Genetic Ascension

It didn't take Sylas very long to reach his destination.

Iskaleth had been born beneath the influence of the Fate Dragon, which meant there was only one reasonable place to begin searching. Conveniently enough, that world now rested within the Galaxy of the Grimblades.

Sylas didn't even need to ask her for directions. As one of his Contracts, her memories were open enough for him to sift through without much effort, nothing like Gogo whose existence sat on an entirely different level even now.

Iskaleth had talent, strange eyes, and a Fate Path Sylas found useful, but she wasn't the sort of Serpentes capable of locking him out if he truly wanted to see something.

So, he followed the impressions buried in her memory until the Hollow Ship dropped out of the void above an ordinary marble of blue and green.

Sylas looked down and found almost nothing worth remembering.

If someone ignored the details, the planet could have passed for the former Earth from orbit. Oceans covered large stretches of its surface, forests and grasslands broke across the continents, while cloud systems drifted lazily over everything beneath them.

The greatest difference was the lack of humanoid civilization. Beasts ruled here, though even calling it rule was generous. There were no sprawling capitals, no City Steles, and certainly no Overlord Beast bloodlines powerful enough to organize the world around themselves.

Much of the surface was little more than wilderness, vast prairies and mountain ranges filled with beasts whose natures leaned heavily toward Lust and Wrath. Packs tore into one another over territory, mating rights, food, or sometimes nothing Sylas could identify at all, their lives continuing as though the entire galaxy hadn't just been torn apart.

They probably didn't even understand that anything had changed. But more importantly, there was no Fate Dragon.

Sylas' eyes narrowed as he stood above the planet. Through Iskaleth's memories, he could feel the confidence she had once possessed. When she grew strong enough, she believed she would eventually find the thread linking her back to the Fate Dragon, then pull on it until the connection led her where she needed to go. There was conviction behind the belief, enough that she had structured much of her future around it, even chasing the Gluttony Seed so she would have the means to consume the thing once she finally reached it.

Standing here now, though, Sylas found the idea almost painfully optimistic.

'It's not tied down here.'

His gaze moved across the world one more time.

'It might be anywhere in the universe by now...'

With a thought, Iskaleth appeared beneath him.

Her massive Serpentes body manifested abruptly in the void, and for the briefest moment she twisted in confusion, unused to finding herself floating above a world with nothing beneath her coils.

Then she felt the weight standing on the top of her head and froze.

Sylas.

Her confusion disappeared almost instantly.

Then her senses reached downward.

Iskaleth's body trembled.

The world below carried no particular meaning to Sylas, but to her it was something else entirely. The Fate around it was familiar in a way almost nothing else could be. Old trails, dead possibilities, echoes of paths she had once taken, places where she had hidden, hunted, learned, and survived, all of them pressed against her awareness at once.

She could not see in the normal sense, but that only made those other senses and feelings all the more palpable. She couldn't hide them behind a veneer of subtle change. The shift of a mountain or the diversion of a river, tweaks to the world she had once known couldn't change her familiarity with it at all.

For several seconds she forgot to care about the fact she was suspended in the atmosphere through telekinesis, something she rarely did precisely because she preferred avoiding attention wherever possible.

"How were you planning to find it?" Sylas asked.

Iskaleth went still.

He already knew the answer, of course. She could feel that much in the question alone, which somehow made the embarrassment worse.

"I..." Her tongue flickered out before disappearing again. "I have a connection to it."

Sylas waited.

Iskaleth exhaled and forced herself to continue. "If I'm close enough, I'll feel it. I'm certain of that. The connection has never fully disappeared, even after all this time. It's weak, but it's there."

Iskaleth's head lowered slightly, feeling embarrassed that this was the best she had.

Sylas' gaze remained on the planet below. "What happens if it left this world a long time ago?"

She froze.

The question landed far harder than she wanted it to.

Her Fate sight spread instinctively, searching the world beneath them for anything that might give her an answer, but there was nothing. The thread she remembered from childhood wasn't here in any way she could recognize. She had always assumed that meant she simply wasn't strong enough yet, that once her eyes matured and her Fate Path deepened, what had once been faint would become clear again.

But if the Fate Dragon had simply moved...

Iskaleth had no answer.

Silence stretched between them, then Sylas reached into the Hibernation Realm again.

Another enormous Serpentes body appeared beside Iskaleth, unfolding into open space.

Sarethvane.

For the first time in what probably felt like an eternity to him, his body wasn't tied into a pretzel. His coils loosened on instinct, relief flashing through his expression before he even understood where he was. Then his slitted pupils found Sylas.

Everything stopped.

The faint relief vanished. His pupils trembled, and even the lingering movements of his body became unnaturally still.

Iskaleth turned her Fate sight toward him, confusion immediately replacing some of her embarrassment. Of everyone Sylas could have summoned, Sarethvane was not one she expected.

Sylas didn't bother explaining the choice.

"The two of you will work together to find the Fate Dragon."

Both Serpentes stiffened.

"You have three hours."

Iskaleth's heart lurched and Sarethvane's gaze sharpened, but Sylas' voice didn't change, only continuing unbothered.

"Failure means immediate death."

Their eyes widened.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!