The next week was spent on the parts of war the movies always glossed over. The recuperation.

Not just the handling of the injured, and facilitating their return to health, but also trying to ease the remaining population of the Lightbringers fallen cult into their new lives under the banner of Lord Corvus. The thought of having an empire had not occurred to Seth, but it had apparently done more than just occurred to many other people.

Old and new citizens alike talked about this being the start of his 'Holy Empire' and where he would expand to next. Their scopes saw vast futures as well. Not just talks of their own country coming under his rule, nor even the British Isle's in their entirety. He actually heard some discussing how much of the world he should deserve to rule.

One war with a single city, and they were already talking about world domination as if it was the next logical step. It was simply exhausting, and incredibly far fetched.

Integration was the hardest part of merging with the Lightbringers people. Mainly because it involved them slowly cleaning their polluted thoughts of the Lightbringers brain washing. A week was no where near long enough to complete that process, not even close. It would take years. But for now, simply merging their people and having them live together across the two cities was the best start.

Especially because it solved their space problem before it became too much of an issue, even if they did have to completely rebuild every single pathetic excuse of a 'house' in the blessed city into something that didn't violate basic human rights.

Speaking of, the 'Blessed City' had been renamed to go along with it's new owner, and it's new inhabitants. It was now called Emberhearth. There were some arguments for the name of Phoenix, since some who had seen the Lightbringer burn to ashes really wanted to take that metaphor to its extreme.

But Emberhearth was the more popular choice. A suggestion that came from members of Seth's own church, so he had heard. Which had only grown in numbers since his take-over. The Lightbringers followers, it seemed, were very eager to take a new figure of worship, making their brainwashing cleansing an even more difficult task.

Thankfully, he could leave their supervision up to his new Head Priestess. Seth's very own lovely older sister Lea, who had experience rooting out cultish mindsets and setting people on the right path.

The fact that her brother was now the god of his own cult should not be seen as a detriment to those teachings. This was absolutely not his fault!

However, even if most of the rehabilitation efforts were dumped into the laps of... I mean, ethically and responsibly delegated to some of his subordinates, that didn't mean that Seth was doing nothing during this time.

He had found himself working in the medical ward of Emberhearth most of the time, under his true lowly lackey Seth persona of course. Not just helping with whatever the healers, both magical and medical, needed help with. But also helping in a way that he was specially suited for.

Prosthesis.

Astra was not the only one that had lost something during the bloody battles, and it didn't seem fair to hog all the extra limbs.

So he spent three sleepless days measuring, taking notes and building new prosthesis for those who had lost limbs in the wars. In the end he designed two types. The basic types, which were closer to the way the old world did them, with simple static designs made to simply even people out. These were given out completely for free.

The second type was the type that he had, the magical type. New artificial limbs, created in tandem with harness' carved with mystical runes, that allowed the limb to move like it was real. The only catches were that it couldn't feel, and that it needed a power source.

The crystal batteries. Which meant unfortunately, these one's were set to the premium versions, and had a cost to them. Mainly based on the upkeep of the battery to keep them powered and therefore functional.

He was still working on perfecting the prototype to create the batteries, mainly the detail that other people couldn't see soul fragments and therefore would need some way to detect them so they could absorb them with the device. But once he solved that tiny issue, he would move onto mass production.

It wouldn't remove the cost of the batteries, but it would ideally reduce the price of them.

There was, of course, another added benefit of working in the medical ward.

Glancing to the side, Seth smiled softly and warmly at the young girl that was standing across the room from him. She had her hands outstretched in front of her, and her adorable face was snruched with deep concentration that made her nose wriggle like a bunny rabbits.

When the girl noticed his gaze, her face unscrunched and broke out into a glowing smile, as she waved estatically at Seth from across the room, before the healer she was assisting scolded her and brought her back to her concentration.

Seth laughed softly at how easily Ava was distracted, and shook his head gently. It was truly amazing how that girl could not only smile so beautifully after everything she had gone through, but immediately set out to help others.

She had even tried to do it before she herself wasn't fully recovered, to the point that Seth had to drag her back to bed a few times. But the colour was returning to her cheeks quickly and her health was climbing back to its perfect state. Her skin was almost glowing with how healthy she was.

It was a little too fast of a recovery, but it allowed Seth to finally understand why his sister had been sucked dry of her blood for the Lightbringers twisted experiments. It was all because of her ability.

The twins were perfect counters for each other. Woe didn't just cut off powers, like they had first expected, but he physically absorbed the energy like a black hole. His body was simply unable to currently do anything with it, and gradually leaked it back into the air.

But Ava was the opposite. She generated energy all on her own, an extraordinary amount of it compared to normal people. It fed into her vitality, giving her amazing self healing abilities. However unlike her brother, who had nothing to do with the energy he absorbed, Ava could project her energy into others.

Not only acting as a secondary source of power for their abilities, like a back up generator. But also boosting the efficiency of them. That was the distillation of the Lightbringers miracle power boosting drug, and why it needed her golden blood. With some training, it might even be possible for her to instil her healing capabilities in others, but for now she was restricted to boosting the healers and learning from them.

Indeed, what the Lightbringer had created was a truly miraculous drug. One which would never be put into production ever again. Not if he had anything to say about it.

Naturally, Seth already had a squad of Unkindly Guards assigned to her, to make sure no one got any funny ideas.

While he was finishing fitting another patient with their prosthesis, one of the fancy magically moving ones, Seth heard a refined voice speaking from behind him.

"Excuse me, Squire Seth. You have been summoned by the Queen."

He glanced over his shoulder, finding a woman in a very smart suit with her hair up in a bun standing behind him, her face completely stone cold and serious. Normally he would have been surprised at that, since most people tended to grimace or stare at his face, even they didn't mean to. But he had met this woman before, and she had some scars of her own. Mainly a burned hand-print around her throat and a large scar that cut diagonally across the length of her face. From forehead to chin.

It was a woman who had worked for the Lightbringer, and had earned his ire by refusing his advances. Whether he kept her around in an attempt to break her will in the future, or simply to act as his punching bag, was unclear. But his mark across her face had made a clear statement that if he couldn't appreciate her looks, then she didn't deserve them.

This woman was also Astra's new assistant.

'Now that I think about it, Why is Astra a Queen while I am still a Lord? Shouldn't I at least be called King Corvus? Actually... never-mind, too heavy on the alliteration. Sounds like a comic book villain.'

Shaking the stray thoughts from his mind, Seth gestured to the arm that he was working on while he addressed the assistant.

"Of course, however I am a little pre-occupied at the moment. Do you know what this is about? Did she tell you anything?"

The assistant narrowed her eyes, giving Seth a glare that could turn the blood of many men to ice. But for Seth, who had faced Astra's many glares on the regular, it almost made him chuckle. Thankfully he avoided doing that.

No need to make it worse. She already hated him enough, although he couldn't figure out why.

"...Yes, she did. She has ordered you to join her by the Lakeside. Something about finding the key to the gate."

The assistant tried to emphasise the word 'Ordered' as some kind of way of reminding Seth of his station, but he was far too lax to care about such petty things. Plus, he was focused too much on the content of her cryptic message, or more specifically on the meaning behind it.

'Lakeside gate huh? About time... I was almost forgetting about it. Looks like we finally get to discover what is behind Heaven's Gate.'

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