Chapter 1823: New Prey

Published Mar 17, 2026, 08:43 AM

Chapter 1823: New Prey At the beginning of his transmigration into a mortal body in Trion and escaping the Nexus for the first time as a mortal, Rowan was deeply aware that the most excellent tool of his enemies was deception. They had to be deceptive, else their true form would be recognized by all, and they would not be able to hunt. Like wolves in sheep’s clothing, they had to hide in order to feed. Something horrible happened in the past that transformed existence into a realm of horror and damnation. The gods that lived above the mortals were no longer the source of enlightenment or hope; instead, they were the butchers. Rowan had come to understand this after countless losses and sorrows, the death of his children, and the many joys he had lost along the way. He had to become a monster, think like a predator, become a butcher so he could make all that was wrong in this world to become right. Death, the Beast of Final Rest, was a deeply complicated being, but Rowan did not need to know everything about this entity to be able to understand how it worked. Rowan looked for patterns, tiny details that did not add up, and he noted them down. From those patterns, he built multiple profiles. These profiles were hypotheses that needed to be confirmed to judge their efficacy. Rowan had three categories he used to separate the people in his life. The first were his children and friends; to those, he did not evaluate them like objects, and he allowed them the freedom to express themselves and be who they could be without any judgment or interference from his part. The second were his enemies. These were the ones he had seen through their mask, or was still investigating the sort of monster they were underneath the facade. To these categories of individuals, he did not treat with any sort of compassion, only a cold understanding that they were monsters that deserved everything bad he would be dishing up. The last category was everyone else... he did not necessarily care about them, and so he would not go out of his way to make their lives better or worse. Like ants under his boots, their welfare was only of concern to him if he needed something from them. This attitude was wrong, but only in a society guided by laws and justice, in a realm under the curse of the Primordials, mercy for everyone else was the ultimate path to destruction, because his enemies would take advantage of his heart. Although he was aware of this, it did not stop Primordial Memory from taking advantage of him using his heart. Using the Gilded Maw Spell, the Primordials had laid a trap inside Rowan’s most beloved children, forcing him towards Death and his drastic evolution. The effect of that decision by the Primordials is still being felt to this day. Andar, Maeve, Lost, Eva, his Angels... so many were gone or changed. If there were no Gilded Maw Spell, then Rowan would most likely still be at the sixth-dimensional level. He had previously planned to remain in this level for at least a million years while he slowly raised his children to the peak of the eighth dimension. The majority of the Primordials inside of Reality would still be alive, and their dance would have continued for a long time as they slowly discover and take themselves apart in a slow orgy of violence and fury. He would have never met the Beast of Final Rest until much later in his life, and his evolution might have become something extremely different. Rowan was not surprised by this move from Primordial Memory and Primordial Light; they had tried it once before and had succeeded in ways they could not have imagined. He dealt with existence using three lenses: his children and friends, his enemies, and then everyone else. The first move by the Primordials had eradicated his children and friends. Trion was gone, his mother and sons were dead, his Angels destroyed. To the Primordials, all attachments of Rowan that held a flavor of his love had been slaughtered. So, the first lens had been destroyed, and just as Rowan had imagined, the Primordials were going after the second lens... everyone else. Rowan was not surprised at the move from the Primordials. He had proven to them that in a direct confrontation, none of them was his match. He had deliberately led them to this passage where they had to bring out all their big guns, else the only path left to them was death. There was nothing stopping Rowan from actively hunting down all the Primordials immediately after he killed Demon and Time, and the only reason there were any Primordials left was solely because Rowan knew that the game extended far beyond this Reality, and killing all the Primordials quickly would be exposing his hand. From the moment he killed Primordial Soul, the board had shifted. The Primordials were not yet aware, or perhaps they were denying it, but they were no longer Rowan’s enemies; they had become pieces on his board. Rowan was always getting stronger and wiser, and killing the first Primordial was a signal that he had exceeded their control and was now becoming something they could not understand. The Fate and Destiny of primordial life were already in his palm, and Light and Memory were not far off; he was only giving these Primordials the façade that they still had an element of control. All because the game had changed. Outside Reality were the true bodies of the Primordials, with strength that he could not yet quantify, and there were other ninth-dimensional entities like other Realities, and then there was Death, who Rowan suspected may faintly exceed the ninth-dimensional level. Rowan did not yet include Enoch on this list; he suspected that this was an enemy that had long surpassed any list. And so, from the moment the Primordials were no longer considered a threat to Rowan, at least the ones inside of Reality, his gaze naturally turned to the entity whose interference in this matter was suspicious. And so he asked himself the first question, when he was killed by the Gilded Maw Spell and his soul sent to the Bleak Gates, where he encountered Death, was that a coincidence?

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