Astraea squints her eyes, looking at the building in the distance.

  “That is indeed the one,” she says to herself as she resumes walking. It is a familiar site, being the same one she and her father entered before the sudden collapse of the Lifebringer family. When she is around two hundred metres from it, a sound from the right draws her attention.

  On the ground next to her is a small boy, crying as he holds his bleeding leg. The healer frowns slightly, looking between her destination and the child, before she grunts and strides to him, crouching down and speaking with a gentle voice.

  “You are innocent. I shall heal you.”

  She reaches out to place her hand on the boy’s head and continues, “Would you tell me what-”

  Astraea stops talking once her hand reaches the child, not sensing any life energy. The crying stops as his bright orange eyes look at her. She falls backwards, off her balance, as her head starts to pound and the child speaks with her brother’s voice.

  “Idiot.”

  Where the injured boy once was is now a large pile of black spheres, which Astraea immediately recognises from the mountain.

  Only a moment later, they erupt with an earth-shaking explosion, blowing a huge, thirty-metre diameter crater in the ground.

  Her body is instantly ripped into small fragments, with half of her head landing against a rock.

  Around three minutes later, her body has fully regenerated and she is entirely conscious. She retraces her steps for several kilometres, locating a sack in a bush. After taking out some clothes, she puts them on and heads back.

  She arrives at and passes by the aftermath of the bombs without so much as a glance, calmly opening the door of the building to see a massive, mostly-empty hall.

  The far side has a pair of wooden staircases, which lead up to a balcony on either side. A group of numerous men and women sit on metal chairs, looking down at Astraea. She steps into the room, and the door shuts behind her.

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  The youngest-looking man, whom she recognises as Azrael Thanasia, stands up and speaks with a voice betraying great arrogance.

  “Welcome back, final member of the Lifebringer family.”

  A few of the older ones snicker and whisper to each other.

  After staring up at the man for a moment, she does not utter a response but walks straight toward the stairs.

  Azrael sighs and waves a hand to where she is going, and a wall falls down from the ceiling, blocking her.

  “You really are as foolish as your father.”

  He repeats the motion in the other direction, trapping her in a thin section of the room. Then, the floorboards beneath her give way, and she falls.

  Azrael sits back down with a drawn-out exhale. A woman walks over to him and begins to talk with a smile.

  “Sir, you've outdone your-”

  “Silence. I need to focus,” he snaps, and the woman grimaces. She slowly returns to her seat and everyone stares at the Thanasian head.

  With a confident expression, he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Every few seconds, he swipes his arm through the air. This continues for two minutes until his smile starts to fade and beads of sweat form on his brow. After another minute, he opens his eyes.

  “Everyone. We need to leave.”

  Quiet murmurs begin before a man says, “What do you mean? The moron fell right for your trap. Haven't you prepared a horde to tear her apart?”

  Azrael doesn't reply as he jumps down from the balcony, landing safely with bent knees. He touches the fallen walls, which quickly retract into the ceiling, then leans over the pit, squinting.

  One by one, she grabs her assailants. Each one in her grasp screams for only a second as their bodies shrivel up, until they no longer have the ability to produce noise.

  They are all men significantly larger than her, many successfully biting, scraping or punching her, but all their efforts are for naught as she directly absorbs their life energy, then drops their shriveled corpses to the ground.

  When being drained, some scream for help, some shout with anger, but they do not relent, clawing at her even in their final few seconds. Eventually their sheer numbers manage to push her to the ground, and she responds by expelling the immense volume of life energy she has taken back into the tens of people on top of her.

  Blood, flesh and bone is catapulted in all directions, covering the floor, covering her, covering the walls and fragments even reaching the wooden floor above.

  Azrael gasps as a shard of bone bounces off his forehead. He looks up at the others and shouts.

  “Make your way to the Thanasia estate. We will regroup there and, in case this monster manages to escape, prevent her from entering.”

  With these words said, he runs to the door and places a hand on its frame. It opens a second later and he dashes out.