It had been an hour since the assault on Anbord, yet a strange silence weighed over the empire. Reports had streamed in, chaos had erupted, beasts had rampaged through the streets, but through it all—there had been no casualties. Dennise, now fully conscious, stood among his cohorts in the shadows of a ruined plaza. They had regrouped to observe, waiting for screams, for blood, for confirmation of the devastation they had unleashed. Instead, what they saw chilled them more than carnage ever could. People were attacked—yes. Beasts struck with teeth and claws, machinery whirring with lethal precision. Yet every blow stopped short of fatal. Every victim rose again, shaken but alive. It wasn’t mercy. It was something far stranger. Dennise’s chest tightened. He could feel it in his bones, in the marrow of his soul. Something fundamental had shifted. This wasn’t luck. This wasn’t strategy. This was wrong. His gaze drifted upward, toward the shimmering dome that blanketed Anbord. The barrier, luminous and vast, stretched as far as the eye could see, like a false sky that mocked reality itself. "...No," he whispered to himself, his throat dry. A thought clawed its way to the surface of his mind; one he desperately wanted to banish. Don’t tell me... But the more he resisted, the clearer it became. He had already lost. Lost without ever knowing when or how. His hands curled into fists, his mind racing. Is there a spy? he wondered, suspicion gnawing at him. But the thought faltered almost as soon as it formed. No—impossible. His allies were like him. Misfits. Outcasts. Each carrying scars and grudges against the great families of Anbord. Betrayal wasn’t in their interest. "Then what...?" he muttered under his breath, his voice barely audible even to himself. The answer lingered in the air, unspoken yet suffocating. Something greater than their schemes had moved. And it was watching them. The source of thɪs content is ɴovel(ꜰ)ɪre.nᴇt Hovering high above Anbord, shrouded in a veil of rolling black smoke, a pair of deep crimson eyes glowed with dark amusement. They belonged to a young man whose long white hair bled into streaks of crimson at the ends. His skin was pallid, drained of all warmth, as if blood itself had abandoned him. A wicked smile revealed the sharp glint of his fangs, the very air bending to his presence. Beside him floated two figures, cross-legged in meditative stillness, their auras vast and burning. To his left was Reginald, his wine-colored hair tied back in a flowing ponytail, fox ears twitching faintly, and three tails fanned out behind him like embers ready to ignite. To his right sat Jerry, his pale skin almost metallic under the light, grey braids framing his face while two short black horns jutted from his forehead. A long, thin tail coiled lazily behind him. Trevor stood as the anchor between them. The young blood sovereign — no, not just that anymore. He had crossed into the Emperor Realm. And with that step came the shattering of illusion: not merely of power, but of identity. The title of Ancestor was not a hollow honorific. It was a mantle — a position that eclipsed primogenitors. Primogenitors were singularities, the first and absolute lords of their element or race. But that was still the beginning. Ancestors were not beginnings — they were foundations. They were the bedrock upon which reality itself balanced, second only to the enigmatic Primordials. If there was a god of blood, then the Ancestor of Blood was not its priest, but its father. That truth had burned its way into Trevor’s soul when he advanced. And with it came his most terrifying gift yet. He could feel bloodlines. Not in the way a vampire senses prey, nor the way a primogenitor commands kin. No — Trevor could see them, threads woven through existence itself. Any who shared his lineage pulsed in his awareness, beacons on an endless web he could never lose sight of. His family — by blood, not by turning — were etched permanently into his perception. And worse still, through them he could peer. He could hear. He could know. It was through that gift he had traced the perpetrator of the attack a week ago. His stepbrother. He had seen his schemes unravel not as rumor or whispers, but through his brother’s very own eyes. Every plot, every resentment, every hateful thought bared naked to him. Trevor was no longer simply a lord of blood. He was the most dangerous spy that had ever existed. The price was steep — shared sensation, the risk of drowning in his victim’s emotions — but Trevor twenty years ago might have faltered under that weight. Trevor now? He filtered and discarded emotions like sand through his fingers, dumping them into the abyss of his will. Now he hovered above Anbord, a silent sovereign, his gaze boring through the city like a blade. Dennise stiffened. A chill crawled up his spine, his instincts screaming though he could not see the source. The air itself pressed on him, oppressive and suffocating. He could feel it — eyes that pierced deeper than flesh, eyes that knew. His heart faltered when he looked back at the chaos raging across Anbord. For the first time, he saw. The cybernetic beasts had clawed through the streets, yes. They had attacked civilians, yes. But... the people had not bled. They had not died. And now, as Dennise’s eyes widened, the truth peeled itself bare. What they thought were victims were nothing more than illusions. The city was unscarred. The barrier hummed with perfect stillness. Every clash, every scream, every drop of blood spilled — a lie woven seamlessly into reality. His throat went dry. "No..." What happens when Chaos and Order clash? A never-ending struggle. One seeks to unbind, the other to chain. But when the two reach balance... when they touch equilibrium... The result is not war. And Anbord... had already fallen under it. No! Anbord itself was dominion. Trevor’s voice cut through the air like a blade dipped in venom, his eyes igniting into a dangerous, blood-red glow. The world seemed to still for an instant — and then the space behind him rippled, bending like glass under pressure. From that distortion, something emerged. The being who stepped forth was monstrous in stature, towering at nearly 7.8 feet, his presence alone heavy enough to warp the smoke around him. His eyes burned crimson, sunken into dark, abyssal circles that gave him a deathless, sleepless look. His hair, pale as bone, writhed like white smoke — alive, restless, untethered by any breeze. His skin was unnaturally white, but not plain — etched across it were crystalline patterns that gleamed faintly on his shoulders, elbows, knees, and feet, as though his body itself was forged from fractured gemstones. His nails, long and clawed, shimmered like blood-stained crystal. He wore simple black garments — a sleeveless tank and loose trousers — but even in their simplicity, they only amplified the brutal rawness of his form. His bare feet ended in crystalline claws that scraped faintly against the empty air, each step threatening violence. Trevor didn’t flinch at the monstrous presence. Instead, his lips curled into a smile that was anything but kind. The command left Trevor’s lips in a chilling calm, yet it carried the weight of final judgment. The towering figure inclined his head once in silent obedience. And then — he was gone. Dissolved into a puff of black and white smoke, vanishing so swiftly it felt like he had never been there at all. Apole, Trevor’s spirit beast — the Death Skull. Once a spectral terror, it had now evolved into flesh, manifesting a body both alien and disturbingly familiar. Familiar in ways that Trevor couldn’t quite name. Not yet. If only he knew what mirror he was staring into... But that revelation belonged to another time. For now, Trevor’s crimson gaze shifted downward, locking onto the attackers with unflinching cruelty. The city, the illusions, the chaos — it had gone on long enough. It was time to end this idiocy. From the shadows above the barrier, a ripple in the sky betrayed something vast, something hidden. At first, it was only distortion — a shimmer, like heat mirage bending light. Then came the sound: a guttural hiss, rolling into a screech that curdled the blood of all who heard it. The illusion peeled away. It was massive, far larger than the tallest towers of Anbord. A grotesque fusion of reptile and night predator — its body carrying the sinewy, shifting skin of a chameleon, but its wings vast and membranous, stretched like those of an ancient bat. Each wingbeat sent shockwaves tearing through the sky. Its scales shimmered with shifting hues, bending light itself until it nearly vanished again, hiding in plain sight. Its eyes gleamed with cold, mechanical precision, glowing a hellish crimson as lines of circuitry ran across its hide. Cybernetic grafts protruded from its joints and chest, pulsing faintly with stolen energy. Its claws were long and metallic, sharpened into blades that could cut through barriers like paper. Then, without warning, it struck. The beast descended in a blur, half-seen and half-not, camouflaged in the spectrum of the sky. The earth cracked where its talons raked. A single sweep of its colossal wings sent buildings collapsing, the wind alone shredding steel and stone alike. Sirens wailed, citizens screamed, and the air itself reeked of terror. It roared, a sound that shook the heavens. A sound not just of an animal, but of a machine — primal bellow overlaid with static, distortion, and the grinding shriek of metal on metal. On every screen in the empire, the AI broadcast a single, chilling message: [EX-CLASS BEAST: VEILWING HAS BEGUN ITS HUNT.] The ground trembled beneath its steps. Camouflage rippled across its body once more, and in an instant, the monstrous form vanished into nothingness, leaving only chaos in its wake.