My Living Shadow System Devours To Make Me Stronger

“Then you don’t hate the Unknown God?”

Lilith looked genuinely curious.

Doom looked past her.

Past all of them.

As though she was gazing through countless ages.

“I did for a time. In my youth there was nothing I hated more. Back then he was more of an abstract concept similar to the Old Ones and the Abyss. I toiled relentlessly until I rose to power and when I finally reached his level I looked into the Abyss and learned how pointless my hatred was.”

Her voice became softer.

“The god I hated wasn’t even there. He had not even been born yet.”

As she walked toward Lilith the entire realm reacted.

Broken worlds drifted apart.

Ruins collided.

Fragments of civilizations folded around one another like pieces of a dream rearranging themselves.

“When he eventually was, I met him expecting a great enemy. I wanted to demand retribution. I wanted explanations. Time had dulled even my hatred.”

Lilith frowned.

“What did you find?”

Doom stood still.

For the first time she seemed almost amused.

“What did I find? I found a child who offered me one of his books and told me I had beautiful hair. He shared a cup of tea and told me which passages were his favorite. He did not even know me.”

A strange laugh escaped her.

Not joy.

Not bitterness.

Something between the two.

Damon had a feeling that story was not the conclusion.

It was probably the beginning.

“Let me guess. He grew up to be the asshole we all know right? Did he gain an obsession with you or something?”

Doom was silent for a moment before shaking her head.

“Not quite. He was indifferent for a time. His goals did not interfere with mine. Even then I kept an eye on him knowing what he would become. He was every bit the evil I knew he would become.”

The venom in her voice was unmistakable.

Whatever history existed between them had not ended well.

“No matter. I have a message for you to deliver to him. However I’ll let you say what you want first. I am after all a goddess. Your prayers will be heard at the very least.”

Damon stared at her.

The Goddess of Doom.

The being he had expected to be irrational, hateful and terrifying.

Instead she had been surprisingly reasonable.

The thought slipped out before he could stop it.

“You… are surprisingly reasonable.”

Doom slowly raised her head.

The drifting ruins froze.

The distant lights seemed to brighten.

“Is that right?”

“”Hahah,” she let out a soft laugh that rolled through the broken world like distant thunder pressed deep into collapsing stone, the sound alone making something inside Damon tighten as despair crept in without permission.

Then she turned her head slowly, not hurried, not uncertain, but with the calm precision of something that did not need to acknowledge anything beneath its attention.

“I am not unreasonable, I merely find this to be entertaining. After all, by the end of this, all of you will be dead and your world destroyed.”

When she said that, Damon felt his face fall and his blood run cold, not as a sudden shock, but as a slow acceptance that something had already been decided long before they ever arrived.

This was coming from the very goddess who had created their world, and she spoke about its end as though it was already written into something trivial, something that did not require care or weight.

She truly was doom.

“Yo..you what are you saying we came here to prevent that outcome..” Lilith said in a shaken voice, her words breaking slightly at the edges as she forced them out, as though even speaking against this presence demanded more strength than she had left.

“I am aware, you wish to turn your backs on the one whose name has been lost..that does not matter whether he succeeded or failed, the outcome is the same to him. Your little world being lost is not really worth mentioning.”

Damon felt something tighten further inside him as he listened, because she was not speaking like a conqueror or an enemy, she was speaking like someone describing a detail that carried no emotional weight at all.

Reasonable was not what this was.

She was not judging them, she was placing them outside the space where judgment even mattered.

“We followed Unknown and turned our backs on our world’s patron goddess… I thought maybe you would be different,” Lilith said in a whisper, her voice lowering as the last trace of certainty left it and she stared at the goddess as though still waiting for something human to answer back.

“You just said you went through peril, then you should understand other people’s suffering.”

There was no change in expression, no shift in the overwhelming stillness that pressed against everything around them, only the same absence of response that made her words feel heavier than silence itself.

“I do, I understand, and I see fate is something you seize for yourself. Your problem, young Priestess, is you waited for gods to save you… the gods were indifferent when I was a girl. Now that I am a god, I cannot say your world matters.”

Ashcroft let out a slow laugh that carried no humor, only recognition, as if something long expected had finally been confirmed in front of him.

“I knew it.”

Damon pressed his lip between his teeth and drew a slow breath through his nose, steadying himself, not because he was calm, but because losing control would mean nothing here.

“And when Lazarak rebelled, what were your thoughts then?”

The question left him carefully, measured, as though he was trying to force meaning into a conversation that refused to bend around him.

Something subtle moved through the space at the name, not a visible reaction, but a pressure in the air that made even silence feel heavier.

“He fulfilled his purpose and had a masterful conclusion. As the inheritors of his will, you should be proud.”

“Then you do not think he was weak.” Damon asked, lifting his gaze fully now and holding it there, refusing to look away even though everything inside him warned against it.

“Why would I create a weakling,” she asked, as if the idea itself was insulting rather than possible, and for a moment Damon actually smiled, because at least that answer carried certainty, even if it crushed everything else.

Damon did not get angry, because anger did not have anywhere to stand in front of something like this.

“Then I want to make a deal with you.”

She moved her hand once.

“Denied.”

Damon narrowed his eyes slightly, refusing to let the answer end it there.

“Denied. You didn’t even hear what I have to say.”

She appeared on the edge of a ruined platform without transition, not as movement but as if reality had simply adjusted itself around her presence.

“I did, and the answer remains the same.”

“I do not need your assistance to deal with Unknown. Like I said before, you are only here to pass on a message to him.”

Doom raised her hand slowly, not in preparation, but in finality, as though the decision had already been completed long before any of them spoke.

“You can leave with your lives. After all, if I destroyed you, there would be no one to pass my message.”

Then she lifted her hand fully, and the destructive light dissolved from it like it had never existed, revealing only her fingers against the ruin, delicate in shape but carrying something that made the space around them feel unreal.

On one of her hands was a ring made of material Damon could not recognize.

“Tell your god this. I am a bride.. just not his.”

Before Damon could even form the next thought, the world collapsed inward around them, not violently and not slowly, but completely, as though existence itself had simply decided to close.