Rumors

Rumors had the tendency to spread quickly, even in worlds where the communications infrastructure was almost nonexistent. Nobody knew the exact reasons how but, whenever an event of a significant magnitude occurred, rumors would spread far and wide, seemingly overnight.

By the time a week had passed, the entire Oyone Continent had heard about what happened in the now-infamous Devouring Moon City. This included the Searing Sword Palace who, after learning how some outer member of a Branch Sect was using their name, had been intending to send an Enforcer to quell the incident and everyone involved.

Upon learning that the arrogant Young Master of the Peng family had been killed, the Enforcer's new task had been to investigate the person who killed him, the Guardian of the Devouring Moon Sect. If she had a powerful backer, they would establish contact before reporting back to the Palace so that a more powerful Elder could be dispatched to deal with the situation.

Ideally, both the Guardian and her Master could be recruited to the Sword Palace but, as was often the case, fate rarely allowed things to be settled so easily. Since Fenrir had attacked someone even loosely related to the Searing Sword Palace, they had to make an example of her in order to prevent other forces from looking down on her. It didn't matter if she had been doing her duty as, when it came to powerful Sects, they had their pride to uphold.

Because of this, the Enforcer from the Searing Sword Palace had already visited the Devouring Moon Sect and, finding it largely abandoned, tracked Fenrir to the Soaring Dragon Kingdom. Considering the palace was still covered in a layer of ice, while the city itself was buried in several centimeters of snow, it wasn't difficult to find.

Believing his mark to be within the castle itself, the Enforcer flew towards the ice palace only to find that it was completely devoid of life. Even after he sent a few meteors formed from Qi to destroy a few buildings, there wasn't a single sign of anyone coming out to meet him. This annoyed him quite a bit so, after entering the deepest part of the palace, only to find several frozen corpses, he made his way out to the city to ask the citizens what had happened.

Adding to the Enforcer's frustration, none of the citizens seemed to understand what had transpired inside the castle. The only thing they knew was that a battle had taken place and, by the time the sun had risen the following day, only silence lingered around the frigid structure. Ever since then, a large amount of snow had been falling in the evenings and, while they had been able to harvest most of the crops ahead of schedule, many were wiped out as a result of the sudden onset of winter.

Since he had even tortured a few dozen people for answers, the Enforcer determined that his quarry had fled after killing the castle's inhabitants. He now had no leads, causing the man to flex his jaw a few times in frustration. Returning to the Sword Palace without any pertinent information was not an acceptable outcome so, with no other clues, he decided to gather information from the surrounding settlements to try and determine where Fenrir had fled...

(Fenrir's Commentary: 'You dare track Fenrir...?')