He woke to darkness.
Not the darkness of a room without light. The darkness of a world without existence.
For a long time—or no time at all—he simply floated.
No body.
No throne.
No crown of antlers branching into the gray.
Just awareness, suspended in a place with nothing else
Then the memories returned.
Not in order. Not gently. They tore through him like claws, each one a fresh wound.
The silver dart. The boy with the glasses. The moment his immortality failed and his kingdom crumbled into light.
He had died.
Or should have.
But death, he was learning, was not an ending. Not for things like him. Not for worlds like his.
The Time Patrol called it "correction."
He learned that later, from the whispers that drifted through the void. They corrected timelines. Erased paradoxes. Pruned branches that grew the wrong way.
And when they corrected a world, they didn't destroy it.
They simply cut the connection.
The world kept existing. Or at least, he did.
But without the anchor of the main timeline, it drifted. Lost. Unmoored. Falling into the space between spaces.
The Plane of Unlawfuls.
He had not known it at the time,but he does now.
That was what the whispers called it. A graveyard of corrected timelines. A place where the laws of physics were almost impossible to dictate and the only constant was the slow, grinding collapse of everything that had ever been real.
Demaon had been floating in that graveyard for centuries.
Or hours.
There were no memories or thoughts he could recall onto to measure the time. For there was no time. Or there was. But one thing for sure...
Time didn't work the same here.
His body reformed slowly. First the antlers, branching into nothing. Then the face, shifting between features that never quite settled.
Then the throne, solidifying under him because he willed it and the void had no choice but to obey.
He opened his eyes.
The gray was endless. But now he could see the shapes within it—fragments of dead worlds.
A castle that had no foundation.
A forest that had no Vegetation.
An ocean that had no water, only the purple ugly slime getting slowly churned into themselves.
And people.
Thousands of them. Millions. Stranded souls from timelines that no longer existed, wandering the gray with no memory of who they had been.
He watched them for a long time.
Then he laughed.
Because it was perfect.
The heroes thought they had won. The Time Patrol thought they had restored order. But all they had done was create a dumping ground for everything they couldn't control.
And he was very, very good at controlling things.
He built his kingdom from the wreckage.
The gray bent to his will. Not at once,it took time..but there was no shortage of time.
The fragments of dead worlds became walls, towers, a throne room that stretched toward a sky that wasn't there.
The wandering souls became soldiers, servants, worshipers.
They didn't remember their names. He gave them new ones.
They didn't remember their purpose. He gave them his.
For centuries....or days...he ruled the graveyard. Other villains found their way to him.
Creatures from corrected timelines, beings who had been erased but not destroyed. They formed alliances, broke them, formed them again.
But Demaon never forgot.
The boy with the glasses. The silver dart. The humiliation of being defeated by a child.
He would find a way back.
That's all he had in mind.
....
Until one day, it changed.
He was standing in a different gray now—not the void of the unlawful plane, but the space between the bleed and the swamp.
His eyes stared at a mountain of corpse, of his worshipers.
Hundreds of them, supposed to bring him offerings tonight.
But they didn't, and that's why he came to see...
He looked up to see what happened.
And how it did.
And she was there.
The woman.
And the "how".
She stood apart from the others, arms crossed, watching him with eyes that had seen too much to be surprised. Her bare body,was crisp, severe, medals falling at her feet next to her discarded dress, that meant nothing here.
"You're awake," she said.
"I wasn't asleep."
"Then you're aware." She stepped closer. "The Time Patrol doesn't know about this place. They think their corrections are clean. Surgical."
"They're children playing with scissors."
"Exactly." Her lips curved, but it wasn't a smile. "I spent twenty years watching them. Following their rules. Erasing what they told me to erase."
"And now?"
"Now I've decided to stop erasing... No,instead" She looked at her bloody palm. "I can no longer keep going like this. "
She looked up at the gray, and for a moment, her expression softened into something almost human. Almost sad.
"My name is.....," she paused. Then said. ".... What should it be?"
Demaon tilted his head. His antlers caught the non-light.
"Why do you think you deserve one from me?" He replied.
"I was corrected." She looked back at him. "A timeline I was born in. They decided it was unstable. They cut the cord. Everyone I knew, everyone I loved—gone. But I didn't die. I fell."
"Into this place....That's not an answer though."
"Into this place." She spread her arms. "And I've been falling ever since."
Demaon stepped forth. The gray swirled around him, shaping itself into something like a cape.
"So you found me."
"I found the ones who understand." She met his gaze. "The Patrol calls you anomalies. Variables. Problems to be solved."
"No man can solve me."
"You're an idiot if you think that." She hissed.
Demaon kept staring at her.
"You're more interesting than the others." He said, putting a hand on her chin, and making her look into his eyes. "Natalie. That will be your name."
She didn't look away,
"I'm interesting.... But, what about you?" She stepped closer. "Are you also... As interesting."
"Hah, you play with fire, child."
She grabbed onto his arm, staring still.
Demaon stops smirking. "What do you want?"
"I want to know.... If you're actually capable of being a king who can actually reign over actual worlds... Not just puppets like those."
"You... Dare challenge me?" His grip tightened.
She flinched, but kept speaking.
"You're not still a king. You're merely at mercy of those people who can always come here and prune this unstable world just like your old one..."
Demaon gritted his teeth, lifting her off ground. "I'll show you, if anyone dare tries that again."
"I'm counting on it." Natalie replies, holding onto his hand as her legs fly in air.
Demaon's eyes widened slightly.
"And I'll help you too... If you just give me one thing in return."
Demaon looked at her eyes, those unflinching human eyes filled with fire. Her bare skill gilstering in blood, and scarred fingers gripping on his skin.
The waving hair.
The audacious demand.
And the plump red lips.
And his heart finally pounded.
"Tell me... Everything you know."