The horizon shone burnished gold, a million points of light glinting as they swept closer. I knew, deep within my soul, that these streaks of colour were significant. Each was a world in and of itself, waiting to bless someone with potential.

  The Great Tree that shrouds the world’s core had risen from its slumber, and the world trembled to behold its majesty. To think I had thought a mere human army could shake the earth, set the trees and grasses to waving. That the natural world would dance to the tune of any but its protector was an insult grave as turned earth.

  Soon, the world was blanketed by a golden glow, the horizon’s edge meeting the peak of the sky, and I marvelled as above me a dome of colour the likes of which I had never even dreamed of took form. Gold, yellow, red and orange. The colours of dawn’s blush and dusk’s goodbye.

  Leaves flew through the sky, tracing trajectories known only to them, some shooting downwards to bring potential to some unwitting fool who just a moment prior had been ordinary. I felt my friends at my side looking up also, our awe synchronised and just.

  There was no noise, but I imagined I could hear the whispers of the many leaves as they descended from the heavens. My heartbeat, once so out of place with my own soul as it danced to the tune of the Great Tree, was now my own once more. The world’s rhythm hadn’t shifted, but my body had moved to match it. It felt right, to be part of this moment. To look above and see glory rain from the sky. To witness a once-in-an-era phenomenon.

  A lyrical chanting washed over me, disturbing the reverence of the scene, but I paid it no mind. Like the growing thunder of hooves approaching, my subconscious marked it as unimportant and filtered it away from the forefront of my mind, leaving appropriate space only to worship at the altar of intensity that the sky had become.

  An age passed, uninterrupted beauty mine to behold. The very truths of Tsanderos seeped into my soul, refining it with wisdom only claimed by the divine itself. And then, all too soon, it ended. A screaming meteor plummeted from the firmament, detaching itself from the wild and free dance of the leaves, descending to earth to bless mortal kind.

  It wasn’t alone, three others following in its wake, but my heart was taken with the first. It loomed large in my vision, a blazing tail of godly light blooming in its wake as it traced a path through space itself to reach me.

  I had time for only a single breath, eyes finally under my own control once more, before it hit me.

  *Nathlan*

  The comet hit him in the chest, and his world went white with pain. Armour, cloth, skin and then bone burned away in an instant in the path of the leaf as it drilled its way effortlessly into his chest.

  Pain; white hot, blazing and completely beyond his capacity to understand, continued to wrack his mind as the seed of the World Tree wrought havoc on his body. Everything that was burned away was reforged the next moment, but the process never stopped. He was reborn again and again, his body strengthening and purifying with each cycle of agony, as was his soul.

  His mind though, that was his own once more. Above all things, Nathlan prized his mind. He had since a child, and the sentiment had stayed with him into adulthood even as he had cast away so much of what he had learned as a young boy.

  Nathlan finally had control of his thoughts, no longer enthralled by the strange power that stirred at the centre of the world. His memories returned, his sense of self, and with them came knowledge of their mission and their position. He couldn’t see the army charging towards them, world blank with pain as it was, but he knew of them.

  He knew likewise that he had an opportunity. He was blessed by the World Tree. Power, or potential at least, was within grasp. He just needed to decide how he wanted to proceed.

  What he wanted.

  The seed whispered to him as it forged him anew, conforming to his desires even as he thought them. Truth had been his desire when he had created his new class. The pursuit of it, but more importantly the caging of it. If he was honest with himself, it had never truly been about learning the truth.

  Nathlan loved learning. He always had. But he hated the truth. He searched for it, reached towards it with jealously grasping fingers, afraid of what it would show him but needing to know anyway. He never sought it with an open heart and curious mind, as the memory of his long-dead friend would have urged.

  No, he groped for truth like a blind man, in the mud and filth, staining his hands in the frantic search for it, and terrified all the while of ever finding that which he sought. To hold truth and look honestly into its pitiless face was not something he had ever truly wanted.

  The pain he felt stripped away all ego and allowed him to understand himself for a single moment. As he did, what Nathlan learned was that he was not a Guardian of Truth, nor a Ravenor of Deceit. He was a rentier, who wished to find truth and bottle it. Keep it from the light of day, locked in a dungeon deep beneath the earth where it could never harm him again.

  The seed of the World Tree could make him an inquisitor the likes of which The Leviathan Coast had never seen. He could return home, root out corruption and deception root and branch, and make from his traitorous homeland a utopia worthy of the name.

  It was a promising dream, alluring in all the ways power so often was. Corrupting in equal measure, though Nathlan knew enough to guard against it. But that dream made him consider the future, and in the throes of the blinding pain as his body burned itself apart and reformed harder, stronger, he found clarity.

  The World Tree had stirred, and as the Ashkanians were so fond of saying; empires would fall. The Wavebreakers would crumble, the coast that he had once so loved would tear itself apart as people were blessed at random. The contradictions that he had noted as a child but never really understood had been sharpening for years already, and the influx of new, unrestrained power, would cast the ordered land into chaos once more.

  With that chaos would come strife, and it would not take long for the storm-wards to fall. The leviathans would rise, and the coast would be destroyed. He knew the Wavebreakers like few others, and he knew they could not weather the coming storm.

  What would be the point of returning, blessed with new power and purpose, to a blasted and salt-soaked wasteland? What could his truth do to help the people of his homeland in the face of a mile-long Water Serpent, or a Fanged Kaiju?

  No, what the Leviathan Coast needed now was a warder. Someone that could renew and restore the already straining storm-wards. Someone who could teach others those same skills. He knew it was possible, after all. Storms were dangerous and brought chaos on their heels – the people of the Leviathan Coast knew that better than any other. But a ward-crafter as Nathlan had once been also knew better than any other that the storms brought life and possibility with them, too.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  He could return to the coast now, as it collapsed, and he could finally pursue his childhood dream. He could teach any and all who would listen. Raise up a new generation of ward-crafters from the common men and woman that lived within the harbour cities. His family’s influence could not constrain him when their power was broken, and while he would need to be careful, he also had now something he had not had when he had laid awake at night planning his return.

  Friends. Companions that he could rely on. Lamb had already sworn his loyalty, and Nathlan knew there was no better man to have at his side than that irascible idiot. Instead of an avenging blade, he would return with an abacus. Instead of bringing blood and death he would bring knowledge and truth.

  For it was true that anyone with the right aptitude could learn to maintain and build the storm-wards. He would fight lies with the truth, but not indirectly with a sword. He would do it directly, with knowledge.

  The thoughts coalesced in his mind, and the seed of the World Tree listened. He had learned the skills once, long ago, and his current class was not so far from that aim, after all. The barrage of pain was difficult to endure, but Nathlan understood that the seed had not been reforging him truly yet. It had been softening him, kneading him, getting his body and soul ready for the transformation to come.

  It had only needed a goal, and he now had one.

  He would be born anew, not as a warrior but as a scholar. A ward-crafter in truth once more.

  Nathlan smiled as his word continued to burn. It was a beautiful dream, after all.

  *Sadrianna*

  Sadrianna endured the agony with gritted teeth and a resolute heart. She had always known a day like this would come. Not that she would be blessed by a cosmic power, obviously. But that she would face something so utterly beyond her own ability to comprehend and match? Of course.

  Her parents had shown her their power from an early age, eager she would understand a little about her place within the world and its many complexities. Once she was old enough to understand, they had then shown her their own insignificance.

  She remembered the swirling leviathans in the great lakes of her home. She knew the rumble of the earth when a Great Bear ended is slumber, and she knew the panic that ensured as the clans altered their migration routes to avoid it.

  Sadrianna was intimately familiar with the scale of power, and she realised she had always thought of it as a ladder. She had begun at the bottom, but it was inevitable that she would climb her way to the top. She had done nothing but excel all her life, and in Tsanderos, such drive and commitment was rewarded with power. It had been a lifelong goal to reach her parents, surpass them even.

  Only recently had she sought a reason beyond that childish fantasy. Her purpose in life, once power was stripped away and responsibility came rushing to the fore, abruptly changed. Mortal concerns had gripped her as a future leader of her clan, and she had busied herself with their resolution.

  A small part of her, the one that consumed her books with such avariciousness, cried out that mortal concerns were menial concerns. That she was destined for more. Descended from a line of titans, she should stride the peak of the world and leave the boring mortal affairs to boring mortals.

  But Sadrianna was a child of duty as well. Her loyalty was to her clan, and her heart bled for the future she saw. She also knew what would come of her if she pursued only power for its own sake. She had seen plenty of old warriors ‘retire’, after all. It was the nominal reason for her presence here in the ass end of nowhere, even.

  Her parents had power, but they had also found love, and a reason to care about something greater than themselves. They shepherded the clan towards a bright future, and had made astounding progress already, but Sadrianna wasn’t content with the way of the world, and had found a purpose of her own.

  It wasn’t to be the greatest warrior. Wasn’t even to be the shield upon which the blows of her clan’s enemy’s broke. It was to be a pillar of stability, to help heal the fractures that a broken system had caused. To give purpose to those who had lost it and help heal wounds before they appeared.

  She envisioned the selfish dream of personal power and prestige, and contrasted it with a more selfless path. The first was found wanting.

  Sadrianna was no angel, but nor was she a hypocrite. She was no healer or sage that could snatch a life from death’s jaws nor predict the future and steer around it. But she was a smart woman. She could put her hands to the fraying social fabric, and like an old widow at the loom, spin it tight once more.

  Her class was built for strength of arms, for that is what the heroes in her stories had excelled at. That is the lesson she had taken from her mother. The warriors still left for one last hunt though, and there was nothing her mother could do to stop them, despite her great strength. No amount of personal power could put the light back into someone’s eye once it dimmed, after all.

  The future was more uncertain than ever before, but the clan didn’t need more warriors. It needed more husbands and wives. More loving parents and caring uncles and aunts. More friends, more comforting shoulders and warm embraces. Cold steel would repel an invading foe, but did she wish to use such an opportunity as the World Tree had presented to wish for more violence?

  Or did she want to end the cycle?

  Sadrianna let her goal shine bright in her mind as her body and soul were reforged in the golden glow of the blessed seed. She would return, and she would mend. A builder, a weaver, a creator rather than destroyer.

  She had learned much in her journey. Practical lessons imparted on her body and her mind expanded past the borders of her home. But Vera’s caring, Nathlan’s quiet companionship, Lamb’s brash search for connection and Jacyntha’s gradual acceptance; these were the things that stood out as she examined the fruits of her quest so far.

  And above them all, The Shepherd’s guidance. That is what she would aim for.

  The seed heard her, and it rushed to obey.

  *Jacyntha*

  Jacyntha knew pain. She was no stranger to the all-encompassing torment, and it was as nothing to what she had endured for years alone. Physical pain had a way of sharpening the mind, stripping away the comforting lies and built-up excuses, and exposing the core of truth within a person.

  Jacyntha had endured a lot of physical pain in her life, and that was why she knew what it could do. For one such as her – one whose own soul was a twisted mix of self-loathing, hatred, guilt and rage – pain was a foe to be battled.

  Not because it hurt, but because it exposed those terrible emotions to daylight. It served them up on a platter for her mind to pick at, to re-open the mental wounds and revisit the trauma that had shaped her.

  As the seed of the World Tree ravaged her body and soul, Jacyntha could not help but focus on her own failures. When she looked back at her life, she was not happy with what she saw. Wasted potential, wasted opportunity, wasted love.

  Power had been hers, though less than she had once imagined, and it had done little to ease the pain inside. Her humbling at the hands of strangers had nearly destroyed her, but she had emerged from that pain a new woman. Introspection was a balm against self-hatred, for hatred was aimed only at what one didn’t understand.

  As she had finally had the courage to tackle her past with honesty, she had learned new things about herself, and so eased the ball of self-recrimination down into no more than a morsal. She now understood that forgiveness is what would absolve her of her sins, not anger. No amount of rage at the world would make it right, and nothing in all the heavens and hells could undo what had been done.

  But she could find penance through protecting others from what she had endured. She could take the knowledge that her pain had given her, and shield others from the same agony. This journey she had been on, from the peaks of the Dragon-Spine Mountains to the gentle swell of the Riverlands, and further still to the marshes and plains of the Western Marchlands of the Sunset Kingdoms.

  She had learned much, had overcome much, to stand where she stood now. Not alone, not aloof, but grounded within a group. Needed. Wanted. Embraced and accepted. Jacyntha stood shoulder to shoulder with her companions, and knew this was where she wanted to be.

  Right here, standing against the strong with weak at her back, protecting those who could not protect themselves. Her mother’s power had cocooned her once, and lashing out had let her feel a shadow of the love she had once known.

  Now, she didn’t want to lash out any longer. But she didn’t want to lose that connection either. She wanted to stand before tyrants and feel her mother’s power bolster her as she protected others from their cruelty.

  Jacyntha had spent most of her life without a purpose, but it was only once she finally understood herself that she had found one. Purpose came from belonging, and she had found it.

  The seed responded to her will, not remaking her, not re-forging her, instead simply bolstering what was already there. As the power of the divine flowed through her, enhancing all it touched, Jacyntha smiled to know she would never be alone again.