Genetic Ascension

They said the eyes were the windows to the soul, the path to the heart.

In practice, that wasn't far from the truth. Of all the ways Sylas could exert his Will upon the world, his gaze remained one of the most direct. When he looked at something with intent, there was far less distance between thought and influence, between the Will within him and the reality outside.

The problem was that his eyes were also one of the weakest links in that chain. They were fragile, far more fragile than the sort of pressure Sylas increasingly wanted to push through them. There was a reason his Charisma only reached its true expression when he entered his Demonic Form.

In that state, his entire body became countless times more durable, and his eyes strengthened alongside everything else.

Charisma measured how efficiently Will could influence the world, but efficiency didn't matter if the vessel carrying that influence broke first. No matter how vast his Will became, there would always be things his eyes simply couldn't endure in their current state.

That was where Fate became interesting.

Sylas had no interest in Fate as some mystical force deciding what would or wouldn't happen. The way he understood it now was far more straightforward. Fate was a method of reading Will and Charisma, not just from a single person, but from everything interacting around them.

Sarethvane specialized in Dead Will, remnants whose meanings had already solidified because the life that once shaped them was gone. Iskaleth sat on the opposite side. She had an affinity for Living Will, for the shifting intentions and interpretations that continued to move while a person was alive.

That was why the two of them worked so naturally together, one capable of reading what had settled and the other capable of reading what still changed.

But Fate wasn't only that. There was Spacetime beneath it.

A person's Will didn't exist in isolation, nor did their Charisma push into a world that remained still. Paths diverged and intersected across both space and time, one decision altering another, one Will crossing paths with another somewhere far away or far ahead. Reading Fate meant reading those interactions as they changed, following the shape of countless possibilities as they formed and collapsed.

The Fate Dragon represented the same principle taken to an entirely different level.

In its most complete form, it existed for one purpose: accumulate enough Will and Charisma that its existence could supersede the concept of a True Dragon across all of Spacetime.

Sylas' gaze sharpened. That also explained Iskaleth.

There had never been some mysterious father hidden in her bloodline, some absurd existence her mother happened to forget among all the others. The answer was simpler.

Iskaleth had been born with an innate affinity for Spacetime. The same sort Sylas possessed.

That affinity had triggered a mutation in her eyes, leaving her blind to ordinary sight. The mutation weakened the distinction between her Will, the Mesh of Reality, and the fabric of the world around her, making her eyes unusually receptive to things they should never have been able to touch so directly.

Then the Fate Dragon brushed against her.

Her Serpentes lineage, her natural Spacetime affinity, and one stroke of Fate aligned closely enough that the Fate Dragon recognized her as something compatible, almost like a natural vessel. Its influence caused another mutation, and from there Iskaleth developed an instinctive comprehension of Living Will that most could never approach.

Sylas looked toward the golden path stretching into the distance. There was another implication.

The Fate Dragon hadn't been tied to this world.

Sarethvane and Iskaleth had already reached that conclusion, but it went further than either had understood.

It wasn't tied to one point in space and it wasn't tied to one point in time. That was only possible because of where it had been hiding.

The void.

If the Fate Dragon had remained within the Mesh of Reality for all these years without the Clan that created it to protect and maintain it, the Will of the Dragon would have eventually eroded it away. The myth it sought to rival was too vast, too deeply rooted across too many lives and too much history. Existing openly beneath that pressure would have been suicide.

So it escaped the Mesh. It hid where that influence could not so easily reach.

Even then, simply entering the void wouldn't have been enough. A stable pocket of void would attract worlds, powers, and World Spirits attempting to claim it. The Fate Dragon needed somewhere no one would want.

A region buried beneath volatile energy... and the nebula below him fit perfectly.

Royal blue clouds twisted through rivers of gold while deeper currents snapped and churned beneath them, beautiful from a distance, but violent enough up close that most would never consider trying to anchor anything here.

Sylas raised a hand. 'Enough hiding.'

The Fate Dragon had spent long enough clinging to the remnants of whatever purpose its creators once gave it, slowly decaying in a corner of the void while the world moved on without them.

Sylas had something better for it.

"You will become the backbone of the Grimblades..." His emerald eyes flashed. "And my eyes."

Pressure descended from his palm.

The Galaxy of the Grimblades answered.

The nebula hummed to the rhythm of Sylas' Will, its golden and royal-blue currents splitting apart as though dragged open by invisible hands. Vast clouds peeled away from one another, revealing something dense beneath them.

Black and dark. Not just the darkness of empty space. Something deeper than that.

The void itself seemed to gather there, compressed around a presence that had remained hidden for longer than Sylas could guess.

Then something moved.

Two enormous eyes slowly opened within the darkness. They were ancient, heavy, and yet... familiar.

Sylas froze. He would recognize those eyes anywhere, and even with his new thinking speed, his new processing abilities, he still found himself lagging to respond in time. The implications simply didn't make much sense...

Until they suddenly did.

"Gogo?"

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