37th of Season of Earth, 58th year of the 32nd cycle

Brand Coldridge was having a great day. More than a year had passed since the cultists hounded him, and a well-cultured adventurer saved him from an almost certain demise. Even more important were the discussions he had with the adventurer, who was incidentally also an alchemist and a herbalist.

The discussions with Dandelion Blackfist, or just Dandelion as the man preferred to be called, had advanced his research into the cure by decades, and the culmination of those inspirational discussions and new insights into herbs had borne fruit.

"I did it!" Brandon stared at the flask and the bubbling mixture inside. He carefully cooled it, white minding heartsoother's sap notoriety for sudden temperature changes. Had he any mana, he would've cooled it without resorting to complex apparatus non-awakened alchemists had to use to perform their art, but that was fine.

Years ago, he had failed his awakening, but that was fine too. His second-chance potion would revolutionize the world. It would let many who had failed once succeed on their second attempt. Dandelion even postulated the potion would increase the odds of awakening and that maybe a lesser variant could be used by those about to try to fuse with a beast core.

"Work for another day." Brand laughed as drops of moisture condensed within the crystal flask. "Another week, perhaps. Today, after all these years, I will awaken and assume my place as the Coldridge clan's heir. I will make us rich and influential beyond imagination, and we will help fight the four cults' blight."

The potion cooled with the cruel sluggishness of commoner-brewed concoctions. But eventually, it cooled enough.

Brand grabbed the flask and downed it. The tart liquid seemed to prick at his tongue, but warmed him without burning as it slipped down his throat. Something bloomed in his stomach, and the warmth intensified, bordering on unpleasant before all the heat shifted towards his heart and head.

Sweat poured down Brand's back, but he endured the piercing pain before it passed after a seemingly hour-long second. Brand swayed on his feet, a feeling of freshness overwhelming him as if someone had stuffed him full of mint leaves.

Then, the freshness too passed, and Brand was wide awake, his shirt sweaty.

Despite his age, the alchemist grinned like a fool and grabbed the third-realm core he had secured for his experiment. He touched it, and rather than crumble, the orb melted into his skin.

"Yes! YES!" Brandon roared in triumph and ran out of the laboratory.

He didn't even check what he had awakened as. His body was tempered with ancestral tinctures; becoming a first realm knight would only change his strength a bit, but he did notice he was running faster. Almost certainly he had awakened as mageknight.

"Father!" he roared as he sprinted through the hallways.

Then, he caught the screams. Brandon climbed the stairs of his underground laboratory and looked out the window, coming face to face with hell.

A dozen men wielding bone swords slashed at the servants and the guards working in the courtyard. He saw his stepmother and stepbrother scream in terror before the uncaring barbarian stabbed the sword into the child's face.

The skull caved in, and the lifeless body bonelessly flopped to the ground, the boy's entire skeleton consumed by the bone blade. Brand stared in terror, unable to move. He didn't like his half-sibling. He didn't hate him either, but his father siring replacements after Brand had failed to awaken had always stung. It also drove his research and the desire to advance.

And his chief motivator had just fallen to a damn cultist.

Brand screamed. He had no weapons, but he wanted to jump out the window and take a bite of the cultists. It was foolish, suicidal, and he knew it. Instead of killing himself, Brand turned around and fled. In the corner of his eye, he caught sight of his stepmother's beautiful, fit body turning into a punctured, boneless sack of flesh and blood.

Brand sprinted, but heard the sound of feet slapping stone, chasing after him. He fled towards the patriarch's bedroom. The escape tunnels were in his father's wardrobe - easily collapsible and safe.

Brand took a turn and then another. The bedchamber was close - the feet slapping behind him closer. Brand slammed the ornate door open, smashing them off their hinges, when his back flared with pain.

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"Got him," a gruff voice said as Brand's back burned. The pain was like nothing he had ever felt. His bones melted, his ribs collapsed and turned into burning goo, flowing through his body towards the blade.

"Leave my son alone!" Brand's father came charging from the wardrobe, throwing a flask at the cultists while drawing a sword.

Despite his pain, Brand smiled. His father didn't hate him. Even without knowing he had made the potion and awakened on his second attempt, his father loved him.

Glass shattered behind Brand. Someone screamed, then a blazing man ran at his father and gutted him with a stab of the bone saber.

Brand watched his father stab the cultist back, but the man took the blow and grabbed the sword with his free hand while the bone blade consumed Brand's father from within.

We're dead. Brand realized. There was nothing he or his father could do. Their lives were over, their bones feeding their madmen murderers.

Instead of cursing, instead of begging, Brandon looked at his father.

"Dad, I awakened." I didn't let you down.

***

The sky was blue, the ocean black, and the ground white, covered in the snows of early fall. Maelstrom enjoyed the contrast as she watched the scenery blur from inside her carriage. The royal procession had left their summer palace and followed the tradition of changing their residence from one of leisure and mental enlightenment to the harshness of winter and the strengthening of the body.

Her parents naturally hadn't needed it, both of them firmly at the ninth realm, but they still took the trip every year, following tradition and, more importantly, going to visit and pay respects to Maelstrom's grandfather.

Maelstrom took the trip twice a year, heading east once the spring's thaw began, and heading west after the fall's first snow blanketed the kingdom.

"What do you think, Wave, will Grandfather have time for me this year?" She asked her traveling companion, servant, and childhood friend.

"Your grandfather is a busy man, Your Majesty, but he favors you the most amongst all his grandchildren. He will certainly find the time to assist you with your training."

Maelstrom held back her sigh. She wasn't asking about training, but even that had been handled by the family's senior retainers rather than the ancient patriarch himself. No, Maelstrom just wanted to talk with her grandfather, take a walk into the ice caves. It would be wonderful if he could take her out for an expedition again like he did when she was a child, when she stalked the huge, fluffy dreadwalkers, who froze and let her hug the soft feathers of their legs because her grandpa was glaring at the ninth realm manabeasts.

She missed the foolishness of youth, the lack of expectations because she was a heavenly talent, the days when she was just the cutest granddaughter in the world.

The carriage shook.

"What was that?" Wave asked, staring in shock while Maelstrom jumped, her slander blade already in her hand.

Three colossi of snow and ice rose outside, smashing towards the caravan. The creatures exploded into a blizzard. Maelstrom didn't and couldn't see anything. She recognized her father's mana in the snowstorm, but she had no way of perceiving the battle between grandmaster-grade combatants.

The only things she knew and could sense were the carriage's rocking and the infernal screams of the damned in the furious snowstorm.

Her eyes went wide as she realized what had happened.

"Has the Ghost Cult gone mad?"

The cultists daring attack a royal family was a declaration of war. Worse, they attacked the monarch personally, his queen, and the heir apparent. It was as Maelstrom had said - some madness must have drawn them.

Maelstrom gaped into the blizzard, then sheathed her sword and sat. She was useless, but she wasn't a child. She knew that going out would pointlessly endanger herself and her family. If the cultists were crazy enough to attack them, Maelstrom wouldn't mind waiting for her parents to bleed their madness out of their heretic bodies, along with their lives.

The storm raged, and a bead of blood oozed out of Maelstrom's nose as the keening and wailing of ghosts and tormented spirits attacked her soul. The carriage's wards blocked the soul-rending magic out of the attack, but the mere pressure of ninth and eighth realm cultists' shrieking shook Maelstrom's bones.

A thud drew her attention from the obscuring snow, and Maelstrom saw Wave sprawled on the ground, blood oozing out of her eyes, ears, and nose. She was a mere second realm knight, so Maelstrom rushed over and poured a potion down her friend's mouth.

The potion still flowed into the poor young woman's mouth when the carriage exploded. Maelstrom flew back-first into the snow, her father's bloody, lifeless body broken in the wreckage becoming the only sight in the world.

A sob escaped her, shaking her entire body as tears flowed down her cheeks for the first time in years.

"Fool man. He should've run." A voice like the ear-piercing screeching of glass filled Maelstrom's world, and a withered human-shaped thing stood before her. It moved to slap her, when her amulet burst. A bubble of water enveloped her and snatched her away at such a high speed not even the ninth-realm ghostsovereign could follow her.

"She lives," another ghostsovereign appeared next to the one who had failed the assassination.

"Doesn't matter. Divine Voice said the attack would crush her spirit, and she would never recover. She guaranteed the brutal death of her parents would crush her." The ghostsovereign looked around. Nine had come, but only two would leave. The royals were truly as fearsome as the rumors claimed. The cults and their hidden allies needed more strength before the glorious era could begin.

"Let's go." The ghostsovereign stored the king's body into a spatial pouch, followed by the queen's. "I can only hope our followers had an easier time completing their missions and gathering the offerings."

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