Rime/History

These visions came to Sunny when he tried to touch the strings of fate in Chapter 2591.

In the first vision, her presence brought salvation: the vicious cold was banished by her will, the icy carapace that encased the world melted, and the long age of snow and hunger ended. By her gift, the forest was restored and reborn, the great tree was rejuvenated, and the natural cycle of winter followed by spring was established, ensuring life continued.^[1]

In the second vision, however, the daemon embodied the opposite. She appeared amidst the Garden of Hunger, summoning a vicious cold by her will. A raging blizzard smothered the world, encasing the great tree in ice and leaving the forest barren. After climbing the tree's branches and speaking to it, the snow and ice eventually melted, allowing new life to sprout — yet ever since, winter would always come, imposing an end to endless hunger and unchecked growth.^[1]

The Demon of Repose played a pivotal role in the salvation of the World Tree during the Age of Heroes. After the Demon of Repose had created the cycle of seasons, the sacred forest flourished under the immutable strength of the World Tree, the avatar of Heart God. However, when the tree became afflicted with a virulent rot — a living being, an Unholy Terror, a remnant of the Age of Chaos — even the divine vessel could not resist its corruption. Answering Heart God's call, the Demon of Repose returned to the sacred forest. Unlike her brother Ariel, the Demon of Dread, who defeated an Unholy Titan in battle, she did not fight the curse directly. Instead, she cast the World Tree into a state of endless rejuvenation, allowing it to consume the disease by rotting, dying, and being reborn over and over, until the Unholy Terror perished and the World Tree regained vitality.^[2]

Her intervention, though a boon to the great tree, became a calamity for the human cities built in its branches — most were destroyed or overgrown, their inhabitants lost. This destruction reflected why daemons were feared above all other deities of ancient times: their aid was powerful but catastrophic, a force beyond prediction or reason. Once the sickness was vanquished, the Demon of Repose departed, but not without payment — she took a young branch of the World Tree. From it, she fashioned the Night Garden, a colossal living ship over a kilometer wide, filled with palaces, pagodas, groves, rivers, and hidden mysteries. The Night Garden became her home and remains the last living sapling of the once great forest, long after both the World Tree and the Demon of Repose herself had perished.^[2]

The Demon of Repose's exact motives for creating the Eternal City are unknown. Speculated reasons include inspiration from the Shadow God's punishment of Kanakht or a personal desire to preserve those who gained her favor. The Demon of Repose's creation imposed eternal life and captivity upon its inhabitants, and she herself did not reside within it, instead wandering the world aboard her living ship. Like other daemons, she was bound by a divine taboo and endured isolation as a result. To preserve the Eternal City, she needed to prevent its inhabitants from expressing gratitude, as gratitude would have caused its destruction, similar to the fall of the Kingdom of Hope.^[3]

The Demon of Repose played a central role in the downfall of Kanakht. She most likely is responsible for separating Kanakht into multiple pieces and sealing each one away. One of these seals was held within the Eternal City, which may have originally been constructed for the purpose of containing the Flesh of Kanakht.^[4]

The creation of the Eternal City involved the Demon of Repose employing Nothing. The Palace at the center of the Eternal City is presented as a structure built to channel a powerful form of sorcery. The city itself was constructed around this Palace, with all canals leading to the surrounding lake and the dome rising highest above its spires. Despite this, the internal workings of Repose's sorcery were not visible within the Palace. Multiple areas, including the pit where the Flesh of Kanakht had been sealed, appeared entirely empty, showing no runes, essence structures, or fate-related constructs—only corroded metal.^[4]

Kanakht had been denied death, cursed by the Shadow God to exist forever devoid of its final embrace, and therefore did not have a shadow because Shadow God had taken it away. The Demon of Repose drew inspiration from this curse when creating the Eternal City and its immortals. Her sorcery mirrored what had been done to Kanakht: she separated living beings from their shadows and sealed the shadows in the heart of the Palace to prevent them from returning to their owners or reaching the Shadow Realm. Because their deaths existed “somewhere else”—in front of Sunny inside the chamber—the prisoners became immortal, unable to die.^[5]

Rime is described in a set of runes left by Weaver. These runes were inscribed in black ink on an ancient silk scroll woven from finely crafted spider silk, a vessel of Weaver's will that had been hidden for thousands of years. The scroll bears both the runes and a gorgeous blue snowdrop, and Sunny recognizes that both the runes and the flower were left by Weaver's own hand.^[6]

According to these runes, Rime was the first being to die, while Weaver was the first to be born. Rime was later named the Demon of Repose. Broken and shattered, she succumbed to harrowing wounds and found herself in the embrace of Shadow, where the darkness offered her solace, peace, and rest, calling her "child and urging her to remain unhurt and at peace. Rime refused this offer, declaring that Shadow's world was "too dark", "too quiet and hollow", and expressing her desire to swim in vast oceans, conquer boundless heavens, explore all of existence, and gather all flowers to bask in their beauty and scents. She acknowledged pain and suffering, stating that thorns make flowers beautiful, cold makes warmth desirable, and that an end paves the way for a new beginning, insisting that she wanted to live no matter how much it might hurt. Shadow, revealing itself as Death, claimed ownership over her, saying she belonged to the shadows and that no one escapes Death, turning darkness into her chain, solace into her collar, and peace into a prison. After time passed and silence remained unchanged, Shadow refused to let her go, and in the end, Rime shattered the walls of his realm and escaped into the light, becoming the first one to escape Death as well.^[6]

During a colossal battle involving countless warriors, Supremes, Awakened, Transcendent sages, Devils, Titans, and Divine Beasts in Ariel's Hell, according to Azarax, the Demon of Repose engaged the avatar of Shadow God in combat, and rather than fighting to the bitter end, the Shadow God's vessel was forced to retreat. Azarax emphasized that Death held no power over the Demon of Repose, and she could not be eradicated or opposed even by the Shadow God. Her actions were pivotal, as the Shadow God's defeat led to the destruction of both armies with a cruel curse.^[7]