Genetic Ascension

Hibernation Halo bloomed from Sylas.

The light spread in a soft ring, washing over Iskaleth's battered body as the hole torn through her torso began to close in real time. Flesh knitted together, blood vessels reconnected, and shattered structures restored themselves under the Halo's influence until the wound that should have killed her became little more than a rapidly fading scar.

Iskaleth remained drenched in blood, crimson running along the length of her scales, but Sarethvane looked almost worse despite being physically unharmed. Sweat coated him from head to tail, his breathing rough as though he had spent hours wrestling against something far larger than himself.

Which, in a way, he had.

To Iskaleth, everything inside the sea of Fate had passed in little more than an instant. To Sarethvane, almost two hours had gone by. Two hours spent prying apart a path Iskaleth seemed determined to force closed, fighting to keep her suspended between life and death while her Living Will slipped away faster than he could compensate for.

They had approached Sylas' deadline with shocking efficiency, except none of that efficiency had been directed toward finding the Fate Dragon. For most of that time, Sarethvane had simply been preventing Iskaleth from dying before they could learn anything useful.

Luckily, she had finally gotten her head together, and Sarethvane hadn't come away empty-handed either.

Something about the boundary between Living and Dead Will had become clearer to him during the process. Not entirely, and certainly not enough that he could claim true understanding, but the line had blurred just enough for his control over Dead Will to change.

Before, the remnants he collected always felt rigid in his hands, useful because they could be read, borrowed, arranged, even made to mimic something greater, but never truly integrated into himself.

Now there was a little more character to it, a little more life.

He understood, at least vaguely, how to make Dead Will sit within his own existence without feeling quite so foreign.

Sarethvane's gaze sharpened.

If before he could only imitate Infinite Will by layering enough remnants together, he felt he could get much closer to the true product now. The real question was which Dead Wills were worth keeping.

Until now, Sarethvane had treated graves almost like resources waiting to be harvested. If something useful remained behind, he took it. But perhaps that was too crude.

Maybe it was time he became more selective about which graves he looted.

Sylas waved a hand and both Serpentes disappeared into the Hibernation Realm before either could say anything. Then Dry Mouth appeared.

The massive snake manifested with a large pail of lemonade clenched between his jaws, looking so pleased with himself that his tail nearly wagged behind him. He blinked once when he realized who stood in front of him.

Sylas.

The happiness vanished.

Dry Mouth slowly lowered the pail.

Sarethvane and Iskaleth had both disappeared for a suspiciously long time.

His eyes shifted. "Ah..."

So it was his turn to be tortured.

Dry Mouth cleared his throat. "Hello."

The greeting came out far more sheepishly than he intended.

When his family wasn't involved, Dry Mouth was honestly rather easygoing. Fun-loving, shameless, and far too willing to annoy everyone around him, but not naturally confrontational.

Sylas raised a hand and pointed.

"Can you see it?"

Dry Mouth turned. He stared into the distance, blinking several times. But he didn't see anything.

His mouth opened to reply, but then he stopped. What if he said no and Sylas killed him because he was useless?

But if he lied and said yes, wouldn't Sylas realize immediately and kill him for lying?

Dry Mouth's thoughts spiraled.

Could he run? Probably not.

Could he hide in the void? Maybe. For about half a second. Then Sylas would probably reach in and drag him back out by the tail, and then kill him.

Dry Mouth swallowed.

He was still desperately trying to decide which answer was less likely to get him killed when his eyes narrowed.

Something was there. Hidden deep within the void was a line of gold.

It stretched outward so far that Dry Mouth couldn't see where it ended, cutting through the emptiness like a thread pulled taut across infinity.

His brows furrowed. That didn't make sense.

The void was the void, the embodiement of nothingness. Understanding it well enough to slip through it or traverse portions of it was one thing. Dry Mouth had already learned enough to recognize that much.

But simply existing inside it? Like this line was doing? That was different.

What could exist in the void?

Dry Mouth tilted his head.

The golden thread carried something familiar... a touch of Iskaleth.

His tongue flickered out as his thoughts briefly wandered toward that beauty, but then another presence surfaced.

Sarethvane.

Dry Mouth's expression twisted. That annoying bastard too? And then his eyes widened.

'Wait... Don't tell me they're fucking?'

Dry Mouth's heart shattered in real time. His lower lip trembled, and a miserable sniff escaped him before another sensation crashed over everything else.

His expression changed.

Something was consuming the Fate. The presence beyond the golden line was enormous. Not merely powerful, but imposing in a way that made Dry Mouth feel small. It pressed against the void like something attempting to fill the emptiness itself, swallowing what gathered around it and giving structure to a place that shouldn't have had any.

Dry Mouth stopped sniffling for a moment and his gaze sharpened.

The line wasn't surviving in the void because it had somehow become part of nothingness. Something was filling the void around it.

What could do that?

The answer came almost immediately: World Spirits.

Dry Mouth knew the feeling.

That was what World Spirits did. They gave substance to places that otherwise had none, wrapped life and law around dead matter, carved pathways through the emptiness of space, and created regions where things could exist.

Only this presence was doing something similar on a scale Dry Mouth had never felt before.

His pupils widened. Then he remembered Sylas had asked him a question.

"Yes, yes, I can see it."

Sylas looked at him, and then two words followed.

"Consume it."

Dry Mouth's eyes widened.

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