A World of Struggle.

Seven ascended were sitting around a round table in a hidden away bunker.

On one of the seven chairs was a young woman with a laid back attitude, she was speaking to the man opposite to her, who seemed to be in deep thought.

"Abel? Are you listening?"

"Huh? Uhhh...yeah sorry I missed a bit...what were we talking about again?"

The young woman with lush blond hair sighed.

"We were talking about the rising number of nightmare creatures around our respective designated citadels... nevermind that, are you thinking of your family again?"

Abel lowered his head. "Yes, sorry for that, it's just that... sunflower hasn't woken up yet at all and...and I'm afraid Rain would develop signs of infection too."

"Who's sunflower?" A slightly older and cold looking ascended leaned towards the stalwart man next to him and whispered.

"He calls his wife by that nickname, and dude, this isn't the time for this type of-"

"Ahem."

Straightening his back, Randal coughed to silence the murmuring and assured abel.

"Dont be sorry, being worried for your family is only natural... I still remember when I lost my daughter in a sudden gate opening."

For a moment, he remained silent, as if remembering that day and then continued.

"As much as it is horrible for a gate to open within your home itself, it is also a miracle that none of your family members died."

Jessie, the ascended women who had been speaking to Abel before, rejoined. "Leaving the echo of that fallen devil in your home was a wise choice. You have protected your family well, Now leave it to your wife to survive her first Nightmare. She has what it takes to do so, I'm sure of it."

Abel nodded his head silently, after the category two gate had opened in his home and brought a small horde of Awakened creatures into the waking world, it had caused unnecessary stress and fear in three's heart, causing her to be infected a few days later.

The horde itself had been stopped by Abel's ascended echo that he obtained from the raid some months before, but that had done little to lessen his worries for now.

His beloved daughter Rain had also been nearby, now the anxiety of her falling victim to the cruel crucible of the spell haunted him as well.

His son hadn't returned in all these days either, Abel was slowly starting to breakdown under all the pressure, if anything kept him grounded now...it was his oldest daughter, and his duty as an Awakened.

"So, about the chain worms of the isles. I think we really need to find a way to exterminate them all. If we don't, the worms will slowly make the region uninhabitable."

He continued his part of the reports, putting aside the worries of his family for a while.

Randal nodded grimly. "It is not that killing them all is the problem...it's just that the corrupted equivalents below in the dark side of the isles are also present. And there's certainly a tyrant birthing the fallen ones from below, Saint Tyris made sure to confirm that herself... otherwise she would have slain all the worms already."

Suddenly, Winter yawned out of place. As if unbothered by the situation at hand.

"If I remember correctly, we don't even know if it is a corrupted tyrant only..it could be worse...a terror for example. Or..."

With a wave of his hand, Randal stopped her.

"In any case, it is not a great one, and that is reassuring enough. We just have to keep the chain worms in check until more saints emerge."

Jessie raised an eyebrow. "More saints? Where on Earth would we get those?"

With a sigh, Randal replied. His eyes glistening with thought.

"The world is shifting, in five..ten years there will be more saints. There will need to be, otherwise humanity wouldn't be able to survive the continuous onslaught of the nightmare creatures."

Davis, the cold Ascended scoffed. "Only if the 'great' rulers let them be born."

Randal turned towards him. "They will have to, if they prevent new Transcendents from being born even as we are being devoured by Nightmare creatures throughout the worlds, they would bring the end of their own clans too."

Winter leaned back on her chair. "I wonder if any of us would live to become Transcendents."

Dale shook his head. "Unlikely, atleast for a few years after Antarctica is lost for sure...if we survive that is."

***

Sometime later...

Rain walked through the busy streets of NQSC, her usual aloof face tainted with anticipating worry and anxiety.

Moving through the crowd, she made her way to a very particular looking building.

This building belonged to the government, and was used to house the infected undergoing their first Nightmares...not the usual ones ofcourse, but the ones belonging to families of important government agents.

She had ofcourse, arrived here to meet her mother.

Taking an elevator, she hurriedly tapped on the floor with her foot to pass the time, nowadays everything seemed to happen ridiculously slowly.

Every moment she lived was spent worrying whether her mom would survive or not, when her dad had been infected, she had been too young to understand...

And her brother was more capable than even his teachers, so she hadn't worried too much for him when he got infected, even though it was scary for her nonetheless.

But her mom? She had barely recieved any training for a nightmare, and that too only because her dad insisted that she be ready incase something like that happened.

Finally the elevator door opened, and Rain rushed out of it. God knew her mother needed company.

Finally reaching the room where her mother was sleeping, she swiped a card given to her by her father at the gate's lock, opening it.

Inside, a lonely woman was sleeping on a bed. The bed was luxurious, made for someone from a rich family.

And yet the person sleeping on it was restrained with iron chains strong enough to stop an Awakened creature from breaking free.

The woman restrained was Sunny's and rain's mother obviously.

Rain walked over to her and say down next to her bed in a chair. There were no awakened guarding her for now because the material was powerful enough to easily stop any dormant creature that could ever emerge from the defeated aspirants' souls.

Rain shivered just imagining that happening to her beloved mother.

There was still a camera put in place to help any awakened stationed nearby to deal with any creature spawning as soon as possible.

Rain stared at her mother's motionless face, her mind racing back to the past.

Some days ago, she had come back home to find a gate opened up inside her home, her mother had been in the kitchen, unaware of it completely.

By the time Rain managed to alert her mom and the ascended devil echo of her father arrived inside their house to defend them, the nightmare creatures had started pouring out.

In the clash that followed, Rain ended up getting slightly grazed by a creature that had somehow managed to avoid the claws of the devil echo, only to be torn apart by it a moment later.

Later on, instead of her as she had expected, it was her mother who ended up succumbing to the spell.

Her brother was somewhere in the dreamrealm too, waiting to be rescued perhaps...or maybe he was doing something insane.

Her dad was busy with his work as usual, but tried finding as much time as possible to visit her mom.

Her adopted sister was the same.

Everyone seemed to be doing something, it was as if Rain was left alone in the world to be idle.

The wound on her left hand had been wrapped in bandages thoroughly, despite the slight grazing she had endured, it had come from an Awakened creature...and so it was going to take some time to heal.

Rain felt weak, upset...pitiful.

She wanted to help, somehow.

Anyhow.

But she knew that she could not, there was no helping someone once they entered their first Nightmare.

Leaning in towards the bed, she whispered. "Be strong mom, you will be okay...you will be safe." As she spoke, tears started to form in her eyes. "I-I know you...you will be."

Unbeknownst to her, her soul was changing...no not changing, rather it had never been as such to begin with. It was taking a form different to what it would have taken originally, and as such her entire existence was changing continuously.

The promise of a distant sky was changing due to the shift of time and the events encompassed by it.

The Rain of this world was turning out very different from the one of the original world.

***

Sunny fell on one knee in momentary exhaustion as the spire messenger in front of him was swatted away by Defiance.

Rising a second later, he met the furious beak of his adversary again with his scarlet blade.

Every single time he clashed with the fallen monster, he was pushed back and overwhelmed.

It was only due to the most sublime and refined sense of skill that he had managed to stay alive and stand his ground for now.

But without complete augmentation, he was going to almost certainly die here.

Something had to change...

Nephis spun around, her sword striking at the carapace devil's torso with fierce might, a burst of incandescent flames spewing out of it's tip and engulfing the creature.

The devil managed to nullify her flames in time, but there was still some damage dealt to it.

Meanwhile, Penthesilea was still stuck hanging on the lance limb of the devil, it had not gotten much time to do anything with her except wave her around, preventing Nephis from truly unleashing her full power upon the creature.

As the fight continued, The devil raised one of it's feet and stomped on Neph's feet, making her sway in disbalance.

Moving forward still, the devil collided with Nephis directly and sent her flying.

Doing a backflip, Nephis oriented herself as she landed on the ground, a drop of sweat dropping from her forehead to the ground.

Before the droplet hit the surface of the floor however, it sizzled...and then evaporated.

Nephis dashed forward, burning with incandescent fury of her pristine flames, healing herself with them to recover the damage dealt to her.

As she ran a few steps ahead, a realisation struck her.

Her healing flames had resulted in the sweat evaporating away...her flames, whether destructive or healing, were flames in the end.

And her flames were born to annihilate corruption.

The carapace devil in front of her...was one of those corrupted.

A slight smile tugged at her lips as she made her way towards the devil, a new plan forming in the depths of her mind.

Penthesilea on the other hand, wasn't completely defenceless either.

As the devil brought her closer to its maw to devour her head, she raised her hands at the creature and formed a sphere of condensed air between them.

The condensed air swirled from every direction, turning into a ball of absolute chaotic destruction.

Before being extinguished completely.

But it was too late, Nephis was already at the carapace dux's doorsteps.

Raising her sword, she flung it at the devil, causing it to strike it away, then she let a burst of flames off.

This one much much bigger than any flame she had released in this fight yet, the infernal waves easily engulfed both the devil and the human... threatening to reduce them both to ashes.

But they never did.

Instead, Penthesilea was healed perfectly while the devil screamed in harrowing agony.

The healing flames didn't kill the devil, but they brought it unexplainable pain, it wasn't physically damaged either..but something in its very core had been reduced to ashes.

As the poor creature fell on its knees, weakened, another sphere of condensed air of death formed.

This one actually struck the devil in its head, finally killing it for good.

Some distance away, Effie had made her way to the other devil and launched a barrage of attacks too, sandwitched between Serpent's terrifying maw and Effie's monstrous strength, the devil died quickly aswell.

Now all that remained was the cursed herald, and it's small brethren of beasts and monsters.

Sunny was entertwined in a furious clash of steel and talons with the fallen one.

Each blow they shared sent a series of cracks throughout the ground.

As the gryphon like creature fought, during one of it's attacks, it used the leverage of its towering height and dove at Sunny with it's beak in a downward thrust.

Sunny rolled back to avoid the attack, dodging it barely.

Just then, a dark shadow appeared over the cursed herald's eye, being cast by...

The Soul Serpent of the Heir of Death.

Biting into the throat of the vile abomination, Serpent dug deep and wrapped it's body around the creature's neck.

At the same time, Sunny got up and ran in between the messenger's legs, and raised Defiance high.

The sharp steel of the unparalleled sword cut through the beast's thin and relatively fragile underbelly with medium effort, forcing a gushing river of blood and internal organs to spill out.

The monster cried out in pain. It's voice as shrill as a ghost.

However, Just when Sunny thought he was starting to win, the monster flew high in pain, not seeing where it was going.

In its blind effort, it crashed into the ceiling of the second floor, and moved through it for some distance.

Eventually, it fell down again onto the ground.

This time in front of Mira the Oracle...

Andreas' eyes widened in fear, as the fallen monster rampaged around blindly, it's talons and beak ripping apart anything and everything that came in their path.

Threatening to erase the poor human infront of them aswell. There were also other humans around it, their loss wouldn't be an easy one to recover.

Time seemed to slow down as Andreas calculated the odds, there was not enough time for him to run to Mira and help her, Athena and Zeo were away too, further away than him actually.

And Penthesilea and lady Nephis...were too far away to even be considered in the equation.

Sunless however...no..even he was farther away than Andreas, and besides, he was kneeling on the ground in exhaustion now, likely due to the long fight against a fallen and the bold stunt he pulled just now.

All in all, it was upto Andreas to save his cohort members, but even he wasn't sure if he could.

Gulping dryly, he raised his translucent wings and was about to move when-

BOOM!!

A thunderclap was torn loose as a single blade flew past him breaking the sound barrier.

The Executioner's Judgement collided with the fallen monster and tore through its skull from one side to the other.

Spinning around, it struck the spire messenger's body in such a way that it didn't fall upon Mira herself.

For a couple of seconds, the world was silent.

Only the sounds of Sunny's laborious breathing could be heard, that and the sound of a dozen streams of blood flowing out.

It was only after a few moments of silently watching the fallen creature's corpse that Andreas looked around and realised what had happened.

Sunny had used the free time when the fallen one went on a mad dance to tear through every single one of the remaining awakened creatures with his ascended memory.

Eventually using it against the fallen monster itself.

The only reason he hadn't been able to do that earlier was because there were too many awakened creatures and two devils protecting them.

Fighting the fallen monster directly also prevented him from properly focusing on the flying blade.

Staring at the panting figure of Sunny, Andreas felt a surge of emotions.

There was acknowledgement of his thinking, fear of his power, gratitude of his actions...but most importantly,

There was reverence.

And within the souls of the several humans present there, with the sole exception of lady Nephis of immortal flame herself...

There were nascent marks of shadow manifesting, symbolising the rising influence...

Of the one who shall one day lay claim to all.