Second Genesis

Grey placed a palm on top of Elowen’s head.

She startled slightly, her shoulders jumping as though she hadn’t expected anyone to touch her while she was wound this tightly, then looked up at him with a frown.

"What are you moping about for?" Grey asked. "As long as I’m here, it’ll be fine. Besides, I’m a much better Paladin than you could ever hope to be anyway."

Elowen scoffed, some of the tension leaving her face as offense replaced it. "You’re a decent mech technician, but you haven’t even seen me battle yet."

Grey grinned then he blinked a few times.

"What kind of battle are you trying to get into?"

Elowen stared at him for a second before rolling her eyes. "Can you think with something other than what’s in your pants for once?"

Grey looked genuinely confused. "Didn’t you just tell me we’re basically tied at the hip now? I’m talking to my wife the way any husband would."

A sneer pulled at Elowen’s lips. "Some husbands barely get to sleep beside their wives. Would you like to become one of them?"

Grey recoiled like she had stabbed him.

"We don’t even have a wedding date yet, and you’re already putting me in a sexless marriage?"

Elowen laughed.

It slipped out before she could stop it, and once it did, the smile followed. For a few seconds, she almost forgot why her stomach had been twisting itself into knots in the first place.

Unfortunately, Grey’s bullshit couldn’t change the truth.

She really was their best chance.

The language of Angels wasn’t a language in the normal sense. It didn’t have strict syntax, grammar, or rules that could be memorized until understanding followed naturally. There was no universal structure saying that one character meant one thing and another could only be interpreted in a specific way.

Everything depended on the person who wrote it... Intent... emotion... memory... perspective.

A single character could carry dozens of meanings depending on the Angel responsible for putting it down, and two Angels could write what looked like the exact same phrase while meaning something almost entirely different.

To understand Angelic, you had to understand the person who wrote it. That was where Resonant Sense came in.

The only reliable method was to reach outward with your Resonant Frame and resonate with the characters themselves, slowly ingratiating their existence into your own senses until you could begin seeing the words from the perspective of whoever had originally written them.

The problem was that anyone capable of writing in Angelic was powerful. Extremely powerful.

Dominion Class would be the bare minimum, and many of the surviving texts had been left behind by existences well beyond even that.

Which meant that the moment you resonated with those words, you weren’t merely interpreting ink, you were touching someone’s will.

Someone who wasn’t even here could reach across generations through the characters they had left behind and begin twisting your Resonant Frame toward their perspective.

Their emotions became easier to understand, their thoughts became more natural, and if you allowed yourself to sink too deeply into that resonance, eventually the difference between what they thought and what you thought could begin disappearing.

At that point, there were two possible outcomes.

The worst was death. Your Resonant Frame could simply collapse beneath the weight of a Will it had never been built to contain.

The second outcome was almost as useless for this challenge. You lost yourself.

Ironically, surrendering completely to the words might allow you to understand them perfectly in the moment, but the instant you were pulled back out, that understanding disappeared. It hadn’t been yours in the first place. You had simply borrowed the writer’s perspective long enough to see what they saw.

Once that connection broke, you were right back where you started.

The entire trick was balance. Resonate enough to understand, but also remain yourself enough to remember.

Twenty percent sounded small until you realized what it meant. You had to let an existence at least several Classes beyond you bleed into your mind, surrender part of yourself to their perspective, and still somehow hold onto enough of your own identity to drag the comprehension back out.

Even if Elowen managed to maintain eighty percent of herself, would that really be enough against such powerful lingering might?

And that still wasn’t the part terrifying her most.

Grey’s hand was still resting casually on her head, but Elowen’s smile slowly faded.

She was alone.

That fact had bothered her since the moment she arrived, though she had avoided thinking about it too deeply because she was afraid of where the thought would lead.

There should have been more members of the Imperial Family here. Her brothers, her sisters... at least one more of them...

Instead, there was only her.

She didn’t know with absolute certainty why, but she had a theory. A theory she desperately didn’t want confirmed.

Imperial Bloodlines could be strengthened through concentration. Everyone knew that much, even if the exact methods used by the Imperial Family were kept secret. Blood, inheritance, essence, whatever word one wanted to use, there were ways to gather what had been spread across descendants and return it to a smaller number of heirs.

Elowen swallowed.

Her mother had always treated her differently, prepared her differently, watched her differently... And now, standing here as the sole bearer of Imperial Blood among everyone the Melix Empire had sent forward, the conclusion became difficult to avoid.

Maybe her siblings hadn’t simply failed to qualify. Maybe they had never been meant to. Maybe Empress Melix had looked at all of her children, decided Elowen had the greatest chance of carrying the Empire into whatever came next, and sacrificed the rest to strengthen her...

For exactly this moment.

Elowen’s fingers trembled.

Everyone here thought their lives had just been placed into her hands. But that wasn’t what scared her.

If she was right, then countless lives had already been placed there before she ever stepped into this Instance. Her brothers and sisters were dead, and she was standing here because her mother had decided she was worth more than all of them combined.

Golden light suddenly flickered across the arena.

Elowen looked up.

Before each surviving group, characters began appearing in the air, ancient and beautiful.

The Angelic text had arrived.

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