchful eyes of his entire, million-strong army.

He had moved the battlefield into his own territory, where he controlled the rules.

The Grand Weaver faltered, its connection to the physical world severed. Cid's "I Am Atomic" fizzled, its energy finding nothing to ignite against in this artificial world.

They all stood in the silent, empty plains of the Shadow Monarch's domain.

Jin-woo floated between them, his eyes blazing with sovereign power.

"My world. My rules," he declared. "Now... let's finish this."