Moraine

Moraine is the Witch of Gluttony, Neo Hargraves's first-life guardian and partner, and the later Mad Supreme or Supreme of Darkness. She raises the abandoned Devil of Tyranny in the Ninth Eon, loses him at the Eon's end, and becomes powerful enough to remake the next history while searching for him. Before her full body can no longer enter his universe safely, she cuts away the independent entity later known as Morrigan di Montaigne. The two assert shared identity but retain different bodies, Intents, histories, and actions until Neo restores their connection near the novel's end. (Chapters 671–687, 702–705, 730, 784–787, 812–818, and 832–833)

Biography

The tavern, the Devil of Tyranny, and a life chosen together

Moraine begins the Ninth-Eon history as an unawakened Witch whom her sisters regard as a disgrace. Her knowledge is valuable enough that a Sovereign once promised his firstborn in exchange for help creating an artificial Devil, but she expected the demand to deter him. Instead, he leaves the boy at her failing tavern and calls them both failures. Moraine initially offers only employment if he can prove useful. His first meal is poor but still better than hers, and the small success lets an abandoned child laugh, stay, and slowly make the tavern prosperous. (Chapters 671–672)

Their domestic life gives Moraine responsibility for more than the boy's food and shelter. She teaches him first aid and ordinary survival, while his strength protects her when villages discover she is a Witch. That arrangement nearly collapses after he murders not only an attacking witch-hunt but every resident who could reveal her identity. Moraine condemns the innocent deaths and orders him away, then recognizes that Hades never taught him another model of protection. She takes him back, makes him bury the dead without magic, and teaches that care cannot be replaced by destruction. He never kills another innocent during their remaining travels. (Chapters 672–674)

Moraine ages and dies while the Devil remains young, then finds him again through Vornaz's search Authority in later incarnations. Affection becomes an openly intimate partnership: they run taverns and bakeries, travel, train, and plan a wedding. The technique he presents as Latent Talent Awakening finally lets her awaken and strengthens Gluttony enough to take a killed creature's complete memories and knowledge. She does not know that he is actually transferring his talent and existence to her at terrible cost. When they postpone the wedding until the Tenth Eon, both believe his supposed immortality will let him follow her there. (Chapters 675–680)

The Tenth Eon, endless grief, and the birth of the Mad Supreme

Moraine reincarnates into the Tenth Eon and waits for a partner who never arrives. After centuries of failed searches, Hades tells her that his Ninth-Eon creation truly died and that the talent technique had been stripping away the Devil's own existence. Moraine refuses the answer by repeatedly killing herself, reincarnating, and waiting again, hoping one birth might somehow reach the dead prior Eon. The cycle weakens her body and soul until she can barely move. Vornaz finally proves that the target does not exist, but certainty only turns her desperate search into an equally desperate wish to die permanently. (Chapters 681–682)

Severant then reveals the Devil's contingency: if he failed to return, the demon was to remove Moraine's memories. She refuses. Forgetting would leave the loss embedded without preserving the only happy life she had known, and a fabricated replacement would be worse than grief. Vornaz and Severant instead explain how the Devil searched for survival and earned the name Tyranny by threatening those who withheld knowledge. Their stories do not repair the broken promise, but they stop Moraine from reducing his secrecy to indifference. She orders Severant to preserve her memory and accepts Ouroboros's offer to fight Hades in exchange for a route to the lost man. (Chapters 683–684)

The resulting Universe Creation war changes both the Cosmos and Moraine. She grows strong enough to confront Hades, permanently devours the former Witches of Pride and Lust, takes most of the Witch of Time's Authority, and helps return the Devil into the revised Tenth-Eon history. The price is a Darkness existence made from fully connected elementals, absorbed Authorities, and fused Consciousnesses. As the Mad Supreme, Moraine becomes so powerful that entering Neo's universe would consume the very person she restored. Her success therefore reproduces her loss in another form: Neo is alive, but the main Moraine cannot safely stand beside him. (Chapters 685–687, 766, and 782–787)

Morrigan's severed life and the return to Neo

Moraine anticipates that barrier before her strength becomes unmanageable. Using Severant, she cuts away an infinitely weaker part of herself that can exist independently inside Neo's universe. That part is still described as Gluttony, yet it is no longer connected to the main Witch and develops a different Intent, body, and history through identities including King Morgan and Morrigan de Montaigne. This severance is why resemblance and habit can coexist with apparently contradictory evidence: Morrigan is Moraine by the characters' asserted continuity, but not merely a disguise worn by the full Supreme. (Chapter 687)

Neo eventually confronts Morrigan after recognizing Moraine's behavior beneath a different Intent. She asks what recognition can change when he will not leave Elizabeth, and his inability to choose confirms the pain that made her hide. Even so, she lets him stay, shares an ordinary meal and morning, and reveals through Percival's explanation that she had been seeking a way beyond the Golden Domain to find Elizabeth for him. Helping that search works against her own desired future, making restraint rather than possession her most consequential proof of love. (Chapters 702–705)

The severed Moraine then refuses to let Neo and Jack Hanma face the Alliance alone. She joins their ship, protects Neo when the Universal Will appears, and demands that he include his companions before gambling with cosmic punishment. Against Zeus, she uses Fate to bend an otherwise fatal strike, deploys a black knight, identifies the law behind his invincible World, and finds the path Neo must climb to qualify as an opponent. Zeus explicitly identifies this body as a Stage 5 God. Her intervention cannot close the raw power gap by itself, but it converts an impossible assault into a fight Neo can understand and survive. (Chapters 728–745)

Apollyon, the True Blessed Land, and a shared family

Outside the Golden Domain, Neo is caught among the Eternals, Apollyon, and a dying body. He hesitates to summon Moraine because her arrival will erase nearby universes, then calls her as the Mad Supreme's Apostle when every safer route closes. Moraine manifests the World of Darkness, holds Apollyon back, removes the black knight from Morrigan, and fuses it into Neo. She also plants the Life Flame Ignition method in his mind so he can stabilize a body and enter the True Blessed Land. Her rescue is protective without being harmless: the full Darkness does not distinguish innocent universes from guilty ones when madness takes control. (Chapters 782–787)

Moraine intervenes again when the Eye of the Existence Watcher connects Neo to a sleeping enemy. She reaches the Darkness Seed in his Core and makes it devour the linked portion of his existence, destroying part to save the whole. Later, the severed Morrigan survives inside Neo's Cosmos while the main Supreme remains outside. Their strange relationship is made explicit when both curse and compete over the black knight despite thinking of themselves as one. The conflict demonstrates the boundary the story preserves: shared origin and claimed identity do not prevent independent desires, custody, or action after Severant's cut. (Chapters 769 and 786–787)

Elizabeth eventually decides that Neo's refusal to face either relationship is causing more harm than honest conflict. After meeting Morrigan inside his Cosmos, she brings Moraine out peacefully, and the household attempts a shared future. Moraine clings to Neo after years without physical contact, quarrels with Elizabeth, and makes no pretense that witch possessiveness has disappeared. Yet both women reject Neo's proposal to sever himself into different partners. Their compromise preserves the continuity of all three people rather than solving jealousy by cutting away memories, histories, or inconvenient parts of a self. (Chapters 812–818)

Restoration from the World of Darkness and Neo's departure

After Apollyon's terminal seal and Zerek's assault, the Supreme of Darkness remains an amalgamation of Horrors, stolen Consciousnesses, Negative Karma, and madness. Neo approaches without resistance and reverses the deaths caused around her. He then separates the minds that never belonged together and takes Moraine's madness and accumulated Karma into himself. The World of Darkness collapses into a woman who can recognize and embrace him. The scene does not absolve the destruction by denying it; it restores the victims and locates the catastrophe in the fusions and choices that overwhelmed Moraine without declaring her identity irrecoverable. (Chapters 831–832)

Morrigan stands beside the restored Moraine when Neo offers them a final choice. Both choose renewed connection, and Neo fuses the severed links, but both remain embodied and speak independently afterward. Their separate histories are therefore not retroactively erased. The restored Moraine immediately faces another threatened loss when Neo decides to leave for Jack. She tries to hold him, certain his Fate means he will never return, then releases him only after he promises to marry her and Elizabeth upon returning. Like the lesson she once gave the Devil of Tyranny, protection cannot justify destroying another person's chosen duty. (Chapters 832–833)

Identity and continuity

Moraine and Morrigan

Morrigan is neither an ordinary alias nor an unrelated lookalike. Chapter 687 says Severant cuts a part from Moraine, makes it independent, and leaves an entity that is Moraine while no longer connected to the full Witch. That entity has its own Intent and lived history as King Morgan and Morrigan de Montaigne. Neo recognizes Moraine in her; Morrigan and the full Supreme later call themselves one; yet they can quarrel, possess different bodies, hold different knowledge, and choose separately. This article follows the asserted shared identity without assigning Morrigan's every independent action to Moraine's original body. (Chapters 687, 702–705, 730, 735, and 786)

Chapter 832 restores their connection rather than showing one body absorbing the other. Neo asks Morrigan whether she wants to remain separate, receives consent from both women, and fuses the links between them. Morrigan remains beside Moraine and Elizabeth during the scene, so the latest local evidence supports connected selves with a repaired identity relationship, not an immediate single-body merger. Morrigan's separate article preserves the history created while the Severant cut was active. (Chapters 832–833)

Reincarnations and the Mad Supreme

Moraine's Ninth- and Tenth-Eon incarnations are Witch reincarnations of one continuing identity. The aged tavern keeper, the younger rebirth, and the grief-stricken later bodies are not unrelated people. The Mad Supreme is likewise Moraine after war, devouring, and Darkness fusion, not a clone responsible for the catastrophe in her place. The fused foreign minds materially damage her sanity, but Neo restores her by separating those additions from the person who existed before them. (Chapters 675–687 and 831–832)

Appearance and personality

In the Ninth-Eon tavern, Moraine has black-and-gold hair, golden eyes, and a commanding presence. Her unawakened body initially has ordinary human strength and ages through adulthood into old age. Reincarnation restores youth rather than preserving that aged form. The severed Morrigan body has black hair and golden eyes, visual continuity that helps Neo's recognition but does not by itself prove identity. During Moraine's long grief, her hair becomes dry and tangled, her skin pale, her cheeks hollow, and her body skeletal; those details describe severe deterioration, not her ordinary appearance. (Chapters 671–682 and 702)

Moraine is gluttonous, blunt, proud, and much more emotionally demonstrative in private than her stiff public manner suggests. She can be imperious and spoiled over food, then intensely practical when teaching first aid, spells, or morality. Her refusal to accept the village massacre establishes sincere care for innocent life, making the Mad Supreme's indiscriminate devouring a tragedy rather than a consistent preference. She also cries readily when abandonment, grief, or reunion overcomes her restraint, and does not consider that openness incompatible with strength. (Chapters 671–684, 702–705, and 832–833)

Possessiveness is her most persistent interpersonal limitation. Other Witches provoke jealousy even before the wedding promise, and Elizabeth's place beside Neo causes both Moraine and Morrigan genuine rage. Moraine nevertheless refuses memory erasure, helps Neo search for Elizabeth, accepts a shared relationship, and consents to reconnection with Morrigan. These choices do not cure jealousy; they show a developing belief that love must preserve the other person's whole identity even when that wholeness includes relationships she would rather exclude. (Chapters 679, 683–687, 702–705, and 812–833)

Powers and limitations

Authority of Gluttony

Moraine possesses the Witch Authority of Gluttony before she awakens. In its weak initial form, killing a being gives her fragments of its knowledge. After the Talent Transfer causes her Awakening, she can take the deer's complete memories and knowledge, but the influx produces severe pain and rising madness that Neo must soothe. Gluttony therefore does more than consume physical strength: it assimilates information and, at later scale, aspects of existence. A stronger body and soul allow more of the Authority to operate, which is why Awakening changes its output without creating the Authority itself. (Chapters 674 and 679–680)

During the Universe Creation war, Gluttony becomes the exceptional method that permanently kills Witches. Moraine devours the former Witches of Pride and Lust and takes most of Vivienne's Authority. Darkness later displays a violent fusion property associated with the stolen Pride Authority, combining bodies, souls, thoughts, and Consciousnesses without preserving a clean hierarchy. Accumulation is therefore also the power's core danger: what Moraine devours does not remain a tidy collection, and the resulting World of Darkness turns acquisition into identity collapse and madness. (Chapters 686–687, 766, and 831–832)

Witch reincarnation and immortality

As a Witch, Moraine survives ordinary death through reincarnation and returns when one Eon replaces another. Her memories may be latent before recovery, but her contracts and relationships can persist across those lives. This immortality is why she initially assumes the Devil of Tyranny will meet her in the Tenth Eon. Hades's correction reveals the limitation: his artificial Devil shared great longevity and blood but not the Witch mechanism, so Moraine's route cannot carry another person across the Eon's end merely because she loves him. (Chapters 675–682)

Repeated self-killing is neither painless nor an unrestricted time-travel technique. Moraine's attempts weaken body and soul, strand her in later incarnations, and cannot reach a prior Eon that no longer exists. Severant can remove memory but says the emotional absence would remain; Moraine therefore treats continuity of experience as part of survival, not a disposable burden. Her immortality protects persistence, while leaving grief, madness, and the consequences of each life intact. (Chapters 681–684)

Supreme of Darkness and the World of Darkness

The full Moraine becomes the Mad Supreme or Supreme of Darkness. Darkness elementals differ from other elemental collectives because they are connected without meaningful individual separation; she cannot send an ordinary fragment into Neo's universe and must either manifest completely or not at all. Her arrival forms a World of Darkness populated by Horrors and fused Consciousnesses. It can engulf universes, contest Apollyon, and treat the physical and conceptual boundaries of Neo's Cosmos as permeable enough to reach Morrigan or a Darkness Seed inside him. (Chapters 686, 784–787, and 831–832)

That scale is also a hard limitation. Full manifestation would erase the universe Moraine wants to enter, and speaking sanely to Neo uses a small reserve of control accumulated over vast time. When the mask falls, the Supreme does not distinguish innocent from guilty and expands through nearby worlds. The fused minds, crimes, and Negative Karma continue worsening her madness until Neo removes them. Calling her is therefore an emergency measure capable of defeating threats and the surrounding reality together, not a safe form of reinforcement. (Chapters 685–687, 784–787, and 831–832)

Fate, the black knight, and Solus

The severed Morrigan body has refined Fate mastery. She reads the tapestry of Fate, detects approaching threats, bends Zeus's supposedly certain attacks away from Neo, and identifies the hidden rule and required path inside his World. Fate does not simply overwrite every outcome: Zeus's superior World continues pressing the fight, and Moraine must supply actionable openings that Neo can exploit. She can also use golden Fate threads to restore a summoned black knight after Zeus shatters its armor. (Chapters 735 and 742–745)

Solus is explicitly a penguin manifestation of Moraine's soul weapon. It communicates mostly through gestures, obtains a seed of the Darkness Firmament from Neo, and appears connected to the same broader weapon identity that later manifests as a black knight. The exact equivalence among every form is not fully explained, so their demonstrated forms are preserved without inventing a transformation ladder. Moraine and Morrigan's later argument over the black knight further shows that shared identity does not automatically settle independent custody or control after severance. (Chapters 735, 743–744, and 786)

Apostle bond and rescue methods

Neo can invoke the full Moraine through his Authority as Apostle of the Mad Supreme. Once called, she can send Darkness elementals into his Cosmos, extract the black knight from Morrigan, and fuse it into his existence while the main World stalls Apollyon. She also transmits the Life Flame Ignition technique after stabilizing a new body for him. The technique supports entry into the True Blessed Land, but its later use burns Neo's Life Flame and carries a death risk rather than providing ordinary healing. (Chapters 784–792)

Moraine's protection sometimes works by sacrificing part of the protected person. When the Eye of the Existence Watcher forms a link to a sleeping higher being, she drives Neo's Darkness Seed to consume itself and the connected portion of his existence. This cuts the link but leaves him catastrophically weakened for Kevin's attack. The act captures her tactical logic at its strongest and most dangerous: she can recognize the only survivable loss immediately, yet survival may still mean accepting damage no ordinary ally would dare inflict. (Chapter 769)

Combat, healing, and practical knowledge

Before cosmic power, Moraine learns and teaches practical survival. She knows herbs, first aid, hunting, archery, sword forms, spells, and runes, and she trains these skills with Neo across incarnations. As Morrigan she supplies healing during Neo's confrontation with the Supreme name, defends allies with prepared witch methods, and remains tactically observant when stronger combatants dominate direct exchanges. Her experience lets her translate Fate information into concise instructions during Zeus's World rather than merely report danger. (Chapters 672–680, 702–705, 733–745)

No formal elemental mastery tier, spell-mastery tier, or named Heavenbreaker Step is supplied for Moraine. “Refined” Fate mastery describes demonstrated competence, not a confirmed Apprentice-through-Supreme level. Neo's Apostle status belongs to Neo, while the Stage 5 statement belongs specifically to the severed body confronting Zeus. The main Supreme body's overwhelming performance cannot be converted into a numeric Stage without an explicit local statement. (Chapters 686–687, 742–745, and 784–787)

Power progression

Relationships

Neo Hargraves

Neo Hargraves begins as the artificial Devil placed in Moraine's care and becomes her dependent, student, teacher, partner, Apostle, and promised husband. She teaches him not to equate protection with destruction; his secret Talent Transfer lets her awaken; her later war restores him but makes her too dangerous to approach. Their bond repeatedly turns self-sacrifice into conflict because each decides what the other can afford to lose. By Chapter 833, Moraine releases him to save Jack only after accepting a renewed marriage promise. (Chapters 671–687, 702–705, 784–787, 812–833)

Morrigan di Montaigne

Morrigan di Montaigne is the independent part Severant cuts from Moraine. The two regard themselves as one but possess different Intents and lived histories and can argue over Neo or the black knight. Morrigan demonstrates the restraint the full Moraine needs: she helps search for Elizabeth and stays near Neo without demanding immediate recognition. Their Chapter 832 reconnection is consensual and preserves both bodies through the supplied ending. (Chapters 687, 702–705, 730, 786, and 832–833)

Elizabeth

Elizabeth is Moraine's rival for Neo and later co-partner. Both experience possessiveness intense enough to contemplate violence, yet Elizabeth recognizes that Morrigan helped search for her while Moraine recognizes Neo will not erase Elizabeth. They reject splitting Neo into convenient histories and attempt a shared household instead. Their alliance remains difficult, but both ultimately hold him together, accept the same promise, and let him leave for Jack. (Chapters 702–705 and 812–833)

Hades

Hades creates and abandons the Devil Moraine raises, then tells her that the Ninth-Eon man truly died. His explanation exposes the Talent Transfer and begins her collapse. Moraine later joins the war against him and grows strong enough to fight him directly. Their conflict is both personal and cosmic: she opposes the father who denied Neo a family while becoming capable of devastation on the same scale as the being she blamed. (Chapters 671, 681–687)

Vornaz and Severant

Vornaz helps Moraine locate the Devil across reincarnations and finally proves that he no longer exists. Severant carries the Devil's instruction to erase her memories, refuses to force it after she objects, and later cuts the weaker independent self who becomes Morrigan. Moraine treats both demons as trusted witnesses to her continuity. Their Authorities offer location and severance, but neither can make a substitute lover or a painless identity without her consent. (Chapters 675 and 682–687)

Items

Solus

Solus is Moraine's soul weapon manifestation, shown as a penguin that communicates through gestures and carries the Darkness Firmament Seed. A black knight serves as another major combat manifestation associated with Moraine and Morrigan, although the text does not fully enumerate how every form transforms into the others. Because Solus remains a living soul-weapon expression rather than an ordinary possession, its actions are treated as part of Moraine's power relationship rather than simple property. (Chapters 735, 743–744, and 786)

Vornaz and Severant

Vornaz and Severant can take weapon forms and are wielded in searches or acts of severance, but both are sentient demons and contractual partners rather than Moraine's property. Vornaz becomes the sword used to search across an Eon; Severant is the blade whose Authority cuts memories, identities, or connections. Moraine's association with them is defined by contract, consent, and shared history, not ordinary ownership. (Chapters 675 and 682–687)