The Shadow Monarch In The Marvel World-Chapter 84 - 83

Yet, even these fearsome giants paled before the Shadow Celestials. Not because Ashborn had fused them with their counterparts—if that were the case, they would have simply returned to their original forms. No, by raising them as shadows, Ashborn reshaped their essence. In doing so, they were reborn stronger than they had ever been.

Stronger than the Celestials they once were. Stronger than the Dark Celestials, who once matched them.

The First Cosmos could only watch in horror as his faithful Dark Celestials were slaughtered, one after another. Just one Shadow Celestial was enough to take on five Dark Celestials at once—and win. The battlefield tipped dangerously in Ashborn's favor.

But this was still Oblivion's domain, and here Ashborn realized something crucial. These Dark Celestials, though destroyed, had not vanished. As they fell within Oblivion's domain, it allowed him to raise them again, this time as void soldiers. Reborn with the power of the void itself, they returned stronger than ever and now stood on equal footing with the Shadow Celestials they once fought against.

Was that all? Of course not. Ashborn's forces weren't just made up of Celestials. Marching beside them was the towering force of True Form Shadow Galactus.

Who was that, you ask? Galactus never had a so-called "true form"—until now. This was Galactus fused with all of his counterparts across the omniverse, reshaped and reborn through the shadow.

This Galactus... was a force beyond comprehension. He wielded the strength of a hundred normal Celestials, allowing him to slaughter the Void Dark Celestials with terrifying ease. Even when facing the mightiest among them, Galactus held his own, possessing the raw power to rival twenty Void Dark Celestials at once, that's not taking into account that the Void Dark Celestials were weakened thanks to Supergirl's sun.

How was such strength possible? Simple.

Unlike the Celestials, whom Ashborn couldn't fuse with their counterparts to have them grow stronger past their true forms, Galactus was different. Across the infinite multiverse, countless versions of Galactus had existed. When Ashborn called them all together through shadow, they fused—not into a mere shadow soldier—but into something else entirely.

The sheer volume of fusion, spanning realities, timelines, and cosmic histories, birthed a being with few—if any—equals in creation.

The Shadow Sovereign, Ashborn, stood at the heart of war—his banners raised high in the endless void, his forces drawn from the bones of fallen cosmos and forgotten gods. Around him surged a legion of power: Beyonders, Molecule Men, and countless beings of might beyond measure. They stood not as mortals, but as titans carved from will, might, and shadows.

Yet despite such strength, they were outnumbered. The forces of Oblivion, twisted remnants of ancient chaos, poured forth in infinite waves—an army that spanned realities, led by gods cast aside by death itself. But the tide did not favor them. No... Ashborn's side was winning.

Why? Though Oblivion, too, could raise the fallen—resurrecting his dead, reforging them from darkness and despair—it was not enough. For every soul he reclaimed, Ashborn's army tore down five more. The void bled shadows, and still it was not enough to stem the advance.

And what of Ashborn's soldiers? They did not die. They were shadows no longer bound by flesh, no longer tethered to the old laws of magic or mana. In Ashborn's hands, even nothing became something. MP, that ancient measure of power, was irrelevant now. Zero became infinity, and from infinity came unbreakable will.

Ashborn's shadow legion, though wounded, stood undaunted. Their bodies broke—but only for a breath. HP restored in an instant, their forms regenerated before dust could settle. Those struck down in a single, cataclysmic blow did not fall for long. No, they returned to the Sovereign's shadow, their essence sheathed in eternal black... and from that abyss, they rose again. An endless cycle. A storm that reassembled itself before the next strike could land.

And yet, not all of Ashborn's strength had been revealed. In the wings of shadow, ancient powers stirred. The Living Tribunal, now a being reborn under Ashborn's dominion, watched silently and patiently, his triple gaze fixed upon a singular foe: Oblivion.

That old abstract of unbeing, the hunger that came before all things, stood uneasy. He saw the coming end. He saw Ashborn's will pushing ever closer to the truth of him.

A cold truth settled into Oblivion's heart... The shadows would reach him. The Tribunal would rise. Ashborn would come.

So Oblivion paused and turned his gaze, not upon the army, but upon the Living Tribunal himself. High above the lattice of destruction, they locked eyes. Two beings of High Omniversal might. Two entities who had judged existence itself.

But the question that now echoed across all of the powerhouses there, across the broken edge of the Outside, across even the Far Shore was this... Had Oblivion ever truly unleashed his full power?

When Oblivion stepped forward to strike Ashborn, when the endless horror bared its teeth and reached beyond the veil, was that truly all of him?

No. It was but a fragment, a ripple... a strand of darkness torn loose from the Far Shore itself. For Oblivion is the Far Shore.

The unknowable depths. The womb of pre-existence. The dreamless sleep of the true Creator. To see Oblivion move is to see a droplet of that sea made manifest. But the sea remains.

Oblivion is not merely destruction. It is origin. The source from which all was born—and the grave to which all shall return.

Creation itself was not cast from light, not spun from will, but torn from Oblivion's loins. And in time, like a child to its mother's arms, it shall fall back into the womb of Nothingness.

So when that fragment of Oblivion faced Ashborn on the battlefield, it was not the full weight of the void. It was a shadow of the sleepwalker's dream. A whisper from the black.

And yet... Even that whisper shook the Outside. Even that sliver made the gods tremble. What happens, then, when Oblivion awakens fully? When the sea of nothing lifts its head? And in that dark, when all else screams or flees or prays, will Ashborn still rise? Or will he, too, be unmade?

At the end of all things, where time forgets to tick and even silence dares not linger, there was Oblivion.

Now, children, remember this: the Great Darkness from DC? Oh, it could feel. It hungered. It whispered. It dreamed. But Oblivion? Oblivion was not a thing that felt. No, the moments when it seemed to long for company, to speak with the other abstracts, to weep like a forgotten god—those were lies. Fleeting shadows. Not the true Oblivion.

You see, the real Oblivion doesn't hope. It doesn't wait. It is. The vast Nothing that was never born, the emptiness from which even the first breath of creation recoiled.

And then—it awakened. Before the eyes of gods and monsters, its form began to shift. Slowly, grandly, as if the universe itself held its breath, a cloak of deepest crimson wove itself around him. Ah, but not just any cloak! This was fabric older than stars, its edges tattered by the fall of cosmoses, stained by the silence of forgotten realms. It fluttered with no wind, whispered with no voice, and yet every being felt its weight in their soul.

Beneath the crimson robe, there was a body—but not one made of flesh, oh no. What lay beneath was darkness—pure, unfiltered, infinite. Not black in the way of ink or coal, but the kind of darkness that thinks, that reaches into your mind and hushes your thoughts just as it swallows light. And within that living void danced streaks of deep blue and violet, like stars gasping in their final breath, flickering just before they vanish forever into silence.

It was not muscle, and it was not bone. It was the shape of the end itself—an event horizon made solid, rippling and fluid, its form marked with cracks of raw energy. And whether those fractures were veins or tears in the fabric of reality... well, no one could say.

His fingers stretched long, claw-like, tipped in a glow that wasn't flame but something stranger—like the last memory of a dying star, fading slowly into the dark. His feet, bare and silent, rested upon the shattered edges of a throne—a throne born from nothing, sculpted by silence itself.

But here, dear listener, comes the truth. That figure sitting on the throne? It was not truly Oblivion. No... what sat there was a kindness. A mercy. A lie wrapped in myth.

For Oblivion, in its truest form, cannot be spoken of, nor seen, nor dreamt. Nothing born of thought can grasp it. And nothing born of creation can survive the knowing. What you imagine, what you read, what you see now—is merely an illusion. A veil to protect your fragile existence. For even thinking of the real Oblivion would erase you, body and soul, from every thread of reality... and that? It would please Oblivion greatly.

I sadly can't speak of what truly appeared before the Sovereign, for it would be the undoing of us all. But let's return to the epic tale.

Oblivion stirred. With a will older than stars and colder than the edge of space, he reached out—not with hands, but with command. His presence swept across his boundless domain, and all within it bowed, unraveling at his touch. But just as his reach extended toward Ashborn and his army... something impossible happened.

He paused. A barrier had formed—vast, shimmering, unyielding. It stood like defiance itself, wrapped around Ashborn and his legions, untouched by the weight of nothingness. No ordinary force could summon such a shield, not against Oblivion. So who dared?

From the depths of Ashborn's shadow, a figure emerged. Susan. Once, she and the others had given everything to seal away the Great Darkness in the realm of DC. Their sacrifice had not been in vain... but it had come at a cost.

Yet time and fate bow to Ashborn now. His rise, his power. They had returned. And they had been waiting. Waiting in silence, cloaked in shadow, until the moment their sovereign needed them once more.

Of course, Ashborn had fused them with countless other shadows, sculpting each into something greater—something beyond comprehension.

Take Susan, for example. She was no longer just the shadow he once knew. She had been merged with the true form of a Celestial, her being entwined with every version of herself that ever existed across the omniverse. Each triumph, each failure, each fragment of possibility had been gathered and forged into a single, perfected entity.

And then there was Warper. He had fused with the greatest reality-warpers the omniverse had ever known. The raw omnipotence of a true Celestial. The boundless imagination of Franklin Richards. The unpredictable magic of every mutant whose power bent the laws of existence. Even the forgotten masters—the Black Priests, the God of Stories Loki, and countless others lost to time—had all been woven into him.

They were no longer mere shadows, no longer remnants of the past—they were now High Omniversal beings, titans in the grand dance of creation and uncreation. Each of them stood shoulder to shoulder with entities like the Living Tribunal, and when united, their might could challenge even the true form of Nothingness itself.

Ashborn floated amidst the void, a calm smile tugging at his lips, as if the weight of reality itself were featherlight in his hands.

"I wanted to have some fun with you before I ended this... oh well," he said, his voice rippling through the void like a whisper from the beginning of time.

He lifted his hand—and in that moment, Oblivion's vast army of void-born horrors, beings dredged from the forgotten corners of lost realities, began to twitch. One by one, Ashborn's will stretched out, coiling through them like shadowed vines.

And then Oblivion paused. He had forgotten. Forgotten the most dangerous truth of all. Ashborn could take control of the darkness and bend it to his will.

BOOM.

The sound echoed across the Far Shore, louder than dying stars and deeper than the breath of a collapsing universe. Oblivion—vast, eternal, untouchable—was sent hurtling backward, his crimson cloak whipping like torn space in retreat.

But it wasn't Ashborn's shadows that struck the blow. No. It was Supergirl.

She hovered there like a second dawn, her entire body pulsing with radiant fire—light not just of suns, but of creation itself. Her very presence seemed to burn away the void, making the nothingness retreat.

'She absorbed the Living Tribunal's gift... and fused it with the Sun Monarch Force,' he mused. 'That power... It's no longer just light... The Sun Monarch Force is now the Sun of Creation.'

And yet... Even with all that, how had she touched Oblivion? How had she landed a blow on the embodiment of pure, formless Nothing?