My Living Shadow System Devours To Make Me Stronger

Chapter 797: Chapter 798: The World

Aetherus. What an arrogant name. He was so arrogant he named himself after the world.

Damon decided to voice his thoughts.

“He really named himself after the world. Your brother is a very humble person.”

Lazarak paused and looked at Damon as he stepped over the frozen corpse of a stillborn. He could hear the underlying sarcasm in Damon’s voice.

“I think you misunderstood something. He is not named after the world. The world is him. This planet is not called the world of Aetherus because it belongs to Aetherus. This planet is Aetherus.”

Damon stopped walking. His expression froze. This was the first he’d heard of this.

Aetherus was a name everyone knew. How could they not when it was the name of the very world they lived on.

He turned fully toward Lazarak.

“When you say this world is Aetherus, you are talking about the earth we walk on. The grass. The trees. The air we breathe. Or is this some figure of speech.”

Lazarak shook his head slowly. His calm attitude contrasted the weight of the information he was revealing.

“Before there was light, there was darkness. Before there was war, there was peace. Before there was Aetherus, there was Lazarak.”

He walked forward with a steady rhythm, his fingers lightly brushing the icy wall.

“I was the darkness before the world had light. The foundation that made the world. Aetherus is the first light of this world. He is the world personified.”

He hesitated as if debating whether he should continue. Damon had been generous with his own truths, so Lazarak chose to do the same.

“Did you know that in the past strange gods existed. Old and ancient. They existed long before Doom was born. Long before she created me or my brother.”

His gaze grew distant, as though he was looking far beyond the current age.

“Many years have passed since my brother told me this. It was a time when we were close. When we truly had each other.”

Damon could hear the sadness in Lazarak’s voice. It threaded through every word.

Lazarak continued, ignoring the distant crashing of Matia’s battle with the stillborns.

“There were once ancient entities that existed before concepts even took shape. For every concept, there was an old one who represented it. Each one a personification of an idea. Even idea itself.”

Damon understood what he meant. The old gods. The ones the true gods had destroyed to claim dominion. He stayed quiet. He wanted Lazarak’s version of the story, not the filtered one from the living shadow system.

“They were perfect in a way you and I cannot understand. Perhaps because perfection is not something mortals or anyone was meant to comprehend. All things must be flawed. Perhaps perfection itself was their greatest flaw.”

Damon thought of the unknown god, the imperfect god who was both god and demon. His memories flickered and died the moment he reached that train of thought. It was the thought that had killed him once, and even now some part of him feared reclaiming it, or rather he couldn’t.

The lie of the true gods.

Lazarak did not notice Damon’s inner struggle.

“They were cruel and tyrannical because they were older than concepts like kindness. Each varied in nature, but all had a single truth. Their flawed perfection.”

A contradiction. Yet contradictions were common when dealing with gods. They operated under rules no mortal could grasp.

“However, each was fundamentally important. They were not symbols of concepts. They were the concepts themselves.”

Lazarak’s voice dropped to a faint whisper.

“The old god of death was death personified. The god of time was time. The god of imagination was imagination given form.”

A cold silence followed. Only the echoes of faroff fighting filled the chamber.

“When the god of death was killed, the concept of death ceased to exist. No one could die. When time was destroyed, time itself no longer flowed. When the god of imagination was eviscerated, no one could imagine anything. They were fundamental to the omniverse. They were not just monsters or amoral entities. They were what kept order.”

He could almost hear his brother’s voice as he spoke. The memory softened his tone.

“Gods are integral to order. But gods that could be killed were no true gods. That is why the true gods won. From the ruins of everything, they created the omniverse anew.”

Damon still did not see how this connected to Aetherus. Dead concepts, collapsing realities. What did that have to do with Lazarak’s brother?

Until he remembered something. Something spoken by Nemoriel the day he died in Lysithara. The same question the unknown god had asked.

“What happens when a god dies.” Damon muttered to himself.

Lazarak mistook it for a question.

“The world dies with them.”

A chill crept up Damon’s spine.

Lazarak lowered his head.

“The old ones may not rule anymore, but gods like me and Aetherus exist. We are minor gods. Each world has a minor god who personifies the world and protects it.”

His voice became small.

“So in a sense we are like those old gods. The only difference is that we were given understanding and a heart. Much like mortals. The lesser gods in this world play similar roles but on a smaller scale. Each represents a concept. Rain, trees, earth, fire. Each is important. When they die, their power returns to Aetherus until a new one is born to carry their mantle.”

He glanced at Damon with a small smile.

“Divinity has a hierarchy. And we are part of its rules.”

Damon narrowed his eyes.

“Then what about you? If Aetherus is the god of this world, what role do you play.”

Lazarak bit his lip.

“I am the failsafe. The pawn in case my brother dies. The extra that came first but failed to become the world. A minor god in name only.”

He smiled gently.

“The expendable one if one of us must die.”

Damon looked away.

“What happens if your brother dies first?”