Six weeks had passed since the grand calamity, the lights from the heavens that had reaped millions of lives and set the world of Embla into a panic.

All the nations of the world were vigilant wary of a second strike, countless forces and personalities were moving in the shadows trying to get down to the bottom of that first strike.

Nowhere in Embla was this effort to find answers more obvious than in the continent of Harta.

On a bed, in a bedroom, in a tower in the northern part of the continent sat a middle-aged man who seemed to have to have been fast-forwarded into old age.

His name was Ghislain vi Helios, and he was the current reigning emperor of the Helios Empire. The tower he was in, was one he commissioned for his beloved wife. One of three he’d made and gifted her after they were affianced.

True love was a rare thing, and it was even rare in political marriages, but it was present in their relationship, and thus the emperor was grieving.

His guards stood at attention directly outside the room, and in all the floors below. His attendants were waiting in the main hall of the tower.

The golden horned, green skinned emperor sat staring at nothing his eyes red and hazy from all the tears he’d wept. In a few minutes he’d clean up, he’d use the restroom and shower that were adjoined to the bathroom to freshen himself up. He’d dress in the spare robes and formal garb he’d brought to makes sure he looked like the sovereign he was supposed to be.

However, that was all in a few minutes or so, for now, he would just be a man, a man who was hurting. A man who was angry and confused and frustrated, the memory of the pillar of light that all but cut his palace in half and stole away his beloved, forever etched into his memory.

His wife wasn’t the only one he lost, he lost his second eldest son, and the entirety of her side of the imperial family.

He’d also lost one sixth of his nation’s secular elites, one eighth of its standing army and one tenth of the civilian citizenry. For a little bit there he thought he was going to lose his mind, but fortunately for Helios, the emperor was made of sterner stuff than that.

He and several other powers within and beyond the continent, had spent the last five weeks trying to find desperately trying to find answers.

All that had been found were mile deep, glassy craters, so of them encompassing entire buildings, others simply taking portions of the buildings and streets.

Attempts to turn to the divine, seeking the aid of seers and priests had been ineffectual at best and unsettling at worst, or at least this had been the case for people of Helios. Abroad the results of the people's attempts to seek answers from the gods and immortals were less ominous.

Stolen novel; please report.

With the responses ranging from simple celestial “shrugs” and their equivalents, to divine messages that reassured the populace that this “whatever it was” that had befallen the land was at the very least a)probably not likely to happen again, and b)targeted at select group.

Which had been extrapolated by the various mortal parties that had received these messages as an affirmation that the portion of the population who’d fallen victim to the lights had somehow run afoul of something beyond mortal ken.

In a world where it wasn’t entirely unreasonable for someone to have their entire family line executed if they somehow managed to piss off a noble, hearing that dramatic disappearance of all those lives was actually due to someone amongst them possibly angering a transcendental existence, it was surprisingly soothing for the populace.

Suddenly the mystifying and utterly frightening, became frightening but understandable. Reducing the apprehensions of the average person to a tenth of what it had been.

The only ones who weren’t relaxing at the moment were the people of the Helios empire and those factions and parties within the empire, that had been relying on the Order of Golden-shadow to handle various matters for them.

They were still panicking, scrambling, still trying to find out whether this unseen enemy would strike at them as well, while they were cleaning up after their fallen allies and trying to keep any outsiders from stumbling upon the various conspiracies that had involved the families and powers that served as members of the order of the Golden-shadow.

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Elsewhere while the secular Helios was still trying to pull itself back together yet another conspiracy was unfolding in the cultivator world. Within a courtyard, within a meadow belonging to the Harta Branch of the Sagacious-Night, the most influential sect in northern part of Harta as well as a major power within Harta’s neighbor the continent of Cinead, two elites were meeting.

The first was a woman, with golden hair and sunflower yellow skin, and a single unicorn horn, that rose from her brow as a jagged spire.

The second was a man with the eyes and ears of a wolf, his hair dark as a moonless night, his gaze sharper than the blade her wore at his side.

“Greetings, Brother Sekhar.” said the woman.

“Greetings, Elder Alexandra.” said the man.

They sat across from each other. Each of them careful to stay a certain distance from the other, neither of them daring to look away from the other party’s movements.

“So... it seems your people and the Golden-Shadow have had a bit of a setback.” said Sekhar Hao, an emissary from the main branch of the sect.

Alexandra Xanthe, sect elder of the Harta-Branch of the sect, had to spend a fair amount of effort to keep her face neutral.

“If by set back you are talking about the fact the Order of Golden Shadows seems to no longer exist, then yes, brother, there has been something of a set back. No worries, though. While this will mean that our plans for the secular world will have to be put on hold for the moment, our plans in the martial world for this continent’s sects are still well underway.”

The wolfman’s brow rose seemingly slightly skeptical and slightly put out, that he’d been unable to get a reaction from the woman.

“Mhm...is that so? Very good. I’m sure our esteemed seniors will be pleased to hear that.” said Sekhar.

“Yes. I can imagine.” said the woman.

“Indeed, it’s very good to hear this because the Sect Head Antelmo has sent me, to send word that he intends to see us moving into the next phase of our grand endeavour by the time this year is up.” said Sekhar.

The woman just nodded, giving no hint of any impressions or thoughts she might have had on the matter.

“Very well, then I shall endeavour to live to our beneficent Head Antelmo's expectations.”

She saw him off and watched as the wolf man leapt on the back of the winged-shark that brought him to her courtyard and vanished within the clouds. Then she returned to her manse, headed into her office and made a few calls to a few parties to let them know that the situation was a tad more dire than they’d thought.