Herald

Anrosh looked through the reports on her table and sighed. The costs were ever rising, though thankfully, they had developed the Sect enough that they had enough to fund all their projects, even if it was tight.

Getting everything to run smoothly on the other hand was a different story. They had gotten by so far, but ultimately, they had to solidify the rule of the Sect, especially now that there are children on the way. Having Selia, Erdania, and Ryun being from two different Houses could be an issue. Not in any real way, Ryun was still the Sect Head, and his word was final. But it might be an issue in the future, the far future most likely.

A lot had changed for Anrosh in the last few months. She had reached the peak of two focuses, both Cultivation and Class, and now stood on the heights that few if any had stood before her. Her power came from Ryun, but she had accepted that long ago. They were family, closer than even most who were linked by blood. She was honored to be his right hand in all things. It was a greater purpose than she had expected when she was younger, greater than anything that she could’ve even hoped for.

She had a good life, she had a partner that she loved, the family that loved her, and a Sect that relied on her. Service wasn’t even a price to be paid, not when she would’ve done it anyway.

Achieving the peak had taken some introspection, a re-framing of how she viewed herself and her Cultivation in particular. Her Paths were not fully aligned with the ideas that she embodied, but anything, or at least most things, could be bent to fit almost any view. Her Path of the Sword and the Unbreakable Wall were now tools for her service. Her inspiration was given to her by Ryun, so she was his Sword, and she was his Unbreakable Wall. The one that stood between him and the things he didn’t want to deal with. And through her Class, she was now the Herald of the End. A Divine Class, something that no one had even known was possible. Ryun had sworn her from mentioning it to anyone, or even speaking about it. Which was hard.

She did still feel slight imbalance, but Ryun had a plan for her to fix it with her skills, as she slowly worked on improving them too in the future.

For now, she was trying to make as much time as she possibly could to train and understand her newly gained power.

Lesamitrius entered her office and pulled her from her thoughts. She raised her head and quirked an eyebrow.

“A problem?” She asked as she knew they didn’t have any meetings scheduled.

Lesamitrius shook his head. “Erdania and Ryun are in the city,” he said as he took a seat across from her.

“Ah,” Anrosh nodded. “Damage control then.”

Lesamitrius sighed as he relaxed in the chair. “I have people around the tavern, in case they… do something again.”

“Smart,” Anrosh said. “You know that Ryun probably knows already?”

Lesamitrius shrugged. “He didn’t react in any way, so I guess that I’m good.”

“You think that your budget can handle another demolition incident?”

Lesamitrius grimaced. “The mountain was expensive.”

“I’m not lending you more funds,” Anrosh narrowed her eyes.

“They’ll probably contain themselves, right? They’ll be parents soon, they should learn responsibility. And they promised me that they will be more careful.”

Anrosh didn’t respond, instead she turned her eyes back to her reports.

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“Yeah,” Lesamitrius said slowly to himself. “It’ll be fine.”

Anrosh shook her head and smiled to herself, then a sensation passed over her. She detected its source to be her last Class perk, the Herald of the End, the namesake of her Class—the perk that connected her to Ryun.

Through it, she detected a momentary panic, then…

She moved out of her seat and to the window, she grabbed the top above it and threw herself up and onto the roof. She looked out into the city, turning in the direction where she could detect Ryun.

A sphere of white light expanded, a sight that she had never seen before but recognized nevertheless. A roar of sound blasted through the city and her attention was pulled to a massive shape in the distance, a curled up reptilian beast the size of a mountain filled the sky, light shining through the gaps in its body. That was the location of the estate.

Anrosh turned her head and looked on the other side of the territory, seeing a third sphere of light at the location of their new research center.

“What is it?” Lesamitirus asked as he followed her out.

“Reaction Engines, head into the city, find Ryun,” Anrosh ordered, she knew that he wasn’t dead.

Lesamitrius jumped off the palace, following her orders. Anrosh’s mind was whirling, thinking, this was a coordinated attack, and they didn’t know anything about it, the goals or the perpetrators. She didn’t know if it was over. But the locations that were gave her hints about the goals. Ryun and Erdania in the city, their estate where Selia had to be, and the research facility that they were planning on using to research the miniaturized Reaction Engines they recovered. One of them was there, but the staff hadn’t yet moved there fully. The defectors though, they were still in Consequence.

She didn’t need to give out more orders, people already knew what to do, they had plans for things like this. And the Sects in general didn’t do well with rigid command structure. People would investigate and help as they wished. Besides, Anrosh wasn’t a military leader.

As an alarm started blasting all throughout the city, Anrosh moved. She jumped from the palace, denting the roof even though she tried to contain her strength. She soared toward the western side of the city, falling like a meteor on a small block residential building.

She equipped her armor and her weapons from storage as she landed, cracking stone and shaking the ground. She drew on her perk, Herald of the End, and perception of the world shifted as she gained a lesser version of Ryun’s skill sense. She found what she had suspected, and knew that she was barely in time. The building was occupied, it was transitional housing, built when they had been expanding and improving the city. Many had called it temporary home for a time while new homes were built or old improved.

Anrosh had housed the five asylum seekers here. Now she could sense six people heading toward their rooms, just barely there for her sense. There were other rooms in between her and them, other people inside, in the process of waking up and moving to windows to look out and see what was happening. Both the alarm and Anrosh’s arrival had announced that something was wrong.

Anrosh was powerful, but she was a blunt instrument, she couldn’t get to them that fast, not unless she went through the building and probably killed everyone in her way.

She focused on her Domain and the people around her, with a flex of her will she summoned it into reality.

Fragment of the Last Forest

The world around her shimmered and disappeared, and the forest filled with tall bare trees, barren and frozen ground was beneath her feet and a cold pale moon shone above.

Everyone in range suddenly found themselves in her domain, without knowing how or what was happening.

Anrosh shifted, her body turning into a giant wolf, of red fur streaked with white cracks. Her armor covered and rippled over her in the colors of the rainbow, but she was already moving.

She landed before the six people dressed in strange suits, their presence barely noticeable, standing in between them and the five they had come to kill.

The Authority of the End spilled out of her, her Soul, her Essence, the Idea of her being using borrowed power. The world slowed as all Essence came under the effect of the Absolute Cold, a manifestation of the End. It was not Ryun’s flavor of the End, but it was part of it, her own piece of his being.

The six shuddered, whatever powers they attempted to use failed under her Unraveling Existence Class Perk which caused the powers to fail in her presence.

She moved, shaping her Qi into {Glacial Shaping} and trapping them in prisons of Absolute Cold. With her authority, she pushed her Essence inside the prisons to seep into their beings, into their Souls, freezing them into statues, trapping them in a world of no life or movement at all.

Once she was sure she had them contained she turned back and looked at the five. The woman that was the leader of the group, Marianna Heva, looked up at Anrosh with wide eyes and fear. The assassins had come here for them. She couldn’t know if the other attacks were just a distraction or if this was some larger plan, but she would need to find out.

Anrosh sighed, she just knew that this was going to mean a lot more work on her table.