Rosalith’s POV:

Omen Street was something else. Every inch of it was muddy, reeking, and rank. This was beyond the slums.

It was where the production industry saw fit to dump their waste, leaving it choked with chemicals, flies, and mosquitoes, as though the Dukes of Chatenham had abandoned it without a second thought.

But this was where Rosay’s faction, the Circle of Chains, had chosen to be. For the past hour, under the cover of the moonlight’s shadows, its members had fanned out across the street, headed straight for Black Arms headquarters. The instructions Rosay had given them were plain enough: kill any terrorist, and do it brutally.

’I know my people are capable. Cloud, especially, is someone I personally acknowledge. Moreover, if any of them were to die, it would mean they were not ready for my faction. But that is not my primary concern...’

She made her way down the street carefully, each step measured, mindful of how little stamina she had left. Her red eyes drifted to the young man beside her, that strange black mask of his with the question mark floating within it.

Not a word had left the man’s mouth since the Laughing End had taken Leomaris, Rosay’s younger brother, and placed him at her side for protection.

’I don’t trust him... but I want to give the Laughing End the benefit of the doubt. Moreover...’

She stopped in the middle of the street and fished out her pocket watch. After a glance at the time, a soft smile tugged at her lips. Almost immediately, a horse carriage came rolling past, and she hailed it down.

’The Sovereign of the Laughing End appears in twenty minutes... I want to see what he is capable of.’

At her command, the carriage clattered off across the cobblestone, making directly for Zoom Street. At a distance, though, right at the town square where Duke Goethe’s massive statue loomed, a swarm of people had gathered, thick with noise.

It was odd, a crowd that size at such an hour, but Rosay paid it no mind. She got out of the carriage all the same. The Black Arms headquarters was only five alleys away, but something had pulled her attention.

She was calm and collected, and rightly so. The commotion was hers, caused by her allies, on her orders. A distraction, nothing more. Something to pull attention from the blood about to be spilled five alleys away.

She took point, and her guard for the night fell into step without a word.

’I can’t waste much time... going through the crowd isn’t a good idea. This alley might be worse, but I’ll take my chances.’

The main reason Rosay had forced the third-year cadets onto a mission involving terrorists was simple, it concerned her directly. Someone had used her identity to sic the Black Arms on Helios Imperial Academy, and she meant to find out who.

That unsettled her. For someone to go to such lengths using her identity, they either wanted to see her fall or wanted her dead outright.

But she wasn’t particularly fussed about the enemy anymore. Dead or alive, information or not, more than anything, she wanted to see what the Jester of the End was made of.

’I don’t trust him... but if he is real, then he might have a deep connection to Leo. Or perhaps the reason behind Leomaris’s unholy presence and abilities.’

The alley kept her on edge, and she was honest enough with herself to know why. Everything she’d worked for meant nothing if the guard at her back had a mind to finish her off.

Click... click.

As they neared the headquarters, a burning flash of light ripped through the street. That was precisely when her clock went off. Her chest tightened as she braced for the Jester of the End.

The light to her left shone straight onto a factory ahead, as though it had been positioned there on purpose. A sign, if ever there was one.

She turned to face the light head-on, and realisation dawned on her at once. The contrast of it against the dark she’d just walked out of was blinding, forcing her to squint as it cut into her eyes like a thousand blades.

Then she saw it...

On top of the building sat a tower, and on top of that tower stood two figures. The brightness swallowed their details whole, but she was desperate enough to see through it, and she did.

The uppermost figure wore a black overcoat that cut dramatically through the night wind, every inch of him dressed like a highly decorated noble. His black mask bore a white question mark hovering within it, as though it had a mind of its own.

In his hands were what appeared to be two handguns, though darkness had swallowed them entirely, a black mist threading slowly through the air.

It was him... Jester of the End.

Behind him stood someone Rosay recognised well enough. A young man, dark-haired, wearing a similar mask and carrying a revolver, dressed almost carefully so as not to overshadow his Sovereign. The right-hand man.

Herald of the End.

Rosay frowned. Her position was poor, and she knew it. The moment anyone came out of that factory, she’d be spotted straight away. But she didn’t mind. The Jester of the End had her full attention.

’That presence... It’s very similar to Leo’s. Could it be that he truly gave Leo his unholy presence?’

Hardly had her thoughts settled when the factory door opened. Her eyes were still fixed on the Jester of the End, and before she could turn to the figure, a gunshot cracked through the air. When her gaze finally found them, there was a hole in their forehead, and they were already going down.

Rosay’s mouth dropped open. Her eyes found the Jester of the End — only he wasn’t there anymore. She turned to the entrance of the building, and there he stood with his right-hand man. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

"How was that possible?" She blurted.

Whether it was the hibernation creeping in, and her body was too weak to see straight, she couldn’t say. But she could have sworn the Jester of the End hadn’t moved before the shot was fired. His right-hand man was no different.

"What... how did his shot land from that angle? Even from that distance?!"

Rosay’s confusion started to lift as she turned behind her. Her guard, a member of the Laughing End, didn’t have the faintest clue what his Sovereign was capable of.

"So... you’ve never seen him in action before?"

The man hesitated, as though someone had ordered him to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. After a moment, he managed it.

"No, I haven’t. I’ve only met the Herald of the End. But does that even matter? How did he land a shot from that distance?"

Rosay exhaled. She didn’t buy a word, but he had a point on one thing. The distance was impossible to land a shot from. Even for the most seasoned of soldiers.

But she wasn’t finished. She wanted to see more. Coincidentally, her allies chose that same moment to arrive, all four Calamities, her own faction included.

"We’ve taken down about a hundred of them, but I’m afraid we lost a few cadets — ten in total," Celestial said as they closed in.

Rosay’s expression darkened. She’d have been well pleased if they hadn’t lost a single cadet. They were already down to about 150, and that was just the third-year. It didn’t look good.

"We will deal with that later. Now, you must move in. The Laughing End are already inside."

Her words found about fifty cadets, the only ones with the nerve to face the Black Arms. They marched toward the factory, and she fell in behind them, casual as anything.

The doors opened onto about five corpses at the entrance. All dead from gunshots. She wanted a closer look at the wounds and wanted to know if the Jester of the End had used anything out of the ordinary to pull off those shots.

Before she could reconsider, a burning breeze cut through the air, and with it came an aura so imposing it stopped them all in their tracks, each one looking to the other.

There was no need for Rosay to think twice. She knew it straight away.

’A false entity.’

"Everyone get out!" Rosay and Cassius yelled in unison.

Before long, the lot of them were outside, eyes fixed on the factory roof. A circle of flames burned there with savage intensity, melting everything it touched, climbing slowly into the sky. Above the halo, a figure emerged. A flame woman, rising clear of the fire, with a blindfold covering her eyes.

At a certain point, it paused. Then, as quick as it had started, the massive halo of fire drew itself together into what looked like a judgment scale forged from flame, and almost instantly, darkness swallowed everything. Like burning ash settling.

Rosay swallowed bile, the heat pressing a sweat onto her brow.

"Who the heck summoned that?"