Morgan strolled through the French Market — the beating heart of the district, a tapestry of color, scent, and sound. Stalls brimmed with ripe produce, rare antiques, and intricate relics crafted by skilled hands. The rich aroma of spiced gumbo and fresh bread wafted through the warm air, luring travelers with whispered promises of indulgence and delight.
Even Morgan had to admit — this place was breathtaking. Perhaps the most beautiful corner of the waking world she had ever set foot in.
Yet today, she wasn't here to savor beauty. She had been dispatched for business.
The Zakharov family was powerful, yes. But to compare them to the Great Clans or the Government itself? Hardly. The Zakharovs were strong, but they remained beneath the true pillars of authority. Morgan, after all, was a princess of war. It was only natural that a certain arrogance bled into her every thought.
Yes, Saint Tyris had slain Cormac and had already paid dearly for it. But there remained another culprit—Klaus Zakharov—whose hand had been instrumental in that Saint's demise. If it had been merely an Ascended warrior or a simple Awakened, perhaps the Valor Clan would have turned a blind eye. But a Saint had fallen—a Transcendent Warrior of a Great Clan—and that was not a wound the Clans would allow to fester without retribution.
The situation, however, was tangled with complications.
First: the Government had established a working relationship with the Zakharovs.
Second: the Zakharovs were anything but weak.
Third: their wealth bordered on absurdity, granting them limitless influence.
And lastly: they were deeply entwined with other powers — the Clan Song and the House of Night.
Morgan was still baffled by the sheer magnitude of it. The Zakharov family held such institutional and financial power that they practically ruled over one-fourth of NQSC—a colossal metropolis that housed a tenth of all humanity. In this corner of the world, they were Kings, standing above the reach of almost all external laws. They wore the guise of harmless businessmen, yet beneath that façade, they stood among the most powerful families in the world.
Still, power within the Zakharov family flowed strangely. While they were individually formidable — grotesquely so — they were not traditional warriors. Their abilities were bizarre, terrifying in their unpredictability.
Yet curiously, their underlings were nothing extraordinary.
The siblings themselves were the true aberrations: Klaus, the eldest, seemed the weakest — merely Awakened, while his siblings had long ascended. One would naturally assume that Noah Zakharov—the intelligent, composed, and ruthlessly capable brother—was the one steering the family.
But in truth, It was Klaus who wore the crown.
Yet it was not Klaus, nor even Noah, that set Morgan on edge. It was Isaac Zakharov.
Isaac, with his disarming humor and boyish mischief, was a fox among wolves. Cunning, unpredictable, and gifted with an ability so bizarre that even a detailed explanation barely scratched the surface of its mechanics. Morgan had faced him once. She had never forgotten the bewildering frustration of that day.
Her attacks had missed by the narrowest margins. Dirt had inexplicably fallen into her eyes mid-swing. The sky had opened up in a sudden, impossible rainstorm, turning the ground slick and treacherous. She had slipped—slipped—as if she were some clumsy initiate rather than an Ascended Swordmaster. Every moment was an absurdity. A farce of the highest order.
How could she, an Ascended capable of cleaving buildings in half with a single swing, fall face-first into the mud?
And Isaac had laughed—howled, even—as if the world itself had bent to amuse him.
Morgan loathed defeat. Yet that day, she had tasted it bitterly. Isaac fought like a man kissed by the heavens, his every step blessed with providence and impossible fortune. And perhaps the most disturbing revelation of all—he had copied her Aspect.
Not during their battle, no. Later. Which meant his ability to mimic required some obscure, conditional trigger.
She narrowed her eyes, recalling every step of their duel. Perhaps it was when she had dashed forward, striking against his shield? Yes… after that moment, he began wielding her own abilities.
Conditional Aspects were the worst kind of threat: unfathomable until it was far too late.
She sighed, taking a slow bite of the ice cream she had bought from a nearby stall. Sweet, cold, comforting.
There was little point in dwelling on unsolvable puzzles.
What mattered now was meeting that strange, diabolical family of freaks.
______
Isaac was playing cards with the old grandpa from next door in the vast sitting room of the mansion. Well, playing might have been generous. He tried not to cheat—truly, he tried—but with the way his attributes and abilities functioned, cheating was less a choice and more an inevitability.
So really, was it his fault the old man was now cursing his entire bloodline with impressive creativity? Isaac wanted to cry out of sheer grievance.
'Who asked you to demand a rematch hundreds of times, old fossil?!' he thought bitterly. 'You're not winning! Accept your fate and spare us both the indignity!'
With a weary sigh, Isaac pushed back his chair and rose to his feet, ignoring the volley of colorful insults hurled at his back. Shaking his head, a sly grin tugging at his lips, he made his way to the polished oak bar tucked away in the corner of the mansion. Anna, ever watchful, wordlessly poured him a glass of bourbon. He accepted it with a grateful nod, sipping leisurely as he idly scrolled through videos on his tablet.
The Dreamscape tournament was in full swing, and today's feature was a particularly chaotic fighter known as Mongrel. Isaac frowned as he watched the demonic-looking swordsman scream bizarre phrases into the camera:
"I'm here to unlearn!" and "I was born in the coliseum!"
Isaac blinked slowly, genuine confusion knitting his brows together.
"Was this man an idiot?" he wondered.
Born in the coliseum? What the hell did that even mean? Had someone dragged his mother there mid-labor so she could drop him onto the blood-soaked sand? What kind of brain damage did one need to spew such nonsense? And "I'm here to unlearn"—What in the ever-loving hells was he supposed to unlearn? Breathing?
Isaac swirled his bourbon, laughing under his breath. "I'm here to unlearn... That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard. Those Fucking imbeciles..." he muttered, amused by the endless flood of "inspirational" edits glorifying Mongrel as if he were some sagacious monk descending from misty mountains.
He finished his drink and glanced at his watch.
Oh? It was time already.
Anna refilled his empty glass.
Smirking with anticipation, he took glass of bourbon, turned on his heel and strode out of bar.
Today was a significant day.
Currently, the district was nominally under Noah's jurisdiction—but their real forces weren't stationed here. Only Liam's curs were left behind to mind the territory, mangy dogs thrown a bone to keep them loyal. Pathetic. They lacked discipline, lacked madness, lacked the ruthless determination that true Zakharov's elite fighters possessed.
Isaac sneered at the thought. Liam was trash. A glorified thief who had seized their family's district while the Zakharovs were abroad in South America, dealing with matters far more important than squabbling over real estate.
South America had been largely abandoned after the emergence of a Category Five Gate. Still, in the southernmost reaches, settlements clung to life, and it was there that the Zakharovs planted their flag. Noah had woven his network into the local economy, wresting control of the markets. Klaus, mad scientist that he was, threw himself into agricultural experiments with the same rabid passion he devoted to everything else. And so, their already obscene wealth had swelled to unimaginable proportions.
Isaac, personally, had no complaints about such arrangements. Having one's brothers labor to the bone while you relaxed in luxury — was there any greater bliss?
Still, he and Tatiana weren't entirely idle. Diego, the muscle of their family, was dispatched to hunt and slaughter Nightmare Creatures.
Tatiana—his dazzling sister, whose beauty could topple empires—was deployed like a living weapon. Her aspect amplified her already staggering allure, turning men and women alike into putty in her hands. Business owners, politicians and rivals fell to her seduction, signing away their holdings with trembling hands and adoring eyes.
Meanwhile, Isaac, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, would quietly tip the scales: bolstering their luck, damning their competitors to misfortune, ensuring every endeavor was laced with inevitable success.
With that deadly combination, they had seized control of the southern territories swiftly and ruthlessly.
It wasn't all greed, though. They had genuinely improved the region. Food production had soared. Settlements were fortified.
Klaus's skeletal companion, Lich, crafted barriers that not only repelled Nightmare Creatures but actively shielded crops from the ravages of the sun. His phoenix, Hemera, once tirelessly moderated the climate, absorbing excess heat and blessing the land with gentle, nurturing light.
Yet even Hemera's labor was now eased. Lich's new barriers absorbed solar energy naturally and redistributed it, supplying plants with just enough for photosynthesis without burning them. Powered by Soul Shards, the barriers were nearly self-sustaining: a Transcendent shard could fuel them for a year, an Ascended shard for five months, and an Awakened shard for twenty days. It was a masterpiece of resource efficiency.
Their subordinates tended the land in their absence.
And now, with the campaign stabilized, 90% of their forces were finally returning home.
Isaac couldn't hide his satisfaction.
He took another leisurely sip of his bourbon, his gaze drifting to the window where the first signs of dusk painted the city gold.
His thoughts, inevitably, drifted to her.
A slow, devilish smile curved his lips.
She was coming back too...
"I wonder..." he mused aloud, voice soft with a mischievous lilt, "Did she grow her hair like I asked?"