The universe is vast, and the world’s ceiling reaches heights human minds can’t grasp.
There are countless secrets and hidden things ...phenomena that defy understanding ..scattered everywhere. Perhaps one of the darkest corners of creation is that bleak, desolate place with a blood-red sky and naked, barren ground:
Helmond .. the land of demons, where the Demon King, Agaroth, presently resides.
Helmond was a colossal planet, its mass dwarfing Earth’s by at least dozens of times. A world the size of a star .. that’s how Helmond was often described. And yet, despite its immensity, most of it lay empty and still, drained long ago.
Demons feed on life force. Aside from the strongest seats, who can persist without much of it, the weak desperately need to consume it. That hunger turned them into conquerors ..raiders of one world after another ..dragging death behind them wherever they went.
They are a long-lived race, multiplying quickly and in great numbers. They do not invade a single planet, but hundreds at a time. They reached even Earth, set out on the edge of the cosmos.
Because of their constant campaigns, their home world was often left vacant. Yet one place on Helmond never slept. One place was always awake.
Black ground, and upon it a city whose walls were forged of some sable metal—like an impregnable citadel raised to withstand anything an intruder could hurl at it. A fortress from another world. Encircling that fortress... a gigantic, impossible creature like a centipede of unimaginable length, so vast it girdled the entire city, coiling around it from every side.
And at the very center, spearing the clouds and threatening to rip the sky itself:
Tower of the End .. the place that housed the strongest being in existence.
The tower held 132 floors, and each floor told a story different from the last. Those tales will be told in time. Today, every gaze turned to the 129th floor ..one of the most important floors of all, and one that sits empty most of the time.
It remains unused because it exists for a single purpose: councils convened by the higher seats .. the mightiest of the demons. On rare occasions, the King himself attends, though he has not done so in ages.
Today was special.
From within those iron walls came the heavy footfalls of a particular figure—a nightmare made flesh. A demon over two meters tall, older than any of his peers. Ash-gray hair.
Eyes a deep, sinister red. Skin wrinkled, sagging, studded with repulsive growths that few could bear to look at for long. He wore a long black robe, and every step rolled out waves of pressure that stamped his presence onto the hall.
Moments later he reached the place set aside for the convocation he had been summoned to attend.
Others had arrived before him.
From the center of the chamber, a voice greeted him .. the voice of one who presided here.
"The Fifth Seat ... Lord Marvas , has arrived."
The old demon was none other than the Fifth Seat, Marvas.. the eldest among all the higher seats.
Marvas’s eyes swept the hall. It was exactly as he had left it. A vast chamber lit only by sparse candles set in scattered sconces, leaving the faces of the gathered scarcely visible. The single pool of full light fell upon the figure who had announced him: another demon in simple garments of black and gray, hair the color of flame, face hidden behind a strange mask.
"Amon," Marvas spat, naming the demon before him.
"Welcome, Lord Marvas. Please take the place prepared for you. The Nightmare will begin shortly," Amon said.
Marvas took a few beats to study the chamber, measuring who had come—and who had not. The one he sought was absent.
"Has Wesker not arrived?" he asked.
"None of the top four seats have come yet," Amon replied. "At present, you are the highest seat in attendance."
"I see," Marvas muttered, then moved to the chair set aside for him.
The seats circled a great throne erected at the most prominent point in the hall .. the throne on which Agaroth would sit if he chose to appear. The nearer a seat’s rank to the King, the closer their place was to that throne. As Fifth, Marvas’s station was relatively close compared to most.
Settling into his place, he scanned the gathering again.
This convocation was called the Nightmare. Amon .. the Host of the Nightmare .. was ranked Eleventh among the higher seats. He was not one of the top ten, yet he had a weight and presence that even those above him observed with respect, abiding by his direction in these rites.
From what Marvas could tell, most of the high ranks from his place down to the Fifteenth Seat were present. Fifteenth was the minimum rank permitted to attend the Nightmare. Those below it were deemed unworthy; they would receive only a summary later from their betters.
"Well now... isn’t this the old Marvas," a sultry voice teased from his right.
He turned toward a nearby seat and found a woman of unsettling charm lounging there .. an elegant black dress embroidered with thorned red roses, a decorated hat set above fiery red hair.
"Izalith" he said.
The Seventh Seat .. bearer of the King’s Blood-Soul, and the strongest sorceress among the demons. She was the very mentor from whom Beatrice had learned all she knew of magic .. an affinity made plain by the many similarities between them.
Marvas was plainly displeased to speak with her; she stood on Wesker’s side, not his.
"No need for all that hostility, old man... You haven’t changed, even after all these years."
"I’ve nothing to say to you except that I’m surprised to see you here. The war against the ghouls is still underway."
"That’s true—but I can’t stay away and miss a Nightmare."
Izalith’s smile deepened. "It’s the first time the First Seat himself has called for the convocation."
The Nightmare is a rite only one of the top five seats .. or the King can convene. This was the first time Crimson had done so.
The First Seat’s summons was weighty enough that Izalith left the ghoul-front—where Number Three of the Seven Great Powers was present—and came immediately, just to attend.
"You’re the oldest among us, Marvas, and the most seasoned. Why do you think the First Upper would call this meeting?"
Marvas closed his eyes. "I’ve no idea. Crimson hasn’t stirred from his place since the King withdrew from the world."
It was the first movement from the First Seat after a long dormancy.
"Perhaps he means to address the Sixth Seat’s disgraceful defeat. Your faction brought us shame," Marvas said, opening fire at Izalith and Wesker’s black faction.
The blood-witch was unmoved. "You can’t fault him. His opponent was Number Two of the Seven Great Powers—the Lord of Light himself."
They were speaking of an incident on the planet Londor, where the Sixth Seat, the Lord of Graves .. Asmodeus faced the Lord of Light, Orsted, who appeared from nowhere. Their battle was catastrophic, and Asmodeus could not escape Orsted. Though the demon bore Agaroth’s Death-Soul, it wasn’t enough to overcome the Lord of Light.
It happened around the time Frey traveled to Londor and first uncovered the truth of Nameless. And though Asmodeus’s body was annihilated, he did not die; he survived by invoking the Death-Souls power at the very end, forcing fate to spare him.
He had since returned in another vessel, but his strength had fallen sharply, and recovery would take a long time. In his current state he was far weaker than the other top ten seats.
"Asmodeus’s defeat is no small matter," Marvas allowed, "but I doubt the First Seat would summon us all for that alone."
Crimson didn’t care much for such affairs; Agaroth was all that concerned him.
"Perhaps it concerns the King," Marvas said.
Izalith fell silent .. she didn’t deny it. If so... what had happened with the King to make the First call them all?
As the two spoke, Amon’s voice rose again from the center of the hall.
"The Third Seat has arrived—Lady Vain."
At the sound of her name, the chamber fell still again. The very air grew darker .. an aftereffect of the bearer of the King’s Shadow entering.
A demoness with violet hair, pallid skin, and four horns crowning her head .. Vain glided in without acknowledging anyone, not even Amon, and took her seat without ceremony. She did not so much as glance at Marvas, which pricked his pride. Izalith noted it clearly: though Marvas masked his expression well, her witch’s eyes saw much.
"Vain has always done whatever she pleases," Izalith murmured. "No need to take her too hard."
"She can do as she likes. I’ve no interest in a filthy beast like her."
"Oh? Because of how much she resembles Wesker, perhaps?"
A faint change crossed Marvas’s face, and Izalith laughed softly .. she’d struck the truth. Wesker and Vain were very alike, because they were siblings; Wesker was the younger.
The blood-witch kept trading words with Marvas despite their opposing camps. He never outright rejected her. Among demons, Izalith was one of the few he respected .. she was the most active on the battlefield, and had led the legions to many victories. Marvas favored her kind, and had regretted greatly when she chose to side with Wesker.
"Let me tell you something juicy, Marvas—about our friend Vain," Izalith said, hopping playfully from her Seventh Seat to Asmodeus’s empty Sixth, just to sit beside him. She leaned close and whispered in the old demon’s ear:
"I hear Vain faced an opponent who frightened her so badly she fled—and shut herself away for months."
Marvas’s brows knit. An opponent that would make the Third Seat run? She who once crossed blades with Orsted as an equal?
"What nonsense are you spouting?"
Only Number One of the Seven Great Powers .. Midir could kill her for certain, and even he shouldn’t have sent her running. The other possibility was the inscrutable Great Ones... but they rarely meddled in worldly affairs. Marvas couldn’t place the foe Izalith meant.
She didn’t know for certain either—but she had a very strong suspicion. In a voice gone heavy, she named him:
"It was... Nameless."
The name nearly jolted Marvas from his seat. He could scarcely believe it.