DK Monarch Vildred

Vildred awoke in darkness. Not the darkness of shadow—but the absence of existence. A barren, lifeless dimension beyond Orbis’ design. No sky. No stars. Only an endless abyss pulsing faintly with crimson veins of energy. There, suspended between life and death, his body remained intact—but empty. His soul flickered, fractured by the loss of the Archdemon’s power. He had failed. He had hesitated. And that weakness had killed him. Then, from the void, a presence emerged. Ancient. Patient. Amused. A voice echoed across the nothingness. “Cast aside by your world… even after carrying its ruin upon your shoulders.” Before him manifested Astaroth, a primordial demon lord who existed outside the authority of Orbis’ gods—a being who fed not on chaos but on broken conviction. Astaroth had watched the battle. Watched the hesitation. Watched the fall. “You were not defeated by strength, Vildred. You were defeated by hope.” The demon offered him something different from the Archdemon’s power. Not corruption. Not possession. Sovereignty. A pact. Unlike the Archdemon, Astaroth did not seek control. He sought partnership—an embodiment in Orbis. In exchange for anchoring Astaroth’s essence into the mortal plane, Vildred would gain power beyond the cycle of the Goddess, beyond the Archdemon’s remnants. Power that did not depend on Orbis’ design. Vildred did not hesitate this time. His heart—once the vessel of borrowed destruction—was replaced with a crystallized core of abyssal energy forged by Astaroth himself. Wings reformed—skeletal, vast, sovereign. His body reshaped, stronger than before, no longer reliant on stolen divinity. He did not return as a pawn of ruin. He returned as a Demon Lord chosen by the abyss itself.