Marquis period

Malthios’s reign is the period of Demon King Malthios’s rule after his ascension, a historical span shaped by conquest, suspicion, demographic decline, and the slow reversal of power between the Demon Lords and the mortal peoples. It begins with spectacular violence and ends under the pressure of a world that has learned to organize against him. The reign is also inseparable from the later life of Theo: memories of Malthios’s rule remain active within Theo, making the past a political danger rather than a closed chapter.

Establishment of the Demon King’s Rule

Malthios’s first month as Demon King proceeds more smoothly than he expects, despite beginning with the cold-blooded killing of a Demon Lord and a dozen Novices. The scale changes, but the underlying work remains familiar to him: kingship is treated as command expanded over a larger field. His authority is therefore established not through gradual legitimacy but through an immediate demonstration that the strongest demon can remove rivals and impose a new order.

The most brutal act of the opening period is his return to the village where the Hero had defeated him. The mortals who overcame him are already dead, having apparently exhausted their mana and life force in the victory. Malthios takes satisfaction in killing the remaining villagers and burning the settlement to ash. This destruction is more than retaliation against absent enemies. It erases the place associated with his defeat and reveals the logic of his reign: victory is not complete while witnesses, homes, or communities capable of remembering resistance remain.

Yet the new king does not trust the structure he inherits. Naamah’s betrayal leaves him suspicious of the commanders and Demon Lords around him, while the demands of rule make an inner circle unavoidable. Commander Fulton becomes his counselor after offering the support of a sponsor, giving Malthios one institutional connection amid his distrust. At the same time, Malthios sends the commanders and Novices trained alongside him on long missions, officially for destruction but also to proclaim the Demon King’s rise and search for signs of a new Hero. The expeditions spread his reputation while dispersing the people who might otherwise form a stable, intimate power base.

A Reign of Consolidation and Attrition

As the years pass, Malthios assumes the role of Demon King more completely and allows his hatred of the mortal races to fuel him. His generals carry much of the practical burden. Tyraz serves as his right hand and is characterized by ruthlessness; Keplo commands the battalions with firmness and a level head; Luvel works as a deadly assassin; and Nissle, younger but specialized in poisons, occupies another place in the assassin network. The hierarchy gives Malthios an effective military instrument, but it also emphasizes his distance from ordinary operations: he leaves the castle mainly when restlessness drives him out or when a possible Hero demands his attention.

The reign is marked by repeated encounters with would-be Heroes who fail before reaching Malthios. Roughly a dozen appear over the years, but they burn themselves out against Novices or Demon Lords. Malthios never meets another person with the same significance as himself. Their failures preserve his supremacy, yet they also create a dangerous pattern: each generation of mortals can produce a new threat even when the previous one has been extinguished. The search begun during his first month consequently becomes a permanent feature of his government.

Malthios’s rule also exposes a central weakness of the demonic order. Immortality grants time, but it does not guarantee improvement. The demons do not grow and develop quickly enough, whereas the mortal races increase both in number and in strength. The imbalance is worsened because, before Malthios’s ascension, many Demonkin were killed by Demon Lords competing to become Demon King, and the population did not recover at the necessary speed. Eventually only the Demon King’s Castle and the surrounding far-northern region remain secure, because the mortals have no settled territory there. The geographical contraction makes the reign’s apparent permanence increasingly deceptive.

The Mortal Counterstate

During Malthios’s reign, the mortal races transform scattered resistance into political unity. They push the demons back, build kingdoms and alliances, and ultimately form the united country of Algeya. This development is especially significant because the capital and its institutions embody the cooperation Malthios failed to reproduce within his own realm. Algeya allows kingdoms ruled by different mortal races, while people may live where they wish and cross borders with ease; the arrangement is intended to prevent one race from suppressing another and to keep any kingdom’s resources from being stretched too thin.

The unity of Algeya is paradoxical. It exists because the demons provide a common enemy, and the mortal peoples joined together generations earlier to survive that threat. Joint laws and cooperation make a degree of peace possible among races that might otherwise have fallen into conflict. From Malthios’s perspective, every massacre fails to solve the larger problem because more mortals replace those who die. His violence therefore produces no final victory; it becomes one pressure among the forces that make the mortal alliance more necessary.

The capital’s palace gives this counterstate a visible institutional form. One half houses the King and his family and hosts councils and balls; the other trains magic users and knights who may serve the royals or join the Hero’s party. The Hero’s party continues protecting common people from remnants of Malthios’s army and the surviving Demon Lords. Thus, even after Malthios’s ascension, the political order opposing him is not merely a collection of fighters. It possesses courts, training systems, councils, alliances, and a shared public mission.

The Reign’s Pressure on Theo’s Present

The historical distance between Malthios’s reign and Theo’s life is repeatedly broken by the fact that Malthios survives within Theo. When Theo first enters the capital, the city’s walls and buildings feel confining, but the deeper danger is internal: Malthios vibrates inside him at the thought of crossing into the city without destroying it. The capital is therefore both the center of mortal civilization and a site that awakens the former king’s suppressed impulse toward annihilation.

Theo’s first magic test makes the political legacy of the reign personal. In the great hall, the King and council observe while people of different races and magical disciplines wait to evaluate and claim the children’s abilities. A large orb reveals each person’s magic when touched and remains dark for someone without magic. Theo fears that the test will expose the Demon King’s magic inside him and lead to immediate execution. His agitation nearly allows Malthios to emerge, but the result shows only Theo’s own magic. The test temporarily protects the secret, while also placing Theo inside the same state machinery that once trained the Heroes who opposed Malthios.

The secret cannot remain merely private because Theo understands that friendship may not save him if others discover what he is. Cargo eventually asks whether he will tell the Hero’s party that he is demon spawn, and Theo’s body freezes as Malthios pushes forward, ready to seize control and defend them. Later, when Bryony brings Theo through a portal to help the gravely injured Luc, Theo recognizes that entering the capital will end his autonomy: the authorities will know who he is and where he lives, and Camden may identify him. He goes nevertheless because Luc’s life matters to him more than the safety created by continued concealment.

Exposure and Historical Reversal

Theo’s exposure turns the legacy of Malthios’s reign into a public trial. After Theo confirms that he is the Demon King’s host, a portal orb carries the group to the capital, where knights and the court mage receive him and take him to the dungeons. In the throne room, the court, mirror spells, Eliza, and the Hero’s party surround him while a round mirror broadcasts the proceedings to towns, villages, and cities throughout Algeya. The state that Malthios once sought to destroy now possesses the means to display his return to the entire country.

The trial’s central accusation is that Theo has been revealed as the host of the reincarnated Malthios. The court initially agrees that he is guilty for protecting the Demon King, treating the shared-body condition as sufficient evidence of culpability. Yet the public spectacle reverses the expected outcome. Micah opens a new mirror spell from Leafel, with Imani, Dale, Dmitri and his parents, Nib, Amaya, Hayden, and the people of the village gathered behind him. Hayden demands Theo’s release in the name of Leafel. The community’s intervention demonstrates that the social world created during Malthios’s reign cannot be reduced to the old division between mortals and demons: Theo is condemned according to the identity he carries, but defended according to the life and relationships he has built.

Malthios’s reign therefore functions as both a historical era and a pressure system extending into the present. It begins with the destruction of a village and the assertion that strength alone can organize the world. It continues through military hierarchy, repeated Heroic resistance, and the narrowing of demonic territory. It ends conceptually when the people of Leafel confront the institutions that inherited the war and insist that Theo is more than the Demon King’s host. The reign’s ultimate irony is that Malthios survives inside the person who most clearly disproves his governing belief: identity, loyalty, and shared life can create bonds stronger than conquest.