"Hmm..."
With a deep frown, the Demon King stared at the writhing form of Wesker before him.
The faint trace of amusement on his lips soon vanished.
At first, Wesker had only screamed ..
but then, silence fell. His body began to convulse violently, trembling in ways that defied anatomy.
Blood erupted from the third eye on his forehead, streaming down his face.
The Fourth Seat had reached the edge of his sanity.
"Even you... the strongest among them in mental fortitude ..
still, you break so easily."
Wesker had fallen into this state after Agaroth nullified all his world-breaking absolutes, stripping himself bare of protection.
That act had allowed Wesker’s King’s Eye to glimpse the Demon King’s destiny ..
a sight never meant for mortal or immortal minds alike.
Agaroth had been curious about his own fate; that was why he’d given Wesker the King’s Eye in the first place.
But it seemed destiny had decided that his own future would forever remain unseen.
When the Fourth Seat’s mind began to collapse, Agaroth ended the process.
He reactivated his internal barriers, cutting off Wesker’s sight into the impossible.
The moment he did, Wesker dropped limply to his knees .. broken, but alive.
Agaroth glanced at him once more, then turned away, disinterested.
A ripple of black aura smoke burst from behind him as he walked off, leaving Wesker sprawled in a pool of black blood seeping endlessly from his ruined eye.
---
As the Demon King wandered through the towering corridors of his vast citadel ..
the monument built solely for him ..
he found himself lost in thought.
Casually, he raised his hand, then clenched it into a fist.
The very air around him shattered.
An immense surge of aura split the void, twisting the air into rippling waves of distortion.
All that, from a single motion of his hand.
It was said that a single punch from Agaroth, charged with aura,
was equivalent to a strike delivered by a world-breaking ability itself.
Only Nameless, with his Black Hole Aura, had ever surpassed Agaroth’s natural control over aura.
Yet the King’s danger went far beyond that ..
for he could wield multiple world-breaking powers, and even fuse them together.
"Strange..." he murmured.
"With all this power, I still cannot perceive my own fate."
Agaroth .. the Demon King.
The Devourer of All.
So many names, yet all carried the same meaning.
His eyes could see everything .. every life, every future, every possibility.
There was no existence that could escape his sight.
He could gaze into the destiny of all beings with a single glance.
And yet, ironically...
he could not see his own.
The soul of the Demon King was something alien .. veiled in absolute darkness.
No one had ever been able to peer through it.
Those who tried lost their minds .. just as Wesker had.
Even Agaroth himself had tried once... and failed.
When he looked within, he saw nothing but endless, impenetrable shadow.
Even he .. the mightiest of all ... had lost to himself in that moment.
"He was the only one," Agaroth whispered,
"the only one who ever saw through that darkness."
His gaze unfocused as ancient memories resurfaced ...
echoes from a time long before he became what he was.
---
Somewhere, in a forgotten era of the vast world...
There stood a large house, its structure resembling that of humankind’s old, pre-industrial age ..
like something taken straight from a Victorian era long lost to time.
Within that house lived many strange beings ..
creatures who had chosen to take human form.
There were girls and boys,
running up and down its halls,
laughing and chasing after a man who visited them often.
That man...
was a memory ..
a heavy one that refused to fade.
As those echoes of laughter and footsteps rang faintly in his mind,
Agaroth arrived at the 131st floor of his tower ..
a place known only to himself and Crimson.
He opened the door and stepped into a room unlike any other in the dark citadel.
Unlike the rest of the oppressive fortress, this chamber was beautifully crafted ..
its floor carpeted in crimson rugs, its walls adorned with ornate golden patterns,
furnished in the same Victorian style of the memories haunting his thoughts.
And there, in the center, behind curtains of white silk, sat a woman on a throne-like chair.
Her eyes were closed, dark shadows blooming beneath them.
Her crimson hair hung loose and wild,
and from within her body extended thousands of glowing red threads,
snaking across the floor, pulsing faintly with light ..
each one feeding into the ground, draining something from her.
Around her fluttered red butterflies .. silent, ghostly, fading in and out of existence.
Agaroth stared at her quietly,
and in his mind, he could almost hear the echo of that old voice ..
the voice of the man who once called out to the children of that house:
"Lia... Seth... Frey... Audrey... Arlecchino..."
"And you, Agaroth."
The woman before him was none other than the Legendary Vessel .. Audrey.
The girl he had kept close to him for ages.
Audrey possessed a world-breaking ability known as the Infinite Core ..
a power that granted her an endless reservoir of aura.
Her energy was limitless ..
an infinite source of life-force, unmatched by any being in existence.
Because of that, Agaroth had turned her into a living reactor,
feeding endless vitality into the demonic race,
replacing the life they could no longer steal after they ceased their invasions of other worlds.
And so she had remained there ..
bound, drained, and tormented in silence for countless years.
No one visited her... except Agaroth himself.
He approached her now, his monstrous presence looming over her still form.
Her eyelids remained tightly shut,
but she was awake .. conscious of everything.
The pain she endured was too sharp to allow her the mercy of unconsciousness.
It wasn’t her aura being drained anymore ..
it was her soul.
Decades ..centuries had broken her beyond repair.
She could no longer move.
She could only sit there, trembling, while his tainted hand brushed against her tangled hair.
"You’re in pain... aren’t you?"
The Demon King’s smile deepened.
"I’m sorry.
It’s been so long since I’ve felt pain myself...
I doubt I can truly understand yours."
He wiped the blood from her face with a slow, almost gentle touch,
then stepped back, his expression turning faintly distant.
"I don’t even know why I came here," he murmured.
"The memories must have led me here... without my realizing it."
And as his words echoed softly in the chamber,
Agaroth—the Devourer of All—
stood before the woman whose existence connected him to a past even he could no longer fully remember.
"Do you hate me, I wonder?"
"Because I’m the one who killed him?"
"Because I’m the one who ended his life?"
Agaroth’s voice was quiet, almost curious—then he let out a soft laugh.
"But he never truly died. He’s right here."