The secret lies within Barbatos, within his overwhelming and incomprehensible power over time, over reality. Indeed, there is a reason Diavolo has selected him to be by his side at all hours, for he is a demon who will give what God will not: the gift of immortality.
Or perhaps immortality is the wrong word for it—a more fitting description would be that it is the gift of time he bestows, selectively pausing it for as long as his pactmate desires. In Solomon’s case, it has been well over three thousand years: three thousand years of a vicious knowledge hunt, spent in pursuit of all the world’s curios and every last secret that God has hidden so meticulously.
And yet, Solomon takes his time. For he knows that Barbatos will pause his timer as long as he desires, as long as he commands it. Only when Solomon’s search for knowledge is exhausted will the conditions of their pact be fulfilled; only then will the demon have the right to Solomon’s soul, seasoned to perfection by every novel experience, every deciphered codex, every forbidden truth that draws him closer to the last.
It is only now, after so many millennia, that Solomon discovers the ultimate secret, the supreme Truth he has spent his whole life searching for: the secret of the soul, the meaning of existence. And Barbatos is by his side at an instant, the hair on Solomon’s neck still standing as he cowers in the magic circle, trembling for the first time with true fear. Fear for life. Fear for oblivion. Fear for what he now understands will lie in wait for him when he ventures into death’s domain without a soul intact, without anything of his own to give to the final God who only takes.
“Do not do it,” He whispers, fingers shaking as the demon approaches. He does not know why he says it, for he discovered two thousand years ago that there is no such thing as mercy to a demon, that all pacts are entirely irreversible to the humans foolish enough to forge them. But still, Solomon begs. For fear of what awaits, for fear of what he has brought upon himself.
And as Barbatos devours every last remnant of the man’s soul, leaving nothing but a shadow where it once thrived, he notes that it is the most delicious thing he has ever tasted. It is true perfection, a taste so divine that nothing he has ever had nor anything he ever will have can compare. It is the soul of a king, the soul of the desperate. The soul of a fool, the soul of the wise. The soul of he who sought Truth, and he who died for it.
