Chapter 50: The Gathering Of The Five Main Families Of Key City

The energy settled and Winston withdrew his hands.

Both girls felt the shift immediately, something new now sat inside them, structural and permanent, exactly as Winston had described.

They pulled up their panels at the same time.

[Traitial Art: Trait Manifestation — Learned]

[Value: Intermediate]

It had actually worked.

Zelda stared at the notification. She’d trusted Winston completely going into this — but trust and watching the actual result happen were different things.

A direct Traitial Art transfer, something that shouldn’t have existed as a possibility an hour ago, and it had just worked exactly as he’d said.

Freya’s energy surged the moment she registered the notification, activating the art on instinct.

Twenty percent at Intermediate value, applied to her base Mastery of 100, pushed her effective output to 120%. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

At five Mastery points per monster level equivalent, that put her baseline at roughly Level 24 — before factoring in her first Realization at all.

With Demonic Fox Swordsman active on top of that boost, she could have soloed the Level 28 Giant Tree Troll without much difficulty.

She turned to thank Winston.

That was when she remembered she was still topless.

Her hands shot up to cover herself — which, if anything, made the situation worse rather than better.

Winston had already averted his eyes the moment the energy transfer finished, keeping his gaze fixed on a point somewhere past her shoulder with the disciplined focus of someone actively choosing not to look at something his instincts very much wanted to.

Zelda had no such hesitation.

She activated her own boosted output, felt the difference run through her body, and turned the momentum straight into Winston — wrapping both arms around him in a full hug before he could react.

"Thank you. Thank you so much."

Winston felt all of her against him and registered that this was significantly more enthusiastic than the situation called for.

Zelda’s internal monologue was running somewhere else entirely.

’I’m not giving Freya room to get you.’

She knew it was excessive. She didn’t care.

Six years of friendship with Winston had never produced anything that felt like competition — not until he’d awakened something that made him strong, reliable, and increasingly hard not to notice.

If someone with Freya’s background started looking at him that way, Zelda wasn’t planning to just stand back and watch it happen.

She held on.

Freya stood several feet away, arms still crossed over her chest, and said nothing at all.

❖❖❖❖

While Winston worked with Freya and Zelda on Trait Manifestation, an emergency meeting was already underway elsewhere in Key City.

Five Paragons sat around a table — one from each of the city’s five most prominent families, gathered on short notice.

An overseer from the Alliance, also Paragon-rank, sat apart from the group, present to observe rather than participate.

A large, muscular man with a bald head and an eye patch scowled across the table.

"What’s the reason for this emergency meeting? Especially one called by a Valerian."

"Don’t act pompous, Johan." The woman who spoke had orange hair and an orange kimono, her tone carrying easy familiarity despite the formality of the gathering.

"You were the first one here."

Johan — a general of the Augustus family — said nothing. Kimberly, of the Kitsune family, didn’t push further.

The other two seats belonged to Lucy of the Ashfield family and Samuel of the Lincoln family.

The overseer, Andrew Gates, sat quietly at the side of the table.

Elizabeth sat at the head and didn’t acknowledge Johan’s earlier complaint.

"I called this meeting because the Supremacists have started moving."

The room went still.

Elizabeth produced the sentient surveillance bird — now inert, drained of its charge — and set it on the table.

"Our analysts bypassed its recording lock. What we found is concerning."

A holographic display activated above the table, showing footage of the five Supremacist agents Elizabeth had faced in Winterheart — earlier footage, before the engagement, capturing them at work in a different region entirely.

The recording showed the agents corralling specific types of monsters and driving them through a portal.

Kimberly leaned forward.

"Is that a Red Gate?" Her voice carried genuine alarm. "Red Gates are supposed to be spontaneous and naturally occurring. That looks controlled."

Nobody else spoke immediately, but every face at the table had registered the same observation. Kimberly had simply been the first to say it out loud.

The footage continued to its end — the same engagement Elizabeth had fought through, ending with the team leader’s remote termination.

Silence settled over the table again. Kimberly’s question hung unanswered, but the same concern was visible on every face present.

"As you can see," Elizabeth said, "this group appears to have found a method of controlling Red Gate activations. We’ve run a city-wide scan and found no active incidents yet. Our working assumption is that they’re timing their release for maximum effect."

Samuel’s eyes sharpened with sudden realization.

"The Crucible."

Elizabeth nodded.

"Exactly. It’s the optimal window. Maximum concentration of new initiates, maximum visibility, maximum potential casualties."

"But they know we have this footage now." Lucy’s voice was careful. "Would they really proceed with an attack on the Crucible knowing we’re aware of their methods? That seems naive for an organization that’s been operating this carefully."

"From everything we’ve gathered on the Supremacists since we first identified them," Elizabeth said, "it’s been fairly clear they want us to know what they’re capable of. This isn’t an oversight on their part. It’s intentional."

"For what purpose?" Andrew Bates spoke for the first time, his question directed at the room generally.

Elizabeth answered before anyone else could.

"It’s simple, really." Her expression didn’t change. "It’s to instill terror."

The Supremacists earned the "terrorist" label for a reason, terror was the actual product they were selling.

But their delivery method had a strange quality to it, almost like attention-seeking.

Not blatant enough to be obvious to outsiders, but deliberate enough that anyone paying attention would notice the pattern.

Andrew’s lack of awareness wasn’t ignorance. As overseer, his focus stayed primarily on Astral Heaven operations and Alliance logistics.

Earth-side political maneuvering by groups like the Supremacists fell outside his usual scope, which was exactly why Elizabeth had needed to brief him directly.

"Shouldn’t we inform the demigods?" Johan said, leaning forward. "At minimum, the Crucible date could be moved. That alone would prevent the worst-case casualty scenario."

The suggestion made sense on the surface. Johan’s family — like Lucy’s and Samuel’s — had no demigod connections of their own.

The Valerians stood apart in that regard, the only one of the five main families with a demigod in their direct lineage.

Celeste and Markus held demigod status independently of any family structure, which left Elizabeth as the only person at this table with a direct line to that level of authority.

Elizabeth’s expression went grim.

"They’re already aware." She let that sit for a moment. "And they’ve decided to keep the date unchanged."