The moment Ash returned to the Alchemy Domain, time resumed and so did his chaos.
However, there was something — or more accurately, someone — who had already left the domain before he froze everything.
The Lord of Alchemy, he had vanished the instant the fighting commenced.
He had not gone to his chambers within the Alchemy Domain.
Instead, he appeared in a hidden, almost primordial like space — a realm of endless devouring darkness where even light feared to tread.
----
There, seated upon a throne made of countless consumed lesser realities, was the Prime Devourer — the creator of the Existential Horrors.
His form was ever-shifting sometimes a colossal maw of teeth and void, sometimes a humanoid silhouette wrapped in layers of consumed universes.
Right now, though, he appeared as a towering figure of swirling black and violet, eyes like bottomless pits that had swallowed entire cosmoses.
