Antares

Antares wore the shape of a tall, handsome man of middle years with a broad, muscular build. His long red hair sat above a short red beard, his eyes burned crimson, and dark red claws tipped his hands. Reddish-silver armor with a raised collar covered him, layered over a tailcoat in a reddish-brown shade.

Fitting his title, Antares took open joy in the ruin his powers brought. Near-peerless strength left him casual and supremely confident, slow to lose his head. He shared the Monarchs' contempt for humanity and would slaughter wholesale as bait to lure the Shadow Monarch out. A code of honor still threaded through the cruelty, and he would bargain with anyone whose strength impressed him, as when he swore to withdraw his armies and spare mankind should Jinwoo ally with him against the Rulers. Across two timelines Jinwoo struck him down, yet the Monarch never stopped acknowledging that strength; decades later he was bitterly disappointed to crush Jinwoo's son Suho so easily, lamenting the boy's weakness and even branding him unfit to carry his father's name. For all his flaws he looked after his own minions and despised anyone who abused them, and he clung to blood purity, holding dragons of mixed heritage in scorn.

Ages ago, during the war the Absolute Being set between Rulers and Monarchs, Antares fought beside the Shadow Monarch Ashborn. Fear of Ashborn's growing might led him to send Rakan and Baran to kill him, a costly blunder: Ashborn shattered the pair, slew Baran for the treachery, then vanished, handing the Rulers victory and scattering the surviving Monarchs into hiding. When Ashborn later sought to return, Antares took him back gladly, with two Monarchs lost and the rest still weak. Centuries afterward, as the war's second phase began in the human world, Antares could find no vessel able to hold his power, leaving him stranded until the conditions let him cross over in raw form.

Once Jinwoo had killed the three Monarchs dispatched to Korea, Yogumunt brought Antares word that their own Shadow Monarch had betrayed them and ravaged the ranks. Resolving to handle Ashborn's vessel in person, he readied his dragons. He descended through a vast gate in Canada, met the Canadian hunter Jay Mills, and burned him to ash before loosing his army to butcher millions, Adam White among the dead. Bored that Jinwoo stayed absent, he began to doubt the man would come at all. When Jinwoo did appear, Antares commanded his host of ten million to encircle him, only for Jinwoo to freeze every one of them with Dragon's Fear and haul Antares off to a remote Japanese island through Shadow Exchange. Their duel opened poorly for Jinwoo, whose strikes merely glanced off, though his cunning impressed Antares enough that the Monarch again offered to spare humanity for an alliance against the Rulers. Jinwoo jeered at the offer, the fight reopened, and in his swelling rage Antares left himself exposed, letting Jinwoo nearly split him in two with his father's dagger. Only then did he spot the Rulers' armies crowding the sky and grasp that their battle had warped space enough to admit them in raw form. The Rulers impaled him on their spears, and conceding he had never had a chance, Antares perished, his body scattering on the wind.

When the Cup of Reincarnation was invoked one final time, Antares came back with his memories whole. Aware he was the strongest, Jinwoo left him for last and spent twenty-seven years cutting down the rest while Antares bided his time. The moment Jinwoo finally entered his palace, Antares loosed his Spiritual Body Manifestation and gave everything, yet fell without great trouble, leaving Jinwoo with nothing worse than a bad burn across the left hand. Come Ragnarok, with Suho craving the Monarch of Destruction's mantle, Jinwoo bargained to revive Antares in trade for grooming Suho into his heir through the System.