Glare at me all you want, Sersa thought as she fought off a curl of her upper lip. I am the deacon of this domain under the jurisdiction of a great elder. While she was wary of Elder Sere, she had confidence that she could overtake her in cultivation as the sect’s ambitions continued to wreak havoc on the easterly kingdoms.

“Rose,” said Marcus, his unnervingly dark eyes finding hers. “You have failed me yet again.” The handsome man was so pale that he appeared sickly. Had he been injured? Most of his body was covered by his flowing robes and there weren’t any abnormalities in his disposition.

“Yes, Your Excellency.” Pushing aside any thoughts about his appearance, she met his gaze but only barely. Eight severed heads fell to the ground with a quick exertion of her will, each face disturbingly attractive despite the pallid complexions and unsettling gore that upset their presentation. “Here are the heads of five of the Earl of Westerbrook’s sons and three of his daughters. As for the man himself, he was done in by these two elder brothers of mine.” Since the core disciples that had killed these nobles had also died in battle she had shamelessly retrieved their heads in order to collect the credit for their defeat.

The two boys in question silently added several more heads to the pile. Only one of the earl’s progeny managed to escape the battle with their life, the young noblewoman that Sersa had failed to defeat throughout most of the fighting.

“Enough pandering,” Marcus waved her off. “This failure was no fault of your own. In actuality, this was no failure at all, but a great success.”

“Yes,” said Sere, who showed no signs of the injury that she had supposedly suffered, “I’m quite surprised with the results.”

Marcus produced another head, this one with long blond hair, round ears and a square, chiselled face. “I give you, the King of Hauss. Or the former king, I should say.”

Sersa finally understood her role in this conflict the moment that she saw the lifeless face before her. The Earl of Westerbrook’s uncle was evidently one of the strongest cultivators within the entire kingdom. Marcus had planned on the man rushing to save his family and chosen that short but crucial period of time to infiltrate deep into the heart of enemy territory in order to claim the life of their king. Elder Sere’s presence was necessary in order to hold off the nobleman in question until Marcus’s return, which resulted in the powerhouse rushing eastward in frustration as the bulk of the sect’s forces retreated southward.

“The reason we have called you here,” Marcus continued, “is because we are going to leave the city of Camomile to those that remain from the Ashen domains, who have left the central region for this new domain. For now we are going to focus on consolidating our power within our new borders and collecting all of the resources that remain on our land.”

“I will see to it, Your Excellency,” Sersa bowed.

“No, you won’t.” Marcus walked over to her and reached out with a pallid hand to trace his smooth fingers through her long, tawny hair. “You didn’t take that pellet that I gave you.”

How does he know? “With all due respect, Your Excellency, I will only do so once ordered.”

A hand appeared beside Sersa’s left cheek that sent such a strong gust of wind battering her hair and clothing that they whipped about as if she stood in the midst of a destructive storm. It was Elder Sere’s hand, the woman standing at her side with fading anger and rising confusion. The great elder had caught her arm with an instantaneous interception.

“You would tolerate this?”

“There is nothing wrong with exercising caution.” Marcus stared hard into the woman’s eyes, a light crunch resounding throughout the room as his hand tightened around her wrist for the briefest of moments. “You would strike down my deacon, within our own domain?”

“Your deacon? She is an outcast, and Kilian’s at that.”

“You needn’t worry about things that don’t involve you.”

“What is this, Marcus?”

“You, a prime player of Elder Zaro’s faction, suddenly appear with a proposition of temporary collusion. Considering the relationship between our domains and those of our affiliates, did you think that I wouldn’t have my suspicions as to your true intent?”

“I came to retrieve the items that Zaro lent to his grandsons without the consent of the rest of our faction leaders. The poison within the blade coincides with the strength and amount of energy injected into it. You know how valuable that weapon is to us. As for the Evernight Bow, which is secondary, there are only a few left in our possession.”

Marcus surprised everyone present with a hearty laugh. “You know, I actually believe that to be the truth. However…”

A tense silence filled the room, the boys keeping their eyes on the floor as the elders shared a hair-raising stare.

“Release me.”

An entire minute passed before the great elder released Sere, who immediately dashed to the wall and smashed its entirety to crumbling bits of aged stone. Before she could move however, she was suddenly surrounded by a field of red electricity that stole her consciousness away with a horrendous scream.

“Do you know why I chose you as my deacon, Rose?” Marcus asked without looking over his shoulder as he slowly walked over to where Elder Sere lay with a pained expression on her unremarkable face. “Because you think. You come to your own conclusions, and I suspect that you hold your own beliefs as well.” He gently lifted Sere onto his shoulder and turned to face the Sersa and the others, the two boys completely un-phased by the unbelievable scene that had just played out before them.

“What do you plan to do to the elder?” she asked uncertainly. “How did you disable her so easily?”

He smiled in response and then walked over to the edge of the open room, which now displayed the eerily dark cityscape of Davenhold under a starless, moonless, cloud-filled sky. “You are still the deacon of this domain because you didn’t consume that pellet. Rane and Maxus are the same; they chose death before ultimate subservience to me, which is what would have happened had you consumed what I had given you."

"That pelle—”

"Once news of Elder Sere’s death reaches the other domains, both her disciples and her territories will be up for grabs.”

“You intend to take Maxus on as your own direct disciple?”

“I will have you as well.”

“Wait, Elder Sere’s death…?”

A jolt of fear shot through Sersa. The great elder’s words were as good as promising to turn his hand against her master, Kilian—a man of equal station—just as he had done with the woman before her. This man was a traitor to the sect, and an insanely ambitious one.

“I have a task for you, Rose. Call it a personal mission if you will.”

“And my duties as deacon?”

“Rane will take over during your absence.” The man’s feet left the ground as his body rose upward with silent skill. “He will explain the contents of your mission, which shouldn’t prove too difficult, if not somewhat interesting. Now, if you will excuse me I have some cultivating to do.” With the twentieth seated elder slung over his intimidating back like hunted game, he flew off into the night sky and almost immediately disappeared into the darkness.

Maxus handed her a vial containing a dozen violet medicinal pellets just a few seconds after the great elder’s departure. “These were found in a general’s coffin within a Vespasian Tomb. They will be a great help with raising your cultivation.”

She silently accepted the vial, which gave off a potent aura that was hard to ignore. Stowing them away within a fold of her robe, she said, “What is going on, Maxus? What is the great elder trying to do, and why are you helping him?”

“For the same reason that you will help us,” he responded, his lengthy hair parted to reveal a terrible hatred within his chestnut eyes, a level of emotion that she had never seen within their indifferent depths. “Revenge.”

The three youths shared a complex trio of stares and then entertained a silence that wasn’t broken until Sersa finally spoke up, her tone that of growing interest.

“What is my mission?”

“Why don’t you take a seat?” said Rane. “I’m sure you’ll enjoy this.”

Sersa reflected on the contents of her assignment later that night. Apparently hundreds of disciples from the Ashen domains had been murdered over the past few days, always far removed from any instances of battle, always killed within proximity of countless others of their sect. In all cases there were no signs of a large force being mobilized in the area, which led the great elder to speculate that the murders were the work of a single person. Every single casualty was found deprived of their inner energies, which could only mean that they had been done in by one of their own. Over a dozen cultivators at the peak of Profound Entry were among the deceased, meaning that whoever had taken their lives was at least as strong as a member of the Core.

The smaller war parties were being harassed by this person and as a result there was a growing sense of unrest among their number in the northern region of the dying kingdom, for only a fifth of the youths from the Ashen domain had remained behind to occupy the territory. Her task wasn’t to locate and subdue this individual, but rather to invite him to join the great elder’s faction, for nobody seemed to know the identity of this deadly cultivator. One thing was for certain though, and that was that the killer was definitely a member of their sect. Who else in this world made use of the Blood Burning Heart Technique, not to mention the reported instances of the Scarlet Serrated Hand martial skill?

It all depends on their reason for killing those from our sect, she thought as she recalled the final bit of information that Rane had provided. Not all of those that had been killed had been refined, as some had been tortured or butchered and left for dead. While many disciples killed their martial siblings when specific occasions presented themselves, virtually none would kill so many and for so long a period of time. Just what kind of person was the object of her mission, who risked killing their allies in abundance despite knowing that the penalty for murdering their own was death by the worst ways of torture?