Dark Parasyte
Chapter 67: A Throne of Ash, A Table of Spite

Chapter 67: A Throne of Ash, A Table of Spite

While Corvin continued to wreak devastation across the blood scorched wastes of Nefrath, bringing ruin to the Archdemon of Wrath’s domain, far to the northeast, past the edges of the Shatterwake Gulf, beyond the ever churning mists of the Veilborn Expanse, and nestled at the southern edge of the human continent of Argyll an entirely different storm was brewing. Not one of flame or lightning, but one of elven indignation and pent up fury.

Valyne was fuming.

Storming down the eastern corridor of Raven’s Nest Castle, her silver trimmed robe flaring behind her like a banner of frustration, she was muttering a mix of curses, grievances, and threats that would make a Voidborn blush. She’d had enough. This whole diplomatic babysitting assignment had gone from mildly irritating to insultingly absurd. Somehow, through no formal process whatsoever, she had become the acting liaison to both the Synod and Aurelian emissaries because, of course, the feather headed Duke was no where to be found.

She gritted her teeth. "If he doesn’t return by tomorrow, I swear I’m holding a summit in my nightgown just to spite him. And I’ll borrow the red one."

A raven on a high perch tilted its glossy black head. With a silent pulse, the bird relayed her exact words across leagues of space and silence.

Far away, amid the ash stained cliffs of Nefrath, Corvin received the message with a raised brow and a smirk that could fracture the composure of highborn matrons. With the ease of a thought, he commanded one of his covenant bound maids to deliver a reply.

Back at Raven’s Nest, just as Valyne reached the door to her room, sanctuary, sanity, and hopefully wine. A maid appeared in her path. With a bow and an unreadable smile, she said, "Master will not be able to return tomorrow, Magistra. However, he asks you kindly to remember your promise and keep it for the private lessons on Space magic. He will be most delighted to see and comment how the red nightgown will look, on or off you."

Valyne froze.

Then blinked.

Then blinked again.

Her ears went red first, then her cheeks, and she spun around so fast her braid whipped her own face. She marched into her room with the posture of a general, closed the door with ominous calm, and then hurled herself onto the bed like a felled tree.

"WHY. WHY. WHY does he hear everything?!"

She flailed a pillow over her head. "Of all the cursed spells, the cursed ravens, the cursed Synod..."

A rustle behind her made her freeze mid rant.

A figure stepped from the shadow near her balcony, a silhouette in flowing black, a mask concealing his face, a presence that made the air grow colder.

"Sir Shadow?" she asked in a breathless squeak, jumping to her feet and smoothing her robe with both hands.

The figure inclined his head. "Magistra."

She recognized his voice. This was the same operative who’d escorted her from Thalasien, the one who’d never spoken more than necessary and had always stared just a little too long as if he can read her very well guarded mind.

"Did you deliver the message of the Synod to Corvin Blackmoor?"

Valyne winced. "He... declined to listen, said he would have time to listen the message in three months."

He said it so politely, too, she remembered, while not even looking at her.

The Shadow was already in her mind. As always. He was reding her, like someone rifling through a diary hadn’t been written. He didn’t need to question her aloud. He could feel the frustration, the pull, the unwilling longing she tried so hard to suppress.

"Obsidian Gate chose well," the Shadow thought.

Then, after a deliberate pause, "Remain close to him. Deliver the message when the time is right. And... perhaps wear red."

Before she could construct a reply or fling a book at him, he vanished. No sound, no puff of smoke, just absence where presence had been.

Valyne stood in place, breathing hard, fuming at nothing and everything.

"I am not attracted to that cursed elf," she told the room. "His voice, his scent, his cursed stare that makes me feel like a gazella... the way he talks to me like I’m the problem while smirking like I just tripped over his ego..."

She paced.

"...The way his arms fold when he’s annoyed. That stupid hair. Those shoulders, no, no, stop it!"

She threw herself into the bed again and buried her face into a pillow.

A raven, perched just outside her window, tilted its head again.

It would report everything.

As always.

--

Nurrak the Severed Crown, Archdemon of Wrath, sat rigidly upon his smoldering throne of charred bone and molten rock, steam seething from every fracture of the magma veined dais. The ambient heat of his rage melted stone at his feet. His twin horns arced like war crescents above a skull thick with resentment, while his clawed fingers dug deep into the scorched skulls adorning the throne’s armrests, splitting brittle bone with every twitch. Rage rolled off him like waves of an erupting volcano, unrelenting and blistering.

Three of his Dark Sovereigns, erased. Both of his Demon Lords, slaughtered. Legions upon legions of warriors, scattered, crushed, or devaured. The foundational pillars of his rule were reduced to ash and cinder. The infernal engine of his dominion had stuttered and now lay in ruin. His empire, once feared for its fury, was crumbling.

His crimson, ember lit eyes scanned the drifting ash in the chamber like augury smoke, hoping the remains would speak the name of his adversary. Who could have orchestrated such carnage? Who would dare?

Korvath the Proud? A likely candidate once but no. Korvath’s armies were licking wounds after the conquest of Velkoth, the Archdemon of Envy. That war had drained him, and his ambitions were inward now, not outward.

Uzaruk, the Slumbering Plague? Unpredictable, yes, but not proactive. The Archdemon of Sloth’s legions were dense with numbers but slow in thought and deed. No major mobilizations had been seen from the southwest. The earth would have trembled for days first.

Jozzon the Covetor, maybe? The Archdemon of Avarice ruled southeast territories with the greed of a thousand dragons, but his grasp always exceeded his reach. If this had been his scheme, there would have been a hundred useless demands before a single drop of blood.

Salvamud the Starved was a possibility, though faint. His realm stretched along the eastern seaboard, his forces lean and ravenous, his tactics more cannibalistic than conquering. A swarm, yes, but not an executioner.

Aisha... the Broodmother. Her west-shore swarms had been oddly still. Though her spellbinding over lust held terrifying potential, they were a threat for the Dark Soverigns and Demon Lords she mates all day long. No whisper of aggression had been caught by Nurrak’s informants.

No... none of them. Nurrak could feel it. This wasn’t ambition. This was obliteration. This was deliberate, personal. Not conquest but judgment.

He growled low and slammed his clawed fist down beside him, cracking the foundation stone of his sanctum. Molten blood hissed from his knuckles. His blood coated fangs clenched.

"Show yourself... whoever you are..."

He wanted their name. Wanted to speak it aloud as he flayed the syllables from their soul. He would grind their bones to powder, smear their blood across his throne, and forge new banners from their skin.

But no answer came. Just silence. Just the hiss of ash and heat. A throne room without fealty. A crown weighed by fear no more. There was no one else to fear him!

He was becoming prey.

And far from his cauldron of wrath and uncertainty, the predator neared.

Corvin, a Planarch, was systematically deleting Nurrak’s dominion from the annals of infernal history.

Three days. That was all it had taken for Corvin to bring Nurrak’s empire to its knees. In that time, he absorbed the second Demon Lord, dismantled their Dreadlord networks, and devoured another pair of Dark Sovereigns. Their resistance had been wild, desperate, and beautiful. But ultimately meaningless.

He didn’t just consume. He honed. With each soul, each scrap of will, each elemental imprint, Corvin evolved.

From the fractured remains of lesser hordes, he constructed an army of ten thousand elite undead. Hellborns, Infernal Warriors, Dreadlords, each stripped of allegiance and rebranded under a single purpose... his. He enhanced each and every one of them with all three of is virutic strains. Their hollow eyes gleamed with arcane fire, their movements flawless and eerily synchronized. A wall of doom forged in fire, tethered to a will far greater than any they’d known.

Corvin now stood at Level 98.

Every step he took was threaded with the hum of denser Aether. His mana pool was vast and wild, his elemental control refined to the point of artistry. Gravity bent subtly around him. The earth hushed beneath his boots.

His second evolution was near. He was excited to see what options of evolution he will get this time.

Hopefully Nurrak was to be the last cornerstone, the final sacrifice to break the boundary and step fully into the domain of something greater.

As Corvin moved through the volcanic plains, an echo reached through one of his ravens. It whispered secrets. Its presence delivered a familiar vision, and what a vision it is. Large expressive eyes, a figure to kill for.. literally. and her lips curved in righteous anger.

Valyne.

Once again, she was murmuring fury and frustration, wrapped in thoughts about red nightgowns and threatening scandal. The raven relayed every syllable.

Corvin’s smirk was nearly audible.

"She’ll be the death of me," he murmured, eyes glowing in amusement and appreciation like smoldering steel.

He sent a message via one of his covenant bound maids. A simple line, playful, reminding her that her threats never go unheard.

Then, he lifted his gaze to the horizon. Fire shimmered around him, and lightning coiled up his forearms.

The Archdemon of Wrath awaited.

And Corvin marched, not just to destroy, but to conquer. To claim his his new form. To evolve!

He would silence the screaming fury.

--

Valyne was trying, Mother knows she was trying to maintain the appearance of civility. But between her fraying patience, the diplomatic tightrope she had to walk, Kaelyn humming some tavern melody entirely out of place for a formal dinner, and the creeping suspicion that Corvin had orchestrated this torment on purpose, she was seconds away from flipping the entire table.

The dining hall of Raven’s Nest was dimly lit with silver sconces and amber lanterns, draping the vast stone table in warm, flickering light. It was a masterpiece of grim elegance, like its absent master. At either end of the table, seated with irritating precision as though the Mother had drawn invisible battle lines, were the Synod and Aurelian Dominion ambassadors. And smack in the middle, exactly where she did not want to be, sat Valyne, unofficial, unqualified, unwilling, underfed, and thoroughly unamused representative of Duke Corvin Blackmoor.

She didn’t even get to eat. Not without fearing someone would throw a verbal dagger into her soup.

Magus Thaelys Silvernight of the Synod, draped in obsidian robes with silver threading fine enough to shame a spider’s web, sipped her wine like it owed her rent. Her expression was perfectly serene, which in Dark Elven terms meant she was two sarcastic comments away from bloodshed.

Across from her, Magus Kelorien Hearthleaf of the Aurelian Dominion bore her usual diplomatic smile, thinner than elven steel and far more lethal. Her silken robes, embroidered with golden leaf motifs, glowed softly under the lanternlight. The judgment in her eyes burned brighter.

"I must admit," Kelorien began, her voice smoother than iced honey and twice as chilling, "this stronghold is... utilitarian. Very functional. One might almost forget it was re designed structured so rapidly after the fall of Holy Verrenate. Quite the achievement, though I can’t help but wonder what labor force was employed."

Thaelys did not miss a beat. "Perhaps your Dominion might learn a thing or two about results driven architecture. Not everything needs to glitter if it holds." Even though she has not an ounce of idea how Corvin managed to do this, it was afterall accompishment of the Synod.

Valyne smiled tightly and counted to ten this time.

Kelorien raised a brow. "Is that a critique or admiration, Magus Thaelys? I do understand your people have... a complicated relationship with aesthetics."

"Only when it comes to excessive drapery, poorly tuned harps and overgrown arboretums pretending to be lecture halls."

Valyne very calmly stabbed her fork into a slice of roast and muttered something about exile being underrated.

Kaelyn, bright eyed and oblivious as always, leaned in and beamed like the sun piercing a storm cloud. "I thought High Elves and Dark Elves were all the same race at some point? Like cousins?"

Valyne dropped her fork.

Silence fell like a divine judgment.

Kelorien cleared her throat delicately. "That would be like saying lions and serpents are cousins, dear."

Thaelys’s smile turned razor sharp. "How educational. In the Synod, we prefer accurate metaphors. Perhaps wolves and leeches is more apt."

"Oh!" Kaelyn chirped, missing the daggers flying above her head. "I had a leech once. In a jar. It exploded."

Valyne inhaled slowly, then turned to Kaelyn, lips twitching. "How. Very. Relevant."

"Thank you," Kaelyn said proudly, stabbing her fork into a tart with the confidence of a scholar contributing to an ancient debate.

The silence that followed was heavier than enchanted lead.

Thaelys finally turned toward Valyne. "Magistra, may I inquire, has our host ’member’ of Umbral Synod, destroyer of slavers and newly appointed Duke of a territory in Human continent, Corvin Blackmoor provided you with any updates on the Circle of Arbiters’ shifting stance on neutral territories?"

Valyne summoned the expression she used when reading exams of some unwanted students, detached, dead eyed, and immune to insult. "Duke Blackmoor is currently engaged in urgent continental matters. However, he did ask me to remind all honored guests that political tensions will be treated with the same gravity as... insubordination."

Thaelys inclined her head slightly, unbothered. Kelorien, to her credit, didn’t smirk. Much.

"And what about the rumors," Kelorien asked after a measured sip of wine, "that Duke Blackmoor might be listed under Argyll military command for the next invasion? I imagine that raises... complicated sentiments among the Synod."

Valyne’s eye twitched.

"If such listing occurs," she said evenly, "it would be because the Duke’s strategic value eclipses petty territorial claims."

Thaelys’s smirk deepened. "A surprisingly neutral answer. Are you sure you’re not part High Elf?"

Valyne reached for her wine and drained the entire goblet like it was medicine for the soul.

The rest of the dinner continued in a flurry of passive aggressive compliments, veiled slights, and the occasional threat so veiled it practically wore an invisibility spell.

And the whole time, Corvin, wherever he was, likely counting the leafs of some tree or charming the shadows themselves, had the gall to send back that nightgown message. Valyne’s cheeks still burned at the memory. Her life had devolved into an endless parade of diplomatic nightmares and sleepwear related stories thanks to Kaelyn.

At least Kaelyn liked the dessert.

"Oh! Is this lemon tart? I love lemon tart."

Valyne put her face in her hands.

"Dark Mother, give me patience. Or at least poison this wine."

Outside, a raven fluttered past the window. Watching. Echoing. Reporting back.

And somewhere in the volcanic heart of Nefrath, Corvin Blackmoor probably smirked.